‘Oh, very well.’
Victoria withdrew into her room. She was less sleepy now. She glanced at her watch. Only half-past four. An hour and a half until Mrs Clipp would be requiring her. She decided to go out and walk about Heliopolis. Walking, at least, required no money.
She powdered her nose and resumed her shoes. They felt rather full of feet. The visit to the Pyramids had been hard on her feet.
She came out of her room and walked along the corridor towards the main hall of the hotel. Three doors down she passed the BOAC office. It had a card announcing the fact nailed to the door. Just as she passed it, the door opened and Sir Rupert came out. He was walking fast and he overtook her in a couple of strides. He went on ahead of her, his cloak swinging, and Victoria fancied that he was annoyed about something.
Mrs Clipp was in a somewhat petulant mood when Victoria reported for duty at six o’clock.
‘I’m worried about the excess on my baggage, Miss Jones. I took it that I’d paid for that right through, but it seems that it’s only paid until Cairo. We go on tomorrow by Iraqi Airways. My ticket is a through ticket, but not the excess baggage. Perhaps you’d go and find out if that is really so? Because maybe I ought to change another traveller’s cheque.’
Victoria agreed to make inquiries. She could not find the BOAC office at first, and finally located it in the far corridor – the other side of the hall – quite a big office. The other, she supposed, had been a small office only used during the afternoon siesta hours. Mrs Clipp’s fears about the excess baggage were found to be justified, which annoyed that lady very much.
Chapter 8
On the fifth floor of a block of offices in the City of London are situated the offices of the Valhalla Gramophone Co. The man who sat behind the desk in that office was reading a book on economics. The telephone rang and he picked up the receiver. He said in a quiet unemotional voice:
‘Valhalla Gramophone Co.’
‘Sanders here.’
‘Sanders of the River? What river?’
‘River Tigris. Reporting as to A. S. We’ve lost her.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then the quiet voice spoke again, with a steely note in it.
‘Did I hear what you said correctly?’
‘We’ve lost Anna Scheele.’
‘No names. This is a very serious error on your part. How did it come about?’
‘She went into that nursing home. I told you before. Her sister was having an operation.’
‘Well?’
‘The operation went off all right. We expected A. S. to return to the Savoy. She had kept on her suite. She didn’t return. Watch had been kept on the nursing home and we were quite sure she hadn’t left it. We assumed she was still there.’
‘And she isn’t?’
‘We’ve just found out. She left there,
‘She deliberately fooled you?’
‘Looks like it. I’d swear she didn’t know she was being followed. We took every precaution. There were three of us and –’
‘Never mind the excuses. Where did the ambulance take her?’
‘To University College Hospital.’
‘What have you learnt from the hospital?’
‘That a patient was brought in accompanied by a hospital nurse. The hospital nurse must have been Anna Scheele. They’ve no idea where she went after she brought the patient in.’
‘And the patient?’
‘The patient knows nothing. She was under morphia.’
‘So Anna Scheele walked out of University College Hospital dressed as a nurse and may now be anywhere?’
‘Yes. If she goes back to the Savoy –’
The other interrupted.
‘She won’t go back to the Savoy.’
‘Shall we check up on other hotels?’
‘Yes, but I doubt if you’ll get any result. That’s what she’d expect you to do.’
‘What instructions otherwise?’
‘Check on the ports – Dover, Folkestone, etc. Check with air lines. In particular check all bookings to Baghdad by plane for the next fortnight. The passage won’t be booked in her own name. Check up on all passengers of suitable age.’
‘Her baggage is still at the Savoy. Perhaps she’ll claim it.’
‘She won’t do anything of the sort.
‘We’re in contact with her special nurse at the home. Apparently the sister thinks A. S. is in Paris doing business for Morganthal and staying at the Ritz Hotel. She believed A. S. is flying home to States on 23rd.’
‘In other words A. S. has told her nothing. She wouldn’t. Check up on those air passages. It’s the only hope. She’s got to get to Baghdad – and air is the only way she can do it in time, and, Sanders –’
‘Yes?’
‘
Chapter 9
Young Mr Shrivenham of the British Embassy shifted from one foot to the other and gazed upwards as the plane zoomed over Baghdad aerodrome. There was a considerable dust-storm in progress. Palm trees, houses, human beings were all shrouded in a thick brown haze. It had come on quite suddenly.
Lionel Shrivenham observed in a tone of deep distress:
‘Ten to one they can’t come down here.’
‘What will they do?’ asked his friend Harold.
‘Go on to Basrah, I imagine. It’s clear there, I hear.’
‘You’re meeting some kind of a VIP, aren’t you?’
Young Mr Shrivenham groaned again.
‘Just my luck. The new Ambassador has been delayed coming out. Lansdowne, the Counsellor, is in England. Rice, the Oriental Counsellor, is ill in bed with gastric flu, dangerously high temperature. Best is in Tehran, and here am I, left with the whole bag of tricks. No end of a flap about this fellow. I don’t know why. Even the hush-hush boys are in a flap. He’s one of these world travellers, always off somewhere inaccessible on a camel. Don’t see why he’s so important, but apparently he’s absolutely the cat’s whiskers, and I’m to conform to his slightest wish. If he gets carried on to Basrah he’ll probably be wild. Don’t know what arrangements I’d better lay on. Train up tonight? Or get the RAF to fly him up tomorrow?’
Mr Shrivenham sighed again, as his sense of injury and responsibility deepened. Since his arrival three months ago in Baghdad he had been consistently unlucky. One more raspberry, he felt, would finally blight what might have been a promising career.
The plane swooped overhead once more.
‘Evidently thinks he can’t make it,’ said Shrivenham, then added excitedly: ‘Hallo – I believe he’s coming
