Victoria, to whom, coming from England, it appeared to be an ordinary summer night with a slight nip in the air, was enchanted by the Tigris seen in the moonlight with the farther bank looking mysterious and Eastern with its fringes of palms.
‘Well, anyway, I’ve got here,’ said Victoria, cheering up a good deal, ‘and I’ll manage somehow. Something is bound to turn up.’
With this Micawber-like pronouncement, she went up to bed, and the waiter slipped quietly out again and resumed his task of attaching a knotted rope so that it hung down to the river’s edge.
Presently another figure came out of the shadows and joined him. Mr Dakin said in a low voice:
‘All in order?’
‘Yes, sir, nothing suspicious to report.’
Having completed the task to his satisfaction, Mr Dakin retreated into the shadows, exchanged his waiters’ white coat for his own nondescript blue pin-stripe and ambled gently along the terrace until he stood outlined against the water’s edge just where the steps led up from the street below.
‘Getting pretty chilly in the evenings now,’ said Crosbie, strolling out from the bar and down to join him. ‘Suppose you don’t feel it so much, coming from Tehran.’
They stood there for a moment or two smoking. Unless they raised their voices, nobody could overhear them. Crosbie said quietly:
‘Who’s the girl?’
‘Niece apparently of the archaeologist, Pauncefoot Jones.’
‘Oh well – that should be all right. But coming on the same plane as Crofton Lee –’
‘It’s certainly as well,’ said Dakin, ‘to take nothing for granted.’
The men smoked in silence for a few moments.
Crosbie said: ‘You really think it’s advisable to shift the thing from the Embassy to here?’
‘I think so, yes.’
‘In spite of the whole thing being taped down to the smallest detail.’
‘It was taped down to the smallest detail in Basrah – and that went wrong.’
‘Oh, I know. Salah Hassan was poisoned, by the way.’
‘Yes – he would be. Were there any signs of an approach to the Consulate?’
‘I suspect there may have been. Bit of a shindy there, Chap drew a revolver.’ He paused and added, ‘Richard Baker grabbed him and disarmed him.’
‘Richard Baker,’ said Dakin thoughtfully.
‘Know him? He’s –’
‘Yes, I know him.’
There was a pause and then Dakin said:
‘Improvisation. That’s what I’m banking on. If we have, as you say, got everything taped – and our plans are known, then it’s easy for the other side to have got us taped, too. I very much doubt if Carmichael would even so much as get near the Embassy – and even if he reached it –’ He shook his head.
‘Here, only you and I and Crofton Lee are wise to what’s going on.’
‘They’ll know Crofton Lee moved here from the Embassy.’
‘Oh of course. That was inevitable. But don’t you see, Crosbie, that whatever show they put up against our improvisation has got to be improvised, too. It’s got to be hastily thought of and hastily arranged. It’s got to come, so to speak, from the
He looked at his watch. ‘I’ll go up now and see Crofton Lee.’
Dakin’s raised hand had no need to tap on Sir Rupert’s door. It opened silently to let him in.
The traveller had only one small reading-lamp alight and had placed his chair beside it. As he sat down again, he gently slipped a small automatic pistol on to the table within reach of his hand.
He said: ‘What about it, Dakin? Do you think he’ll come?’
‘I think so, yes, Sir Rupert.’ Then he said, ‘You’ve never met him have you?’
The other shook his head.
‘No. I’m looking forward to meeting him tonight. That young man, Dakin, must have got guts.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Dakin in his flat voice. ‘He’s got guts.’
He sounded a little surprised at the fact needing to be stated.
‘I don’t mean only courage,’ said the other. ‘Lots of courage in the war – magnificent. I mean –’
‘Imagination?’ suggested Dakin.
‘Yes. To have the guts to believe something that isn’t in the least degree probable. To risk your life finding out that a ridiculous story isn’t ridiculous at all. That takes something that the modern young man usually hasn’t got. I hope he’ll come.’
‘I think he’ll come,’ said Mr Dakin.
Sir Rupert glanced at him sharply.
‘You’ve got it all sewn up?’
‘Crosbie’s on the balcony, and I shall be watching the stairs. When Carmichael reaches you, tap on the wall and I’ll come in.’
Crofton Lee nodded.
Dakin went softly out of the room. He went to the left and on to the balcony and walked to the extreme corner. Here, too, a knotted rope dropped over the edge and came to earth in the shade of a eucalyptus tree and some judas bushes.
Mr Dakin went back past Crofton Lee’s door and into his own room beyond. His room had a second door in it leading on to the passage behind the rooms and it opened within a few feet of the head of the stairs. With this door unobtrusively ajar, Mr Dakin settled down to his vigil.
It was about four hours later that a
Chapter 13
It had been Victoria ’s intention to go to bed and to sleep and to leave all problems until the morning, but having already slept most of the afternoon, she found herself devastatingly wide-awake.
In the end she switched on the light, finished a magazine story she had been reading in the plane, darned her stockings, tried on her new nylons, wrote out several different advertisements requiring employment (she could ask tomorrow where these should be inserted), wrote three or four tentative letters to Mrs Hamilton Clipp, each setting out a different and more ingenious set of unforeseen circumstances which had resulted in her being ‘stranded’ in Baghdad, sketched out one or two telegrams appealing for help to her sole surviving relative, a very old, crusty, and unpleasant gentleman in the North of England who had never helped anybody in his life; tried out a new style of hair-do, and finally with a sudden yawn decided that at last she really was desperately sleepy and ready for bed and repose.
It was at this moment that without any warning her bedroom door swung open, a man slipped in, turned the key in the lock behind him and said to her urgently:
‘For God’s sake hide me somewhere – quickly…’
Victoria ’s reactions were never slow. In a twinkling of an eye she had noted the laboured breathing, the fading voice, the way the man held an old red knitted scarf bunched on his breast with a desperate clutching hand. And she rose immediately in response to the adventure.
The room did not lend itself to many hiding-places. There was the wardrobe, a chest of drawers, a table and the rather pretentious dressing-table. The bed was a large one – almost a double bed and memories of childish hide-and-seek made Victoria ’s reaction prompt.
