“Quite so.” They had stopped outside the Adler-Palace Hotel. “Will you come in for a drink?”
Kopeikin shook his head. “It is kind of you to suggest it, but you must get some sleep. I feel guilty now at having kept you out so late, but I have enjoyed our evening together.”
“So have I. I’m very grateful to you.”
“A great pleasure. No farewells now. I shall take you to the station in the morning. Can you be ready by ten?”
“Easily.”
“Then good night, my dear fellow.”
“Good night, Kopeikin.”
Graham went inside, stopped at the hall porter’s desk for his key and to tell the night porter to call him at eight. Then, as the power for the lift was switched off at night, he climbed wearily up the stairs to his room on the second floor.
It was at the end of the corridor. He put the key in the lock, turned it, pushed the door open and, with his right hand, felt along the wall for the light switch.
The next moment there was a splinter of flame in the darkness and an ear-splitting detonation. A piece of plaster from the wall beside him stung his cheek. Before he could move or even think, the flame and the noise came again and it seemed as if a bar of white-hot metal had been suddenly pressed against the back of his hand. He cried out with pain and stumbled forward out of the light from the corridor into the darkness of the room. Another shot scattered plaster behind him.
There was silence. He was half leaning, half crouching against the wall by the bed, his ears singing from the din of the explosions. He was dimly aware that the window was open and that someone was moving by it. His hand seemed to be numb, but he could feel blood beginning to trickle between his fingers.
He remained motionless, his heart hammering at his head. The air reeked of cordite fumes. Then, as his eyes became used to the darkness, he saw that whoever had been at the window had left by it.
There would, he knew, be another light switch beside the bed. With his left hand he fumbled along the wall towards it. Then his hand touched the telephone. Hardly
knowing what he was doing, he picked it up.
He heard a click as the night porter plugged in at the switchboard.
“Room thirty-six,” he said and was surprised to find that he was shouting. “Something has happened. I need help.”
He put the telephone down, blundered towards the bathroom and switched on the light there. The blood was pouring from a great gash across the back of his hand. Through the waves of nausea flowing from his stomach to his head, he could hear doors being flung open and excited voices in the corridor. Someone started hammering at the door.
T
HE STEVEDORES
had finished loading and were battening down. One winch was still working but it was hoisting the steel bearers into place. The bulkhead against which Graham was leaning vibrated as they thudded into their sockets. Another passenger had come aboard and the steward had shown him to a cabin farther along the alleyway. The newcomer had a low, grumbling voice and had addressed the steward in hesitant Italian.
Graham stood up and with his unbandaged hand fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette. He was beginning to find the cabin oppressive. He looked at his watch. The ship would not be sailing for another hour. He wished he had asked Kopeikin to come aboard with him. He tried to think of his wife in England, to picture her sitting with her friends having tea; but it was as if someone behind him were holding a stereoscope to his mind’s eyes; someone who was steadily sliding picture after picture between him and the rest of his life to cut him off from it;
pictures of Kopeikin and Le Jockey Cabaret, of Maria and the man in the crumpled suit, of Josette and her partner, of stabbing flames in a sea of darkness and of pale, frightened faces in the hotel corridor. He had not known then what he knew now, what he learnt in the cold, beastly dawn that had followed. The whole thing had seemed different then: unpleasant, decidedly unpleasant, but reasonable, accountable. Now he felt as if a doctor had told him that he was suffering from some horrible and deadly disease; as if he had become part of a different world, a world of which he knew nothing but that it was detestable.
The hand holding the match to his cigarette was trembling. “What I need,” he thought, “is sleep.”
As the waves of nausea subsided and he stood there in the bathroom, shivering, sounds began once more to penetrate the blanket of cotton wool that seemed to have enveloped his brain. There was a sort of irregular thudding coming from a long distance. He realised that someone was still knocking at the bedroom door.
He wrapped a face towel round his hand, went back into the bedroom and switched on the light. As he did so, the knocking ceased and there was a clinking of metal. Someone had got a pass key. The door burst open.
It was the night porter who came in first, blinking round uncertainly. Behind him in the corridor were the people from the neighbouring rooms, drawing back now for fear of seeing what they hoped to see. A small, dark man in a red dressing gown over blue striped pyjamas pushed past the night porter. Graham recognised the man
who had shown him to his room.
“There were shots,” he began in French. Then he saw Graham’s hand and went white. “I … You are wounded. You are …”
Graham sat down on the bed. “Not seriously. If you will send for a doctor to bandage my hand properly, I will tell you what has happened. But first: the man who fired the shots left through the window. You might try and catch him. What is below the window?”
“But …” began the man shrilly. He stopped, visibly pulling himself together. Then he turned to the night porter and said something in Turkish. The porter went out, shutting the door behind him. There was a burst of excited chatter from outside.
“The next thing,” said Graham, “is to send for the manager.”
“Pardon, Monsieur, he has been sent for. I am the Assistant Manager.” He wrung his hands. “What has happened? Your hand, Monsieur.… But the doctor will be here immediately.”
“Good. You’d better know what happened. I have been out this evening with a friend. I returned a few minutes ago. As I opened the door here, someone standing there just inside the window fired three shots at me. The second one hit my hand. The other two hit the wall. I heard him moving but I did not see his face. I imagine that he was a thief and that my unexpected return disturbed him.”
“It is an outrage!” said the Assistant Manager hotly. His face changed. “A thief! Has anything been stolen, Monsieur?”
“I haven’t looked. My suitcase is over there. It was locked.”
The Assistant Manager hurried across the room and went down on his knees beside the suitcase. “It is still locked,” he reported with a sigh of relief.
Graham fumbled in his pocket. “Here are the keys. You’d better open it.”
The man obeyed. Graham glanced at the contents of the case. “It has not been touched.”
“A blessing!” He hesitated. He was obviously thinking fast. “You say that your hand is not seriously hurt, Monsieur?”
“I don’t think it is.”
“It is a great relief. When the shots were heard, Monsieur, we feared an unbelievable horror. You may imagine.… But this is bad enough.” He went to the window and looked out. “The pig! He must have escaped through the gardens immediately. Useless to search for him.” He shrugged despairingly. “He is gone now, and there is nothing to be done. I need not tell you, Monsieur, how profoundly we regret that this thing should happen to you in the Adler-Palace. Never before has such a thing happened here.” He hesitated again and then went on quickly: “Naturally, Monsieur, we shall do everything in our power to alleviate the distress which has been caused to you. I have told the porter to bring some whisky for you when he has telephoned for the doctor. English whisky! We have a special supply. Happily, nothing has been stolen. We could not, of course, have foreseen that an accident of such a kind should happen; but we shall ourselves see that the best
medical attention is given. And there will, of course, be no question of any charge for your stay here. But …”
“But you don’t want to call in the police and involve the hotel. Is that it?”
The Assistant Manager smiled nervously. “No good can be done, Monsieur. The police would merely ask questions and make inconveniences for all.” Inspiration came to him. “For
all
, Monsieur,” he repeated emphatically. “You are a business man. You wish to leave Istanbul this morning. But if the police are brought in, it might be difficult. There would be, inevitably, delays. And for what purpose?”
“They might catch the man who shot me.”
“But how, Monsieur? You did not see his face. You cannot identify him. There is nothing stolen by which he could be traced.”
Graham hesitated. “But what about this doctor you are getting? Supposing he reports to the police the fact that there is someone here with a bullet wound.”
“The doctor’s services, Monsieur, will be paid for liberally by the management.”
There was a knock at the door and the porter came in with whisky, soda-water, and glasses which he set down on the table. He said something to the Assistant Manager who nodded and then motioned him out.
“The doctor is on his way, Monsieur.”
“Very well. No, I don’t want any whisky. But drink some yourself. You look as though you need it. I should like to make a telephone call. Will you tell the porter to telephone the Crystal Apartments in the rue d’Italie? The number is forty-four, nine hundred and seven, I
think. I want to speak to Monsieur Kopeikin.”
“Certainly, Monsieur. Anything you wish.” He went to the door and called after the porter. There was another incomprehensible exchange. The Assistant Manager came back and helped himself generously to the whisky.
“I think,” he said, returning to the charge, “that you are wise not to invoke the police, Monsieur. Nothing has been stolen. Your injury is not serious. There will be no trouble. It is thus and thus with the police here, you understand.”
“I haven’t yet decided what to do,” snapped Graham. His head was aching violently and his hand was beginning to throb. He was getting tired of the Assistant Manager.
The telephone bell rang. He moved along the bed and picked up the telephone.
“Is that you, Kopeikin?”
He heard a mystified grunt. “Graham? What is it? I have only just this moment come in. Where are you?”
“Sitting on my bed. Listen! Something stupid has happened. There was a burglar in my room when I got up here. He took pot shots at me with a gun before escaping via the window. One of them hit me in the hand.”
“Merciful God! Are you badly hurt?”
“No. It just took a slice of the back of my right hand. I don’t feel too good, though. It gave me a nasty shock.”
“My dear fellow! Please tell me exactly what has happened.”
Graham told him. “My suitcase was locked,” he went
on, “and nothing is missing. I must have got back just a minute or so too soon. But there are complications. The noise seems to have roused half the hotel, including the Assistant Manager who is now standing about drinking whisky. They’ve sent for a doctor to bandage me up, but that’s all. They made no attempt to get out after the man. Not, I suppose, that it would have done any good if they had, but at least they might have seen him. I didn’t. They say he must have got away by the gardens. The point is that they won’t call in the police unless I turn nasty and insist. Naturally, they don’t want police tramping about the place, giving the hotel a bad name. They put it to me that the police would prevent my travelling on the eleven o’clock train if I lodged a complaint. I expect they would. But I don’t know the laws of this place; and I don’t want to put myself in a false position by failing to lodge a complaint. They propose, I gather, to square the doctor. But that’s their look-out. What do
I
do?”
There was a short silence. Then: “I think,” said Kopeikin, slowly, “that you should do nothing at the moment. Leave the matter to me. I will speak to a friend of mine about it. He is connected with the police, and has great influence. As soon as I have spoken to him, I will come to your hotel.”
“But there’s no need for you to do that, Kopeikin. I …”
“Excuse me, my dear fellow, there is every need. Let the doctor attend to your wound and then stay in your room until I arrive.”
“I wasn’t going out,” said Graham, acidly; but Kopeikin had rung off.
As he hung up the telephone, the doctor arrived. He was thin and quiet, with a sallow face, and wore an overcoat with a black lamb’s wool collar over his pyjamas. Behind him came the Manager, a heavy, disagreeable-looking man who obviously suspected that the whole thing was a hoax concocted expressly to annoy him.
He gave Graham a hostile stare, but before he could open his mouth his assistant was pouring out an account of what had occurred. There was a lot of gesturing and rolling of eyes. The Manager exclaimed as he listened, and looked at Graham with less hostility and more apprehension. At last the assistant paused, and then broke meaningly into French.
“Monsieur leaves Istanbul by the eleven o’clock train, and so does not wish to have the trouble and inconvenience of taking this matter to the police. I think you will agree, Monsieur le Directeur, that his attitude is wise.”
“Very wise,” agreed the Manager pontifically, “and most discreet.” He squared his shoulders. “Monsieur, we infinitely regret that you should have been put to such pain, discomfort and indignity. But not even the most luxurious hotel can fortify itself against thieves who climb through windows. Nevertheless,” he went on, “the Hotel Adler-Palace recognises its responsibilities towards its guests. We shall do everything humanly possible to arrange the affair.”
“If it would be humanly possible to instruct the doctor
then to attend to my hand, I should be grateful.”
“Ah yes. The doctor. A thousand pardons.”
The doctor, who had been standing gloomily in the background, now came forward and began snapping out instructions in Turkish. The windows were promptly shut, the heating turned up, and the Assistant Manager dispatched on an errand. He returned, almost immediately, with an enamel bowl which was then filled with hot water from the bathroom. The doctor removed the towel from Graham’s hand, sponged the blood away, and inspected the wound. Then he looked up and said something to the Manager.