The Quest of Julian Day (30 page)

As Mustapha was
hors-de-combat
I had warned Amin to be on hand and suggested that, if he was willing to go on the expedition, we should send him to Luxor ahead of us to select the men to go with us. We called him into conference and after I had promised, as was only fair, that if his licence as a guide was taken from him by the authorities, should it be discovered later that he had been involved with us in illegal digging, we would pay him an adequate sum in compensation, he willingly agreed to accompany us.

Although his general occupation was to show transient tourists the antiquities of the Nile Valley, on many occasions
he had taken visitors with more leisure upon camping expeditions into the desert, so he went through our lists again with us and added a few more items which his experience told him might prove useful in emergencies. Once we had told him that it was buried treasure we were after he was delighted as a child at the whole idea of the trip. I knew we couldn't have a better man to pick the personnel of our caravan and it was arranged that he should start on the following morning for Luxor, where we would join him with our vehicles and stores five days later.

When he had left us I found there was still time before lunch to walk up to Groppi's and order myself a special supply of sweets, in hermetically-sealed tins, for the expedition. Five weeks is a longish period and as I strolled up the Kasr el Nil I was happily contemplating the vast assortment that I should be justified in buying at one fell swoop; together with the various kinds and their respective quantities.

I was just outside the Anglo-Egyptian bookshop and had got as far in my mental list as
Feuilletés Pralinés
, those delicious satin cushions striped like golden wasps which have thin layers of chocolate between their sugar instead of a solid chocolate centre, when I chanced to glance at a big limousine which had pulled up at the kerb owing to a traffic block. In it, large as life and twice as beautiful, was the Princess Oonas.

She was not looking in my direction and I did not realise for the moment that she would be unlikely to recognise me even if she saw me, since her last view of me was with the paint-daubed face of a Red Indian, so I swung round and dived into the bookshop.

A smiling Arab in European dress came forward to ask in what way he could serve me but I waved him hurriedly aside and, staring at the car, wondered what I could do about it.

Here was the trail once more; if only I could follow it Sooner or later it was certain that Oonas would contact O'Kieff or Zakri Bey and, although the expedition to try to find Cambyses' treasure had now fired my imagination. I could rarely forget for long that, as far as I was concerned, it was only a fascinating side-issue.

With my mind in a whirl I stood gaping at the car until the traffic was released and it moved on. Suddenly I saw that what
ever happened I must not lose track of Oonas now I had found her again. A bicycle was leaning against the kerb outside the shop.

‘Is that yours?' I asked the bookseller quickly.

‘It is my son's, sir,' he replied in some astonishment.

‘Right!' I cried. ‘I promise I'll bring it back and pay you for the loan but I've got to borrow it.'

In one leap I was across the pavement. Seizing the handlebars I jumped into the saddle and began to pedal for dear life after the fast-disappearing limousine.

Luckily there was another traffic block further up the street so I managed to catch up the car before the jam moved on again, but by that time we were within a hundred yards of the Nile bridge and evidently the car was going over it towards Gezira. Once it had crossed the river and reached the open road I knew I should never be able to keep up with it. I cast frantic glances right and left in search of a taxi but, just as it happened, there was not a single empty one in sight. In desperation I adopted the old errand-boy's trick of grabbing the back of the car with one hand so that it would tow me along.

A policeman shouted at me angrily but I took no notice and at a terrifying speed for a push bike, I was carried over the bridge. On the grid of the car there was a big pile of luggage so I assumed that Oonas had only just arrived in Cairo and was. perhaps, going out to Mena House, since O'Kieff had put up there during his short visit; but at the far side of the bridge the car turned left along the Nile bank.

Another minute and it started to slow down; coming to a halt opposite the landing stage where the tourist companies keep their flat-bottomed steamers which take parties of visitors to Egypt up and down the Nile. I pedalled on for another hundred yards and dismounting from the bike took up my position under a tall palm tree to watch events.

Oonas got out of the car and after her another woman whom in my excitement I had not previously noticed. She was evidently a maid, as she was carrying a rug, a beauty box and various other items of Oonas' equipment. They both walked down to the wooden landing-stage and up the gangway on to one of the steamers that were moored there; upon which the native stewards came running off to fetch the baggage from the car.

Leaving the bike under the palm tree I strolled over to the wooden wharf and asked the man who was superintending the loading of the baggage what time the ship was due to sail.

‘In a quarter of an hour,
effendi
', he replied. ‘We leave at one o'clock.'

‘Are you full up?' I enquired.

He shook his head. ‘Business is not what it was,
effendi
. In the old days every cabin was booked weeks in advance and if a passenger wanted to give up his cabin he could sell it at a premium. But in these times there is not so much money in the world and only in the high season are we fortunate enough to fill all our cabins.'

‘Thanks,' I said, and slipping him five piastres, I hurried on board to see the purser.

He was a swiss and proved very amiable. He agreed at once that if I wished to come on the trip he could fix me up in a cabin with a private bathroom. ‘But,' he said, ‘how about your baggage, You have none, apparently, and we are due to sail in ten minutes.'

I pleaded with him to delay his departure just for half an hour. At first he refused but when I pointed out that, seeing the ship was not full, my passage money meant a clear profit to his company, he consented; although he laid it down very firmly that if I was not back by half-past one they would have to sail without me.

Fortunately, knowing that I might find myself in some unusual situations in my campaign against O'Kieff, I had landed in Egypt with a large sum of ready money on me which I kept in a money belt strapped round my waist, so I promptly undid it and paid my passage as an earnest of good faith.

Once on the shore again I seized the push bike and putting every ounce into my flying feet streaked across the bridge back to the bookshop, where the owner was unfeignedly glad to see me and his son's cycle again. I offered to pay for the loan of it but he would not hear of this and seemed a most friendly fellow, so I bought half-a-dozen of the latest novels and told him to send them to Sylvia at the Continental.

Ten minutes had gone but in a further five a taxi got me back to Shepheard's where I had the hall-porter send up men for my baggage right away. Another ten minutes went in cramming
my things into my trunks just anyhow and while the porters were carrying them downstairs I scribbled a note to Harry: ‘Oonas on Nile boat leaving 1.30 today, didn't see its name. Am going too. Trip to Luxor takes six days. You'll be just in time to meet me there arriving same day by rail. Love to Clarissa and Sylvia. See you in Luxor. Julian.'

As I had stayed for some weeks at Shepheard's during the previous winter, the management knew me well enough to trust me for my bill and promised to send it on to the Winter Palace at Luxor. I left the note for Harry with the porter and dived back into the taxi. It was sixteen minutes past one when I left Shepheard's and twenty-seven past by the time I got back to the wharf. I was on board with two minutes to spare. It was only then I realised that I could easily have made all my arrangements at my leisure and by hiring a car for the twenty-miles' run to Sakkara have joined the ship there any time up to five o'clock that afternoon: but that's the sort of fool I make of myself when I act on quick decisions.

None of the passengers was about when I reached the ship and as the purser showed me to my cabin he told me that they had all gone in to lunch; so I left my unpacking till afterwards and went straight down to the dining-saloon on the lower deck.

It was a long, narrow room, the width of the ship and roughly a third of its length; about thirty people were feeding there but several tables were still vacant and I was given one to myself. Oonas was seated facing me on her own at a table about fifteen away.

As I sat down I looked straight across the intervening table, which was occupied by two elderly women, at Oonas and saw that she was looking at me, as indeed were most of the other people. Doubtless they had been summing up their fellow-passengers at this first meal of the voyage and, having had a quarter of an hour to study each other, it was natural that they should now concentrate their attention covertly upon the solitary late-comer.

Oonas' face showed no trace of expression as her large blue eyes swept over me and then transferred their gaze to the other side of the saloon. Knowing she was short-sighted I had not expected for one moment that she would know me at the first glance. The all-important test would come later, when I first
spoke to her, as my voice was much more likely to give me away than my appearance. If she remembered it as that of the man who had impersonated Lemming my six-day trip was almost certain to be wasted, but if she did not know me again there was a reasonable chance that I might become sufficiently friendly with her to learn quite a lot of interesting things.

The other passengers looked a dull lot; there were more women than men and most of them were middle-aged or elderly, the majority, from such scraps of conversation as I could catch and their style of dressing, appeared to be Americans. There was only one really good-looking girl among them and she was deep in conversation with an equally attractive young man, which suggested that they might be honeymooners as later I found to be the case.

The ship had cast off directly I had come aboard so we were now chugging up the river and I turned my attention to the colourful spectacle outside the windows. I should explain, perhaps, that these Nile steamers have little resemblance to an ordinary ship. They are three-decker paddle-boats with flat bottoms, drawing only a few feet of water, and are almost entirely composed of superstructure, so one gets an equally good view of the passing scene from any of the three decks and it is rather as though one were being propelled along the river in a glorified house-boat. The lower deck contains the dining-saloon and engines; the main deck is mostly cabins, with a comfortable bar at the forward end, and the upper deck is divided into de luxe cabins aft with a drawing-room and a glassed-in observation-lounge forward. For anyone who is a bad sailor but finds life on shipboard attractive in other respects a Nile boat provides the perfect vehicle, since during the whole passage the river is as smooth as a mill-pond yet one gets the illusion of ocean travel from one's immediate surroundings.

The food proved better than I had expected although, owing to my own lateness, I was hurried through lunch to catch up with the others. When dessert was served a gorgeously-robed Arab appeared, took up his position at the end of the saloon and bowed theatrically to right and left of him, clapping his hands for silence. He then began in a loud voice:

‘Ladies and gentlemens, I am Mahmoud, your guide for the
Nile voyage. Each night we anchor some place in the middle of the river where you sleep very comfortable away from the little biting insects. Each day we go ashore some place and I show you, please, many interesting things.'

He then proceeded to give, for the benefit of the uninitiated, an abbreviated and somewhat facetious history of Ancient Egypt.

‘The Nile Valley, ladies and gentlemans, has been inhabited very long time. Desert very difficult to cross on west side and east side also make it no fun for bad mens to raid the Egyptian peoples. They develop the civilisation untroubled by invaders for many many centuries and learn to make many beautiful things.

‘The history of these people is in three parts, yes. Altogether thirty-three Dynasties of Kings rule over the Egyptian peoples for four thousand years; but not all these Dynasties matter very much, oh no!

‘First come the Old Kingdom. Many of you in Cairo visit the Pyramids, perhaps. The Great Pyramids you see at Mena are built in the time of the Old Kingdom by the Pharaohs of the IVth Dynasty. The Vth Dynasty Kings also very powerful. This afternoon we visit Sakkara where we see the Step Pyramid and tombs of the VIth Dynasty, also very powerful. It finishes, this wonderful Old Kingdom, about 2,600 years before Christ.

‘There is then civil war. For 500 years history is black-out. We only know that at latest the Princes of Thebes, which we now call Luxor, conquer all the land and become the Xlth Dynasty which found the Middle Kingdom. The XIIth Dynasty follows, also very great people. At Beni Hassan I show you some of the XIIth Dynasty tombs but much trace of the Middle Kingdom is not left, oh no, because they build not so big as the Old Kingdom and where they make temples those who come after build on top.

‘The XIVth Dynasty is what we call Shepherd Kings. They come from no one knows where, Palestine perhaps. They are not Egyptians and they conquer all. The Middle Kingdom is finish.

‘Another 400 years goes away, poof! There comes another Dynasty of pure Egyptian Kings, the XVIIIth. This is the
start of what we call the Empire because they rule in Egypt and conquer Sudan and Mesopotamia also. In it there reigned the great Hat-shep-sut, the Queen Elizabeth of Egypt. She, what you call, wear the trousers and put her husband and son right in the back place. Also then reigned Tothmes IIIrd, the Napoleon of the ancient world. With the XIXth Dynasty we have Seti I and Rameses II called the Great, because he put up so many statues to himself. After come the XXth Dynasty with many other Pharaohs bearing the same name, Rameses, but not so great. With them finish the XXth Dynasty and the Empire, about 1,100 B.C.