Garment of Shadows (34 page)

The lanes grew ever narrower, from the width of a laden donkey to a passage unsuitable for two men side by side, to a crack between buildings that required us to edge sideways. Mahmoud pulled himself along, unable to conceal his laboured breath. Holmes came next, torch in one hand, rifle in the other. I held back, my own gun at my shoulder, waiting.

A scratching noise came from ahead, and the procession stopped. The sound was repeated, twice, and then a door opened. Lamp-light poured into the ridiculously thin passageway.

Youssef looked out.

And Idir stepped forward to embrace him.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-SEVEN

I
am not certain how Holmes bundled Mahmoud into the lighted room as quickly as he did—I expect he more or less lifted him bodily. But within seconds of the servant’s appearing in the doorway, three Europeans and two rifles were in the room as well. Both rifles pointed straight at Youssef. The room was so small and the guns so long, the muzzle ends nearly brushed his chest.

The man’s first move was to detach Idir’s arms from his waist and put the boy behind him. Pale beneath his brown skin, he looked from Holmes to me and then to Mahmoud.

“Monsieur, what—?”

“Who are you?” Holmes demanded.

“Monsieur, I am Youssef.”

“Of what tribe?”

“Ah.” A degree of comprehension dawned on his features, and something that looked like chagrin. “I am of the Beni Urriaguel.”

“And the child?”

“Also of the Urriaguel.”

“Mahmoud, did you know of this?”

“I did not.”

“
You
are Sayyid Mahmoud?” Youssef asked in surprise, but Holmes overran the question.

“What relation are the two of you to Abd el-Krim?”

“No relation, not by blood. I …”

Youssef paused, looking around the room. It was very full of human beings. The tiny space was irregular, typical of a room fitted into an odd gap between buildings. Both doors were only adequate for someone Idir’s height, and the ceiling was a bare handsbreadth over Holmes’ head. But everything was scrupulously clean and tidy: A low cushioned divan was pushed against one wall, with a trunk at one end and a stool at the other; a small chest of drawers, holding a water jug and bowl, stood near the door. A pair of long shelves mounted to the wall held Youssef’s possessions, among them three framed photographs, a service of gilt-edged glasses, a comb and tooth-brush, and a small leather box, on top of which sat the rosette of the
Légion d’honneur
.

And beside the box, a menagerie of carved wooden animals.

The eyes of Dar Mnehbi’s steward lingered on the gilt glasses, as if he was about to offer tea before he told us his tale. Fortunately, he decided against it, and merely took a seat atop the trunk, gesturing with his hand in an offer of stool or divan.

Mahmoud, deciding it was better to admit weakness than to collapse, lowered himself onto the stool. When he saw that Holmes and I intended to remain on our feet, Youssef patted the divan cushion at his side, and the boy sat down.

“Mohammed ibn Abd el-Krim al-Khattabi was a student here in Fez,” he began, “many years before the French came. He lived at the
madrassa
, of course, but because we were both from Ajdir, he often joined my family for dinner, and for friendship. I became like an uncle to him. After he left Fez, to work in Melilla, we wrote from time to time.” He glanced down at the boy, then shifted to French, simple but clear.

“In the early days of the Revolt, my brother was killed, and his entire family but for this, his youngest son,
hamdallah
. When the Emir’s men found him, the boy was silent, but the soldiers took him in, and when they returned to the mountains he went with them. They made him a—how do you say?” He said an Arabic phrase I did not know.

“Mascot,” Mahmoud supplied.

“A mascot. First one man, then another, would feed the lad and watch over him for a time. When that man was killed or went home to work his crops, another would take him.

“Not until winter did news reach me that one of my nephews had survived. I sent for him, and put him in a
madrassa
, here in the town. But the boy was a problem. He did not speak. He would not respond to his name, only to the name he had been given by the soldiers. Day after day, I would receive word that he had left the school and was somewhere in the city, and sooner or later we would find him on the road out of town. He was too young to be put to work here in Dar Mnehbi, too much of a problem to be given to others as an apprentice. He wanted nothing but to return to the mountains.

“My heart was heavy, for I have no sons of my own, but in the spring, I sat down and wrote to my old friend the Emir. And he came, himself, to Fez. We talked, he and I, and in the end it was decided that although the boy would not be safe up where the fighting was, neither was he safe on the roads or in the town. And so the Emir took my brother’s son away with him. I think—” Youssef turned to ask the boy something, and saw that Idir had fallen asleep. He laid a hand on the dark head, but did not wake him. “I was surprised to see him, a week ago. He came to my room first on the Sunday evening, arriving as he did tonight, and told me—he writes very well now—that he was travelling with a friend of the Emir whom he called Sayyid Mahmoud, but the Emir commanded that should he find himself among the French, he must say nothing of his relationship with me.

“This was the Emir’s business, so I agreed. The lad told me that he and Sayyid Mahmoud were taking the train to Rabat the next day, but would return immediately to Fez. However, it was not until Thursday that I saw him again. He put a note under the door during the afternoon, to say that he was in Fez and would come to see me that night. And he did, but it was very late, almost the morning, when he did so.

“He was very upset. Crying, in fact. His travel companions had disappeared the night before—he wrote that Sayyid Mahmoud had been abducted and their other friend, a woman who looked like a man, had gone as well. It was hard to believe, but he was very disturbed. I told him that we would inform the Maréchal, who would help, but the idea made the boy come near to a panic. To calm him, I agreed to say nothing, and put him to bed. I decided to speak with the lad the next day, when he was calmer, and take him with me to the Maréchal. But in the morning, he was gone. And then in the afternoon, he came to Dar Mnehbi openly, first with Monsieur, then with another person, and finally with a third. And if none of them was named Mahmoud, one did,” he added with a glance at me, “turn out to be a woman who looked like a man.

“Clearly, this was the Emir’s business. When you returned, Madame, on Tuesday evening, I intended to present you with my questions, but you left before I could do so. And I thought, so much the better: When it comes to my old friend the Emir there are times when it is better not to enquire too closely.”

The apologetic smile he gave seemed to indicate an end to the story. As he had talked, first I and then Holmes had lowered our heavy guns to the floor. I cleared my throat.

“When I left on Tuesday, what happened?”

Youssef looked puzzled. “You left. That is what I was told.”

“Who told you?”

“Monsieur Dulac. He said you had wished to see the Maréchal, but when the Maréchal did not return, you remembered other business in the city.”

“Did any men come here,” Holmes asked, “before you returned to clear the tray?”

“No, Monsieur. Well, merely the three men come for the trunk.”

“A trunk? A large one?”

“Yes, very pretty, with inlay, but old. It has been in the guest-room for years—the room that you were given—but Mme Lyautey has decided to decorate, and wished some articles removed.”

“Did Dulac tell you that?”

“Yes. Because I had not heard of the Madame’s wishes, when the men came to remove it that night.”

Holmes said in English, “Either the fellow’s a superb liar, or he’s not our man.”

Mahmoud signalled his agreement by standing and holding out his palm to Youssef. “The key.”

“Monsieur?”

“To this back door.”

With reluctance, Youssef turned to the shelf beside the door, picking up a fist-sized chatelaine of keys. He would have removed one—laboriously—but Mahmoud said, “We will take them all.”

The key to Dar Mnehbi’s hidden exit, an exit given to the house steward to safeguard, was a piece of Mediaeval iron-work the length of my hand. But the lock was well maintained, and when the ornate black shaft was turned, it moved with ease. “Is there one for Monsieur Dulac’s room?” Mahmoud asked.

“Oui, Monsieur.”
Youssef pointed out a key some three centuries younger than the first.

We left the sleeping Idir and his anxious uncle in the tiny room, pinned inside by the massive storage chest that Holmes and I wrestled into place against the door, and went in search of a traitor.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-EIGHT

D
ar Mnehbi was an ornate jewel-box better suited for meeting visitors than for housing foreign guests. Lyautey had rooms off the stairway tower, but Holmes and I had been housed in the neighbouring guard-room
dar
, where, according to Youssef, François Dulac slept tonight, up on the first floor, in a room with an external window.

In the cramped corridor outside Youssef’s barricaded door, we considered the best approach. We had two options: Wake first Lyautey, then the guards, working to convince a series of sleepy men that they needed rapidly to obey us, hoping that nothing panicked Dulac; or, we could take the direct approach.

Need I say which we chose?

The corridor was a plastered mole-tunnel that wound a surprising distance before entering the staircase tower connecting Dar Mnehbi’s ground floor to its rooftop terrace. We eased down the steps to the courtyard. A shaft of soft light came from the entranceway, casting shadows and gleams across the
zellij
.

We waited there, straining to hear above the perpetual splash from the fountain, until we were certain where the guards were—or, as it turned out, guard, the source of snoring that overrode the splashes. Mahmoud slipped into the courtyard, leading to the right: By skirting around the sides, past the decorative inner doors and windows of the public salons and the library, any rustle of garments or scuff of feet would be concealed by the fountain.

The guard-
dar
was mostly asleep as well, although light came from one of the ground-floor salons, with the low sound of conversation from the guards on duty. They did not hear footsteps creeping up the stone stairs, or moving across the railed balcony.

Youssef had said that Dulac’s door did not have a bolt, merely the keyed lock.

And it was true, there was no bolt.

Unfortunately, there was a sturdy wedge.

The key slid in, the mechanism turned smoothly, Holmes’ shoulder went against the door, and nothing happened.

Except for inside the room. A light came on beneath the door, followed by a flurry of thumps and motion from within as the occupant tumbled from his bed, jerked on trousers, stepped into shoes, and scrabbled for his hidden stash of valuables before yanking open the window to his roof-top escape.

Only to stop at the sight of a revolver barrel, inches from his nose.

His hands went up.

“Drop what you’re carrying,” I said. “Now move away, slowly.”

When he was on the other side of the little room, near the rhythmically thumping door, I told him to turn his back to me, leaving his hands in the air. “M. Dulac, if you turn around, if you reach for that pistol in your belt, I will shoot you.”

Fortunately, he believed me. He stood motionless as I struggled through the window. I plucked the gun from his waist-band and kicked the wedge from beneath the door just as the guards came up the stairs.

Holmes and Mahmoud tumbled in, slamming the door and turning the key.

Louder pounding ensued, breaking off only when Holmes identified himself. When the guards proved unwilling to accept his name as sufficient authority, I told Dulac to send them away.

He did, although I did not imagine they would retreat altogether.

Holmes began an immediate circuit of the room, emptying drawers, prodding wood-work, unscrewing the cap ends of the bed, getting down on his knees to examine the boards. Handing Mahmoud my revolver, I retrieved the object Dulac had been in the process of shoving into his shirt-front when he ran into the end of my gun.

It was a washed-leather bag about the size of my fist, very heavy, securely knotted. I picked open the ties, and looked inside: francs, sovereigns, pesetas, and two American double-eagles, but mostly Deutschmarks. Gold, all of them.

“Treachery appears lucrative, here in the French Protectorate,” I remarked.

“What do you mean?” Dulac seized upon bluster as a shield, and drew himself up to make the most of it. “What are you doing?” he demanded of Holmes, who had lifted the curtain-rod from the little window and let the fabric slide to the floor. “What is the meaning of this invasion? I thought we were being attacked by town ruffians. I was about to go out of the window to hide my life savings.”

I glanced sideways at Mahmoud. “Quick thinker, this.”

“A bit late for that.”

“Who is
this
fellow?” Dulac demanded, gazing down his nose at the admittedly scruffy figure of Mahmoud. “If you don’t let the guards in at once, I’ll—”

Holmes dropped the curtain-rod, which bounced with a hollow metallic clatter, and held up a tightly furled paper tube. We waited politely for Dulac to complete his threat. We might be waiting still, but for voices outside the door.

“François? What is going on?” Lyautey’s voice, as crisp as if he’d been up for hours.

But his secretary did not appear altogether reassured at the arrival of authority. His voice squeaked, just a little, with his answer. “These … individuals, Monsieur le Maréchal! They have invaded my rooms, stolen my goods, threatened my person. I demand—”