CAIRO TANK TROUBLE

Originally appeared in Thrilling Adventures, May 1943.

CHAPTER I

A Fight in an Alley

Mike Rayne, civilian specialist, was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be a real break to get out in the desert after Rommel. He was tired of sweating here under the floodlights. He was weary of trying to invent ways of mating up parts from three different models of tanks. The result had to be one mongrel tank that could roll, and dish it out, and take it for a while.

Here the greasy concrete floor quivered from the impact hammers which straightened plates, ripped and warped by those roaring 88s. Hissing torches welded cuts, and built up tractor treads. Here, just as much as the desert gap between the Qattara Depression and el Alamein, was the front.

And Rayne, who had left the factory in Detroit to go to Egypt to supervise tank repair, had been doing it the hard way. His crew had to recondition damaged parts, while Rayne robbed what he could from hopeless wrecks. There was nothing else to do. For the Iron King, loaded with spare replacements, had been torpedoed in the Red Sea.

A stooped, thin man with silver eagles on his shirt stalked through the shop. He halted, cocked his head.

“Rayne! You working yet?” he bellowed. “When the simmering blazes do you sleep? How many hours do you think a man can stand in this furnace?”

Rayne’s swarthy face twisted. He gestured at the line-up.

“All right, Colonel. Take over for me, will you?”

Colonel Mitchell made a gesture, palms up.

“Enough’s enough. Don’t you work your crews overtime?”

“Won’t do. If they get groggy things might happen.”

The Colonel snorted with disgust.

“I know why. They can’t use a micrometer, they can’t pour a bearing, they can’t balance a crankshaft. Especially the ones which ought to go to the scrap-heap instead of back into service. That’s so, isn’t it?”

“Sure. Simple enough.”

“All right,” the colonel went on, “and if you don’t ease up, you’ll drop dead. Get out of this place, right now.”

Mike Rayne was tired, more tired than he had ever been in his life before. Lines of weariness had cut into his young face, injected his eyes with blood and furrowed his brow. But he wouldn’t quit. His square jaw set itself. He felt inclined to argue.

“Aw, nuts!” he said. “Don’t you realize Rommel’s advancing?”

Even as he spoke the shop had a tendency to spin. He put his hand to his wet brow and managed to control the dizziness. Colonel Mitchell caught the gesture. His manner grew triumphant.

“Ah, ha, you see that?” cried the Colonel. “What did I say? You need time off. I’ll wager you haven’t even seen your grandmother; I’m putting you out.”

To emphasize his remarks, Mitchell caught Rayne by the shoulder, whirled him about and hustled him toward the far-off entrance. Mitchell’s hand was far more powerful than it looked. Effortlessly he managed the weary man.

“You follow instructions,” he told Rayne. “Get yourself a bit of shut-eye, see your grandmother, or go out and get drunk. Do something.” At the door he halted the young mechanic. “Trust your crew,” he said. “You trained ’em. Now give ’em their heads. They depend too much on you. If it weren’t for that you could go to the front. But you’re too valuable to lose. So you must take care of yourself, boy. Understand?”

Rayne sighed. The old chap with the silver eagles was right, no doubt about it.

“You win, Colonel. I’m going.”

Not until he left the shower, did Rayne realize the colonel’s order. He put on his clean whites, which accentuated the swarthiness of his face, the keenness of his deep-set eyes and the darkness of his brows. He still did not feel any too steady on his feet. His head was giddy from long sustained tension.

Maybe he ought to see his grandmother, out in the Salahiya Quarter, as the colonel had suggested; The old lady was past eighty. However, going to bat for Cairo had been a mania with Rayne since he had come back to Egypt. Though born in Denver, he had spent his boyhood in Cairo, with his grandmother.

On the Detroit payrolls, he was listed as Mike Rayne, and not Mikhail Matar. An American, he once told his parents, ought to have an all-American name, so he had translated it. Though “Rain” he figured, had a bit more class if you spelled it “Rayne.”

The paving billowed a little under his feet. He knew that he could drink arrak by the bottle and not feel the blistering stuff. He understood now why the survivors of a torpedoed transport, after several weeks in an open boat, had that blank look, why they could not say much.

Rayne was exhausted. Exhaustion parts the thin veil which separates a man’s everyday knowledge from the hidden knowledge which comes to him in hunches. To Rayne, the lights and the voices, the café laughter and the whine of “rebeks” and the crying of flutes carried a shocking message. Most of the town felt Rommel did not want to bomb Cairo.

Rayne knew Rommel wanted to blast the British and American armored forces. Rommel wanted to shoot the R.A.F. and the U. S. Air Force from the sky. But he wanted to keep Cairo intact for the Nazis. Rommel could plan this way because at least half of Egypt hated the British, and believed that Hitler would bring a bright new day to the Nile.

Rayne could have gone to the Continental Roof, where Hekmet did the Egyptian version of a strip tease. Also there were the cafés on the Ezbekiyah, crowded with officers. Instead, Rayne, drifted toward the Muski Quarter, the town he knew from boyhood days;

He had lived in the States too long not to notice the smells. But for all his crinkled nostrils, it was like meeting an old friend, a friend who was making a deadly mistake. A woman’s voice, and the plucked strings of an oudh tugged at his heart. Such things brushed back some fifteen years. Mike Rayne became Mikhail Matar again, an American thinking in Arabic.

Robed figures flitted about shadowy alleys like the unburied dead. “Effendis” strutted in European clothes, and tarbooshes rakishly cocked. At times, he heard English and American voices. These began to sound foreign. He stepped into a loqanda where much arrak and only a little coffee was sold. No one gave him a second look; he belonged. But when two men in civilian clothes entered, Kassim’s customers eyed them. Kassim, sharp-eyed and greasy, went into his tourist bait routine.

“Nix, we want a drink,” growled the two men.

They were seamen. Rayne knew that. They needed the anise flavored brandy to turn the Red Sea jitters out of their rugged frames. U-boats did slip past Aden. Submarines still plied On Mozambique and Madagascar.

“Talk about horseshoes,” the red-Haired sailor said, after a snort to welcome the “arrak” home. “That Iron King. Torpedoed, she’s abandoned. Gosh knows what happened to her crew, but she settles on a reef and hanged if he’s not towed in.”

“Says who?”

“I talked to a guy at Suez, that’s who. Cargo all okay.”

Rayne almost choked on his “arrak.” The Iron King, leaving New York some six weeks ahead of him, had been loaded with spare parts. And these men had sighted her, limping homeward after emergency repairs at the southern end of the Suez Canal. Then why had not her cargo reached the shops?

The seamen’s speech, already thick, was becoming more so. Rayne left his bench in the corner and sat down with them.

“What ship you on?”

Where they had been dishing out news for all to hear, they now froze up, “Who wants to know?”

The other put in his bit. “Beat it, mug,” he said. “Shove off before we wrap a table around your head.”

That a customer, so much at home in Kassim’s, spoke English with an American accent, aroused their suspicions. This was no place for Rayne to explain himself. Particularly be did not wish to debate matters with a couple of drunks who belatedly remembered their orders against mentioning ships by name. He shrugged, and went back to his own table, where he called for more liquor.

“That buzzard likes the stuff,” the redheaded seaman muttered, his voice carrying much further than he had intended.

This remark solidified Rayne’s suspicions. Fellow Americans were mistaking him for an “effendi.”

Kassim, meanwhile, directed a sharper scrutiny at Rayne. Apparently, the encounter had made him wonder. Rayne, realizing he was getting nowhere, headed for the street.

Decidedly he had a hunch. Heavy cargo could not be dumped into the Canal. Nor could it be buried in the desert. But it might be sidetracked and hidden in Cairo’s many warehouses. That would be simple enough. If hidden, with the records altered, the spare parts could remain out of service for several months. That would be sufficient to cripple the defending army. Replacements might take weeks to arrive.

A good hunch. But Rayne needed more details. No matter who he told, the pasha responsible would block investigation. The official clique, barring a few honorable exceptions, had for the last century been Egypt’s worst enemies. No wonder the fellahin were not worried about Rommel. Nazis would be a treat in a land looted by native officials.

Rayne stepped into the darkness of an archway across the street. His wits were sharpening now. He was having one of those brief stretches of alertness which alternated with periods of intolerable sleepiness.

His legs were tired. His feet burned. He squatted in the archway, easily and readily as any native. Then, hearing a mumbling and gurgling, he realized that he was not alone in the gloom. The varnish odor and the incoherent words told him that someone was polishing off what remained of a bottle of Greek “mastika.”

“Have one, brother,” the drunk sputtered, and passed him the flask of resin-flavored brandy.

Rayne thanked him and pretended to take a pull. Meanwhile, the sailors, after making unsteady silhouettes in the doorway of Kassim’s place, reeled down the murky street.

“That’s hot music,” one said, thickly.

In some other dive, a girl was singing. “Zabbiyat il unsi ilaya…”

“Koochie dance.”

Probably he was right. The song ceased. The little kettle drums began to mutter. A sistra jangled metallically. Voices raised raucous shouts of “Ya sitti! Kamaan!”

The seamen were in no shape to barge into a native cafe which featured dancing girls. Just the wrong quip, and they would get their throats sliced, or they would be slugged.

Rayne also wanted to know what ship had brought them in. That thin hunch needed building up. So, still holding the mastika bottle by the neck, he set out after them.

Though the Muski is not such a bad place if you knew the answers, it is not for two drunks in civilian clothes. Nor can it even be called healthy for a handful of hard-boiled men in uniform.

Ahead flickered a yellow light. Rayne knew it marked the dive where the drums pounded, where Christians and renegade Moslems swilled arrak and cheered as a dancer shook her torso.

Then Rayne saw business was picking up. From a cross alley, dark figures suddenly blended with the silhouettes of the seamen. A wrathful growl sounded, followed by the pop of a hard fist, and the sinister gleam of steel.

CHAPTER II

Into Moslem Byways

Although outnumbered by assailants, the seamen defended themselves stoutly. So far as Rayne could tell, the attack had been launched utterly without justification. Regardless of that, he would have intervened, anyway. What now drove him on was the conviction some other reason than robbery, vengeance for breach of custom, had instigated the attack. As Rayne dashed forward he felt this fight embodied all of the hidden fires that he had sensed in his walk through modern Cairo.

The town was ignoring the war. It had ignored it to a degree which had shocked Rayne. Though the eight-sided Ezbekiyah had not been festooned with neons, it might as well have been. Pompous-looking pashas, rolling by in long, sleek cars only conceded to Rommel’s air force the flattery of blue headlights. In side streets, marriage processions still wound heedlessly along, torches flaring. Until this evening Rayne had not suspected the true state of affairs.

Too many merchants of Cairo had figurative welcome signs for Rommel on their doorstep. That made things bad for sailors on shore leave.

Rayne, with a bottle clutched by the neck, fairly swooped toward the battle. Excitement brought out his last reserve of energy as he swung the bottle.

“Ruh, ya kilab,” Rayne yelled, and cracked down on a felt skullcap.

A police whistle shrilled.

For a time there was no sound in the darkness other than heavy blows and the other noises of furious combat. The sailors continued to swing their fists recklessly, letting go at every head they saw.

After his first shout and efficient use of the liquor receptacle, Rayne had intervened no more in the battle. He had an excellent reason for this. A chance wallop from one of the seamen had laid him down in the Egyptian mud, stunned and breathless.

The men from the ship continued to use their fists with effect. Soon their assailants began to dodge away. One of the seamen now had opportunity to speak to his companion who, likewise, had backed up against a wall.

“That feller who helped us out with the bottle,” growled the sailor. “He ain’t no pansy. What d’ye say, friend? Shall we check out of here like he did? The cops is on the way.”

“Aye, aye, shipmate,” responded his companion. “Let’s shove off quick.”

And they merged into the shadows just as the police rushed into the street from another direction.

Rayne, still groggy from the punch, was unable to get away either. In addition to the blow a kick from a hard shoe had nearly knocked him unconscious. The police approached, flashing lights upon the scene.

The scattering thugs distracted them. By the time they collared one prisoner, and given the others up as a bad job, Rayne had crawled painfully into the angle of a wall. A flashlight played on the arena.

One of the khaki-clad policemen seemed surprised.

“Wallah, this was the grandfather of battles,” he said. “One of these dogs has a crushed skull. Doubtless he sings in Paradise at this very moment.”

“Infidels did this thing,” a groggy ruffian mumbled through shattered teeth to a policeman. “Allah knows we were innocent.”

“Silence, thou father of thieves,” snapped the policeman.

One of the officers flashed a light into the alley. He saw Rayne. So did the man with the thickened mouth.

“There’s one of those sons of pigs,” he cried. “They wore Feringhi clothes.”

One man lay dead, one badly gouged, one in need of some dental work. And there in the angle rested Rayne, just recovering from his bruises. Thus he seemed to be an ideal candidate for a scapegoat. Spectators came flocking out of houses, although thus far no one had emerged from Kassim’s place.

Assembled policemen held a conference in Arabic.

“Wallah, this fellow wears Feringhi clothes, still he doesn’t look like one of them,” they said.

“He’s an unbelieving dog,” muttered the man with the broken teeth. “He stole my purse.”

“But he’s not one of the men who were beaten up by the infidel,” muttered a policeman. “Who can he be?”

They hoisted Rayne to his feet.

“The peace upon you, but ruffians knocked me down,” he gasped, with difficulty. “They kicked me in the stomach. Allah, first I am booted asunder, and with the father of all boots, and now they accuse me.”

“By the prophet, a true believer,” the cops exclaimed. “Which way did the infidels run?”

Things looked better for Rayne.

“Allah knows all things, but it seemed that way,” he answered, pointing in a wrong direction.

Then Kassim waddled out.

“O Men, what is this thing?” he puffed. “Who makes these riots?”

“Wisdom is with God.”

Kassim squinted at Rayne. “This fellow lies like Iblis, the condemned. He is a friend of the Feringhi. He sat at their table.”

“Let us take them all to jail,” decided the policemen.

Well, things could be worse. Though Grandma would shudder, bailing her grandson out of jail, Rayne figured he could live it down. But a real wallop knocked the relief out of him.

From the doorway opposite Kassim’s lurched a man who reeked with mastika. “There’s the eater-of-filth who stole my bottle,” he bawled, as he stumbled and wove through mud and offal. “O True Believers, make him return my bottle.”

That fatal bottle! It had killed a man and Rayne’s fingerprints, whether sharp or blurred, were nevertheless on the glass neck. This looked like it would be something from which Grandmother could not extricate him. The old lady’s influence did not carry weight enough with the pashas.

Rayne made a lunge. He tripped one policeman and cold caulked another. The uniformed men had barely hit the dirt when he was darting into the darkest of the Muski, and he thanked Allah that he knew where to go.

The effects of the kick and the punch had worn off and he moved easily, lightly upon his feet. After him followed the police and various idlers, like a pack of hunting dogs, raising their voices in wild yells. But this did not bother Rayne. He thanked his stars for the training of his youth and a thorough knowledge of the furtive alleys of the city.

He went through murky passageways, around the corners of wooden shops, past shadowy buildings, twisting and turning, but holding to a general direction. Pedestrians whom he met were careful to draw back and give him room. For this was the East where a man’s business is his own, and they knew not what crime he had committed or what weapons he carried.

Rayne headed for the more lawless sections of Cairo, knowing that in such a section on general principles, all men aid a fugitive from the law.

In a few minutes by skill and quick wit the sounds of pursuit had died out and he had lost the howling pack. Then he swung around another corner and halted, leaning against the side of a building in the dark. He was breathless but calm. For a few minutes he waited, regaining his wind.

Then he sauntered off as if nothing had happened. And as he strolled along, he was thinking hard.

Rayne was not old, but he had not become a master mechanic by having folks pat him on the head.

Battered and half asleep, he began to reckon the score. Kassim and his loqanda were off color. That the ambush had occurred so near the place proved nothing. But it was odd, during the riot, no one had come out of Kassim’s to get a look until the police had arrived. And then that effort to connect Rayne with the seamen, when Kassim knew well that he, Rayne, had been rebuffed as a prying foreigner.

His last waking thought was, “When I can think straight, when I’m not so dopey, I’ll get to the bottom of this.”

Again weariness seeped through him and he longed for rest. His course now took a definite direction. He turned his steps toward a ruined mosque with which he was acquainted and soon stopped before the wide steps of the deserted building. Further along was a coppersmith’s bazaar but not a light showed either there or here.

Rayne slipped down along the structure out of sight. Halting before a door he cast a quick glance up and down the narrow lane. No one was near. In a minute or two he was inside the mosque. It was pitch dark inside but he managed to find a clean corner which would do for a bed. In a minute or two he was settled down and composed for sleep. He had a last waking thought.

“Tomorrow, when I’m not so tired and dopey, I’ll find out what became of those missing tank parts,” he said to himself.

Rayne passed the night undisturbed in the mosque. At dawn, awakened by the muezzin’s call to prayer from another mosque nearby, he crawled further into the crumbling masonry and caught up with some more sleep. After the bedlam of the tank shop, the sounds of the market failed to disturb him.

Not until mid-afternoon came had he rested enough to notice the discomfort of his rocky bunk. This told him how correct had been Colonel Mitchell’s diagnosis, and how near Rayne had skirted utter collapse.

He plunged his head into a nearby fountain. His hat was gone, and in Egypt, running around bare-headed is a worse breach of etiquette than roaming about without pants. So Rayne lost no time in buying a tarboosh. Then he got out of that quarter of Cairo.

Near Khan el Khallili, where caravans from the Soudan used to unload gum and leather and ostrich plumes, he found a loqanda. Here he ordered sour milk, cucumbers, and a flat cake of bread. Borrowing an Arabic newspaper from the proprietor, he read an account of the previous night’s fray as he sipped his coffee.

The two sailors, Walt Kearney and Robert Irwin, were in jail. They had been held in connection with the death of Zahir-ud-Din Mohammed, a resident of the Kordofan Bazaar. In addition to this, one Abu Najeeb, who had been severely cut by broken glass, was in the Ismailia Emergency Hospital. Kassim, restaurant proprietor, stated that the two sailors had come in with a bottle of mastika, and had left in a quarrelsome mood. Therefore, the street fight had not surprised him, Kassim informed the police.

Since every paper in Egypt is government controlled, this was official. It bothered Rayne. According to that version, the actual owner of the bottle, despite his loud protests to the police, did not and never had existed. Neither could the seizure of the bottle by Rayne matter much to the police since Rayne, likewise, had no official existence. All of which seemed odd to say the least.

“Kassim, is a liar,” Rayne told himself. “Kearney and Irwin didn’t have a bottle, and he knows they didn’t.” The only reason Kassim could have for building up a case against two seamen would be that he had some good motive for covering up the fact that a gang had jumped the sailors at the first alley beyond his place. But why cover that up?

Rayne had two guesses: first, the Garden was a deadfall; or, the men had during their brief visit said or done something which made their disappearance necessary to Kassim. What made Rayne want to follow through was the fact the two seamen might know more about the Iron King and her cargo than they had let on.

Still puzzled, Rayne left the restaurant. His chief needs were suitable garments in which to carry on his investigations.

Wandering from shop to shop, he bought sandals here, baggy trousers there, and elsewhere, a jacket. In a ruined house he made a quick change. Then he resumed his tour of the bazaars. When it was done, Rayne had become a lemonade and cigarette peddler, raucously offering his wares to the shoppers who crowded the narrow street.

The customers he really wanted were in jail. The official smoke screen and the distortion of facts told Rayne anyone trying to get in touch with Kearney and Irwin would be blocked by miles of red tape.

Whoever, consul or otherwise, tried to investigate would surely run into a yarn about the prisoners having just been shifted to such and such station. So Rayne asked no questions. He settled down to patient guessing.

At each station, he gave the man at the desk free lemonade and a pack of cigarettes; there was similar baksheesh for the jailer. This detail settled, he was allowed to peddle his wares to the prisoners.

CHAPTER III

The Toils of the Law

It was near sunset when he found the two sailors in the tank with half a dozen natives.

Rayne pretended a lofty scorn of the seamen. “Have these two infidel pigs any money?” he asked the natives, in Arabic.

“Ya Allah, they have,” was the answer. “We tried to rob them, and they kicked us breathless.”

Kearney and Irwin indeed looked as though they had been battling for their rights. So did their cellmates.

“Then stand back, little brothers, and the blessing of Allah upon you,” said Rayne. “I speak their language a little, they will think I am a friend. Watch me loot them.”

“God give you strength,” came the pious wish, and the natives edged as far away as, they could.

Rayne addressed the sailors in dragoman-English.

“Lemonade, Mister,” he inquired. “Cool and freshing. Fine Egypt made cigarettes, cheap.”

“Go jump in the lake, you greasy swab.”

The other, seaman nudged his companion.

“Bob, don’t you remember this guy? Only he was wearing white man’s clothes then.”

For a few moments Rayne continued his patter. He displayed his jug, his greasy little cups, the packages in his basket.

Then, in Americanese, “Dish out a bit of small change and keep on cussing me out. I told the others I was out to give you a rooking.”

Red-haired Kearney offered a piastre. Rayne babbled for more.

“Who are you, anyway?” asked Kearney.

“Army Intelligence. You fellows are buried so deep no consul will ever find you, but maybe I can give you a break. You’re wanted for murder.”

Both sailors started; their faces changed. “Cut it out, brother.”

“Gospel truth,” Rayne insisted. “It’s not in any English or French paper in town, just in the Arabic papers. The whole yarn is phony. Dig up some more dough, and take some cigarettes. Keep up the game, and growl at me a little.” They wrangled and bartered. Rayne winked at the interested native prisoners, elaborated his gestures.

“Wait until this unbelieving fool gives me a one-pound note and wants his change,” he smirked.

Meanwhile Kearney and Irwin carried on. “How come we went to that dump, Kassim’s? A dragon-man or something met us on the train and said he’d show us around reasonable. In Suez, a black fellow gave us cards, be sure and go to Kassim’s and was it a washout when we got there. That’s what we were sore about, no girls, nothing but that arrak.”

“Do you remember the dragoman’s license number?”

They did not. Tourists should, but never do, take their guide’s number. Rayne went on, as he palmed a pound note and slipped it to Kearney.

“When I start walking out, wave this folding money, call me back, and buy something. I’ll take the money and run out on you, and you yell and raise the roof, like I’d robbed you. Get it?”

They did. “All right,” Rayne continued. “Now what were you fellows talking about before I came into Kassim’s?”

“About the cargo of the Iron King, how lucky it was they salvaged all those spare parts for tanks. We were in port when she was being loaded, back home. We knew what she had.”

“I’ll do my best to get you fellows out,” Rayne promised. “Do you know any more about the cargo?”

“No, how would we? Except it landed at Suez.”

“Okay. Go into your dance.”

The act was good. The prisoners got several packs of cigarettes, and Rayne made off with a pound Egyptian, worth close to five American dollars. The cursing was an inspiration. And the native prisoners howled with glee.

Mike Rayne grinned at the sergeant, tossed him a piece of silver, and went on. The sergeant caught the backsheesh on the fly, and thought it was a grand joke.

* * * *

That night, Rayne sat in a restaurant, eating an eggplant and mutton stew. He mopped the gravy with a flap of leathery bread, and wished that he had time to take the interurban train to Grandma’s house. But for the time, he was too busy piecing together the information Irwin and Kearney had given him. Though it did not seem important, actually it was dynamite.

First, runners in Suez handed out cards to merchant marine sailors with shore leave to Cairo. Second, a dragoman met them in Cairo to guide them to the spot, and apparently, managed to get them moderately drunk on the way. Third, two men who discussed the cargo of the Iron King had narrowly missed being murdered. And fourth, after escaping from ambush, they had been jailed on false testimony largely concocted by Kassim.

Rayne did not know whether to tell Colonel Mitchell, or carry on alone. The colonel, in his official capacity, would have to confer with whatever officer handled much matters. Then that man would confer with the British, who in turn would have to take it up with some of Egypt’s swarm of pashas. These tricky scoundrels would decide it was consular business, and the merry-go-round would keep whirling.

Meanwhile, Rommel was kicking up sand in the wrong direction.

“A short circuit,” Rayne told himself, “may blow some fuses, but it is also the shortest distance between two points.”

To save time and avoid lengthy explanations, he had been forced to tell the sailors he was Army Intelligence, and they had accepted it. Rayne hated the deception but there had been no other way. Now he figured it might be wise to make that harmless lie a temporary truth.

Rayne hurried away from the jail and turned his steps back in the direction of the place where he had left his clothes. He nearly dropped his lemonade peddling kit when he approached the place where he had made the change.

A crowd had gathered and the police were bringing out of hiding the shoes and suit which Rayne had concealed.

Now it turned out in his haste, he had not performed the task as well as he should have done.

The hat, lost in the alley brawl, must have started the search. Rayne raised his voice, adding to the chatter, but got no customers. Then he edged into the crowd. Whether the police had found the wallet he had buried under a loose slab, was not certain. But if they had, Rayne’s identity would soon be disclosed by cards and papers.

As nearly as he could gather, however, an American cigarette, in the side pocket of his coat, along with the stamped corner of an envelope mailed from the States, told them what brand of infidel was on the loose.

“Now he’s trying to disguise himself as a true believer,” a policeman told one of the spectators.

Rayne sold some lemonade. The policemen helped themselves, sans payment. Rayne, though still shaky, left the corner with increased confidence. However, he realized that from now on, the police would be going from one shop to the next to pick up the trail of a man who had shed a white suit in favor of native dress.

Once more, he was tempted to phone or see Colonel Mitchell, but he ended by resisting the temptation, simply because an officer could not take part in any free and easy snooping fest. Whether he liked it or not, Rayne had to play the hand out himself.

Then the game began to have a thrill. As he ate, that night, he chatted with fellow diners and got their ideas on the mad infidel. They were betting a hundred to one the fellow would be nailed before dawn. His way of eating or drinking would betray him, even if his speech did not.

While they admitted that infidels might learn Arabic at school, none could speak it convincingly. Rayne, after belching in the fashion prescribed by the Egyptian Emily Post, wagged his head and agreed. “By Allah, brother, that is verily the essence of truth,” he said.

He rented a cubicle in the old caravanserai, and spread out the palm leaf mat he had picked up near the restaurant. From now on, this was his address in the Muski. Having a visible means of support, his chances were not the worst in the world.

In spite of having gone native, Rayne dared not risk entering Kassim’s place. But he prowled about, waiting for dragomans to bring customers from the merchant marine. With the ever increasing flow of ships from the States, there would be more and more American seamen.

These seamen did not have to be indiscreet. Just a casual remark, harmless in itself, was enough. But it could be dangerous when fitted into other equally trifling bits contributed by sailors from a different ship. A man can hardly help but let his hair down after making a safe landing. While Rayne had always known the peril of unguarded remarks concerning a ship about to sail from the States, he now realized, from the past night’s mishaps, the enemy could make good use of facts pertaining to a safe arrival in port.

CHAPTER IV

Into Enemy Clutches

From his lurking place across the narrow street, Rayne saw and heard three Americans who trailed after their dragoman. The guide’s leathery face was plain for a moment as he stood under the light in Kassim’s doorway. He turned to bow and gesture, and to go into his patter, “This way, gents,” he told the Americans. “Famous rendezvous. The real Cairo. Boss spiks good Inglees, like me.” The man’s number also showed for an instant. Rayne would not forget either. The Americans filed in. But they came out before long and the dragoman followed them, wailing.

“You wait, I show some other place,” he promised. “Kassim uncle just die. No more business tonight.”

“How about us going to the funeral?”

“Do they have grub and fireworks?” another quipped.

“You’re thinking of the Chinese,” said a third. Then, to the dragoman, “Shake it up, Abdul!”

“Name is Selim,” the guide corrected. “Poverty struck son of one time pasha.”

“Aw, nuts, it’s Abdul, do you get it?” The three went on, everyone offering an idea as to the next place. “Kassim’s looked like a funeral anyway. Hey, take us to a juke joint, we want to dance.” Rayne did not follow them. Just why Kassim was turning down customers was worth finding out.

He headed Nile-ward for perhaps a hundred yards, then swung into a yard-wide alley. It opened into a dark and odorous court which opened into another passageway. This was Cairene town planning, at its craziest.

Above him, he heard the voices of people lounging on the flat roofs. The scent of Ajami tobacco drifted down to blend with rubbish reek. He met no pedestrians, and presently, he had doubled back, reaching the rear of Kassim’s place.

In the dark, he found the wicket, which was latched, not locked. Patiently silently, he worked the door open, then closed it after him. Once in the gloom of the court, he made a slow circuit of the wall. It was lined with storage sheds and packing crates were heaped in corners. Liquor cases, saved up for fuel, he surmised, to stretch the charcoal supply.

Above him, mashrabiyehs bellied out, projecting from the second floor and overhanging the court. In these screened bay windows one could get the river breeze almost as readily as on the roof. But at the moment, lack of either light or voices told him the occupants of the building were elsewhere.

Rayne could barely distinguish muffled speech from somewhere in front. In view of Kassim’s having turned customers away, that conversation was worth hearing.

The door ahead was apparently bolted from the inside. Rayne headed for the corner of the court, stacked up some empty cases, and from that footing, pulled himself up. He doubted the carved latticework of the nearest mashrabiyeh would offer a toe-hold strong enough to support his weight. Then there was the matter of noise. So he tried another approach.

An upward leap, risky because of his narrow footing, gave him a precarious grasp of the parapet which guarded the flat roof.

For a moment, he doubted that he could make it. Worse yet, there was the chance that he would lose his hold and drop down into the court, making enough noise to alarm Kassim. But he made it. Skylined, he was at the mercy of any neighbors who might be looking.

When he had cleared the parapet, he crept across the roof to the head of the stairs which led to the lower floor. Echoes distorted the words, otherwise, he could have halted midway to listen. Not until he had reached the edge of the patch of light which wavered on the lower stair treads, was he able to understand what was being said. From that distance, also he got a partial view of the back room.

Kassim was conferring with two men. One, wearing European clothes and a tarboosh, had an oversized diamond in his necktie. Heavily-jeweled rings flashed on his lean brown hand. The other, in native dress, was familiar, which puzzled Rayne for an instant. Then he realized that this was the jailer, now in civilian clothes. Kassim was protesting to the bejeweled dignitary.

“Your Excellency, I couldn’t leave my post to call on you,” Kassim said. “I had to send a messenger.” He made a helpless gesture. “Really, Daoud Pasha, this was no time for etiquette.”

“Etiquette!” The pasha snorted. “You fool, you son of several pigs, I’m not thinking of ceremony. But if Army Intelligence is watching you, it is not helpful to have me come here to be included in their suspicion.”

Kassim gulped, turned to the jailer for moral support, and got only a blank look.

“Excellency, we have only Musa’s word for it the accursed lemonade peddler is connected with the British or American Army,” Kassim assured the official.

Musa, the jailer flared up.

“So you think I can’t understand Inglesi? I speak better than you. No, I was not so near, but I can’t be mistaken. That’s what he said to the sailors.” Daoud Pasha went wild.

“Satan blacken you, Musa. And you waited till now to tell us.”

“I didn’t know it was important. Not till I began thinking a while, after I was off duty. Anyway, what if the officers or the sailors do find them and get them released?”

From this it grew clear Musa did not know the score any better than Rayne did. Under ordinary circumstances, neither Kassim nor the pasha would have enlightened him. As it was, the pasha, believing himself in a tight corner, wanted to impress Kassim’s friend with the importance of being vigilant in the future.

“Listen, Musa,” he said. “Foreigners are swallowing Egypt, piecemeal. First the British, and now the Americans. For what they call defending the country, they’ll take an even stronger hold. Kassim and I are patriots, you understand? Egypt for the Egyptians. Despite all that it takes you hours to decide you ought to tell Kassim about an Intelligence officer finding those sailors in jail!”

Musa, seeing how worried Daoud Pasha was, forgot his deference to the man’s rank.

“What happens to your excellency is none of my business!” he snapped, insolently. “I had Kassim in mind. Allah! What have you ever done for me? None of this makes sense anyway. The British are bad, but no worse than the Germans. They pretend to be friends but only a fool would believe that.”

As Rayne now saw it, Musa, knowing the sailors had gotten into a serious riot outside of Kassim’s place, had been worried only by the thought that his friend might run into trouble with Army Intelligence. However, Daoud Pasha’s hasty drive in response to a restaurant keeper’s summons convinced Rayne that his original hunch had been right. The anti-British pasha must have been conspiring with Kassim to obstruct the defense of Egypt.

Daoud probably was, according to his lights, a patriot, and neither a Quisling nor a traitor. But Rayne’s job at the moment was to trail the missing spare parts, regardless of the pasha’s being or not being a Nazi agent.

“Only a fool would believe those Germans,” Musa repeated, enjoying the spectacle of a badly-worried pasha.

But Daoud was frightened and jittery. He had been pushed too far by an insolent jailer. He cursed, drew an automatic pistol from his pocket, and fired.

Kassim, however, bounded toward him. This deflected the pasha’s aim. Musa, panic-stricken, did not wait for the outcome. Though there was a door leading to the front and another to the rear, both were barred. With a yell, he leaped over a bench, and darted toward the stairway.

Meanwhile, the pasha dropped the pistol as Kassim, wrenched his wrist. “Excellency, Musa means no harm,” he shouted. Then, shouldering the hotheaded official aside, Kassim darted after his friend, calling, “Wait, Musa! Wait!”

Rayne, cramped from squatting on the stairs, could not move rapidly enough to race Musa to the roof. The way was narrow, and even as he hoped that the jailer would be blinded by panic, Kassim’s shouts took effect.

The frightened man, thinking he had two enemies now, leaped to his left, colliding with Rayne.

Just then Kassim charged into the tangle. The stairs were steep and narrow. Rayne’s efforts to disengage himself failed. He was still kicking and struggling when the three thumped down a dozen treads and crashed against the low table in the center of the floor.

Rayne doubled Musa with a boot to the stomach. He disentangled himself from Kassim and tried for the pistol which the pasha had dropped, but Daoud, apart from the three-cornered melee, had kept his wits. He snatched the weapon.

“Hold it, you fools!” he cried. “We’ve got a spy here!”

Rayne, failing to get the pasha’s pistol, seized the table, which was knee high, and a little over a yard in diameter. The silver and ivory inlay deflected Daoud Pasha’s hasty shot.

Then, as the weapon jammed, Rayne straight-armed the table, knocking the Egyptian off balance.

One more move, and he would break for the roof. He had plenty to tell Colonel Mitchel. Moreover, stealth had no further use, now that Daoud knew a spy had tuned in. He whirled, and from the corner of his eye, caught a glimpse of Kassim, who had regained his feet.

Rayne’s ankle turned. A splash of coffee dregs made him slip, and for an instant, he floundered. Kassim, for all his fat, was agile enough to use the brass tray he had picked from the floor. It rang like a temple bell as it smashed down on Rayne’s head, knocking him face forward to the floor, too nearly out for either flight or fight.

CHAPTER V

Torture By Fire

The disturbance had not alarmed the quarter. The stone walls muffled the sharp crack of the small bore pistol. Kassim’s waiters had apparently gone home when the proprietor closed the loqanda, since no one had come from the front. Once Rayne’s wrists were lashed together with a length of cord, Kassim and the pasha yanked him to his feet.

Musa had by now regained his breath sufficiently to gasp, “By Allah—that—is—the Intelligence—officer.”

Daoud, despite his bleeding and battered face, was amiable enough.

“You did very well, stopping him,” he said to Musa, who presumably was supposed to forget the attempt to shoot him down. “I’ll speak to the chief of police in your favor.”

That, Daoud assumed, would fix it up. Pashas had not changed much since the days when arbitrary floggings and capital punishment were a routine privilege they exercised freely.

“Your excellency,” Kassim said, “we must get this fellow out of here before his superiors search the place.”

It was not clear to Rayne why they had not already cut his throat. As his captors marched him, blindfolded, down through a maze of alleys, he reasoned that it is usually easier and safer to let a man go to the execution scene under his own power.

If there were any spectators on the nearby roofs, or in the over-hanging mashrabiyeh windows, they would see nothing significant in the group which filed through the darkness below.

Rayne was sure that even if he had been one of a group of Intelligence officers, it would have been impossible to trail him. At least twice during the march, the party entered and passed through a building, and emerged in the labyrinth at its rear.

Odors finally helped Rayne to orient himself. When he caught the tang of the spice bazaar, and the reek of the saddle-makers quarter, he knew where he was. These landmarks were scarcely out of nose range when his captors prodded him over a threshold and removed the blindfold.

By the light of an oil lamp, Rayne saw that he was in the reception room of a long unoccupied house. Dust coated the floor, and the worn upholstery of a low platform which ran along one wall.

“There is a well in the courtyard,” said Daoud Pasha. “It is about your size.”

“Nobody is stopping you,” retorted Rayne, hoping that his voice did not betray his dismay. “Or are you waiting on my account?”

“There is a way out, if you are reasonable,” cut in Kassim. Musa stood to one side. His eyes were narrow and glittering. He seemed to be wavering between hatred of Daoud Pasha, and loyalty to his friend Kassim.

“What was the purpose of your spying?” the pasha asked Rayne. “Do you realize you are wanted for murder? Not even your superior can protect you from that.”

A good deal more could be found in that idea than the pasha himself realized. While Rayne may have intervened to help two fellow Americans fight off a treacherous attack, he would nevertheless have to face the local laws. Certainly he had no legal defense for his invasion of Kassim’s quarters. But what heartened him was that Daoud Pasha was temporizing instead of using that ready gun.

Rayne’s mind raced as Daoud Pasha’s intent eyes bored into him.

“This buzzard must believe I have something on him, he’s trying to blackmail me by using what he’s got on me,” he thought to himself.

“You aren’t too sure what my superior can or can’t do, are you?” Rayne retorted to the pasha. “Otherwise you’d give me what you tried to give Musa.”

“You’ve not told me why you were spying,” Daoud Pasha persisted.

“Those sailors were led by an unlicensed dragoman to Kassim’s place,” Rayne retorted. “They were ambushed on the way out because they knew too much about something you are interested in. Naturally, I reported that. But if you’re sure they won’t be released from jail until you’ve covered your tracks, you have not a thing in the world to worry about.”

With an oily smile, the Egyptian official stared at Rayne.

“Army Intelligence won’t find you so easily,” the pasha countered.

“Maybe not.” Rayne shrugged. He tried to force himself to believe, rather than hope he could find a loophole in the pasha’s defenses. Then he staked it all on a bluff: “They don’t have to find me. What is one man, more or less, in this whole show? As long as they find the tractor parts you sidetracked, you’ll get what will run your friend Rommel the full width of Africa and push him into the ocean.”

The Egyptian official was not poker-faced. The thought of Army Intelligence on his trail cracked his resistance. His snort of derision did not sound sincere. So Rayne hammered away. Though his hands were tied, he had, for a moment at least, won the initiative.

“Official Egypt may be pretty rotten, but there are some sound spots. Maybe you’ve got your reasons to be anti-British but a lot of your people don’t agree that the Nazis are a blessing. There’s a well waiting for me out in back, but do you know what’s waiting for you?”

Daoud Pasha’s laugh was forced.

“You are almost threatening me. Very well, if your superiors know where the spare parts are, why haven’t they seized them? I never heard of that American game called poker. So—I am calling your hand.”

The pasha’s confidence had returned. He stalked grandly out of the room, and into the court, where he called, “Ali! Marouf!”

Two men answered.

“Aywah, effendi!”

A low-voiced consultation followed. Rayne was not able to get a word of what passed between Daoud and the two he had called. That they were at hand, awaiting summons, seemed significant. They must have been there all evening, for Daoud Pasha had not taken time, since Rayne’s capture, to order henchmen to appear at a rendezvous. A thrill of realization buoyed him up and out of the depression which the ominous conference in the court had induced.

The pasha remained in a huddle with Marouf and Ali. They were planning the first step toward murder and its concealment. Their having been on hand indicated that the warehouse which contained the sidetracked tank parts must be near.

This was a quarter devoted largely to the wakkalas which in the old days had received goods hauled by camel caravans out of the Soudan. So, despite the growing menace, Rayne felt that he had gained a point.

He realized that this might be wishful thinking on his part, yet he could not deny the logic. Daoud Pasha, worried and caught off guard, would inevitably take a prisoner to a place associated in his mind with concealment.

When Daoud returned, two lean and wiry Arabs followed him. One had a copper brazier and goatskin bellows. The other had iron tongs. These household implements implied that Marouf and Ali cooked their meals somewhere in the rear; that they kept day and night watch, taking turns.

Instead of going to their homes or to loqandas to eat, and thus laying themselves open to native curiosity, the two watchmen never stirred from the supposedly abandoned wakkala and the house which abutted it.

But their faces told Rayne that they were not preparing to cook coffee or grill mutton.

“If you had given your superiors any real information, they would have raided Kassim’s place, and then this place,” said Daoud Pasha. “I am giving you just one chance to keep from being buried in a dry well.”

“Thanks,” Rayne retorted, ironically. “Allah will reward you.”

“You must convince your superiors that you have so far discovered nothing, but that you have a clue. Which perhaps you have.”

“Turn me loose and I’ll tell them just that,” said Rayne.

Daoud Pasha scowled.

“You will not be so witty when Ali and Marouf set to work.” He turned to his men. “Get busy, now!”

CHAPTER VI

A Desperate Chance

The Arabs squatted by the brazier. One slopped a bit of kerosene from the lamp bowl, and struck a match. The other pumped the bellows, first gently, so as not to extinguish the yellow flame which rose from the charcoal. Then, as the black chunks began to glow, he increased the force of the air blast.

Sparks showered. The glare presently overwhelmed the murky light of the lamp. Tongues of blue flame rose from the incandescent heap in whose center the tongs were thrust.

“You’ll write your message,” Daoud Pasha said to Mike Rayne, raising his voice above the evil hissing and creaking of the bellows. “Either now, or after we’ve cooled some iron on your hide. You will say you have gone to Alexandria to watch a suspect.”

Once he had written a message to throw his imaginary superiors off the trail, Rayne knew he would be murdered.

His hands were tied behind him. Furthermore the odds were five to one, and then there was the pasha’s ready pistol. The machine shop beyond the Nile seemed a long way off, now. So also did his grandmother’s house in the Zeitoon Quarter.

Rayne regretted a tactical error on his part.

He had gone too far in convincing Daoud Pasha that he, Rayne, had been playing a lone hand. Though the pasha could hardly suspect Rayne of being certain the missing tank parts were only a few yards away, the earlier bluff, teaming up with circumstance, had shaped itself into a trap. The pasha believed Rayne could disappear without any danger of being traced.

“Let me think this over for a minute,” Daoud Pasha said, and moved back toward the bench.

Ali gleamed with sweat as he pumped the bellows. Marouf took the tongs from the heap of glowing coals. The metal shot out white sparks. Waves of heat billowed toward Rayne. The small room had become stifling. Daoud Pasha and Kassim stood there, eyeing him. Musa, somewhat apart, was blank faced, perhaps in his mind already enjoying the promotion and pay which the hot tempered official had, after relenting, promised him.

Marouf approached, slowly, bringing the iron nearer.

“Effendi, we ought to tie him first,” he suggested.

“Wallah!” the pasha exclaimed, as though he had forgotten such trifles. “Of course.”

Part of the buildup—the preliminary terror to crack the victim’s will. Rayne knew this, and also he had no chance against such odds. Yet he resisted when they seized him.

He writhed and kicked and twisted until booting and sheer weight won out for the Egyptians. Four men did the job, while Daoud Pasha stood by, polishing his rings on his coat sleeve. Not until the men had lashed him to a bench, did Rayne appear to wilt. To Daoud Pasha the beating and mauling had been enough to crack any man’s spirit, even without threats of the red hot iron.

“Wait, effendi!” Rayne howled, as though in abject terror. “Don’t let him touch me. I’ll write it. Untie me. Let me sit up and give me a drink.”

Rayne made his act good. His life depended on it and, besides, he did not need to pretend fear. So he babbled with terror. The pasha nodded. Ali and Marouf removed the bonds, and yanked Rayne upright. The act ticked like clockwork. The pasha looked pleased. Then Rayne went on with the desperate plan he had conceived.

“My hands and wrists are numb. How can I write?”

“Try and see.” Daoud Pasha took a pen and notebook from his pocket. “And no trickery, no codes either.”

“Who is going to deliver the message.”

“A detail I shall handle,” the pasha reassured him.

Rayne took the pen and paper. Then, for a moment, he wondered if his hysteria had been convincing for the official had drawn his pistol and stepped back a little.

Closing his eyes as if dazed, Rayne fumbled, opened them and gazed blankly about. He rose, mopped his forehead with his sleeve. Then like some half animated dummy, laid the pen and paper on the bench. The Egyptians regarded him with contempt. Apparently terror had cracked him more completely than they had expected.

Rayne took off his jacket, and muttered about the heat. Then, after dropping it on the floor, he decided to pick it up out of the dirt.

Now that their task of intimidation had ended, the Arabs had moved away from the blistering heat of the brazier. Daoud Pasha lowered his pistol. In another instant he might even have pocketed it, but Rayne was not gambling on that possibility. He preferred that weapon to be within sight and reach.

Clutching the jacket Rayne went into action. Leaping forward he seized the glowing brazier before a man of the group sensed what he meant to do.

The coat muffled his hands. There was the stench of burning wool. Then, despite the penetrating heat, Rayne spun in an arc, showering red coals and ashes as he whirled.

A fiery cascade showered the barefooted Arabs. It sifted down into their loose garments. Glowing fragments peppered Daoud Pasha’s face and hands.

He was not a good shot, and the startling counter-attack made him jerk the trigger. The bullet went wild.

Rayne let go the hot brazier. It hurtled straight for Kassim, who yelled and bounded to one side. This maneuver knocked the pasha off balance.

The floor became carpeted with red hot flame. Rayne, making the most of the confusion, snatched the tongs. He ignored the howling Arabs, whose every step brought their bare feet down on chunks of glowing coal. They danced about like fleas on a stove lid. Rayne darted for Daoud Pasha who, trying to scramble to his feet, tried at the same time to shoot.

He made a bad job of both. Rayne smashed down on his wrist with the hot tongs, knocking the pistol from his grasp. Next Rayne jumped back to face Kassim, who was drawing a knife.

The restaurant keeper did not like the still glowing jaws of the tongs. He hesitated, bounded for the door.

In the courtyard, the Arabs screeched and shed their smoldering garments. Rayne charged for Kassim, combining escape with vengeance. Out of the side of his eye, he saw Musa, the jailer, lunge for the pasha’s pistol. Already the room was roaring with fire. The lamp, kicked over, had spilled its oil on the floor.

It was Musa’s move for the pistol which saved Kassim. As the fat man raced down the alley, Rayne halted and spun about to heave his tongs at the man with the gun.

Too late!

“O son of many pigs,” shouted Musa. “This is my day.” Then the weapon commenced to explode.

But Musa did not fire at Rayne. He was pouring lead into the official who, perhaps an hour previous, had tried to cut him down. Daoud Pasha dropped.

“Stop it, you fool!” Rayne yelled.

Musa straightened up, eyes blazing. “There are too many pashas like him. I was afraid until now. Then I saw you, and by Allah, I am your protector.”

“Give me that gun,” Rayne demanded, walking back. Without waiting for obedience, he twisted the weapon from the man’s hand. “Now turn in a fire alarm.”

The blaze did not yet bar him from the court. So Rayne, pistol in hand, raced through the room to the rear. By the light which reached into the paved space, he saw Ali and Marouf clambering over the wall. And beyond the further archway, Rayne learned his suspicions had been well grounded.

He was looking into a barn-like warehouse loaded with crates and cases. The stenciling on the nearest told the story: they had been consigned to the S. S. Iron King.

So long as the wakkala did not go up in smoke, the shipload of spare parts would after all help roll Rommel back into the desert.

Rayne retraced his steps. His first act was to examine Daoud Pasha’s wounds. They were not serious. Next, Rayne dragged the man out of the blazing room. That done, he raced to a telephone. It was about time to speak to Colonel Mitchell.

A fire company was on the job before Rayne got in touch with the colonel. “There are two American sailors in the Saiyida Zaynab jail,” Rayne told the officer. “They were framed. While I was trying to help them, I located the missing spare parts.”

“What?”

“Yes, sir. Near the Soudan Bazaar. You can’t miss the place. There’s a fire, half the town’s turned out, and Daoud Pasha was shot up by some native who had a grudge against him.”

“I’ll be blasted,” the colonel exclaimed. Then asked and received the remaining details. “I thought you were going to see your grandmother?”

“That’s where I’m going now, Colonel,” Rayne replied. “If you think that you will be able to spare me for another day.”