“How long have we been here?”
“Hard to say,” the detective rejoined quietly.
It was impossible to see my watch, which I now recalled had been confiscated along with the contents of my pockets at the time of our arrest. My furious protests and demands to see the British Consul were met with East End indifference.
“Consulate opens at nine, gentlemen. Cleaning crew comes at ’alf seven.”
Indeed it was just as difficult to determine where we were as it was how long we had been here, for there was no light of any kind. I had anticipated some sort of cell, but the place in which we found ourselves was clearly spacious, high ceilinged and populated by slender columns of frieze work and flaking plaster against which—to my intense annoyance—I struck my head several times. In addition, the place contained a fantastic assortment of queerly configured furniture against which, as I restlessly sought to examine our surroundings, I was constantly barking my shins.
For all its sense of space, the odor of the big room was mildewed and airless. Using my hands, I felt fringed footstools, tasselled settees, curiously shaped chairs, and large, bolster-like cushions with goose down stuffing popping out from tears in the damask. Silken upholstery was frayed elsewhere beneath my fingers.
Colliding with these irregular objects, I was hard put to contain my temper.
“All this fuss over a piece of paper none of us has ever seen and which may very likely prove fraudulent,” I fumed.
“I’m not sure I follow you, old man,” Holmes offered mildly.
“I should think it obvious. This whole wretched business began when Duke Michael stole that map or whatever it was at White’s and came gallivanting off to Egypt in search of buried treasure or some such nonsense. Professor Tewfik warned us Egypt is swarming with such items. You surely remember his blue hippopotamus. And here we find ourselves!”
“But how does all that connect with Mustafa and our present predicament? As for the map, I remind you the Swede Ohlsson certainly believed it genuine, so much so that when it was taken from him, he chose to do away with himself. It’s possible, one must allow, the man was delusional and invested more faith in the document than was warranted, but—”
“Holmes, it is imperative I get back to the Jardin des Plantes before breakfast!”
“I understand your anxiety, my dear fellow.”
“They are Military Police. Tell them who you are!”
I could sense his frown in the darkness. “Only as a last resort. Revealing my identity would lead back to Mycroft’s part in the business of Colonel Arbuthnot’s passport and on no account must I compromise him. Come, we are in a British gaol. Let us not surrender to panic.”
His advice was impossible to follow. Were I not to appear at breakfast with Juliet and the reason for my absence inevitably become known, nothing would dissuade her from returning to London with me in tow.
By contrast with my own agitated state of mind, the detective appeared content to remain in thoughtful silence.
“Holmes, what can you be thinking?”
“About the unfortunate Mustafa, to be sure. And also about ancient Egyptian daggers with lapis lazuli handles. A singular choice of murder weapon, wouldn’t you agree? What would you give to know what sort of knife was used at Karnak to cut the throat of Professor Jourdan, eh, my boy?”
His words meant nothing to me in my distracted frame of mind. In the gloom, I once again tried to make out where we were. If this was the British idea of a holding cell I was at a loss. Briefly tripping over Holmes’s extended legs, I paced out the circular room. The detective was reclining on one of those oddly constructed items of furniture, a sort of divan seemingly designed to allow two people reclining side by side to face each other with back support in opposite directions. I could not imagine the reason for such an arrangement.
“Certainly suggestive,” Holmes said, reading my thoughts. “Ordinarily, I might infer the foyer in a house of ill repute, but in this case, strange as it may be, I think we have been stashed in an erstwhile seraglio.”
“A what?”
“Harem. Doubtless belonging to a previous owner, as the place is in a state of evident neglect. No self-respecting sultana would deign to set a perfumed foot here. Of course I could be mistaken,” he added, but in truth his explanation accounted for some of the furniture’s more unusual properties. In other circumstances I might have been intrigued; currently I remained distracted.
“What will we tell them?”
“The police? As much of the truth as possible is always best. You are here with your wife at the Al Wadi on the Jardin des Plantes for her health. At Shepheard’s you chanced to encounter a former regimental comrade at the American Bar and attempted to help search for his missing friend. The waiter at supper offered to supply us with information as to that friend’s whereabouts in exchange for the usual incentives. We somewhat naïvely agreed to meet with him where and when he stipulated, but the unfortunate man was attacked before he could speak and the rest, alas, is known.”
“But he did say something,” I now recalled. “Or tried to.”
“Could you make out what it was?”
I shook my head, trying ineffectually to focus on the problem. “It sounded like—it was T-something. It began with T.”
“Let us for the moment keep that information to ourselves. The less we give them to chew on, the better off we shall be.”
His words, coolly uttered, calmed me for a time. But as more invisible minutes elapsed, I felt the floodtide of anxiety returning. How much time did I have to get back to the Khedivial Club with Juliet none the wiser?
“Holmes, really—”
I have no notion what my next words were to be, because at that instant, all unbidden in that curious way the mind works, I suddenly recollected what the features of Akhenaten had put into my head.
“Marfan Syndrome!” I cried.
“What’s that you say?”
“Pharaoh what’s-his-name’s stretched-out face!” I was quite sure of myself as it all came to me in a rush. “Fifteen or twenty years ago a Dr. Marfan—French, if I recall rightly—first described this condition in The Lancet.* The elongated face, fingers and toes, a genetic disorder that runs in families. Not very common, but the drawings and photographs in the article I would swear matched those presented by the statue.”
“Bravo, Watson. That is most—” But before the detective could say more, a rattling of keys, footfalls, and voices interrupted us and drove all thoughts of Marfan Syndrome aside. “Remember our narrative,” Holmes cautioned as light flooded the room.
Moments later, two privates in the khaki dress of British Military Police escorted us up an enormous winding staircase of polished malachite and down another arched corridor with bulky wrought-iron lamps, recently wired for electricity, strung from massive chains overhead. This in turn led to yet another set of stairs. As we walked, their metal-tipped boots reverberated off tiled walls adorned with intricate, symmetrical designs.
As we were shortly to learn, this sprawling building was nothing less than the former palace of Suleiman Ali Pasha. It served now as the British Consulate and British Administrative Headquarters in Cairo, adapted for both purposes ad lib. Our belongings were returned to us at half past three in the morning according to my watch, which I immediately refastened on my wrist,† after which we were taken before a sleepy sergeant in his small office. A framed portrait of His late Majesty remained on the wall behind the sergeant’s desk, and drooping from a short flagstaff nearby was a reassuring Union Jack.
“What’s all this then?” The man spoke more to himself than us as he flipped through a set of pages. “Out for a midnight ramble and got into a scrap, ’ave you?”
“Nothing of the sort,” Holmes assured him, and launched into our account of the evening’s events.
The fellow heard us out, not troubling to suppress a yawn, his rattan chair rustling as he leaned back in it. The notion that a murder had taken place on his watch seemed not to interest him particularly, though I daresay his attitude would have been different had the victim been an Englishman.
“But you was seen a-pulling this ’ere weapon from the wog’s body.” He read from the arrest report and, rummaging carelessly for it, held up the distinctive bloodstained dagger.
“Pulling it out, not pushing it in,” the detective emphasised. “See here,” he went on. “You have my passport and travel documents. I am Colonel Arbuthnot, Northumberland Fusiliers, retired—in Egypt on holiday. My friend hasn’t his papers with him, but you can easily obtain them as he’s a registered guest of the Khedivial Sporting Club.”
“Oh, registered at the Khedivial, is ’e?” This intelligence seemed finally to rouse the sergeant.
Nonetheless, the man insisted on taking us through the events of the previous evening several times more. The temptation to vary our answers simply on the basis of boredom was enormous, and in my case I had to suppress the wild impulse to implore the man to release me, babbling explanations about my wife and so forth, but following the detective’s example, I adhered to what we had agreed as if it had been the Lord’s Prayer.
During one of these catechisms the door was opened quietly and a bearded Turkish officer drifted into the room. The sergeant snapped instantly to his feet, stamping his boot, and performed a rigid salute.
“Sir!”
“As you were, Sergeant.”
“’Evening, Major ’aki.” The sergeant stood at ease, hands clasped behind him.
“Good morning,” corrected the Turk. He extended a beige-gloved hand and the sergeant handed over the arrest documents. “Shukran.”
Holmes signed to me to remain silent while the major lowered himself into a straight-backed chair and began to read. The sergeant reseated himself and fell to drawing circles on his desk blotter.
At length the man addressed as Major Haki looked up and regarded us with professional detachment.
The detective broke the silence. “Major, my friend’s wife is taking the cure at the Al Wadi spa and she’ll raise the roof if her husband here fails to join her for breakfast. All this is easily verified by Dr. Amrit Singh,” he added. “In the meantime, if it’s the man who held the knife who interests you, here I am.”
The major studied us some more, fluffed his beard thoughtfully with the back of his gloved knuckles beneath his chin, but did not reply. It took me a moment to realise that what I’d presumed to be the man’s knuckles was in fact something else. Haki’s left hand had evidently suffered a catastrophic injury, his missing or deformed fingers now concealed by a leather shroud or cap that appeared to cover a perpetually clenched fist.
Oblivious to my scrutiny, the major used his good hand to uncover the dagger on the sergeant’s desk where the man had tactfully concealed it beneath a large blue handkerchief. The major held it to the light and squinted at the darkened bloodstains with the same disinterested expression. To him it was merely evidence, a piece of the puzzle, nothing less or more. The sergeant, abruptly determined not to appear idle, now busied himself with paperwork, seemingly indifferent to what came next.
At length the major rose slowly to his feet, and mumbled something to the sergeant, before turning to me. “You may go,” he said, handing me back my belongings. “Not you,” he instructed the detective as Holmes made to rise.
“Colonel Arbuthnot—”
“Not to worry, old man. I’ll send word.”
I did not stay for him to change his mind.
“John, you’ve not shaved,” said Juliet, studying me over her porridge.
“I know, dearest. I had rather a late night.” In truth the night had run so late it was all I could do to arrive at breakfast moments before the appearance of my wife.
“You were with Colonel Arbuthnot?”
“Yes. The colonel and I dined at Shepheard’s with Professor Tewfik, the duchess, and her brother-in-law. There was a bit of a fracas involving one of the boys.”
I spoke in a low voice so Lady Cunningham and others breakfasting at the stipulated distance could not hear our talk. Taking Holmes’s advice as my model, I told Juliet as much of the truth as possible, omitting merely the incidental fact of a murder and our arrest as suspects. Even as I censored my account, I had the dim conviction this was a mistake and that a reckoning would one day come due. I had in fact no idea what had become of Holmes following my release from the sultan’s harem (Watson, can you hear yourself?) by that mysterious Turkish major (what was his name: Haki?) with his club hand and felt guilty to be sure—always guilty—about leaving my friend when and where I did.
Instead, I concentrated my summary of events on the duchess’s displeasure and the time limit she had set on the detective’s progress, conditions I could not ever recall being imposed on any of his investigations before. Forty-eight hours was not a long time and we had squandered at least four of them in British custody. For all I knew, Holmes was still under arrest, clapped by now in a real prison, and heaven knows what difficulties would be incurred trying to free him. But he had enjoined me in the most emphatic terms not to reveal his identity to the authorities.
Following his instructions, I therefore attempted nothing of the kind and happily spent the day in Juliet’s company. With Dr. Singh’s permission, following breakfast, we went for a slow ramble about the leafy precincts of Zamalek on the northern portion of the island. I suspect Juliet was pleased to escape Lady Cunningham’s clutches. “She is most amusing,” she conceded, her voice as always slightly muffled behind her face mask, “but sometimes a little of her goes a long way. We were running low on lion cubs,” was her wry conclusion. I could not see whether or not she was smiling.
The weather was warming and our stroll so leisurely it placed no strain on my leg. I confess it was a relief to escape the horrible events of the previous evening, and while it was maddening to walk with space between us, forbidden to touch, I think we were both overjoyed to regain some of the intimacy we had been obliged to forfeit in the earlier days of her illness. I took comfort as well in Stark-Munro’s opinion that if I’d not contracted the disease by now, I was unlikely to do so, but felt it best not to antagonise the head of Al Wadi by flouting his instructions.
On the polo field there was a lively match in progress and we enjoyed several chukkas before I heard Juliet clear her throat. The sound was not large enough to be termed a cough and certainly nothing compared to those in London before Christmastime, but it was enough for me to conclude we had best return. Indeed she looked quite done in by the time we got back to Al Wadi.
“Time for a lie-down.” She smiled, pressing the back of her wrist briefly against her forehead before blowing me a kiss.
I was making my way back to my residence at the sporting club when a white-clad orderly on a bicycle squealed to a stop before me, Dunlops crunching the gravel.
“Dr. Watson?”
“I am Dr. Watson.”
He glanced at the envelope in his hand. “Dr. John Watson?”
“I am Dr. John Watson.”
“That’s alright then,” said he, shrugging and handing me a telegram which I opened at once.
I AM THE BIGGEST FOOL IN EGYPT [it ran]. MEET ME OUTSIDE SHEPHEARD’S AT SIX. WILL BECOME CHILLY AFTER DARK.
There was no signature. I reread the terse message several times.
“Any reply?” the lad enquired with a touch of impatience.
I shook my head. Wordlessly he remounted his bicycle and pedaled off.
I looked at my watch. It was close on five. I sent a note to Juliet explaining I was fatigued myself (which was true), and in for the night (which was not). I then hastened for a shower and thence to my room for a change of clothing and a sweater, arriving breathless outside Shepheard’s at a few minutes past six. I found the detective pacing agitatedly before the enormous porte-cochere.
“The biggest fool in Egypt, Watson!” he repeated at the sight of me.
“Colonel, how did you manage to—”
“How many windows do you count?”
“What?”
“Up there!” He pointed. “The seventh floor! How many?”
Taking my time and using my finger, I counted up seven stories and then, going from left to right, ticked off the number. The setting sun, reflected in the windows, turned them into orange mirrors, easy to count. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten—”
“Ten windows!” he fairly shouted.
“But…”
“Now we must wait.”
“For what?”
“Night.”
“Only on condition that you explain yourself.” I tugged his sleeve to turn him towards me. His grey eyes were glittering as when the game was afoot.
“How often have I twitted you that you see but do not observe? Well, now we may lay that charge at my own door. How many times since my arrival have I beheld those windows yet failed to notice their number—one for each suite with the Nile view on this side of the hotel? Mark you, Watson, as it grows dark, you will see the lights in all those rooms turn on. All but one!”
Sure enough, as we waited and smoked the sun made its slow descent beyond the farther side of river. As the light vanished, so did the orange mirrored windows. They turned dull black but, as Holmes predicted, began almost at once to light up within, one after another, including two on the seventh floor as occupants throughout the building began dressing for supper.
“Colonel…”
“Patience, Mr. Watson.”
And so we stood there as it darkened and felt the desert chill. I was glad the detective had forewarned me to dress warmly. Still I had no idea what to make of all this.
“Colonel, how did you obtain your release from police custody?”
“What? Oh, that. You recall my telling you Mycroft slipped me a page of his engagement diary before I left the Diogenes?”
“Oh, yes, now you remind me, but—”
“I kept that ace up my sleeve and I played it. What Mycroft had written on it was sufficient to command Major Haki’s attention. At my suggestion he summoned Professor Tewfik, who kindly came at once and instantly vouched for both Colonel Arbuthnot’s identity and his character. I felt rather like the upstairs maid presenting her references, but it seemed to answer. With the major’s permission, I showed the professor the murder weapon. Tewfik turned quite pale and then informed me it was Egyptian, Seventeenth Dynasty, and wondered when the legalities were concluded if he could add it to the museum’s— Look!” he interrupted himself, seizing my sleeve and pointing upwards. “There’s another! Hotel guests turning on their lights! What could be more natural? Soon they will all be lit, but I wager not the tenth at the end of the seventh floor. There! You see! Dark as Plato’s cave.”
I followed his finger once more to the now conspicuously black window at the end of the seventh floor.
“Perhaps they’re already at supper.”
“They are not, because the salon does not begin service before eight o’clock and because the room does not exist.”
“I’m not sure I follow—”
“The thing is simplicity itself. As you can see, this side of the hotel uniformly boasts ten windows on each floor, all facing the river. One set of windows and a balcony for each suite. The duchess says her letters were addressed to suite seven-eighteen, which would be the tenth even-numbered room on the end of the seventh floor. But Monsieur Charpentier of the management insists there is no suite seven-eighteen and allows me to walk down the corridor and confirm this fact for myself.”
“So you told me.”
“I began at the first even-numbered room, seven hundred. There should be a total of twenty rooms on the seventh-floor corridor. That is to say, ten rooms on either side. Ten which face the Nile and the odd-numbered, doubtless less expensive rooms with the less attractive views, facing the city to the east.”
“Very well.”
“But each side of the corridor has only nine room numbers! Why?” He did not wait for me to speculate before answering his own question. “The odd-numbered side is easily accounted for. It is typical that there would be no room seven-thirteen, as superstitious builders and occupants sometimes eschew that reputedly unlucky number. But how does one account for only nine even-numbered rooms overlooking the Nile, when I count ten windows from where we stand?”
At which point, with a jutting forefinger, he again emphasised this fact, and now fairly bursting with manic energy, he pulled forth his notebook and pencil, shoving both into his trouser pockets. Before I knew what he was about, he had peeled off and handed me his alpaca.
“Colonel—”
“Wait here, Watson, and hang on to this, if you please. There’s a good fellow.”
In another instant he had grabbed hold of one of the wrought-iron columns of the hotel’s massive porte-cochere and began shinnying up, crawling across the glass awning and reaching for the cornerstone masonry. From there, as people noticed and gathered about me, the detective, imitating Poe’s agile monkey,* commenced scrambling upwards.
“Holmes!” In my alarm, I forgot his alias. Clasping his coat to my chest, I watched, along with multiplying spectators in evening dress, as my friend, by no means a young man, scaled his way higher and yet higher, clutching the cornerstones until he gained the seventh floor, by which time he resembled nothing so much as a large spider. From there, as we gaped, he began a hazardous aerial journey, leaping from balcony to balcony, slowly but inevitably progressing to that lone, dark window.
Now cries could be heard, occasionally from rooms above where the detective’s presence had understandably alarmed the occupants (I distinctly heard a woman’s high-pitched scream), and several cries came from the throng gathered where I stood.
“What’s the chappie doin’?”
“Some kind of wager,” another was convinced.
“Look at him. The Great Houdini,” a third sniggered.
Having finally lunged onto the last balcony—to gasps from below, some of them mine—Holmes turned his attention to the window behind him and peered briefly into its blackness before returning to the balcony ledge. By the light overflowing from the adjacent suite I could make out he was doing something with his hands on the railing.
“Looks like he’s writing!” someone with sharper eyes than mine cried out.
Squinting, I could imagine this was likely the case, as he’d taken his pocket book and pencil with him. We watched in puzzled silence for some moments.
“A suicide note!” someone suggested helpfully.
More exclamations greeted this possibility.
“Here, you ladies best be off,” a gruff voice to my right advised. The women, I suspect, were only waiting to be told, and with a swish of skirts many quitted the vicinity, retreating inside to the foyer.
After another few moments, during which time we’d all now congregated directly below the balcony in question, the detective finished whatever he was doing and waved his hands.
“Señor is going to jump!” a Spaniard shouted in alarm, but I knew better and stepped forward.
“Stand back!”
Obedient to my confident command, the crowd withdrew a few steps, and I pushed my way through, waving his alpaca above my head, knowing the lights down here would enable Holmes to see it and me.
In another instant, with an emphatic gesture of his right arm, the detective flung the notebook into the air, where it fluttered down some thirty feet from where I stood, landing on a topiary camel.
“Out of my way!” I cried. “That is intended for me!”
“Well, no one said it wasn’t,” a bystander mumbled as I pushed my way unceremoniously towards the hedge.
The small book lodged just out of reach in the cleft of the camel’s hump, but by dint of shaking the entire shrub furiously, the thing obligingly tumbled to my feet.
Ignoring the bemused stares of those clustered about me, I took the small volume into the light and opened it to the last page, where Holmes had scrawled his message. Reading the words twice to make sure I understood them, I pocketed the book, tucked his coat under my arm, and waved up to him to acknowledge my possession of the book and its instructions. By way of reply, he clasped his upper arms, indicating he was cold.
Waving again, I entered the hotel and made for the front desk.
“I wish to see Monsieur Charpentier at once,” I told the clerk who stood behind it. A polished brass nameplate before me identified him as Mr. Dumfries. The man surveyed me with a bureaucrat’s condescension.
“I’m afraid you are not properly dressed—” he began.
“Read this.” I held the book open before him that he alone might see what the detective had written. He scanned it with a bored expression, but the colour drained from his face as he comprehended, then stared at me with the surprised expression of one who has just been slapped.
“Please follow me.”
It has been said that if you enjoy sausage you would do well to avoid seeing where and how one is made. I had experienced examples in hospitals, in the army, and on those infrequent occasions when I found myself backstage at the theatre where the chaotic arrangements and the troops of enablers bore little or no resemblance to the effortless airs and graces produced by the actors and the production’s scenic effects in view of the enchanted audience. Yet none of these quite prepared me for the clattering mayhem that was just out of sight at a luxe hotel. While well-paying guests enjoyed spotless linen, crisp sheets, furniture redolent of beeswax, sparkling crystal and gleaming cutlery framing artfully presented food, the veritable army required to achieve this agreeable result toiled just out of view. Only a wall and occasional swinging door separated diners in formal dress from piles of laundry in trundling carts, dozens of chefs and sauciers in scalding kitchens, multitudinous maids scurrying to and fro, dozens more pressing on steaming irons, butlers and menservants forcing passage through narrow hallways and corridors crammed with houseboys on their errands. Simply maintaining an establishment as large and complex as Shepheard’s required a company of carpenters and electricians. It was the opposite of what one imagines pondering the workings of a Swiss watch, where the innards are as pristine as what is seen on the clock-face.
Dumfries—I was not sure of his title—led me through this maze of activity with determination and assurance. If I anticipated our trek would culminate in an imposing command post wherein M. Charpentier presided at his ease over the Shepheard’s kingdom, I was again disabused.
Monsieur Charpentier, a Frenchman in his forties, occupied an office that was smaller than his responsibilities might have suggested, but his large walnut desk was perfectly organised with what looked like topless tin dispatch boxes separating his multifarious tasks for easy disposal. Much of the scant wall space was devoted to photographs of M. Charpentier with some of his more celebrated guests. Richard Francis Burton had evidently stopped here on more than one occasion and a photograph of his unsmiling widow, Isabel Arundel, adorned the wall, as did a portrait of Charles George “Chinese” Gordon, though that had obviously been taken before the advent of the present hotelier.
As we entered, Charpentier himself looked up in surprise, then checked his watch. Clearly everything in his domain ran according to a prearranged timetable and the appearance of the clerk I took to be the concierge was not anticipated.
“Dumfries? What brings you here?” He was looking at me as he posed the question.
“Monsieur Charpentier, this gentleman”—indicating me—“has something to show you that would seem to warrant your immediate attention.” The man nodded in my direction and I opened up the detective’s notebook to the same page and held it before the hotel manager.
Charpentier adjusted his pince-nez and read what Holmes had written. I had seen men turn grey before, from illness or wounds incurred in combat, but never, I think, from merely reading three sentences of English:
You will immediately break open the concealed door to suite seven-eighteen or I will smash the window on the balcony where I am standing and unlock the door from within. Watson, please send for the duchess and Lord D at Osiris House. Kindly hurry, as I am cold. Sherlock Holmes.