They left the crowded streets behind and started to climb a small hill behind the town on which Melina could see that there was a white villa surrounded by a high wall.
Bing pointed to it with his finger.
“Villa Harris!” he said. “Built by an Englishman who was a correspondent of The Times. He is dead now and the Moroccans have made it one of the landmarks of the town and tourists are taken out to look at it, from the outside of course.”
“No one is allowed in?” Melina asked, disappointed.
Bing shook his head.
“You’re lucky if you can get inside any of the buildings in Tangier once they are owned by the natives,” he said. “They rather object to being stared at, and who doesn’t?”
“I should like to go inside a real Moroccan house,” Melina said.
Bing did not answer. He was intent on passing a number of small boys who were playing ball at the corner of the street in imminent danger of their lives.
“You must have been in a great many,” Melina remarked.
“What makes you think that?” Bing asked.
“When you are dressed as an Arab, surely you can go into Arab houses?” Melina ventured.
She knew that she was being curious and was not unprepared for the little sidelong glance that Bing gave her and the twist of his lips as he said,
“Les jeuxs sont faits, madame,”
It was the cry of the croupier at every casino when no one may stake any more money because the ball is rolling in the roulette wheel.
Melina knew with a sense of exasperation that Bing had seen through her idea of making him talk and she sat back silent in the seat until Bing stopped the car below the villa.
“We walk from here,” he said. “It’s too rough for my tyres.”
She had a feeling, although she could not put it into words, that there were other reasons for his wishing to walk.
Obediently she climbed out into the hot sun, shaking the skirt of her cotton dress to prevent it from being creased and being glad, when she saw the rough stones and sand on what was little more than a cart track, that she was wearing low-heeled sandals.
As they rounded the high white walls, the view over the sea was breathtaking. There were few people about, for it was the time of siesta and Melina knew that most of the Moslems would be asleep in their houses or drowsing over their wares in the marketplace until the heat of the afternoon abated a little.
“Mad dogs and Englishmen – ” she mused aloud and Bing turned to smile at her.
“It isn’t hot yet,” he said. “Besides, I like the sun, don’t you?”
“I can’t really answer that question. I have never been in a hot country until now.”
“Morocco is not really hot,” Bing replied. “You should try India, the Persian Gulf or Aden in June. And even Algiers, next door, can be uncomfortably warm in the summer months.”
He was talking casually enough, but Melina knew that his eyes were moving ahead of them, searching the stumpy trees and rocks and even a camping ground that was a little farther on, as if he was expecting to see something unusual.
The stony ground slipped beneath their feet and still they climbed. There were two children in charge of the three small thin goats grazing a little above them,
Below them the ground fell away until they reached one point in the hillside where there was a sheer drop down hundreds of feet of rough shale cliff.
There were a few trees growing along the side and a broken-down fence that had once prevented cars and perhaps people from running over the edge in the dark.
The leaves of the trees were thick and dark in colour and silhouetted against the sky they made a picture that Melina somehow felt would be engraved on her mind.
Everywhere she looked she saw a lovelier scene than the last. It was hard to believe that only an hour or so earlier Bing had been pursued by men intent on violence or worse.
“You were expecting someone to meet you here?” Melina asked in a low voice.
“Perhaps,” Bing replied enigmatically.
“There doesn’t seem anyone about,” Melina said. “I can see some tents at the end of the camping ground. They look to me rather like those used by boy scouts.”
Bing turned in the direction she pointed and with his back to the cliff searched with narrowed eyes the long grassy incline where the boys were playing with the goats.
There was a monument of some sort in the distance, a memorial perhaps, nothing more sinister.
“What do we do now?” Melina asked.
She turned her face up to his as she spoke and, even as she did so, she saw a slight movement in the tree behind him.
If she had not been expecting trouble and in consequence been tense and on edge, she would not have screamed so quickly.
As it was, her scream made Bing swing round just in time to catch the man who had sprung at his back. He was an Arab and he held a knife in his hand!
After the first scream had left her lips, Melina felt paralysed and unable to move. She could only stand breathless and watch Bing struggling with the man who, although smaller in height, was fighting fanatically.
As he jumped, Bing had caught hold of the man’s right wrist and, although he kicked and clawed and struggled, he was unable to use the long pointed knife that gleamed in the sunshine or to strike as he had intended.
They struggled in silence, the only sound being the scuffle of their feet on the gravel.
Then almost before Melina could realise what was happening Bing picked up the man bodily in both his arms.
For a second he held him high above his head before he flung him over the battered fence and down the deep stony ravine.
There was one cry, the sound of a thud and a shower of stones as the body fell over and over, bashing itself against the rocks as it fell.
And then silence.
There was sweat on Bing’s face as he turned towards Melina, but there was something else that made her take a step backwards from him – a new feeling she had never known before seeping through her as if she, herself, had received a knife in her heart.
His face was transformed.
No longer was it the face of a quiet pleasant Englishman, but the face, she told herself, of a devil. There was a glint in his eyes, a cruel twist to his mouth, the set of his jaw and, above all, an expression of satisfaction, of triumph.
It was then, instinctively, that she began to run, running away from him, her feet scurrying over the stony, sandy path as her terror urged her on until, passing the Villa Harris, she found herself back again at the car.
The run had exhausted her and without thinking coherently that it was Bing’s car yet also Bing from whom she was escaping, she leant against it panting, holding on with her hands to one of the side mirrors although after being in the sun the chromium seemed to burn her as if it was on fire.
She heard him come up behind her and, without looking up, she managed to gasp,
“Let – me – go! I cannot – stay with – you. Let me – go!”
“Pull yourself together!”
He spoke sharply and opened the door of the car.
“Get in,” he ordered.
“I can’t. I’ll – I’ll – walk back,” Melina managed to mumble.
“Get in!”
His voice was inexorable and she obeyed him simply because she no longer had any breath to argue with.
She sank down in the seat and put her hands up to her eyes.
She could not look at him, she could not bear to see that expression on his face.
Why had she been such a fool to come here with this man, this killer who enjoyed the killing? In a kind of agony she heard him open the door next to the driver’s seat.
Then, as she expected him to climb into the car, she heard him pause.
There was a child’s voice speaking to him in Arabic, begging, no doubt, for money in the traditional way or presenting a nosegay of wild flowers that he had picked on the hillside.
Bing was feeling in his pocket and then, in an ordinary conversational voice that any husband might have used to his wife, he asked,
“Do you have any small change?”
With trembling hands, fighting back the tears that were now pricking her eyes, Melina opened her bag. She pulled out her small purse and handed it to him and saw that he took a coin out of it and gave it to the boy before he got into the car and tossed a little nosegay of flowers onto her lap.
“Thank you,” he said, giving the purse into her nervous hand.
With an effort she forced herself to put her purse away and then realised that he had not started up the car but was just sitting in it.
She turned her face away from him looking blindly out of the window beside her.
“Melina, look at me!”
“I don’t – want to.”
She knew it was the reply of a sulky child, but somehow she felt peculiarly childlike at this moment.
“Melina, don’t be silly. These things have to be done. You have to understand. Besides, I owe you a debt of gratitude.”
Still she did not answer and he went on,
“It was him or me! If you hadn’t screamed, that knife would have been buried in my back. And you would have had a lot of explaining to do as to why your ‘husband’ should have been killed by some religious fanatic beside the Villa Harris on a quiet afternoon when everything else seemed at peace.”
“How – could you – do it?” Melina asked. “Wasn’t there – any other way?”
“Melina, look at me,” he repeated and, when she did not obey him, he put out his hand and taking her small chin in his fingers turned her face round to his.
For a moment she resisted him and then, compelled almost against her will, her eyes opened and looked up into his. Could any man look like that, she wondered involuntarily and yet be a killer?
“It had to be done,” he said quietly. “As I have told you, it was him or me. There was nothing else for it.”
“But – why did he want to – kill you?” Melina asked.
She saw a sudden blankness come over his face and knew that he was going to refuse to answer the question.
“You have to tell me!” she cried passionately. “Don’t you understand? I can’t go on? I can’t stay with you unless you tell me the truth. I do have to know. You have said that I helped you, saved your life, if you like. Well, don’t you owe me something? It’s only frankness and honesty I am asking for, nothing else. Just to know, just to understand what this is all about.”
He took his hand away from her chin and turned to look out over the sunlit hillside. The boy who had brought the flowers was back again beside the goats. There was no one else in sight.
It seemed utterly peaceful, quiet and serene.
“Tell me! Please tell me!” Melina begged.
“How can I be sure that I can trust you?” Bing answered. “It’s not just my secret. It would be so easy for you to walk out on me, as you were trying to do just now. There could be a word here or a word there and Heaven knows what would not be involved.”
“You can trust me,” Melina said briefly. “Perhaps I should have told you before. My father was Sir Frederick Lindsay!”
She saw Bing’s eyes widen almost incredulously.
“Sir Frederick Lindsay! The man who did so much in Morocco! Good Lord! Why didn’t you say so? I met him once, years ago, when I left school. But all he has done, his books, the stories about him, mean more to me than I can ever say.”
“And yet he died penniless and without anybody apparently caring a damn one way or the other,” Melina said bitterly. “He was very ill for the last three years of his life and none of the people who wrote such glowing obituaries ever bothered to ring up or to write or to come to see him. He would have appreciated it so much, but they just were not interested when he was no longer of any importance.”
“Your father will always be of importance,” Bing said, “I can promise you that. His fight against the slave trade, his battle to prevent narcotics being brought into the country, the work he did to bring peace to Morocco. All this is something that those who write history will never forget, even if the Moroccans themselves may be somewhat grudging in their appreciation of all his efforts.”
“He didn’t want to be thanked,” Melina said quickly. “But I minded for him. He used to talk of Morocco as if it was his best beloved child. That is why I wanted to come here – that is why I wanted to see the country he had given his heart to.”
“You shall see it,” Bing asserted. “But only if you have some of his courage.”
“Then tell me what I am fighting.”
Bing looked round over his shoulder as if he half expected there was someone crouching against the car listening to them.
“It’s a long story,” he began, “and I’m not going to bother you with the details, but your father fought all his life to improve conditions in Morocco and the new King has carried on the good work. He has closed down innumerable dens of vice, he has broken up secret societies, he has eliminated, in one way or another, a great number of perpetrators of evil. But not all of them.”
Again Bing glanced over his shoulder.
“Naturally,” he went on, “these people are not pleased at the new regime. They have been working against the King for a long time and, although they have not come into the open, those concerned with the Government of the country know there is a vast underground movement ready at the first opportunity to sabotage and hinder every effort at improvement.”
“You mean a revolution?” Melina asked.
“I don’t think it will come to that,” Bing answered, “for they are not strong enough as yet to show their hand. And, if those who serve the King are really vigilant, they never will.”
“Go on,” Melina prompted. “How are you concerned in this?”
“These people, who have no name, no badge and who work secretly, are all the more dangerous because no one knows where one may find them.”
“The man who was in the tree – why should he want to kill you?”
“Who knows who gave him the order to strike at me? All I am certain of is that when his body is found nothing will be said. It will be taken away and buried, but little will be said about it except perhaps in the gossip markets and there will be nothing in the newspapers.”
“It sounds frightening!” Melina murmured.
“It is frightening,” Bing replied. “But I am not concerned with the revolutionaries, if one might call them that, as a whole but only with one act of theirs”
“And what is that?” Melina asked.
Bing looked round. Everything was quiet and peaceful and there was only the sunlight outside.
“They have kidnapped a child,” he said at length in a low voice.
“A child!” Melina exclaimed. “What child?”
“The child belonging to a friend of mine,” Bing answered. “He was at Harrow with me and I came out here to stay with him. I have worked in these parts before in various capacities, but this time I came to Morocco for a holiday and a good rest.”
His lips twisted in a wry smile.
“I had not really started to relax!”
“Who is this man?” Melina asked.
“I am not going to tell you his name,” Bing told her. “It is of no significance to you as things are and, quite frankly, I want you to know as little as possible, just in case anyone should interrogate you.”
“You mean that they might kidnap me?” Melina asked.
“Not if I am about,” Bing replied simply. “At the same time, I have to protect you, even though you are your father’s daughter.”
He put his hand over hers for a moment as it lay on her lap and she heard the respect in his voice and felt warm that someone cared so much for her father and remembered him with such affection.
“This friend of mine,” Bing went on, “has a position of authority in the Government. He was instrumental in having two men, steeped in wickedness and crime, brought before a Court of Justice and sentenced to death. They are to be executed in a week’s time.”
Melina turned wondering eyes towards Bing.
“And the child?” she asked.
“The child will die, too, unless he pardons them,” Bing answered. “Or unless by some miracle I can find the child.”
“But why you? Has he not told the police – ?” Melina asked, only to feel her voice die away between her lips, knowing without being told what the answer would be.
“You must see that it would be impossible to make such a situation public,” Bing explained. “It might precipitate the very thing that we are trying to avoid, the strengthening of the forces against the King and a rallying cry for all those working underground to sabotage the Government.”
“Oh, I see!” Melina murmured
“What they hoped would happen, of course,” Bing continued, “was that the Minister in question would proclaim his loss in the newspapers and say he was being blackmailed to save the two men who really deserve to die.”
“But it doesn’t seem possible that such things can happen today,” Melina cried.
“Things like this are happening all over the world,” Bing answered. “Sometimes they are reported in the papers, sometimes not. The worst crimes are usually never heard of except by those people who make it their business to know about them. Already my friend has, I believe, embarrassed and disquieted the Opposition a little because he has said nothing and has gone about his business, although his heart is breaking, without revealing the tragedy that is hidden in his home.”
“And the child! Supposing they kill it!”
“They won’t do that until the last moment,” Bing replied confidently.
“Is it a boy or a girl?”
“A boy, of course,” Bing replied. “Which naturally enhances the value of the hostage in Moslem eyes. A boy of six. All we know is that he is hidden somewhere in this vast country. And I have one week in which to find him!”
“But – but surely it’s impossible?” Melina said. “What can you do, working alone?”
“I am not alone. There are loyal decent people amongst the poor, amongst the beggars and even the goatherds! But they are frightened. They can only work surreptitiously. They are afraid of their own shadows and suspicious of their relatives in case they should be on the other side.”
His eyes were on the small boys seated by the goats on the hillside.
“That boy who brought these flowers,” Melina said looking down at them on her lap. “He told you something, didn’t he?”
Bing nodded.
“He brought a message from his father, who was too afraid and too wise to come himself. He may have known about the man hidden in the tree or he may not. Anyway two people knew I was coming here. The man who tried to kill me and the man who had a message for me. Do you understand now how complex this situation is?”
“And brother shall turn against brother,” Melina quoted beneath her breath. “I have heard my father say that when he was describing a civil war in one country or another.”
“It is very true of the East,” Bing said, “where men are truly brothers and yet become bitter and more dangerous enemies because their affection has been so great.”
There was silence and then he said,
“Why did you run away?”
She did not answer, but he put his hands on hers again and said,
“Tell me, Melina. We must have the truth between us if nothing else.”
“It was – your face,” she said almost in a whisper as the horror of it returned to her. “You – killed a man and you looked – pleased – no, more than that – triumphant.”
“I was,” Bing said quietly. “I was glad there was one less of them, one less perhaps, of those swine who are torturing a child of six!”
“Torturing!”
Melina blurted out the word sharply. It had an almost Medieval sound in her ears.
“Yes, torturing,” Bing said. “They have threatened to flog him every day that the reprieve is not announced.”
“Oh, no!”
Melina’s voice was broken.
“Now do you understand?” Bing asked. “Now are you prepared to work with me?”
“But, of course! I was anyway. You had engaged me. But now – oh, don’t let’s waste time here. Let’s go and do something.”
“We are going to Fez,” Bing said. “That was the message I received from the little goatherd. ‘That which you seek travels to Fez’.”
He turned the car and started down the hill. There were a thousand questions Melina wanted to ask him, but somehow she felt that she had delayed him long enough.
As soon as they were out on the open road, she realised that the Peugeot might look small and insignificant but it was obviously fitted with a large and powerful engine.
They sped along, passing cars that were much bigger than theirs and making short work of the long twisting road that led into the centre of the country.
“Are we likely to be followed?” Melina asked once.
“Anything is likely,” he answered. “Besides my changed appearance in your bathroom has not fooled them as we hoped.”
“Why didn’t they kill you even though I was there?” Melina asked.
“God knows!” he answered. “It depends very much on who is on the chase. Some people are rather half-hearted about murder. They are never quite certain that their employers will stand by them when there’s any trouble. And, remember, a dead Englishman in an hotel with a witness to see who has done it is a very different thing from a dead Englishman on the hillside murdered by a man whose face you would not have seen and who, as far as you were concerned, would have disappeared into thin air.”
“If only one knew what they are like. If only they wore a uniform,” Melina said desperately.
“It is what I have often thought to myself,” Bing replied. “But they really have nothing in common except a desire to create chaos in a country which is just finding peace.”
“Does the King know about the child?” Melina asked him.
“Of course,” Bing replied. “But he, too, is powerless. As I have told you, to bring this thing into the open might precipitate the one situation we are trying to avoid – an open revolt.”
“The Police, the Army! Aren’t they loyal?”
“We hope so, but we don’t know.”
Melina was then silent, remembering the Policeman who had come into her bedroom. There had been something unpleasant about him, she thought. He did not exude evil as the other two men had done, but he was definitely not trustworthy.
She began to see the enormity of the task Bing had undertaken.
“Who are these people who are helping you?” she enquired.
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Again I don’t know,” he said. “The ayah of the child, the servants who guarded him, were, we think, loyal and utterly devastated when he was snatched away from his Governess as he went down to the beach to bathe. The men picked him up in their arms and carried him to a car. The woman was left staring after the car, screaming for help, but by the time anyone paid any attention to her it was out of sight. The child had vanished.”
“It’s terrifying! Absolutely terrifying!” Melina cried.
“I suppose really I ought not to have embroiled you in all this,” Bing said reflectively. “But somehow it seemed such a Heaven sent opportunity. Now that I realise that our little subterfuge was fruitless, I ought to send you back.”
“Even if you tried, I won’t go,” Melina said firmly.
“Are you sure about that?” he said. “You were running away from me just now.”
“It was because you terrified me,” Melina said. “But now I understand.”
“And you are no longer terrified of me?” he asked.
She hesitated before she answered. She was frightened of him, she thought, if she were truthful. There was something about him, something strong and ruthless, which made her feel uneasy and, yes, more a little afraid.
He did not, press her for an answer and she was thankful not to have to lie.
They stopped for a drink and something to eat in a small village. Melina wondered, as they were served attentively by the owner of the restaurant, whether they just appeared to him to be ordinary travellers or whether he already had information about them.
Everything seemed completely and utterly normal and she began to think that perhaps all that had happened before was a bad dream or something that had come out of her own imagination and had not, in fact, occurred at all.
Bing paid the bill and then casually said in French,
“I suppose you haven’t seen some friends of ours come through in the last day or so? There would have seen two or three of them with a small boy. They would be travelling, I think, in a big touring car. I half expected to meet them here today.”
The man hesitated for a moment, but only as if he was thinking rather than for any ulterior motive.
“There was a small boy with some men here yesterday,” he said. “They stopped for a meal at midday. The child asked for milk, but I had only goats’ milk and he didn’t like it.”
“That may have been them,” Bing said casually. “My wife and I were held up with car trouble. Oh, well, we shall meet them later on I expect.”
“If it was the same party,” the proprietor continued, “the chauffeur said he was going to Fez. He asked me how many kilometres it was.”
“And how far is it?” Bing asked. “We hope to stay there tonight.”
“Only about eighty kilometres,” the man answered. “You will be there soon after dark.”
“Thank you very much.”
Bing put his hand under Melina’s arm and led her towards the car.
“Don’t look round,” he said. “And don’t say anything until we are out of earshot.”
She could hardly hear his words and she knew that his cool deliberation in looking at the tyres and polishing the windscreen before they set off was all an act put on to impress the proprietor.
“Do you think he suspected us?” she asked as soon as they had driven away.
“He sounded natural enough,” Bing answered.
“We’re only a day behind them,” Melina pointed out.
“They may not stay there though,” Bing replied. He glanced at his watch. “We are about ten minutes from the restaurant. Look back now and see if anyone is following us.”
The road behind them was long and dusty.
There was no one in sight.
“Are there other roads?” Melina asked.
“This is the only main route from Tangier to Fez. The side roads are in a bad state and in many places are only negotiable by horses.”
“That was why you were sure they had come this way?” Melina suggested.
“They would have wanted to get the child out of Tangier quickly,” Bing said. “I thought that was what had happened, but I had to make sure.”
“And you nearly got yourself killed in the process,” Melina said, thinking of his sudden jump onto the balcony and the urgency of his whispered voice when he had asked her to save him.
“And now? What happens now?” she went on.
He did not answer.
“Fez is the largest native town in the whole of North Africa,” Bing said. “But I have an idea where they will take him and we can only hope that my intuition is right.”
His voice was slow and deliberate and without emotion. Melina looked at him quickly and said,
“What you are planning is dangerous, isn’t it?”
“Everything is dangerous,” Bing answered. “But they are risks that have to be taken.”
He gave a quick sigh and added,
“I ought never to have brought you, I see that now.”
“I am glad you did,” Melina replied. “Very glad. I want to help you save that child and somehow I am not so afraid as I thought I should be.”
He turned and gave her a fleeting smile.
“Your father’s daughter!” he said. “Good girl!”
She felt a glow at his words and she was suddenly surprisingly happy.
“Thank you,” she said in a grateful voice.
Then impulsively she put out her hand and laid it on his arm.
“I am so very glad I met you,” she sighed and meant it.