O Jerusalem - Laurie R. King [19]
I fell silent. Another twenty minutes passed. In the two hours we had lain there, nothing had changed except that the rooster in the village had been joined by another perhaps a mile off. At two hours and a quarter Holmes breathed again in my ear.
“Something is moving near the house.”
Before I could react I felt more than saw a dark shape moving across the ground towards us.
“Ya walud,” came the now-familiar voice, pitched low.
“Here, Ali,” said Holmes.
The man had the eyes of a cat, and picked his way by starlight over the uneven ground to where we lay.
“There is a problem with the safe. Mahmoud cannot persuade it to yield, and the dog and the guard will awaken soon.”
“Does he wish me to try?”
“You said you knew modern safes.” It is difficult to express nuances of doubt and disapproval in a whisper, but Ali managed.
“I will come,” said Holmes, and rolled cautiously off the wall, sending a minor shower of stones off the cliff and rousing the dog of the house below, but not, fortunately, the human inhabitants. Holmes made to follow Ali into the blackness, then paused. “By the way, Russell, I meant to wish you many happy returns. Although I suppose by now I am a day late.” He vanished before I could respond, but in truth I had quite forgot that it was my nineteenth birthday. For which I had received a sunburnt nose, a matching set of blisters, a bone-deep bruise on my right heel, a stomach clenched tight with hunger, and whatever bruises my current wall-top position might leave me with. All in all, one of the more interesting collections of birthday presents I had ever received.
Much cheered, I resigned myself for another lengthy wait. To my surprise, less than half an hour later there was another motion of a shadow approaching, and Ali reappeared, much agitated.
“The safe is open, but that foolish man insists on looking at everything it contains. You must tell him to close it so we can leave. There is no more chloroform.”
I followed Holmes’ example and allowed myself to roll off the wall, only to be knocked breathless by a large stone in the belly. Gasping as silently as I could, I got to my feet and staggered after Ali and into the house.
From the outside it had seemed a large building, and moving through the dark rooms—over smooth marble floors and thick carpets, through air scented with cooking spices and sandalwood— confirmed my impression that this was indeed one holy man who did not embrace poverty.
We turned into a corridor towards a dimly lit rectangle and entered the room, Ali closing the door silently behind us. I looked at the two unshaven men in dirty headgear and robes, bent over the papers, then at the man in garish dress beside me, and could only hope that the guard Ali had chloroformed did not wake, because if he had a whit of sense he would shoot before asking any questions.
Holmes sat on a low stool in front of the wall safe, rapidly but methodically sorting through the stack of papers on his knees. As we came in I saw him pause over a letter, open it, glance at it, and slip it with its envelope into the front of his robe. Mahmoud was looking more animated than I had ever seen him, standing over Holmes and clasping his hands together as if to keep from wringing them, or applying them to Holmes’ throat. Ali held out one hand to me, gesturing with the other to the two men.
“Tell him,” he insisted. “Tell him we must go.”
I studied Holmes for a minute, and thought I recognised the disapproving set to his features. I turned to Ali. “What is he looking for?”
“We only wish to retrieve one letter. We have found it. We must be gone.”
“Is it possible that this mullah could be a blackmailer?” I asked. Ali’s eyes slid to one side and Mahmoud growled something about the man in truth not being a mullah, both of which I read as affirmatives. “Holmes doesn’t much care for blackmailers,” I commented, but added to the man himself, “It will be getting light out in another half hour.”
The only sign Holmes gave that he had heard me was a slight increase in the speed of his examination. There was no budging