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By Root 14137 0

with longer and longer telegrams full of the shrewish iterations of minds trying to influence the operation of what Mountolive now knew to be not merely chance, but in fact destiny. It was interesting, too, in a paradoxical sort of way, this first great lesson which his profession had to teach him; for outside the circumscribed area of his personal fears and hesitations, he watched the whole affair with a kind of absorbed attention, with almost a sense of dreadful admiration. But it was like some fretful mummy that he now presented himself to the gaze of Nur, almost ashamed of the splendours of that second-hand uniform, so clearly was it intended to admonish or threaten the Minister. The old man was full of a feverish desire to accommodate him; he was like a monkey jumping enthusiastically on the end of a chain. But what could he do? He made faces to match his trans-parent excuses. The investigations undertaken by Memlik were not as yet complete. It was essential to verify the truth. The threads were still being followed up. And so forth.

Mountolive did what he had never done before in his official life, colouring up and banging the dusty table between them with friendly exasperation. He adopted the countenance of a thunder-cloud and predicted a rupture of diplomatic relations. He went so far as to recommend Nur for a decoration … realizing that this was his last resort. But in vain.

The broad contemplative figure of Memlik squatted athwart the daylight, promising everything, performing nothing; immovable, imperturbable, and only faintly malign. Each was now pressing

the other beyond the point of polite conciliation: Maskelyne and the High Commissioner were pressing London for action; London, full of moralizing grandeurs, pressed Mountolive; Mountolive pressed Nur, overwhelming the old man with a sense of his own ineffectuality, for he too was powerless to grapple with Memlik without the help of the King: and the King was ill, very ill. At the bottom of this pyramid sat the small figure of the Minister for Interior, with his priceless collection of Korans locked away in dusty cupboards.

Constrained nevertheless to keep up the diplomatic pressure, Mountolive was now irradiated by an appalling sense of futility as he sat (like some ageing jeune premier) and listened to the tor-rent of Nur’s excuses, drinking the ceremonial coffee and prying into those ancient and imploring eyes. ‘But what more evidence do you need, Pasha, than the papers I brought you?’ The Minister’s hands spread wide, smoothing the air between them as if he were rubbing cold-cream into it; he exuded a conciliatory and apologetic affection, like an unguent. ‘He is going into the matter’ he croaked helplessly. ‘There is more than one Hosnani, to begin with’ he added in desperation. Backwards and forwards moved the tortoise’s wrinkled head, regular as a pendulum. Mountolive groaned inside himself as he thought of those long telegrams following one another, endless as a tapeworm. Nessim had now, so to speak, wedged himself neatly in between his various adversaries, in a position where neither could reach him — for the time being. The game was in baulk.

Donkin alone derived a quizzical amusement from these ex-changes — so characteristic of Egypt. His own affection for the Moslem had taught him to see clearly into his motives, to dis-cern the play of childish cupidities underneath the histrion ic silence of a Minister, under his facile promises. Even Mountolive’s gathering hysteria in the face of these checks was amusing for a junior secretary. His Chief had become a puffy and petulant dignitary, under all this stress. Who could have believed such a change possible?

The observation that there was more than one Hosnani was a strange one, and it was a fruit of the prescient Rafael’s thought as he quietly shaved his master one morning, according to custom; Memlik paid great attention to what the barber said — was he

not a European? While the little barber shaved him in the morning they discussed the transactions of the day. Rafael was full of ideas