The Alexandria Quartet - Lawrence Durrell [68]
Presently the car dropped us and the soldier led me on foot through a straggle of small streets and alleys near the Rue Des Soeurs. If the object here was to make me lose myself it succeeded almost immediately. He walked with a fight self-confident step, humming under his breath. Finally we debouched into a suburban street full of merchants’ stores and stopped before a great carved door which he pushed open after having first rung a bell. A court-yard with a stunted palm-tree; the path which crossed it was punctuated by a couple of feeble lanterns standing on the gravel. We crossed it and ascended some stairs to where a frosted electric light bulb gleamed harshly above a tall white door. He knocked, entered and saluted in one movement. I followed him into a large, rather elegant and warmly-lighted room with neat polished floors
enhanced by fine Arab carpets. In one corner seated at a high inlaid desk with the air of a man riding a penny-farthing sat Scobie, with a scowl of self-importance overlapping the smile of welcome with which he greeted me. ‘My God’ I said. The old pirate gave a Drury Lane chuckle and said: ‘At last, old man, at last.’ He did not rise however but sat on in his uncomfortable high-backed chair, tarbush on head, whisk on knee, with a vaguely impressive air. I noticed an extra pip on his shoulder, betokening heaven knows what increase of rank and power. ‘Sit down, old man’ he said with an awkward sawing movement of the hand which bore a faint resemblance to a Second Empire gesture. The soldier was dis-missed and departed grinning. It seemed to me that Scobie did not look very much at ease in these opulent surroundings. He had a slightly defensive air. ‘I asked them to get hold of you’ he said, sinking his voice to a theatrical whisper ‘for a very special reason.’
There were a number of green files on his desk and a curiously disembodied-look ing tea-cosy. I sat down.
He now rose quickly and opened the door. There was nobody outside. He opened the window. There was no one standing on the sill. He placed the tea-cosy over the desk telephone and re-seated himself. Then, leaning forward and speaking carefully, he rolled his glass eye at me as with a conspiratorial solemnity he said:
‘Not a word to anyone, old man. Swear you won’t say a word’. I swore. ‘ They’ ve made me head of the Secret Service. ’ The words fairly whistled in his dentures. I nodded in amazement. He drew a deep sucking breath as if he had been delivered of a weight and went on. ‘Old boy, there’s going to be a war. Inside information.’
He pointed a long finger at his own temple. ‘There’s going to be a war. The enemy is working night and day, old boy, right here among us.’ I could not dispute this. I could only marvel at the new Scobie who confronted me like a bad magazine illustration. ‘You can help us scupper them, old man’ he went on with a devastating air of authority. ‘We want to take you on our strength.’ This sounded most agreeable. I waited for details. ‘The most dangerous gang of all is right here, in Alexandria’ the old man creaked and boomed, ‘and you are in the centre of it. All friends of yours.’
I saw through the knotted eyebrows and the rolling excited eye the sudden picture of Nessim, a brief flash, as of intuition, sitting at his huge desk in the cold steel-tube offices watching a telephone
ring while the beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He was expecting a message about Justine — one more twist of the knife. Scobie shook his head. ‘Not him so much’ he said. ‘He’s in it, of course. The leader is a man called