The Falcon at the Portal - Elizabeth Peters [158]
“Hmmm,” said Emerson, sucking on his pipe. “You still have some way to go. Tell me what steps you have taken.”
Originally Mr. Russell had concentrated on the coast, trying to confiscate the cargoes as they were unloaded. As Ramses had mentioned earlier, this was a hopeless task, for the area was extensive. “It seemed to me,” Ramses continued, “that it made better sense to try and intercept the stuff when it entered Cairo. It might come by water, up one of the arms of the Nile, or overland. In either case it would end up in a warehouse or shed or some other storage area, awaiting distribution to the dealers.”
“More than one such storage place, surely,” said Emerson, who was listening with keen interest. “Common sense would suggest they change the locale periodically.”
“Not if they had no reason to believe it was suspected,” Ramses argued. “Even so, pinning down a specific location would be difficult. So I started from the other end—the local distributors. I managed to get a position in one of the hashish dens—”
“How did you manage that?” Emerson asked curiously.
“I started a fight. It wasn’t difficult; some of the lads become combative as the night wears on. After I had pitched my unfortunate victim out into the alley and expressed my regret for the disturbance, the owner offered me a job as lookout. It didn’t take long to figure out the schedule of deliveries and identify the deliverers. To make a long story short, I worked my way up the ladder until I was taken on as one of the laborers who meet the incoming shipments.”
“So you’ve located the warehouse?” Emerson inquired. He sounded a little envious, I thought.
“One of them. That wasn’t what I wanted, though, and it finally occurred to my slow wits that I was never going to get past a certain point. There is a great gap between the people who handle the stuff and the people who finance the business, and only a few points of contact between them. I was racking my brain trying to think how to bridge the gap when David found out what I was doing.”
“I owe Wardani a debt for enlightening me,” David said. “You wouldn’t have told me.”
“There’s no need to go into that,” Ramses said. “It was David who came up with the brilliant idea of setting up a police ambush, so that we could save the shipment and become heroes. Russell approved the scheme; so David joined the group, on my recommendation, and when the attack occurred we gave our all for the cause. We’d planned exactly what we would do and it went off rather well; in all the pandemonium and in the dark nobody could really tell who was hitting whom. In the end David and I and our immediate superior were the only ones left standing, and we dashed off with the hashish. Bleeding copiously, of course, and covered with bruises.”
Emerson chuckled. Ramses picked up one of the little pottery lamps and used it to light a cigarette. The glow illumined his face and David’s; both had a look of reminiscent amusement that made me want to shake them. I wanted to shake Emerson too, for laughing. Men are incomprehensible to me at times.
“So,” said Emerson, “what next?”
“Next comes a spot of eavesdropping,” said his son. “We will never be admitted to the inner councils, but because of our extraordinary heroism we are considered trustworthy; people don’t always guard their tongues when we are around. There is a meeting tonight we must attend. We haven’t been invited, so we will have to hang about in the hope of hearing something interesting. It will take a little time to get into position, so if you will excuse us—”
“Not quite yet,” said Emerson, slowly and distinctly. “There is something more, isn’t there? No, don’t tell me; I will tell you. You and David wouldn’t waste your time on police business unless it were connected with our other problems. It’s the same man, isn’t it? How did you make the connection? Is he also using David’s name?”
After a moment Ramses said, “Yes, to both. Sir—”
“Confound you, Ramses, don’t you see that attempting