The Light of the Day - Eric Ambler [55]
He pulled a glass out of a bowl of dirty water by the sink, shook it once, and poured some konyak from an already opened bottle on the table. He also refilled his own half-empty glass, which was conveniently to hand.
“Here’s cheers!” he said, and swallowed thirstily. A sentence of Tufan’s came into my mind—“He gets drunk and attacks people.” I had not thought to ask what sort of people he usually attacked, the person with whom he was drinking or some casual bystander.
“Are you British?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“How you know I speak English?”
An awkward question. “I didn’t know, but I don’t speak Turkish.”
He nodded, apparently satisfied. “You worked for these people before?”
“A little. I drove the car from Athens. Normally, I work there with my own car.”
“Driving tourists?”
“Yes.”
“Are these people tourists?” His tone was heavily ironical.
“I don’t know. They say so.”
“Ah!” He winked knowingly and went back to his stirring again. “Are you by the week?”
“Paid you mean? Yes.”
“You had some money from them?”
“For the trip from Athens.”
“Who paid? The Fischer man?”
“The Harper man. You don’t think they really are tourists?”
He made a face and rocked his head from side to side as if the question were too silly to need an answer.
“What are they, then?”
He shrugged. “Spies, Russia spies. Everyone know—Hamul and his wife, the fishermen down below, everyone. You want something to eat?”
“That smells good.”
“It is good. It is for us. Hamul’s wife cooks for him in their room before they come to wait table in the dining room. Then, I cook for the spies. Maybe, if I feel like it, I give them what is left after we eat, but the best is for us. Get two dishes, from the shelf there.”
It was a chicken and vegetable soup and was the first thing I had eaten with any pleasure for days. Of course, I knew that I would have trouble with the garlic later; but, with my stomach knotted up by nerves the way it was, I would have had trouble with anything. Geven did not eat much. He went on drinking brandy; but he smiled approvingly when I took a second helping of the soup.
“Always I like the British,” he said. “Even when you are backing the Greeks in Cyprus against us, I like the British. It is good you are here. A man does not like drinking alone. We can take a bottle upstairs with us every night.” He smiled wetly at the prospect.
I returned the smile. It was not the moment, I felt, to tell him that I hoped not to be sharing the servants’ quarters with him.
And then Fischer had to come in.
He looked at the brandy bottle disapprovingly, and then at me. “I will show you your room,” he said.
Geven held up an unsteadily protesting hand. “Effendi, let him finish his dinner. I will show him where to sleep.”
It was Fischer’s opportunity. “Ah no, chef,” he said; “he thinks himself too good to sleep with you.” He nodded to me. “Come.”
Geven’s lower lip quivered so violently that I was sure he was about to burst into tears; but his hand also went to the bottle as if he were about to throw it at me. It was possible, I thought, that he might be going to do both things.
I whispered hurriedly: “Harper’s orders, nothing to do with me,” and got out out of the room as quickly as I could.
Fischer was already at the staircase in the passage.
“You will use these stairs,” he said; “not those in the front of the house.”
The room to which he now showed me was at the side of the house on the bedroom floor. He pointed to the door of it.
“There is the room,” he said, and then pointed to another door along the corridor; “and there is a bathroom. The car will be wanted in the morning at eleven.” With that he left, turning off the lights in the corridor as he went.
When he had gone, I turned the lights on again. The corridor had cream lincrusta dadoes with flowered wallpaper above. I had a look at the bathroom. It was a most peculiar shape and had obviously been installed, as an afterthought, in a disused storage closet. There was no window. The plumbing fixtures were German, circa 1905. Only the cold-water taps worked.
The bedroom wasn’t too bad.