Read Online The Quest of Julian Day by Dennis Wheatley - Free Book Online

clean away with it unless I risked everything by intervening. But that meant facing him at once and exposing myself to recognition, which was the very last thing I wanted to do.
    Just as I was striving to reach a decision it looked as if the luck had taken a sudden turn in my favour. A police sergeant came hurrying up.
    â€˜No one is to leave the ship,’ he barked at the Purser.
    â€˜Good gracious, man, why?’ inquired O’Kieff with bland surprise.
    â€˜It is an order,’ said the sergeant.
    I was just chuckling to myself at his having been caught out when he leant over the rail and spoke to someone in the launch below. Next moment a short, stout figure wearing a red tarboosh came swiftly up the ladder and stepped on to the deck. In the glow of the electric light I recognised him instantly as Ismail Zakri Bey and my heart sank like a stone.
    Zakri was the Egyptian among the Big Seven whom I had met in Brussels and I saw their whole plan in a flash. Before O’Kieff left Marseilles he had arranged that Zakri Bey, who could give him diplomatic immunity from all landing formalities in Egypt, should come off to meet the ship and take him ashore. I was near enough to hear the two of them greet each other, while the police sergeant drew himself up and saluted smartly.
    â€˜Sorry to have to bring you up on deck, Bey,’ O’Kieff was murmuring, ‘but there seems to be an order that no passenger should leave the ship as yet.’
    â€˜That does not apply to this gentleman,’ Zakri Bey said quickly to the sergeant. ‘He is a friend of mine.’
    â€˜Pardon, Excellency,’ replied the man, ‘but it is an order of the
Miralai
that all baggage must be searched before any passenger leaves the ship.’
    O’Kieff laughed, and I gave him full marks for his magnificentself-assurance, as he said, ‘Well, you can search mine if you like. I haven’t the least objection.’
    â€˜No, no.’ Zakri shook his head. ‘We have no time.’
    He turned to the sergeant again. ‘Mr. O’Kieff is my personal guest and I take full responsibility. Tell your officer that we had to go ashore at once to keep an important engagement. Come now,’ he added to the stewards, ‘put all these things in the boat.’
    The sergeant did not dare to protest further, but saluted again and, to show his efficiency before such an important personage, began to shout curses at the Arab riff-raff below for the noise they were making as they endeavoured to coax piastres out of the watching passengers.
    Zakri Bey’s arrival on the scene caused me finally to abandon any thought of trying to prevent O’Kieff from leaving the ship. Zakri was a power in the land and he obviously did not intend to allow that cabin trunk to be opened whatever happened. If I attempted to force an issue he would simply overrule everybody, have the trunk thrown into the boat and make his peace with the authorities afterwards. Besides, if one of them failed to recognise me under the thin disguise of my brown beard it was quite certain that the other would. I could only stand there half-choking with fury at the way O’Kieff had slipped through my fingers, as he followed Zakri down the ladder.
    The sergeant had passed along the deck, still shouting at the Arabs, while I leant over the rail gloomily watching the luggage being loaded into the launch. It was just pushing off when I heard a voice call up to me from the semi-darkness below, a little further aft.
    â€˜Mr. Day, sir!
Saida
, Julian
effendi
! Please to regard me! What pleasure to welcome you to Egypt again!’
    I turned, and there, standing up in a small motor-boat ten yards away, was a tall figure in a long, wide-sleeved silk jibba and tarboosh, with a crooked stick hanging over one arm and two rows of enormous gleaming white teeth shining up at me out of a dark, smiling face. It was Amin Khattab, the admirable Arab who had been my