The Mystery of Khufu's Tomb (Unabridged). Talbot Mundy
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and a coward, too. But as far as concerns Miss Leich, you are dealing with another kind of person altogether. Listen to me, now; don’t get impatient. I’m going to pin you in that chair and make you listen if you don’t act sensibly. Sit still.
“There’s nothing to stop you from getting title to that land in the Fayoum except your own indecency. Miss Leich doesn’t want it. She doesn’t need money. All she would insist on is a square deal. If you happen to know that that land is very valuable—that there’s gold on it, for instance, or oil, or something of that sort—all you need do is to lay your cards face-upward on the table.”
“You mean she’d sell?”
“I don’t know what she’d do. She’d give you a square deal of some kind.”
“All right,” he urged. “You get me title to that thousand acres and I’ll pay you. Suppose we agree on the amount of the commission now?”
“Thanks,” I said, “but I’m not in the commission business.”
“You want money, don’t you?”
“Not at present.”
“Well, then, what do you want?” he demanded. “What is your motive in buttonholing me, if you don’t want to do business?”
“I’m doing my best,” I said, “to resist a temptation to thrash you! I’m taking pity on you if you’d only realize it.”
“You talk of thrashing me and of taking pity in the same breath! You talk like the British Government! However, I believe I did not invite you to sit next to me.”
Like Dulcy in the drama, I counted ten. It works occasionally. Then:
“It’s a matter of common hospitality,” I said “You’re a stranger in a strange land, and I’m warning you. If you’ve business to do, you can do it but you’ll have to do it straight or you’ll suffer; for it simply happens that you’ve picked on a woman who belongs to a crowd that is honest. And they’re so honest that they’ll smash you all to pieces if they catch you playing under the table.”
“Such hypocrites, I suppose you mean!” he answered, getting out of his chair.
And at that he walked away with a sneer as perfect as a tom-cat’s that gives elbow-room, but no more, to an Airedale terrier.
CHAPTER IV
Zoom of the Zee-Bar-Zee
I met Mr. Zoom of Zezwinski and Zoom the next morning on my way to breakfast; he was taking the air with a half-dozen dogs. He believes in keeping himself before the public eye, does Ollie Zoom—enjoys a reputation for giving two-dollar bills to hoboes, provided that someone is looking, and rather poses as the man behind the legislature—a pose that costs him a lot less than running for office. In fact, he cultivates an atmosphere of influence based on clandestine information, and walks to the office in golf stockings to show what a democrat he can be, in spite of everything.
Ollie Zoom likes nothing better than to be accosted by a stranger in the street. It gives him a chance to get off some real, free, genuine Western stuff rather suggestive of a five-cent chromo of the Grand Canyon, or, if you prefer the simile, of a chain-store Camembert cheese, all smell and no flavour. He liked immensely to have me admire his German police-dogs, and told me all about their pedigrees, what they had cost to import, and which prizes he proposed to win with them. They were a melancholy-looking lot of brutes that lacked nothing so much as an honest job of work, but I flattered Zoom unrighteously about them and he grew chesty. When he learned that I was recently from New York he became at once a Colonel Cody in his own imagination. He had asked me pointblank where I came from, which no genuine Westerner would ever do.
“Ah! New York—that’s where you see the best dogs, of course, and the best of everything that money can buy. But you can’t buy life; that’s what I always say, you can’t buy life. Out here there’s life and lots of it. We’re not effete; we’re free and easy; there’s room to turn around in. What were you thinking of doing out here?”
I answered with one of those true statements of fact that act like bait in a wolf-trap.
“I represent an Eastern capitalist.”
The wolf walked straight in.
“Got any connections here?” he asked sharply, suddenly.
“No.”
“Well, say—you’ve come to the right city and met the right man! I’m Zoom of Zezwinski and Zoom—the Zee-bar-Zee, as the boys all call us. Here’s my card; suppose you come and see me at my office; at that corner, first flight up where you see that long row of big windows. Light, my boy! That’s my medicine. Let there be light! Who d’you represent?”
“The god of good appetites,” I answered. “I’m on my way to breakfast.”
“Hah! Nothing like this climate for making you hungry, eh? Punish a meal and then see me at nine-thirty! Suit you all right? I’ll make a point of being there. There’s nothing between the Coast and Utah I can’t tell you all about. See you later, then.”
He went one way and I the other, but I stopped on the stone bridge that crosses the Truckee River and pretended to watch the water, for the fun of seeing him stand and pretend to fool with his dogs in order to watch me. It was just as well I did that, because Joan Angela came out on the hotel steps and if I had walked straight along he would have seen me talking to her; but he proved less patient of the two, and I remained on the bridge until he turned a corner.
Joan Angela is one of those women who are good to see at eight in the morning. Lots of them look lovely by eleven o’clock, and, of course, in the afternoon and at night they are all adorable. But Joan comes out as if the dew were on her, and is wide awake and full of laughter from the start-hungry in the bargain!
She hurried me in to breakfast with the wife of the man who keeps the hotel cigar-stand, and we three had a table in a corner to ourselves. Joan Angela resumed an argument over the ham and eggs.
“You see, dear,” she said, “if you keep on being angry, when your husband comes you’ll make him angry too. Sam doesn’t stop to think. He’ll just use his gun and there’ll be trouble. I know Sam’s popular and so are you; and of course any jury around here would bring it in an accident, or self-defence, but what’s the use?”
“He ought to be shot! He’s no better than a coyote!”
“Exactly. Then give him the range,” advised Joan Angela. “The law is off coyotes. He’ll fall foul of someone whose business it is to go after his kind.”
“But think of the brute’s impudence!”
She was a pretty little woman, but her eyes were, and her forehead was, all netted up with angry wrinkles.
“Why should you of all people take the part of such a reptile? What is he, anyway? Some kind of prince? Does he think that any woman over here, just because she happens to be running her husband’s shop while he’s away, will be tickled to death to—”
“Never you mind,” laughed Joan Angela. “I’ve had lots and lots of that kind of proposal! He comes from Egypt, where they think that any woman who shows herself in public is doing it to attract them. They don’t know any better.”
“He’ll learn as soon as Sam gets back!”
“Sam need never know. Why, those Egyptian pashas used to get introductions to me and make me the most amazing offers. It’s really funny if you stop to think. There was one of them, a big, fat man like a Turk with a bulbous nose, who swore he’d turn Bolshevist and upset the world if I wouldn’t be his fourth wife. I told him he’d better be a Bolshevist than nothing. I called him Mafeesh Pasha—mafeesh means ‘nothing’ in their language.