Seven Dials Page 0,71

happy to show him some of the less-well-known places of interest in the city afterwards.

Pitt requested paper and wrote back accepting, and dispatched the messenger with his reply before continuing with his excellent fresh bread, fruit, and fish. He was very rapidly growing accustomed to the exotic food, and enjoying it greatly.

He spent part of the morning in an English library reading what he could find about the Orabi uprising and looking for any reference to anyone named Ghali involved in politics at the time. The passion and the betrayal were so absorbing he was almost late for his luncheon with Trenchard, and arrived at the consulate barely by noon.

Trenchard made no comment, but rose from his chair with a smile and welcomed him in.

"Delighted you could come," he said warmly. He regarded Pitt's pale cotton shirt and trousers, and the already deepening color of his face and lower arms. "You look as if you are well settled in-apart from a few mosquito bites," he observed.

"Very well," Pitt agreed. "It is a city one could spend a year exploring, and hardly touch the surface."

Something in Trenchard's face eased. The lines of his mouth softened and there was an added reality to the warmth in his eyes. "Egypt has you, hasn't it?" he said with evident pleasure. "And you haven't even been anywhere near Cairo yet, never mind up the Nile. I wish your detection took you to Heliopolis, or the tombs of the caliphs or the petrified forest. You could not go that far without riding out to the pyramids at Giza, and of course the Sphinx, and then sat up until you could at least see the pyramids at Aboukir and Sakhara, and the ruins of Memphis." He shook his head slightly, as if at some pleasant, well-known inner joke. "And then nothing on earth could stop you from continuing on up that greatest and oldest of all ruins till you reached Thebes, and the Temple of Karnak. That defeats even the imagination." He was watching Pitt's face as he spoke. "Believe me, no modern Western man can conceive the grandeur of it, the sheer enormity!" He did not wait for comment. He stood still in the middle of the room, oblivious of modern furniture and consulate papers around him. His vision was on the timeless sands.

Pitt did not interrupt; no answer was expected or wanted.

"Then south to Luxor," Trenchard went on. "You should cross the river at dawn. You have never seen anything in your life like first light over the desert, moving across the water's face. Then you have only about four miles to the Valley of the Kings.

"If you ride on a fast camel you will see the sunrise on the tombs of the pharaohs whose fathers ruled this land four thousand years before Christ was born. They were ancient before Abraham came out of Ur of the Chaldees. Have you any idea what that means, Inspector Pitt?" There was challenge in his eyes now. "The British Empire that circles the earth now was born in the last five minutes of time compared with them." He stopped suddenly. He took a deep breath. "But you haven't time for that... I know. And Narraway certainly won't pay for it. Forgive me. No doubt you are eager for your accommodation, and you are honest enough to be compelled by duty."

Pitt smiled. "Duty does not forbid me from learning something about the history of Egypt, or from wishing I needed to pursue Ayesha Zakhari's history at least as far as Cairo. I haven't found an excuse, but I haven't stopped looking."

Trenchard laughed, and led the way out through the offices to the street and a short distance along the crowded thoroughfare in a direction Pitt had not been before. He found himself staring at the beautiful buildings decorated with stone fretwork like lace in its intricacy, balconies with roofs supported by simple pillars. He saw one, shaded from the heat, where a group of elderly men sat on thick turquoise-and-gold cushions eating bread, fruit, and dates as they talked earnestly to one another. They barely glanced at the two Englishmen, contempt and dislike in their eyes for a moment, then masked, because they dared not let it be seen. Behind them, a large man with skin almost as black as his beard, dressed in loose trousers caught in below the knee, seemed to be waiting their pleasure. Pigeons fluttered around, and a tall, narrow-necked vase was stuffed full of