The Egyptian Cat Mystery, Harold Leland Goodwin [best free ereader TXT] 📗

interest in the proceedings.

Hassan led the way like a charging lineman, with Rick in his wake. Scotty fell back a few paces to prevent attack from behind. But in spite of a few yells from the rear, no one else menaced them. The people of the bazaar obviously were curious, but not involved.

Rick had a fleeting thought that a pair of obvious foreigners running at top speed through a department store at home would arouse some curiosity, too. He grinned, in spite of his bewilderment. Then they were at the car. Hassan wheeled the little sedan around in almost its own length and charged through the crowded streets like a miniature juggernaut, heading back to the hotel.

A short time later over café au lait, part coffee and part hot milk, the boys and Hassan held a half-angry, half-amused post mortem. There had been no opportunity in the car for real conversation because of the sheer adventure of rocketing through impossible traffic at equally impossible speed. Rick had reported briefly to Scotty, and that was all.

Scotty took a sip from his steaming cup and turned to Hassan. "You ever play football?"

Hassan stumbled over the word. "Footsball? What are footsball?"

"Never mind." Scotty grinned. "The way you took that clerk out, I thought you might have played blocking back for the Green Bay Packers."

The dragoman's bewilderment deepened. Rick came to his rescue. "Football is an American game, Hassan. It is rough. The Green Bay Packers is the name of a famous professional football team."

"One thing is for sure," Scotty offered. "The clerks didn't know football. That flat pass you threw was good for plenty of yardage."

"It made a touchdown," Rick pointed out. He changed the subject. "Look, what went on in that store, anyway? I don't know who the big man was, but he wasn't Ali Moustafa. At least he didn't come close to Bartouki's description."

"Why didn't you give him the cat, anyway?" Scotty asked with a grin. "Afraid a brand-new mystery might end without you getting a piece of it?"

Rick grinned back. "Not a bad idea, now that you mention it. I didn't think of it at the time. The only thing I knew for sure was that I wasn't going to hand over any helpless little pussycat to a guy with eyes like that. He'd mistreat it."

"Uhuh. Only, now what do we do with the cat?"

"Give it to the right Ali Moustafa," Rick said. "There must be a right one somewhere."

Scotty waved his arm in a gesture that took in all of Egypt, half of the Sudan, and most of Libya. "Help yourself. I'll bet there are ten thousand Ali Moustafas around. How do you find the right one?"

Rick didn't try to answer. Instead, he asked Hassan, "Could there be another Ali Moustafa in El Mouski?"

The guide shook his head. "I ask my friend when we stop. He say there is only one, and he tell me how we get there."

Rick's brows furrowed. "Then that must be the shop Bartouki meant. Only where was big, fat, jolly Ali Moustafa? Or could I be wrong about the description?"

Scotty was definite. "Not a chance. I remember the description the way you do. Either Bartouki didn't know his own partner, or the man you saw was not Ali Moustafa—unless he took off weight and shaved his beard. And changed his disposition in the bargain."

"Which brings us back to the question before the house. What do we do with the Egyptian cat?"

"Give it to Hassan," Scotty suggested with a smile.

The dragoman's pleasant black face assumed an air of great sadness. "Cat's nice," he said. "But no can take. Too much cost for food."

Rick smiled at the joke, then suddenly he realized Hassan was not joking. He was genuinely sad! He took the package from his lap and held it up. "Hassan, what do you think is in here?"

The dragoman shrugged. "You say cat. I believe."

Scotty asked incredulously, "Didn't you think carrying a cat wrapped in paper was pretty strange?"

Hassan smiled apologetically. "Americans many time do thing I not understand."

Rick choked back laughter with a heroic effort and almost strangled. Scotty found a handkerchief and blew his nose violently.

"Pretty strong coffee," Rick managed finally.

Scotty nodded, struggling to keep a straight face. Neither of them wanted to risk hurting the guide's feelings.

"Hassan," Rick said at last, "even American science couldn't keep a live, wide-awake cat quiet in a paper parcel. This cat is a model, a statue. You see?"

For an instant Hassan stared, then he rocked back, his white teeth flashed, and he shouted with laughter. The boys broke down, too, and in a moment the entire patronage of the coffee shop was staring at the three idiots who roared with unrestrained laughter in public. Such behavior in Americans was to be deplored, perhaps, but understandable. But a licensed dragoman ... incredible!

When they had quieted down, Rick summed it up. "Well, Hassan knows what's in the package now, but that's the only new bit of information any of us has. We still don't know exactly what happened in the bazaar, or why. And we don't know what to do with the cat."

He felt the cat through the heavy paper, as though to reassure himself it was there. Suddenly he didn't want to get rid of it quite so urgently, and inwardly he laughed at himself. A mystery was one thing he couldn't ignore.

"I hope I'm wrong," he concluded thoughtfully, "but I have a hunch this little plastic feline is going to be more trouble than the liveliest real cat you ever saw!"

CHAPTER V Sahara Wells

Hassan arrived during breakfast on the following morning. His colorful costume had given way to European clothes, except for a tarboosh. He wore a topcoat.

At Rick's invitation he joined the boys on the balcony overlooking the Nile, and accepted the offer of coffee. Rick went to the novel push-bell system which had three buttons identified by pictures. One was a porter, another the room maid, and the third a waiter. The little drawings were for the benefit of strangers who knew neither Arabic nor English.

Rick rang for the waiter and ordered more coffee and a cup for the dragoman.

Hassan shed his topcoat and grinned at the boys. "Cat catch mouse last night?"

"No mouse," Scotty replied. "The cat just caught some sleep. And so did we."

Hassan puzzled out the reply, then smiled his appreciation.

Rick thought that the cat hadn't even caught any interest—at least from the scientists. At dinner he and Scotty had described the incident at El Mouski to Winston and the Egyptian scientists. The scientists had only one suggestion, to the effect that perhaps the boys' imaginations had run away with them.

It was obvious that the scientists were far more interested in the problem of the radio telescope than in listening to tales of wild adventure in the bazaar, so the boys let the matter drop. They had excused themselves immediately after dinner and turned in, tired from the long plane trip and the day's excitement.

Rick had gone over the events at the bazaar a dozen times. He had compared notes with Scotty on what Bartouki had told them. Clearly, something was pretty strange about the whole affair. It was simply inconceivable that Bartouki would have given an inaccurate description of Ali Moustafa, so the man in the store had not been Bartouki's partner. Yet, he had known about the cat, and had called Rick by name. Who was he? And where was the real Ali Moustafa? There were no answers, at least for the present. But Rick didn't intend to give up.

He motioned to Hassan's coat. "Is it cold out today?"

"Yes. Good you wear coats when we go out. Later it will be warm, then cool again when sun goes."

The boys had decided to keep Hassan as a guide and driver during their entire stay. The dragoman's services were not expensive, and besides, both of them felt they had found a friend. The way Hassan had pitched in at the bazaar, with no questions asked and their interests obviously at heart, had been a fine example of professional loyalty coupled with a quick mind and fast reflexes.

After breakfast the boys went to the wardrobe and took out the coats they had brought. Rick's was brand new, a Christmas present from his father. It was a short, hip-length woolen coat that could double as a hunting jacket. In addition to the big outer pockets, it had inner game pockets lined with a leatherlike plastic. It was warm, but light. He was thoroughly pleased with it.

Scotty slipped into his own short coat, much like Rick's except for the game pockets. Then the ex-Marine motioned to the Egyptian cat, unwrapped and sitting in elegant repose on the writing desk. "What about Felix?" he asked.

Rick went over and picked up the cat. "We'd better take it along, I guess. It might get lonesome. Or we might run over Ali Moustafa on the way to the project." He slid the cat into an inner pocket. It fit with room to spare.

Scotty asked Hassan, with mock seriousness, "You know Sahara Wells?"

Hassan answered with equal seriousness. "Know Sahara Wells well."

The ride was an interesting one, up the Nile to a bridge different from the one they had crossed en route from the airport, along roads with a palm-shaded center strip, past mosques, stores, and airy, modern apartment houses. There was less traffic than in downtown Cairo, and Hassan went faster.

Scotty muttered, "Fewer close calls today."

Rick winced as the car almost scraped a woman with a basket of fruit balanced on her head. "Fewer, but closer."

The costumes on the street were mixed. There were many people, including women, in Western dress, but there were also many women in cloaks, and men in the traditional Arab bornoss, the enveloping robe called a burnoose in English. For the first time, the boys saw several men in blue gowns, and Rick asked Hassan what they were.

"Fellahin," Hassan replied. "How you say? Farmers. From country. Man tell me that is where your word 'fella' come from."

Rick looked with new interest. He had heard of the fellahin, the farmer-peasants of Egypt. Many of them lived and worked as their ancestors had centuries ago, plowing with wooden plows, living in mud-and-wattle houses. They represented the past of Egypt, as installations like the atomic energy plant at En-Shass, or Inchass as it was sometimes called, represented the future.

There were soldiers along the route, too, dressed in British-style brown uniforms. Some carried Sten guns, vicious little submachine guns originally of English manufacture.

"Why the soldiers?" Scotty asked.

"Camp near," Hassan replied.

And then, abruptly, the boys lost interest in people, because looming ahead, like something from a travel movie, was a pyramid!

Hassan rounded a corner and another pyramid came into view. They were enormous, Rick thought. He hadn't expected anything so huge. "Are we at Giza already?" he asked.

"This Giza," Hassan agreed. He pronounced it more like Gize'h.

"I always thought the pyramids were out in the desert," Scotty objected.

"Is true," Hassan said. "You will see."

They did, within minutes. The terrain changed from the green, fertile, Nile Valley to the bleak Sahara as though cut by a giant knife. For the first time, Rick understood the phrase "Egypt, gift of the Nile." Where the yearly Nile overflow brought fertile silt and moisture, there was lush green land. Where the overflow stopped, the desert began. No intermediate ground lay between. Egypt consisted of the Nile Valley and the desert, with nothing in between.

The road crossed the dividing line and they were in the Sahara Desert. Hassan drove between houses of faded red clay and tan stucco, unlike the modern apartments a few hundred yards back. It was as though they had driven into a different country. Children, goats, chickens, and Arab adults scattered before the car. It was a typical desert-country scene, and right at the edge of modern Cairo!

Hassan turned a sharp corner and Giza lay before them, up a gradual, rising slope.

In the immediate foreground was