“My beloved Thi!” he intoned, extending his arms and walking slowly toward her. “I shall take you to wife and together we shall rule my kingdom, bring order out of chaos, and produce many heirs.”
“He still thinks he's Amenophis!” she wailed.
“Oh, no, my love,” said Friday. “I know now that I am Amen-hetep.”
“Your name is Friday!” she said, practically crying. “Now leave me alone or I'll miss my boat!”
“But my beloved Thi!” he said, confused. “Can it be that the passing of the eons has dimmed your memory? I am the Pharaoh of all Egypt!”
“You're not even an Egyptian!” she said desperately. “You're a ... a Nubian!”
“Impossible!” he scoffed.
“You think not?” she said, walking up to him and avoiding his hand. “Let me try to bring you back to your senses once and for all!”
I positioned myself behind him, ready to race out the door if he got violent, while Rosepetal grabbed the end of a bandage that was coming loose at Friday's waist and began unraveling it. Pretty soon she got the most curious expression on her face, and by the time she had unwrapped the tape down to his thighbones she just quit altogether, staring kind of strangely at what she had uncovered thus far.
“Amen-hetep, dear,” she sort of crooned, “can you ever forgive me for doubting you?”
“It is forgotten,” he intoned graciously. “And you are still my beloved Thi?”
She took one last look and nodded vigorously.
He reached out and embraced her.
“Lucifer,” she said, “you'll find my ticket lying on the nightstand. Take it and leave.”
“I'll do no such thing!” I said.
“Lucifer,” she said sweetly but firmly, “if you're still in this room in ten seconds I shall ask Amen-hetep, Pharaoh of all Egypt, to execute you as slowly and painfully as possible.”
I was on my way down the hall in eight seconds flat, and I heard the door to Room 207 slam shut just as I reached the stairway.
That was the last I ever saw of Rosepetal Schultz or Friday, though she did write me after I had finally established my tabernacle to assure me that there were no hard feelings and that Amen-hetep had certain virtues that were well worth waiting a mere three thousand years for.
As for me, I wound up in Morocco, which was as far as Rosepetal could afford a ticket for, and within a mere fortnight I was holding one of the world's rarest and most valuable treasures in my hand.
It was not, as you shall see, quite as simple as it sounds.
Chapter 6
A RED-LETTER SCHEME
Casablanca wasn't real popular with tourists and sightseers back in the old days, and I was the only passenger to climb down the gangplank when we docked there. It was so hot and dirty and grubby-looking that I could tell right off why it didn't rank way up there with the Riviera and New Orleans and other places of worldwide renown.
There was a very worried-looking little man waiting on the pier, pacing up and down and working himself into a nervous frenzy. I nodded pleasantly and walked past him, but a minute later he raced after me and grabbed me by the shoulder.
“I beg your pardon,
monsieur
,” he said apologetically, “but was there not perhaps a lovely young lady on the ship with you who also planned to disembark at Casablanca?”
“None that I know of, brother,” I replied.
“But this is terrible!” he cried.
I shared his sentiments, especially since I could have used a little company during the voyage, but I merely smiled at him and kept walking.
He was back beside me a moment later.
“Her name was Mademoiselle Rosepetal Schultz,” he said. “Are you sure you did not meet her on the boat?”
“Rosepetal?” I repeated. “Why didn't you say so in the first place, brother?”
“Then she is on the ship after all?” he asked, looking mighty relieved.
“No,” I told him. “As a matter of fact, I used her ticket to get here.”
“But this is dreadful!” he wailed. “She wired me yesterday that she would be arriving this afternoon!”
“Something came up very unexpectedly,” I told him truthfully. “These things happen.”
“But why must they always happen to
me
?” he moaned.
“Try reading a couple of chapters from the Book of David,” I said soothingly. “I find it usually settles me down when I've had some bad news.”
He raised an eyebrow. “You know a lot about the Bible?” he asked.
“The Right Reverend Honorable Doctor Lucifer Jones at your service,” I said, extending my hand.
“Would I be correct in assuming that you have no place to stay?” he asked.
“I've temporarily fallen upon hard times, brother,” I admitted. “But I've never lost my faith in the Good Lord, Who I know will provide for me.” I stared at him curiously. “What did you have in mind?”
“Room, board, and fifty francs a week,” he said.
“Done, brother!” I cried. “By the way, how much is that in real money?”
Well, it came to about ten dollars, which isn't a hell of a lot unless the economy happens to be in the midst of a depression—and since that was exactly the state my personal economy was in, I decided to take it unless and until something better turned up.
My employer's name was Andre Peugeot, and in all my born days I never saw a man with more nervous tics and gestures. All he would tell me about his place of business was that it was called Bousbir, and he seemed absolutely flabbergasted when I told him I'd never heard of it.
When we arrived, I was pretty flabbergasted myself to find that something like the Bousbir had escaped my attention, because what it was was the biggest whorehouse in the whole wide world. At least, that's what Andre told me. All I knew for sure is that it was the biggest one I had ever seen, and took up about twice as much space as the Banque de Casablanca, which was right across the street from it.
We walked through a series of lobbies and lounges, each covered with plush carpets and velvet wallpaper and containing as tasty an assortment of fine-looking ladies as ever I did see, until we finally reached a small room with a single bed and a sink and toilet in the corner.
“Your room,” said Andre.
“Brother Andre,” I said, “we'd better get a couple of things straight right off the bat. I'm pretty liberal as men of the cloth go...”
“So I noticed,” he said dryly.
“Neverthegoddamless,” I continued, “there are some things that are specifically frowned upon by the Good Book, the law, and various other official governing bodies, most of them pertaining to your male customers, that I am not prepared to do even for money, and especially not for a lousy fifty francs a week.”
“I quite understand,” said Andre. “It is for your unique qualities as a man of God that I have hired you.”
“I reckon you could use one around here, at that,” I allowed.
“Indeed,” he agreed. “It has been one of our greatest needs up to now.”
“Well, Brother Andre,” I said, “I'll certainly be glad to bring such comfort as I can to your poor wayward girls in any way that I think will help and uplift them the most.”
“I appreciate your offer,” he replied, “but I think you misunderstand me. It is not my girls who need your spiritual expertise. Rather, it is my customers.”
“Your customers?” I repeated. “Why don't they just go to church?”
“We sell many things here, my friend,” said Andre. “But perhaps our most precious commodity is fantasy. Do you begin to understand?”
“Not really,” I answered.
“Some of our little pageants need—how shall I put it? —a technical adviser.”
“Brother Andre, the light is beginning to dawn,” I said, shooting him a great big grin.
“Can you do it?”
“Like shooting fish in a barrel,” I assured him. “After all. you're asking me to combine my two favorite vocations. Just leave everything to me and the Good Lord, and I'm sure we'll manage to work things out betwixt us.”
Which we did, at least for a few days. But within a week the customers and even the girls were getting a little jaded and began demanding new material, and I took to wandering through the bazaars during the afternoons, searching for ideas that had nothing to do with cardinals and nuns, or black masses, or maniacal rabbis, or secret Chinese fertility ceremonies, or any of the other similarly pedestrian productions I had been directing and coaching.
It was during one such sojourn through the marketplace that I saw a white man who looked vaguely familiar. He had his back to me, and was browsing at a table about fifty feet away, but I couldn't get the thought out of my mind that I knew him from somewhere. I stayed right where I was, pretending to examine some old pottery, until at last he paid for the dates he was munching on and I finally got a look at his face.
It was Erich Von Horst!
Not wishing to cause a scene in public, especially since I didn't speak French or Arabic and I had the feeling that no one around there spoke anything else, I continued to browse until he left the bazaar. Then, being careful to keep out of sight, I followed him for almost a mile until he entered an old, dusty, run-down hotel.
I waited five minutes, then entered it. There was no desk clerk on duty, so I reached over the counter, grabbed hold of the registration book, and began looking at it. There was no Von Horst listed, nor even a Captain Peter Clarke, but it didn't matter: a gentleman named Fritz Wallensack was the only guest currently in residence. I tiptoed up to his room, threw the door open, and walked in.
“Von Horst!” I bellowed. “You owe me two thousand and forty English pounds!”
“Why, Doctor Jones,” he said, looking up from his bed, where he was lying with his head propped up against the moldy wall. “How very nice to see you again. Have you been in Casablanca long?”
“Don't give me that crap, Von Horst!” I snapped. “I want my money!”
“I don't doubt it,” he chuckled.
“Well?” I demanded.
“If I had your money, or indeed if I had
anybody's
money, do you think I'd be staying in a place like this?” he said calmly. “You're welcome to search the premises, of course, but I can guarantee that you won't find anything except an exceptionally dirty shirt and a pair of socks with holes in them.”
“What about my money?”
“It was well spent,” he assured me with a smile. “You'd have enjoyed every shilling of it had you been in my place.”
“I wasn't in your goddamned place!”
“Well, yes, I was rather afraid you'd look at it that way,” he sighed.
“Just how soon do you intend to make restitution, realizing of course that I'm going to be your constant companion until that happy moment occurs?” I said.
“As soon as I can work out a few unpleasant details I'll be happy to pay you back, and with interest,” said Von Horst.
“What details?” I demanded.
“My dear fellow, I hope you don't think I'm in Casablanca for my health!”
“Just what
are
you doing here?” I asked suspiciously.
“I've been here for two months, working on the biggest deal of my life,” he said, lowering his voice. “But the Casablanca police know who I am, and I haven't been able to make a move without being watched. So here I sit, slowly going broke in this grubby hotel, less than half a mile away from a fortune that I could retire on. And the worst part of it is, there's a time limit on the damned operation! But sooner or later they'll have to relax their vigil, and then...” His voice trailed off.
“Just how much is this deal worth?” I asked with as much lack of interest as I could muster on the spur of the moment.
“At least fifty thousand pounds,” he said without hesitation.
“That much?”
He nodded—and then he stared at me kind of funnylike for a very long minute.
“I wonder...” he said softly, still looking at me.
“About what?” I said.
“You know,” he said, more to himself than to me, “it just might work.”
“What might?”
“Jones,” he said suddenly, “forget about what I owe you. How would you like to make some
real
money?”
“I imagine I could be coerced into it,” I admitted.
“Good,” he said. “But we'll have to move fast. Can you be ready to leave the country in two or three hours?”
“Ain't nothing around to stop me,” I replied.
“Well, Jones,” he said, all businesslike, “I'm afraid we're going to have to trust each other, much as I dislike the thought of it. But unfortunately there is no way to avoid giving you the details of the plan. All I can do is assure you that such knowledge will do you absolutely no good without me.”
“Shoot,” I said.
“Three short blocks from here is a small Christian mission, run by two elderly German sisters and their middle-aged nephew. Inside the mission is a speaker's podium. On a shelf inside the podium is a copy of the Bible.” He paused for effect. “Jones, that Bible is a Jacobean Red Letter edition!”
“That's something special?” I asked.
“There were only six printed,” he said. “The sisters don't know what it is, so stealing it should present no great difficulty. But the moment I try to leave the country, or even the city, I'm going to be searched six ways to Sunday, and since I am not known as a religious man, sooner or later one of the gendarmes is going to send some telegrams to various religious organizations or antiquarian bookdealers, and then the shit will hit the fan.” He smiled. “However, no one will question a man of God who carries a Bible with him. You can walk out with it right under their noses!”
“Sounds good to me, Brother Von Horst,” I said.
“You are probably thinking that once I turn the Bible over to you, there is nothing to stop you from selling it and reaping the entire profits for yourself,” he continued.
“Such a notion never crossed my mind!” I protested vigorously while crossing my fingers behind my back.
“Well, just in case it does, let me tell you that forty-eight hours from now I intend to send a letter to the Moroccan government telling them what the Jacobean Red Letter Bible is, and grossly exaggerating how much it is worth. They will promptly put out a reward for its return worth considerably more than the book itself, and nine dealers out of ten will be more likely to turn you in for the reward than buy the book from you.”