Journey Into Fear Read Free Page B

moment. Then she said: “He is very good, that friend of yours.”
    Graham was not quite sure whether it was a statement, a question, or a feeble attempt to make conversation. He nodded. “Very good.”
    She smiled. “He knows the proprietor well. If you desire it, he will ask Serge to let me go when you wish instead of when the place closes.”
    He smiled as regretfully as he could. “I’m afraid, Maria, that I have to pack my luggage and catch a train in the morning.”
    She smiled again. “It does not matter. But I specially like the Swedes. May I have some more brandy, Monsieur?”
    “Of course.” He refilled her glass.
    She drank half of it. “Do you like Mademoiselle Josette?”
    “She dances very well.”
    “She is very sympathetic. That is because she has a success. When people have a success they are sympathetic. José, nobody likes. He is a Spaniard from Morocco, and very jealous. They are all the same. I do not know how she stands him.”
    “I thought you said they were Parisians.”
    “They have danced in Paris. She is from Hungary. She speaks languages—German, Spanish, English—but not Swedish, I think. She has had many rich lovers.” She paused. “Are you a business man, Monsieur?”
    “No, an engineer.” He realised, with some amusement, that Maria was less stupid than she seemed, and that she knew exactly why Kopeikin had left them. He was being warned, indirectly but unmistakably, that Mademoiselle Josette was very expensive, that communication with her would be difficult, and that he would have a jealous Spaniard to deal with.
    She drained her glass again, and stared vaguely in the direction of the bar. “My friend is looking very lonely,” she said. She turned her head and looked directly at him. “Will you give me a hundred piastres, Monsieur?”
    “What for?”
    “A tip, Monsieur.” She smiled, but in not quite so friendly a fashion as before.
    He gave her a hundred piastre note. She folded it up, put it in her bag, and stood up. “Will you excuse me, please? I wish to speak to my friend. I will come back if you wish.” She smiled.
    He saw her red satin dress disappear in the crowd gathered round the bar. Kopeikin returned almost immediately.
    “Where is the Arab?”
    “She’s gone to speak to her best friend. I gave her a hundred piastres.”
    “A hundred! Fifty would have been plenty. But perhaps it is as well. Josette asks us to have a drink with her in her dressing-room. She is leaving Istanbul to-morrow, and does not wish to come out here. She will have to speak to so many people, and she has packing to do.”
    “Shan’t we be rather a nuisance?”
    “My dear fellow, she is anxious to meet you. She saw you while she was dancing. When I told her that you were an Englishman, she was delighted. We can leave these drinks here.”
    Mademoiselle Josette’s dressing-room was a space about eight feet square, partitioned off from the other half of what appeared to be the proprietor’s office by a brown curtain. The three solid walls were covered with faded pink wall-paper with stripes of blue: there were greasy patches here and there where people had leaned against them. The room contained two bent-wood chairs and two rickety dressing tables littered with cream jars and dirty make-up towels. There was a mixed smell of stale cigarette smoke, face powder, and damp upholstery.
    As they went in in response to a grunt of
“Entrez”
from the partner, José, he got up from his dressing table. Still wiping the grease paint from his face, he walked out without a glance at them. For some reason, Kopeikin winked at Graham. Josette was leaning forward in herchair dabbing intently at one of her eyebrows with a swab of damp cotton-wool. She had discarded her costume, and put on a rose velvet house-coat. Her hair hung down loosely about her head as if she had shaken it out and brushed it. It was really, Graham thought, very beautiful hair. She began to speak in slow, careful English,