Thieves Fall Out Read Free

have a cigarette, would you?”
    “I don’t smoke,” said Mr. Case; then he added, “Sorry,” which made it worse, but Pete Wells was already gone.
    * * *
    The Stanley Hotel was only a half-dozen crooked blocks away, a large nineteenth-century building, dilapidated, very English, with high ceilings to which were attached great lazy fans that made little difference in the damp gray heat.
    He nodded to the desk clerk, a stubby Britisher with a cockney accent who had told him about Le Couteau Rouge the night before, contributing to his downfall. Then he went into the dining room, where, fortunately, lunch was being served.
    Tall Negroes from the Sudan, wearing fezzes, striped robes, and bloomer-like trousers, served him and the dozen other guests, all English, who sat about at the small tables, listlessly eating, their white linen suits crumpled in the heat.
    Pete ate hungrily, despite the oddness of most of the dishes and the army of flies that shared them with him. By the time the bitter chicory-tasting coffee was served, he felt more like himself again, as though he could handle anything. The only problem remaining was what to handle. With no money and no prospect of anything from the Consulate, the possibilities for action were limited. He couldn’t buy cigarettes or a drink; he couldn’t even get into the Cairo Museum, which required a ticket.
    His mind full of schemes, he went upstairs to his room. It was on the first floor, facing a cement court where several seedy palms were growing. He shaved. He took a bath in an ancient tub hidden in a dark closet down the hall. Then he put on his only suit, a clean gabardine, old but in good condition, with all essential buttons still attached.
    As he combed his hair in the dusty glass of the bureau, he was fairly pleased with his appearance. He looked solvent. No one, he decided, would have suspected he didn’t have a cent in the world. His face was eager, healthy, typically American, with dark blue eyes, a small nose a trifle off center, a good jaw, and sandy hair with a cowlick in front that hung over his forehead, like a thatched roof on an Irish hut. He was almost tall, with lean hips and a deep chest acquired during his days in high school and in the Army, where he had been divisional middleweight boxing champion. An honest, open face, he thought to himself with a grin, concealing a larcenous soul. He was prepared to do almost anything to make a dollar, and in his life he’d done a lot of unusual things to survive.
    At the moment, the only answer to his immediate problem seemed to be Shepheard’s Hotel, where he’d been told almost anything might happen to somebody with an eye on the main chance. That was the hotel where the biggest operators lived.
    It was a long walk to Shepheard’s and he took it easy, keeping as much as possible to shadowy arcades, trying not to work up a sweat that would wrinkle his last clean white shirt.
    Every step he took was an effort because of the beggars, thieves, and guides who clutched at him, shouting, whining, begging, some in English, some in a crazy mixture of French and Arab and English. He brushed them aside, swore at them, but they would not leave him alone, and finally he was forced to accept them as an unpleasant but inevitable part of the scenery.
    Shepheard’s was a long building, several stories high, with big shuttered windows and a porch on the street side, where, at numerous tables, foreigners and rich Egyptians sat at the end of the day, watching the street and drinking
apéritifs;
but at this time of day the porch was deserted.
    With a show of confidence, he walked up the steps to the main door, glad to be rid at last of the beggars, who now fell into position against the terrace wall, waiting for American and European victims.
    The lobby of the hotel was blissfully cool after the heat outside. Negro servants in hotel livery moved silently about the great room, carrying bags, doing errands for the guests. Though it