Love Is Dangerous Read online

  “What is it?” Melina asked, her mind almost fully occupied with the question of whether she should tell him or whether she should not.

  “Well, the truth is,” Ambrose Wheatley said, “I cannot afford to quarrel with my cousin because she has promised to finance a little invention of mine. At the same time I don’t want to see you carted on my account. So I thought that, if you would agree, you could stay on in Morocco. I’ll find the money for that somehow and we could meet whenever I was off duty, so to speak.”

  He coughed as if embarrassed by what he was saying.

  “We are booked at all the best hotels,” he went on, “as you well know, but there are other ones, quiet little affairs round the corner where you would be quite comfortable. And when she lies down in the afternoons or when she’s gone to bed, I’ll pop out and we’ll enjoy ourselves. What do you say to that?”

  Melina stared at him in astonishment.

  She had always thought that he was conceited and somewhat of a cad, but she had never believed that he would suggest anything quite so outrageous or so humiliating.

  She shook herself free of the hand on her shoulder and said icily,

  “I am afraid, Mr. Wheatley, I am not very good at backstairs intrigues.”

  “Now, Melina, don’t take it like that,” he pleaded. “You know as well as I do that I cannot say, ‘keep this girl as your secretary. I have a liking for her and I want to see her around.’ Besides I personally have too much at stake at the moment.”

  “And so have I,” Melina said. “I have my reputation and my self-respect. I think you flatter yourself, Mr. Wheatley. I am not the least bit interested in you as a man and I never have been.”

  He blinked his eyes and she felt that he could not have been more astonished if she had slapped him in the face. He was good-looking in a rather theatrical manner and there were no doubt dozens of women who would find him irresistible. He was, in fact, with his good manners and sophisticated conversation the typical Mayfair young man who took up jobs such as decorating, trying to patent some inventions or pioneering exhibitions of unknown French artists, and used his Social connections to finance them himself.

  He had been to a good public school, belonged to several of the best Clubs, could dance well and was used to any advances he made to the opposite sex being received with enthusiasm.

  “I say, do you really mean that?” Ambrose Wheatley expostulated now in almost shocked surprise.

  The penny had really dropped in his brain that Melina disliked him and yet he could hardly believe his senses.

  “Yes, I do,” she responded.

  “Very well, then,” he replied huffily. “If you don’t want my help, I only hope you will find it easy to get back home. My cousin told me that you had nothing but a week’s wages between you and starvation, but perhaps she had forgotten that there are other ways of earning one’s living.”

  The implication in his sneering voice was quite plain and Melina resisted the impulse to throw something at him.

  He walked out of the room and slammed the door behind him.

  Yet, as soon as he had gone, she wanted to call him back. It was all very well to be proud, but she might at least have borrowed something from him for her fare to England.

  She had really forgotten until this moment her original plan to go humbly to the British Consulate and ask their help.

  The door of the bathroom now opened.

  “You were magnificent,” a quiet voice said. “It was very difficult for me not to come out and kick him. I would have done just that if I had had any shoes on!”

  Melina laughed.

  The thought of Ambrose Wheatley being kicked hard by this strong wiry man was a pleasant one.

  “Is it true?” the stranger asked.

  “Is what true?” Melina enquired.

  “What he said about you being sacked and left here without any money?”

  “Unfortunately it is,” Melina said lightly. “But I am going to the British Consulate. I believe they help stranded women under these circumstances.”

  The stranger sat down on one of the beds.

  “I have a better idea,” he smiled.

  “What is it?” Melina asked.

  “That you should work for me,” he said. “I am very much in need of you at the moment.”

  “I am afraid I shall not be able to offer you a very good reference,” Melina said with a smile. “Mrs. Schuster, my late employer, said I was both incompetent and impertinent.”

  “What was the real trouble?” he enquired. “Not our friend Mr. Wheatley?”

  Melina nodded, amused by his perception.

  “I am afraid so,” she said. “Mrs. Schuster took a liking to him.”

  “And he took a liking to you,” the stranger added. “Oh, well, it’s a story that I seem to have heard before somewhere.”

  “Everything seems like a Fairy tale at the moment,” Melina said. “Mrs. Schuster, Ambrose Wheatley and you! You are none of you real characters. Either you are all mad and I am sane or I am raving and should be locked up, I really don’t know which!”

  “Does it matter?” the man on the bed asked. “You’re in the middle of an adventure, that’s all. Isn’t it rather better than hammering a typewriter in Whitehall or wherever you did it before?”

  “Hampstead,” Melina said automatically, then, glancing towards the sunshine outside the window, she went on, “Yes, much better. I have wanted to come here all my life and now I can hardly believe it’s true that I have seen it.”

  “And where were you going with Mrs. Schuster? Marrakesh?” the stranger enquired.

  “That’s right. I have dreamed about that too! I have seen Winston Churchill’s paintings and I have collected photographs of it ever since I was a child. And now I suppose through my own stupidity I shall miss it.”

  “Your own stupidity?”

  “Who else can I blame?” Melina said. “I ought to have dragged my hair back into a bun and worn dark glasses over my eyes the very first moment Ambrose Wheatley appeared. It isn’t that he is really interested in me – he’ll never be interested in anyone but himself. But he is just so conceited that he thinks every woman is fair game.”

  “You’re making me regret those shoes,” the stranger remarked. “Now, if only I had had my Army boots with me what a difference that would have made.”

  Melina laughed again.

  It was so ridiculous somehow. Here was this man she had never seen before seated comfortably on her bed and talking nonsense, while outside there were sinister Arabs waiting, apparently, to kill or imprison him.

  With an effort she tried to be sensible.

  “Listen,” she said. “We cannot go on gossiping here. If you’re in real danger, the first thing you need is clothes, that’s obvious. How can we get them for you?”

  “The first point,” the stranger replied, “is for you to accept my offer of employment. Whatever that woman Mrs. Schuster was giving you, I am quite sure it wasn’t enough and I can make it more. Secondly, she wanted to get rid of you and I need you desperately. I somehow think that might count.”

  He was almost too clever, Melina thought. He could see, or was she imagining it, something of the loneliness that had been hers ever since her father had died, her longing to be wanted, her dreams in which she did something worthwhile for somebody who really mattered. And yet because she was a little frightened of him she played for time.

  “I suppose you realise that I don’t even know your name?” she said.

  “I know yours,” he replied. “It is Melina and a very pretty name too. Do you have another one?”

  “Most people have two,” she answered. “It’s Lindsay, if you want to know.”

  “Melina Lindsay! Charming!”

  “And yours?”

  She thought he hesitated a moment as if he was going to lie and then he told her the truth.

  “My name is Ward,” he said. “Not a very exciting name, but my parents, in a misguided attempt
, I think, to make it sound interesting, christened me Benjamin. It is not a name I ever allow anyone to use, so my friends and most of my enemies too, call me ‘Bing’. Now we are introduced.”

  “How do you do?” Melina said. “And thank you for your offer of a job. I am very pleased to accept, so long as you can assure me that I shall not find a knife between my shoulders one dark night.”

  “I cannot promise you anything of the sort,” Bing answered and to her surprise his voice was serious.

  He rose to his feet, walked to the window and then back again across the room.

  “I ought not to ask this of you,” he said. “It’s wrong and it’s definitely against my principles and you may easily, as you put it, end up with a knife between your shoulders. And yet it seems as if it was providence finding you. Out of all the balconies of the hotel that I might have dropped onto I had to choose yours.”

  “If you are trying to frighten me, I don’t think I am easily frightened,” Melina said. “If taking employment with you means that I can stay in Morocco, then I am prepared to risk almost anything to do that.”

  “You’ll stay in Morocco,” he answered. “The difficulty will be to get out of the country.”

  He turned to face her and she thought that where before his eyes had seemed blue, now they were grey and steel-like.

  “It would not be right for me to let you work for me unless you knew what you were facing,” he said. “I am a wanted man. I’m in the devil of a hole at the moment, as you can see for yourself. Somehow I shall get out of it because up till now my luck has always held. That is why I feel you are lucky for me. It would not have happened this way if it had not been meant.”

  The sternness of his face relaxed and he smiled.

  “It may seem nonsense to you,” he said, “but I have lived too long in the East not to believe in fate, Karma, anything you like to call it or, as the Arabs say ‘what will be, will be’. You happened along and from an entirely selfish point of view I cannot afford to let you go.”

  Melina stared at him. He was not as young as she had thought at first. There were deep lines in his face, lines perhaps of tiredness or exertion, but also lines of experience. There was something about him that made her want to trust him.

  He was not exactly handsome. In fact she thought to herself suddenly that he had a hard almost cruel face except when he was smiling. And yet unlike Ambrose Wheatley, she could not imagine him doing a mean or underhand thing. He might be hard and ruthless, but at the same time he would be straight.

  ‘It’s crazy,’ she thought to herself. ‘Crazy to feel that one can trust a stranger, a man one knows nothing at all about.’

  And yet aloud she said,

  “Thank you for telling me this, but I should like to work for you.”

  “Very well,” he answered. “And thank you. I can only hope that things will not be as bad as they might be.”

  He looked down at her and she dropped her eyes before his. There was something about his very seriousness that was vaguely embarrassing because she did not understand it. With an effort she forced herself to say lightly,

  “Well, now I am engaged, what are your orders, sir?”

  She saw him pucker his brow a little and square his jaw and guessed that it was something he always did when he was concentrating and then he said,

  “I want you to go down to the reception desk and tell them that your husband has arrived unexpectedly.”

  Melina looked concerned.

  “My – husband?” she faltered.

  “Of course,” he answered. “Did you not realise that you are engaged as my wife? We have already established that with the Police Officer. His report will by now have gone to Headquarters.”

  “Your wife!” Melina exclaimed. “I-I had not understood – that.”

  Bing made a gesture of impatience.

  “What does it matter,” he said, “what you call yourself? My wife, my secretary, my driver! We have to be together. The men who came here believe that we are married. It is going to be rather difficult to present them with a different story.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” Melina agreed.

  “Very well, then,” Bing went on in a matter of fact voice that somehow seemed to make it sound better. “Tell the reception desk that your husband has arrived unexpectedly and that you will be checking out this afternoon. What about your bill?”

  “Mrs. Schuster is paying that at the end of the week,” she said.

  “That’s all right then. If they charge extra for my having used the bath she can pay for it,”

  Bing smiled and continued,

  “After you have spoken to the reception desk I want you to go into the telephone booth in the hall, be quite certain the door is closed and then ring up this number I will give you.”

  He looked round the room for a piece of paper and a pencil. There was a biro lying on the dressing table and, taking a tissue from the box where Melina kept them, he wrote a number on it.

  “A man will answer,” he said. “Just say ‘I am speaking from The Excelsior Hotel. The Sahib has need of you’.”

  “The Sahib has need of you,” Melina repeated. “Will he understand?”

  “He will understand,” Bing said. “Be careful to speak straight into the mouthpiece so that nobody watching can read your lips.”

  “Who is likely to be able to lip-read here?” Melina asked in astonishment.

  “Some of the men waiting in the hall are very good at it,” Bing answered. “When you have finished, go back to the reception desk and say that your husband’s luggage will be arriving during the afternoon.”

  Melina drew a deep breath.

  “Anything else?” she enquired.

  “Well, now I think of it,” Bing answered, “I could do with something to eat. I haven’t had anything since last night.”

  “Good Heavens!” Melina exclaimed. “You must be starved. What would you like?”

  “I don’t want the waiter to come in here while you’re away,” he said reflectively, “or, for that matter, even when you’re here.”

  “Shall I slip outside and buy something?” Melina suggested. “There’s a shop opposite, a store that sells all sorts of food.”

  “Get me anything,” he said, “but have it packed so that no one can recognise what it is.”

  “Leave that to me,” Melina assured him.

  She picked up her bag.

  “I’m afraid you will have to finance me,” Bing said, “until my servant arrives. Oh, and by the way, I forgot to say one thing. When you say, ‘the Sahib has need of you’, add the number of your room.”

  “They may ask your name at the desk. What shall I say?”

  “May I borrow your name for the moment?” Bing asked with a smile. “I rather fancy Lindsay!”

  “I think it will save complications.”

  She wandered to the door and then turned and looked back.

  “Are you sure you will be here when I return?” she asked. “I have a feeling that I am dreaming all this and when I wake up there will be nothing for me to do but go tamely and call on the British Consul.”

  “I cannot promise you anything, but what lies ahead is certainly not going to be tame,” Bing answered.

  “Now that you are employing me,” Melina said, “won’t you tell me what it’s all about?”

  “Honestly, I think it’s better for you to know nothing,” he replied. “Besides, it’s not my secret.”

  “In other words the answer is ‘no’.”

  “It would sound rather rude if I put it so abruptly,” he said with a smile.

  She turned away disappointed. As she reached the passage, she heard the key turn in the lock of the door behind her and then she walked quickly down the corridor.

  She passed the Arab at the end of it. He was pretending to be asleep, but she was quite sure that he was watching her beneath his eyelids. She had a sudden glimpse of a knife tucked into his waist.

  ‘What have I let myse
lf in for?’ she asked herself as she waited for the lift. ‘I should have done the sensible thing and gone straight home.’

  And yet she knew that she was only giving her conscience lip service. She had no intention of going home. It was all far too exciting here even though she could not help a sudden pricking at the base of her skull, a sudden flutter within her breast.

  What was this man up to? And why were they after him? She knew that she could never rest until she learned the answer to the question. At the same time she was sure that it would be no use trying to coax him into telling her. He was not that type of man. If he wanted to keep a secret, he would keep it and nothing she could say or do would alter his decision.

  She told the man at the desk that her husband had arrived unexpectedly. He was extremely disinterested, knowing her only to be the servant of Mrs. Schuster and therefore not in any way a valuable client of the hotel.

  She wondered why Bing had wanted her to make this explanation. And then she had the quick impression that someone at the back of her, someone amongst the number of people standing about in the foyer or sitting waiting on the benches provided for the pageboys and guides, was listening to what was being said. That was why he wanted her to say it, she thought.

  She moved from the reception desk to the telephone box.

  She went in, reached for the receiver and then realised that, while she was quite certain she had closed the door as she entered, it was already ajar. There was an Arab with his back to her standing outside. She could see his robes. She pulled the door closed again and fastened it firmly.

  Now the kiosk was hot and airless, but it was soundproof.

  She lifted the receiver, dialled the number Bing had given her and heard it ringing. Then someone lifted the receiver at the other end. Whoever it was did not speak, but she could hear him breathing.

  “I am speaking from The Excelsior Hotel. The Sahib has need of you. Room three hundred and nine.”

  There was no answer, only the sound of the telephone receiver being replaced.

  Melina came out of the box and the Arab who stood outside had disappeared.

  She went out of the hotel and crossed the road to the delicatessen shop. She had a feeling that she was being followed, but it might have been entirely her imagination.