Love Is Dangerous Read online

  “If you are looking at the man on the right,” Bing said quietly, “do you see anything unusual about him?”

  “No – I don’t think so,” Melina replied. And then she saw it – a scar running from his left eye down the side of his face!

  She gave a gasp and Bing bent over and took the glasses from her.

  “Come away,” he murmured. “We’ve seen enough.”

  “Then the child is there! That is the man who took him,” Melina cried.

  “Don’t waste time talking. I want to get away from here.”

  “Why?” Melina asked. “You don’t think they have seen us?”

  “One never knows,” Bing answered. “Someone might have noticed the sunshine on the lenses of the binoculars. Someone might be watching to see who visits the hill above the villa. Moulay Ibrahim has sentries at the gates, but he also has eyes everywhere.”

  “But we know the child is there,” Melina said, thinking Bing was being unnecessarily panicky when, after all, they had discovered what they wanted to know.

  He hurried her so quickly to the car that she had no time to say more.

  He pushed in the gears and set off down the dusty track towards the main road. They reached it and he turned to the left, away from Fez, and started to drive very swiftly along the smooth well-built road.

  “Where are we going?” Melina asked. “Oh, please tell me. I am so excited now that we have discovered the child. Can’t we send soldiers or Police or someone to take him away?”

  “If the soldiers battered their way into Moulay Ibrahim’s villa,” Bing said grimly, “there would not be one chance of their finding anything. Small bodies are very easily disposed of.”

  “Do you mean they would kill him?” Melina exclaimed in horror.

  “I mean that Moulay Ibrahim would never be incriminated by being found with the evidence of the crime,” Bing answered. “He is far too cute for that. No, we have to be far more subtle, far cleverer.”

  “But how?” Melina asked. “How?”

  Bing did not answer and she knew that her question irritated him. She relapsed into silence, biting her lips to keep back the stream of questions that longed to be asked, but to which she knew, in all justice, there was no answer.

  Bing drove on and on, then turned and dropped down from the mountains a little. There was a small village below them lying, Melina guessed, on the very outskirts of the suburbs of Fez, not really a part of the City but somehow joined to it by the encroaching growth of the native population.

  “Will there be a telephone there, do you think?” Melina asked, knowing instinctively why Bing was thinking of stopping.

  “Look back over your shoulder,” he said. “Is there a yellow car following us?”

  She glanced back.

  “Yes,” she said. “There is a car and it is yellow.”

  Bing suddenly slowed down his speed.

  “It was outside the hotel when we left this morning,” he said.

  “You mean it might be someone following us?” Melina asked in a kind of horror.

  “It’s a chance we have to consider,” he answered. “We are tourists! Think now. Where would tourists want to go? And what would they do on this particular road?”

  Melina pointed below them to where, in a field, two white oxen were pulling a primitive native cart, which was being filled with some sort of crop by two women.

  “I think that tourists would want to photograph that scene ahead,” she said.

  “Of course,” Bing answered. “Thank you, Melina.”

  He drew up on the roadside.

  “Don’t look round,” he said. “Just be intent on focusing your camera.”

  She watched him as he brought a light indicator out of his pocket and considered it absorbedly.

  She heard the car approaching them and it was with the greatest effort that she did not look round. Instead she moved first this way and then another trying to get the oxen in focus.

  The women working in the fields suddenly saw them and screamed a Moslem protest of modesty and indignation. Bing bowed to them and threw several coins spinning through the air, which they scrawled for eagerly.

  Now at last they could turn away.

  The yellow car was out of sight.

  “Perhaps it was all right,” Bing said a little uncertainly but not, Melina thought, very hopefully.

  They climbed back into their own car and drove down the road.

  “I don’t think it would be safe to telephone anywhere near here,” Melina suggested. “It is what they would expect you to do.”

  “You are right, of course,” Bing said. “You are quite right. I must not go near a telephone, but somehow I have to send a message to my friend. It will be something for him to know where his boy is, if nothing else.”

  “Could Rasmin not do it?”

  “Of course! Of course he could!” Bing said. “We will go back and complain about some of the goods we bought yesterday. Reach back and see what they are.”

  Melina did as she was told. The parcels were still where they had put them last night and she opened the first one to find a pair of leather shoes with wooden soles.

  “We will say they hurt your feet and we want to change them for something else,” Bing said. “I’ll make quite a fuss about it. That ought to sound convincing.”

  At the next crossroads he turned the car to the right, going back towards the native town.

  Then he put out his hand and laid it on Melina’s.

  “Thank you,” he said, “for helping me. Somehow I didn’t expect you would.”

  She felt annoyed at his words.

  “What do you mean by that?” she asked.

  “What I said,” he answered. “I never imagined a girl could be as helpful as you have been. You were so quick the time I jumped onto the balcony. I was hoping, almost against hope, there might be a man there, an Englishman. I felt he might understand. But you could not have been better. And now, despite all my misgivings, I am glad you are with me.”

  “You seem to have a very poor opinion of the female sex,” Melina said.

  For a moment there was silence then Bing took his hand away and put it back on the wheel.

  “I suppose that is the truth,” he said. “Perhaps I have met the wrong sort of women, as my mother would have said had she been alive.”

  “Have they made you cynical or bitter?” Melina asked.

  “Both,” Bing answered.

  There was a note in his voice that made her think that somehow she had struck him on the raw.

  “What happened?” she asked curiously. “Did you love somebody very much and then she behaved badly to you?”

  To her astonishment Bing hit the wheel with the palm of his hand with a sudden vicious blow, which made her feel that he would have liked to have hit her.

  “Be quiet!” he shouted. “Don’t poke and probe. It’s what all women do. You are all the same, every one of your sex. You want to put a man under a microscope as if he was a moth impaled on a pin and then you start to dissect him. ‘Why do you think this, why do you do that?’ Shut up, damn you! Allow my life to be private and let me have some secrets that are my own.”

  Melina sat absolutely still, tense with astonishment

  She had never been spoken to, in her whole life, so rudely and so offensively. And yet, at the same time, she knew that underneath Bing’s anger there was pain – real pain and unhappiness. Some woman, she thought, had hit him very much on the raw.

  Chapter 6

  Melina looked at herself in the mirror and wondered if she was smart enough for such a prestigious party. To her own eyes her dress of turquoise-shaded nylon made her look very young and unsophisticated.

  She had brushed her hair until it gleamed with golden lights and she had made up her face very carefully, adding a touch of eye shadow, which she hoped would make her look exotic and exciting. But instead it only seemed to accentuate the blueness of her wide eyes and make her appear younger than ever,
/>
  Her only ornament was a necklace of pearls and moonstones that had belonged to her mother. It was an antique necklace that had come from Burma and whenever she wore it she felt as if it brought her luck and that her evening would be a happy one.

  She thought now as she slipped on the necklace that she was wishing for safety and a lack of danger more than anything else, but it certainly added to her appearance and she noted, with a little touch of vanity, that her skin looked very white and clear, almost transparent.

  She wondered wistfully whether Bing would notice her appearance. He was so intent on his job and his search for the child that she felt he would hardly notice or care if she appeared dressed in a sack.

  And she could not forget, either, his strange outburst that afternoon when she had questioned him.

  After his voice had rung out in protest and anger, there had been a long barren silence while Melina looked out of the window, feeling her cheeks burning crimson because he had spoken in such a way and also because she reproached herself for having seemed curious and prying.

  Then about three minutes later Bing spoke,

  “I’m sorry,” he said in his quiet ordinary tone.

  He had then gone on to talk about quite trivial ordinary subjects and she realised, thankfully, that his anger was past and he was striving to make matters between them as normal and pleasant as they had been before.

  Nevertheless she was well aware that it was a danger signal. Bing was not going to allow her to encroach on his private life and she felt a little resentful that she had been so open in her confidences to him.

  During the long drive between Tangier and Fez she had spoken of the loneliness of her life in London and how, after her father’s death, she had longed for adventure and to get away from it all.

  ‘I expect he was bored listening to me,’ she told herself now.

  And yet even the uncomfortable feeling that she had been over-exuberant and too confiding could not overshadow the little flicker of excitement within herself for what lay ahead this evening.

  She had so seldom been to a really big party, in fact all the parties in her life had been few and far between and most of them not worth remembering. The people in the village where she had lived as a child, when she returned there for a weekend, would say,

  “Fancy you living in London, Miss Melina! You must find us very dull and stodgy after all your smart parties.”

  Melina knew it was no use trying to tell them that nearly always when her work was done she would go home to her tiny bedroom at the top of a tall house in Bloomsbury and sit there reading until it was time for bed. Sometimes, as a treat, she would eat at Lyons Corner House or one of the cheaper restaurants, so as to watch the people. But she had few friends in London and most of those, being of her father’s generation, were not the sort to press invitations upon a young girl who they thought was too gay for them.

  It seemed absurd that she could not make friends of her own age in the office, but the place where she worked employed nearly all men and most of them had been there thirty years or more. One or two of the younger ones had asked her out from time to time, but they were married men and she refused them with such positiveness that they did not venture to invite her a second time.

  No, tonight would be a red letter occasion as far as she was concerned and suddenly, as she looked at herself in the mirror, she threw away her apprehensions and made up her mind to enjoy it.

  ‘When I go back to London it will be something to remember,’ she whispered to herself. ‘I shall have seen one of the most beautiful houses in Morocco, I shall have been the guest, although uninvited, of one of the most powerful and dangerous men in the country.’

  It sounded rather like a film, she thought and the only ingredient lacking was the love interest. She was not going to find fault with anything, however, and conscious that she looked her best, she opened the communicating door and stood there waiting with sparkling eyes for Bing’s approval.

  He was putting the finishing touches to his hair, which he had brushed upwards in the American manner, and this, with its new darker colour, completely altered his appearance.

  He put down his hairbrush and smiled at her.

  “Well, you look real dandy!” he said in exaggerated tones and Melina laughed.

  “All I can say to you is that you look very American, Bing,” she retorted.

  His tuxedo, with its padded shoulders, was white and there was no possible doubt that the tailor who had cut it lived in the United States.

  As Bing slipped a handkerchief into his breast pocket and picked up his loose money from the chest of drawers, Melina looked round the room and saw that the desk, which had been pushed to one side to make room for a table and comfortable chairs, was now piled high with papers.

  She looked at them quizzically raising her eyebrows and in a low voice, which he used when he did not wish to be overheard by anyone listening outside the door, Bing whispered,

  “My papers! They are all about the American stock market and are quite incomprehensible to me – as I hope they are to anyone else who tries to read them.”

  “Every detail is vital, of course,” Melina said, speaking seriously but with a teasing note in her voice.

  “One day I will explain to you that detail means the difference between success and failure,” Bing replied.

  He straightened his narrow bow tie, slipped a large gold ring onto his engagement finger and held his hand out to Melina.

  “What do you think of that?” he asked. “Twenty carat and bought in one of the best jewellers on Fifth Avenue. Haven’t you forgotten anything?”

  Melina gave a little gasp.

  “A wedding ring!” she exclaimed.

  “Exactly,” Bing answered. “Rasmin thought of it, so I don’t take any credit. Try one of these for size.”

  He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and emptied the contents on the palm of his hand. There were three narrow gold wedding rings and Melina took the smallest.

  “I guessed that was the one,” Bing said. “And now I had better hide these. Anyone finding them in my baggage would imagine I’m a bigamist!”

  She saw him slip the little envelope into a carton of cigarettes, which he then threw into a drawer.

  “Is that a safe place?” Melina asked.

  “Far safer than locking anything up,” he answered. “The implication, if one has something locked, is that one does not wish anyone to see it, which makes those who are curious ‘curiouser and curiouser’, as the White Rabbit said.”

  “I only hope that I will remember that my name is ‘Cutter’,” Melina answered. “That is the most difficult thing for me to learn at the moment. Are you ready?”

  “I am ready,” Bing said solemnly, “if you are.”

  He picked up her evening scarf, which was of white silk with a fringe at either end, and carrying only a small evening bag which contained her handkerchief and her vanity case she walked across the floor in front of Bing, thinking that the stiletto heels of her silver shoes made a noise like the overture at a theatre before the curtain rises.

  Bing picked up the invitation, which was lying on the table, and slipped it into his pocket. They had both studied it carefully before they went to dress.

  Moulay Ibrahim had invited his guests for seven-thirty, which meant, Bing said, that there was going to be so much food and drink it was quite unnecessary to have dinner before they went.

  “I expect there will be dancing,” he said, “but that will really be for the Europeans. To the Moroccans a party means a good blow-out. I expect the dishes will be mostly European tonight. No roasted sheep and the principal guest being handed the eye as a special titbit! Nevertheless, there will be plenty of it and too much drink anyway, so be prepared for an orgy.”

  “I’m longing to try real Arab dishes,” Melina commented.

  “Well, I doubt if you will get them tonight, but, anyway, there are certain to be several that you have never tasted before.”r />
  Melina remembered the conversation as they went down the shining stone stairs to the ground floor. She was feeling quite hungry, she thought, and only hoped her fear that they might be denounced as gatecrashers would not take away her appetite at the last moment.

  They drove slowly out of the courtyard and up the hill in Bing’s car and almost immediately found themselves in a long queue of other cars all converging towards Moulay Ibrahim’s villa.

  “There’s going to be a good scrum,” Bing said with satisfaction, “in which case nobody is likely to notice us, so don’t be nervous.”

  “Supposing he says, ‘I don’t remember inviting you’,” Melina said.

  “Even if he thought such a thing, nobody in this country would be so rude as to question our credentials,” Bing said. “Once inside the gates we become honoured guests, invited or not. Their rules of hospitality are very strict.”

  “I remember my father telling me about them and how even an enemy, once he sits down to eat, must be treated with courtesy and consideration.”

  “That is right,” Bing answered. “Look! There’s someone important arriving.”

  A huge limousine came out of the queue and passed them on the left hand side of the road, speeding up towards the gates.

  “Who do you think that is?” Melina asked.

  “I have an idea that I have seen the gentleman inside before,” Bing answered. “If I am not mistaken he comes from Russia and is someone I was quite certain will be here tonight.”

  They drove on and finally came to the gates where an Officer in uniform took the invitation that Bing held out to him and told them where he could park the car.

  It was all beautifully arranged, Melina thought, as they walked across the green lawns towards the house. There were fairy lights everywhere, which seemed only to echo the stars, which were already beginning to twinkle above them although it was not yet dark.

  Guests in a long stream were surging up the steps through the tall, white columned entrance and for a moment Bing and Melina stood at the end of a queue, which was moving forward step by step.