Command. William McFee

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СКАЧАТЬ tarboosh on one side of his head, was lolling on the crimson plush cushions. In one hand he held the stem of an amber-mouthed narghileh. On the table was an empty coffee cup and a glass of mastic. Across his long thin thighs lay a Greek newspaper. He was reclining completely inert, gazing moodily across the crowded restaurant. The alteration in his demeanour when he became aware of Mr. Bates standing before him was dramatic. It was as though he had suddenly seen a very funny joke and had been subjected to an electric current of high voltage at the same time. He sprang to his feet with extraordinary animation, and his face was contorted from a sombre melancholy to what seemed to be an almost demoniac joy. It would be a solecism to say he looked as though a fortune had been left him. No one was at all likely to leave Mr. Dainopoulos a fortune. No one had ever left anything of value within his reach without regretting it extremely. It will suffice to say that his features registered a certain degree of pleasure upon seeing Mr. Bates.

      "Why, my dear friend!" he exclaimed in a sort of muffled scream, and he wrung the honest hand of Mr. Bates as though that gentleman had only that moment rescued him from a combination of drowning and bankruptcy. "And how are you? Sit down if you please. What will you have to drink? You must be—what you call it?—dry. Ha-ha! Sit down. This is good luck. Your friend? I am very pleased. Sit down please. Here!" He clapped his hands with frightful vehemence, and held up a distracted waiter who was in full flight towards a distant table with a loaded tray. Mr. Dainopoulos, gently pressing Mr. Bates and Mr. Spokesly into two chairs, addressed the waiter as Herakles and gave him an order which sounded to his guests like a loose board being ripped forcibly from a nailed-up box. Mr. Spokesly, sitting immediately opposite this monster of hospitality, was not favourably impressed. Mr. Dainopoulos rarely impressed people favourably at first. The long emaciated face had the texture of the uppers of an old buckskin shoe. The bloodshot brown eyes in their reddened sockets seemed in danger of falling into the great pouches of loose skin below them. The mouth, full of sharp yellow teeth and open as though about to yawn, had been slit back to the salience of the jaw at some time and had been sewn up in a sketchy fashion indicated by a white zig-zag scar like a flash of lightning. As he talked this scar worked with disconcerting vivacity. Mr. Spokesly turned with relief to the whiskies and sodas which appeared, borne by the industrious Herakles.

      "And how is business?" asked Mr. Bates, having lifted his glass and set it down empty. Beyond three or four sherries and bitters and a glass of gin and vermouth, before coming ashore, he had drunk nothing all day. He was thirsty. "And how is business?"

      A simple question. And yet Mr. Dainopoulos did not render a simple answer. He regarded Mr. Bates for a moment and then turned his head cautiously to right and left. Preserving an impressive silence he caught Mr. Spokesly's eyes and smiled, taking a suck at his narghileh. It was at this juncture that two French naval officers, seated at a distant table and smoking cigarettes in long ivory holders (to keep the smoke from their beards), exchanged opinions upon the folly of their British allies in permitting the officers of ships to come ashore in civilian attire.

      "You are quite sure, of course, that they are officers of a transport?" said the elder, observing with attention.

      "Quite, my commandant. From the Tanganyika, arrived to-day. The little one I know well. The other I observed upon the forecastle as she anchored."

      "But what are they doing in company with him?"

      The lieutenant raised his shoulders.

      "I imagine, my commandant, that they do a little business in hashish. But in any case it is not what you imagine. The English do not spy."

      "But Dainopoulos may use them, eh?"

      "Impossible, my commandant. You do not know them. I do. As you are aware, I was in the Crédit Lyonnais in Lombard Street. If Mr. Dainopoulos attempted to enlist their services they would batter his head in with his own narghileh. They have no compunction about robbing their government by peculation, but treachery is not their métier. And our friend knows it quite well."

      "Business," observed Mr. Dainopoulos suddenly, "is very bad."

      Mr. Bates seemed very amused at this and leaned over the dirty marble-topped table.

      "Count us both in, my friend here and me, for the same as last time. How about it, eh?"

      "Oh!" Mr. Dainopoulos pulled his extended frame up and put his elbows on the table, his eyes blinking quickly. "Oh, that's all right. Yes, certainly. But I mean to say business is very bad. You would not believe me, Mister, but the chances that are going, and all for a little management, are lost! Incredible! Only this week"—here he lowered his voice so that Mr. Spokesly, who was listening with undivided attention, scarcely gathered the words—"only this week, I could have made—ah, much money—if I had with me an Englishman who knows the business. Ten thousand drachma, easy as that!" Mr. Dainopoulos snapped his fingers without a sound and looked depressed.

      Mr. Bates did not look depressed. His smile evaporated and he looked down his nose into his moustache with an expression of ruffled propriety.

      "I must say——" he began, and added, after a pause, "'Course we hadn't arrived, but I should 'ave thought, seein' we was due here, you might have counted on me."

      Mr. Dainopoulos regarded Mr. Bates as though he were sizing him up for the first time and found him to amount to an almost negligible quantity. And then he shook his head.

      "No," he murmured in a muffled tone. "That's not what I meant. What I wanted—too late now, of course—was a Kapitan."

      Mr. Bates, touching Mr. Spokesly's foot with his own, emitted a snigger right in the face of Mr. Dainopoulos.

      "And what about it?" he queried, impudently. "My friend here's got a master's ticket. What's the matter with him? I'm surprised——"

      He was. To Mr. Bates it was unpleasant to discover that Mr. Dainopoulos should doubt his ability to cope with any situation which involved a financial reward. That gentleman, however, was not exclusively preoccupied with Mr. Bates and his emotions. He turned immediately to Mr. Spokesly who sat quietly twisting his glass of whiskey on the marble table. The pale, prominent, and bloodshot brown eyes examined Mr. Spokesly with passionless attention. Mr. Dainopoulos had filled many posts in his career. Quite apart from his participation in what he discreetly alluded to as "the wars," he had rendered some slight assistance to the builders of the Panama Canal as stoker on an excavator, he had worked in a felt-hat factory in Newark, New Jersey; he had been a waiter in a Greek café near Franklin Square, New York; he had held the position of clerk in the warehouse of a Turkish tobacco importer in London; and he had also been an assistant purser in one of the Roumanian Lloyd mail steamers which used to run from Costanza to Alexandria. He was one of those people who, as the saying is, "could write a book," which means they can do or have done almost everything except write a book. Such people are rarely of a literary turn. Mr. Dainopoulos certainly was not. But he had one faculty which, if literary people only knew it, is of use even in literature. He could size a man up. By a natural turn of judgment, so necessary to success in his business as a "general merchant and exporter" coupled with ceaseless practice, he had acquired a skill in sizing up which seemed as effortless and intuitive as the driving of a fine golfer or the wrist-work of a professional billiard player. The London School of Mnemonics could teach Mr. Dainopoulos nothing about practical psychology. He might even have given them some useful hints. In the present instance he was not at a loss. He waited, however, for Mr. Spokesly to make some comment.

      "That's right enough," said the latter, leaning forward and smiling. "But I'd have to know a little more of the game, you understand? There's a war on, you know. Can't be too careful."

      "True," assented Mr. Dainopoulos reflectively and СКАЧАТЬ