the orderly room at the front of the building and set out after Nikos.
They went on foot since their way lay through the mediaeval city, where the streets were too narrow and congested for a carriage to pass. This early in the morning the streets were not, in fact, very crowded. Almost the only people they saw were the black-gowned women drawing water for the day from the street pumps, but by the time they reached the Coptic Place of the Dead there were a lot more people around, and when Owen looked behind-him he found that Nikos was not the only guide. From somewhere or other they had acquired a sizeable following of small boys and old men and others who might have been on their way to work if something more interesting had not come along.
Without assistance, although not necessarily on such a scale, Owen would never have found the House of Andrus, for it was set back from the ordinary thoroughfares of the necropolis and masked on all sides but one by huge family tombs. Once it came in sight, however, there was no mistaking it. A large crowd, mostly in the traditional dark gowns and dark turbans of the Copts, had already gathered around its front entrance. As Owen approached, the crowd parted and a man came up to him.
‘This is an outrage!’ the man said.
‘An unfortunate incident, certainly,’ said Owen smoothly. Nikos had been able to brief him on the way.
‘More than that,’ said the Copt, ‘much, much more than that.’
‘Don’t let your distress—’
‘They are trying to provoke us,’ the man cut in.
‘They? Who?’
As soon as he had spoken, he could have cursed himself. For he knew what the answer would be.
‘The Moslems,’ said the man. ‘The Moslems. They are behind this.’
‘Nonsense!’
It was important to stifle such ideas at birth. Cairo was an excitable city.
‘Who else would have done it?’
‘Children. Boys.’
‘Children!’
‘Yes. For a joke.’
‘You call this a joke?’
‘No. I say only that it is the sort of thing children would do as a joke.’
‘We know who did it,’ said someone in the crowd, ‘and it wasn’t children.’
‘Nor was it a joke,’ said the man who had spoken first. ‘It was done to provoke us.’
‘So you say.’
‘So I know,’ the man retorted.
‘How do you know?’
‘This is not a thing in itself. It is part of a pattern.’
‘There have been other things?’
‘Yes.’
‘What things?’
‘Attacks on Copts in the streets. Women jostled on their way to church. Our priests spat on, children stoned.’
‘These are all bad things,’ said Owen, ‘but that is not enough to make a pattern.’
‘What more do you want?’ asked the man. ‘Someone killed?’
‘In a pattern,’ said Owen, ‘there is design.’
‘There is design here. Do you think these things happen by chance?’
‘Women have always been jostled. Boys have always thrown stones.’
‘But not like this,’ said the man. ‘Our women dare not go out. We keep our children at home.’
‘There have been many such incidents?’
‘Every day and increasingly.’
‘In one part of the city or in all?’
‘At the moment,’ said the man, ‘in one part of the city only.’
‘And that is?’
‘We are from the Mar Girgis,’ said the man. The Church of St George, in the old part of the city, Owen thought. He had walked past it on his way to the cemetery.
‘It is around there, is it?’
‘Yes.’
He became aware that the man was watching him closely.
‘If you do not do something about it,’ the man said, ‘we shall.’
The crowd went quiet. Owen suddenly noticed how much it had grown. It must be over two hundred. And with that realization came another. Not all of them were Copts.
‘We have endured too much too long,’ the man said. ‘It is time to make an end of it.’
‘That is not for you,’ said Owen coldly. ‘It is for the Mamur Zapt.’
This was ridiculous. To flare up over a thing as trivial as this! But he knew that was how things did catch fire in Cairo, and also that once started the fires were hard to put out.
‘I will do something about it,’ he said.
‘Do so!’ said the man. ‘And do it quickly. For we will not wait.’
The Mamur Zapt did not reckon to take this kind of talk from anyone, and he looked round for the police. But there were only two of them, huddled uneasily behind him. For the moment he could do nothing.
But he would have to do something. He couldn’t leave the crowd like this. For the moment, the man seemed to have them in hand, but he could as easily incite as restrain. And if he did so, what would become of the Moslems present? There were only a few of them compared to the Copts. And what the hell were they doing here, anyway? You’d think they’d have enough sense to get out, fast.
He knew what they were doing. Watching the drama, like all Cairenes.
The thing to do was get this out of the public forum, get the drama off the streets.
He turned to the man who appeared to be the leader.
‘There is no reason why you should wait,’ he said to him. ‘I am ready to hear what you have to say. Only not here. Can we go into the house?’
‘Of course!’ said the man.
He stepped aside and made a gesture of invitation.
‘It is the house of Andrus,’ said Owen. ‘Where is Andrus?’
‘I am Andrus,’ the man said.
The crowd opened and they walked through.
As he pushed past, someone in the crowd cried out. Owen looked up quickly but it was only an idiot, and he was a Copt, anyway. His head sagged to one side and his lips drooled. He called out again and this time Owen heard what he said.
‘A death for a death!’
Owen turned in a flash, caught hold of him and threw him to one of the constables.
‘Take him away, for Christ’s sake,’ he said.
The constable’s hands closed round the idiot as round a rabbit. As the boy was borne away he cried out once more: ‘A death for a death!’
‘The boy is crazed,’ Owen said to those round about him. ‘To talk of such things when the only death in the affair is that of a dog!’
‘So far,’ said Andrus.
Owen had hoped to disperse the crowd by going inside, but it didn’t work. They followed him into the house. Cairenes had no sense of privacy, and they all wanted to know what was going to happen next. Owen was used to the publicness of Egyptian life and didn’t really mind, especially now that the tension seemed to have eased, though he would have preferred fewer bodies in the room.
The