Seven Dials

“Do,” Narraway agreed. “Before they change their minds. And Pitt… be careful. The stakes could be as high as war. The people behind all this are not going to be squeamish about getting rid of one policeman more or less.”

Pitt was jolted, in spite of himself. “I know that!” he said sharply, then turned and left, calling a good-bye over his shoulder so Narraway should not be aware how ugly and deep his thoughts had become. He had faced physical danger before. No one could patrol the back alleys of London as he had done without it. But this was a different venture, a conspiracy of a magnitude he had not tasted before. It was no one man’s ambition but a nation’s fate which could erupt in death and awful, senseless destruction.

He took the first hansom that passed and told the driver to take him as rapidly as he could to Newgate. As soon as he was there he went straight to the warden in charge and showed him the paper Narraway had given him. The man read it right through twice, and then consulted with a superior. Finally, when Pitt was about to lose his temper, he conducted him to the cell where Ayesha Zakhari was held, and unlocked the door.

Pitt stepped in and heard the steel clang behind him. The woman who turned to face him startled him so profoundly he was robbed of words. He had created a mental picture of her from his expectations, and from the Greek Alexandria he had seen. Perhaps old stories of the city had touched his imagination without his being aware of it. He had pictured someone olive-ski

She was very tall, only three or four inches less than he, and slender, delicately boned. She wore a pale silk gown like those he had seen on women in Alexandria, but more graciously cut. But most extraordinary of all, her skin was almost black and her hair was no more than a dark, smooth covering for her perfectly shaped head. Her features were more than beautiful; they were so exquisite she seemed like a work of art, and yet the vitality in her made her obviously a living, breathing woman. She was not an Egyptian of the modern, sophisticated Mediterranean Islam; she was of ancient, Coptic Africa-not Cleopatra at all, but older than that, Nefertiti.

“Who are you?” Her voice jolted him back to the present. It was low and a little husky, but with hardly any accent he could place, only a slightly more precise diction than an Englishwoman would have had, other than perhaps Great-aunt Vespasia.

“I apologize,” he said without thinking. “My name is Thomas Pitt. I need to speak with you, Miss Zakhari, before the court resumes on Monday morning. Certain things have transpired of which you may not be aware.”

“You may tell me whatever you wish,” she replied levelly. “I have nothing to tell you, beyond what I have already said. And since I ca

He remained standing because there was nowhere to sit, except the cot, and to reach that he would have had to walk past her, and then look up where she stood.

“I went to Alexandria about three weeks ago,” he began, and saw the start of surprise in her, the stiffening of her body, but she did not speak. “I wanted to learn more about you,” he went on. “I admit that what I found surprised me.”

The ghost of a smile crossed her face, and vanished. She had a gift of stillness which was more than a mere lack of movement; it was an i

“I believe you came here to England to try to persuade Ryerson to influence the cotton industry, so more Egyptian cotton could be woven where it was grown, so that the factories could be started up again, as they were in the time of Mohammed Ali.”

Again she was surprised. It was no more than a hesitation in her breathing; he felt it rather than saw it.

“So your own people could prosper from their work,” he added. “It was naive. If you had understood how much money was vested in the trade, how many people’s power, I think you would have realized that no one man, even with Ryerson’s office, could have had any effect.”

She drew in her breath as though she was going to argue, then she let it out silently and turned half away from him. The light on her smooth face shone like polished silk. Her skin was blemishless, her cheekbones high, her nose long and straight, her eyes a little slanted upwards. It was a face of passion and immense dignity, but oddly, it was not without humor. The tiny lines, visible because he was close to her, spoke of laughter, not easy as of mere good humor, but of intelligence and irony as well.

“I think that the man who sent you knew that you could not succeed,” he went on. He was not certain whether it was a shadow that moved, or if her body stiffened a trifle under the silk of her dress. “I believe his purpose was different,” he continued. “And that cotton was only the reason he gave you, because it is one you could serve with all your effort, whatever the cost to yourself.”

“You are mistaken,” she replied, without looking at him. “If I was naive, then I have paid a high price for it, but I did not kill Lieutenant Lovat.”

“But you are prepared to hang for it?” he said with surprise. “And not only yourself, but Mr. Ryerson as well.”

She flinched as if he had struck her, but she did not make any sound, nor move her position.

“Do you think perhaps because he is a minister in the government that they will let him off?” he asked.

She turned to face him at last, her eyes wide and almost black.

“Have you not realized yet that he has enemies?” he said more loudly than he wished to, but he could not afford gentleness. She might back away, evade the truth again. “And whoever sent you has far bigger aims than cotton, in Egypt or Manchester.”

“That is not true.” She stated it as a fact. There was certainty in her eyes, then, even as he was watching, it wavered before she could master it.

“If you did not kill Lovat, then who did?” he said far more quietly. He had not yet made up his mind whether to say anything of the massacre to her, or even to hint at it. He watched her, searching for anything in her expression, however fleeting, to betray the hatred that could lie behind a murder of revenge. So far he had seen nothing at all, not even a shadow.

“I don’t know,” she said simply. “But you said it was not to do with cotton. What, then?”

It was almost impossible to believe she knew. And if she did not, and he told her, might her love of her country, and of justice, then impel her to speak, perhaps even to make her crime seem justified? Would a judge mitigate her sentence because of such provocation? Pitt would have. “Other political reasons,” he said evasively. “To expose old wrongs with a view to inciting violence, even rebellion.”

“Like the dervishes in the Sudan?” she said bleakly.

“Why not? Knowing what you do now, do you really believe you ever had a chance of changing the cotton industry, before the political and financial tides have changed, no matter what Mr. Ryerson might believe or wish for?”

She thought about it for several moments before conceding. “No,” she said almost under her breath.

“Then surely it is possible that whoever sent you also knew that, and had in mind another plan altogether?” he pressed.

She did not answer, but he saw that she had understood.

“And he does not care if you hang for a murder you did not commit,” he went on. “Or that Ryerson should also.”

That hurt her. Her body stiffened and some of the richness of color faded from her skin.