Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 46, No. 6. Whole No. 265, December 1965

A Lesson in Firearms by Charles B. Child

Inspector Chafik, the slim dark Iraqi detective with the remarkable index-card memory, is one of the most popular characters ever to have been published in an American magazine. He began his distinguished career in “Collier’s,” where numerous Chafik stories appeared, many of which were reprinted in EQMM. We were privileged to publish only an occasional new tale of the compassionate and understanding little man with his compulsion for neatness and order and his irresistible habit of soliloquizing and philosophizing.

With “Collier’s” no longer in existence, EQMM hopes to continue the saga of Inspector Chafik. Here is the newest Chafik story — a tale full of Baghdad color and sharply observed Middle East detail and deeply felt human interest. But above all, the story reveals that Inspector Chafik is a maker of criminous carpets: the threads he uses in his weaving are the facts of a crime... and his carpets do not always have pleasing designs.

He was a small boy on a long road that crossed a desolate area at the back of the City of Baghdad.

The day was ending. The sun’s afterglow daubed the cheeks of the drab, flat-roofed buildings which crouched like mendicants in the shadow of the towers and domes of Baghdad’s many temples. Tigris, the sullen river bisecting the city, flamed beneath her mascaraed fringe of date palms. Yet nothing was so bright as the red hair of the boy on the road.

This was noticed by two men in an approaching police car.

“Observe, sir,” said the driver in Arabic.

His passenger, a slim dark man neat in a cool white suit, replied, “Even the blind beggar at the city gates to whom just now I foolishly gave alms could not fail to observe.”

The slim man broke the ash of his cigarette into the disposer on the car’s dashboard. The slant of evening light made a mirror of the windshield and he admired his reflection. He had high cheekbones, a straight nose, a long upperlip smudged by a mustache; his watching eyes were dun-colored, cynical, and as flat as the land of his birth.

The slim man was pleased with himself as he adjusted his sidarah, the black peakless hat that proclaimed Moslem faith, and then sat back with the arrogance of an enthroned king. His ancestors had walked in Babylon.

“This one is a foreigner,” he said about the boy on the road. “By costume and armament, American,” he added decisively.

The boy wore faded blue jeans and a once-white T-shirt. The strings of his battered sneakers were undone. He had a gunbelt looped about his narrow hips; sometimes he stopped and drew the gun to challenge playworld enemies.

At the back of the gunbelt dangled a sheathed hunting knife.

The driver of the police car admired the boy’s handling of the gun. “Very fast!” he said, and a rare smile cracked the mahogany veneer of his face.

“May he never draw anything but a toy!” said the passenger.

“Yes, sir. But this toy looks too real... and as you said, sir, he is an American — so undisciplined—”

The slim dark man squared thin shoulders. “Sergeant Abdullah! — the boy gives expression to his heritage of freedom!”

“Yes, sir.” Sergeant Abdullah accepted reproof with a salaam; the hand that curved to his forehead was a bear’s paw and with a bear’s growl he added, “And if our river Tigris was so permitted to express itself, Baghdad would be inundated—”

The boy on the road was snub-nosed and freckled, and his grimed face was furrowed by tears. But he aimed a steady gun when the police car stopped.

“Bang!” he said.

Sergeant Abdullah’s passenger spoke in precise English, “My bold outlaw, do you mistake us for a stagecoach?”

The boy fanned the gun and gave suitable sound effects.

“Ah! That got us!” There was warmth in the drab eyes of the man in the police car. “Now it’s time,” he went on, “for all young outlaws to be in bed. I’ll take you home—”

“Don’t want to go home! Never!”

The boy backed to the edge of the road which was built on a high embankment, precaution in season against the floods that bedeviled Baghdad. When Sergeant Abdullah, who was in uniform, eased his six-feet-two out of the car, the boy yelled, “Yah, cop!” and rode the slope of rubble to the wastes below the embankment.

The two men watched him run across the gray dusty land, leap the channels scoured by last year’s monsoon, and dodge the thorns of the skeleton bushes that would be resurrected when the next rains came. The sheathed hunting knife slapped his buttocks as he ran.

“Shall I pursue him, sir?” asked the Sergeant.

“Abdullah, neither your feet nor your dignity need be so uselessly wounded.”

They watched the boy vanish behind the rising wall of the night. Over there was a district of abandoned slums where rats and scorpions held court, as the small dark man knew.

He dragged at his cigarette, frowned at it, then spat it out and said in the shrill voice of self-reproach, “You should have permitted Abdullah to pursue him!” And as he got into the police car he added, “Are you not father to a boy of that age?”

The tactful Sergeant said nothing as he drove into Baghdad by way of Alwiyah, a district of fine villas and gardens. They went up Rashid Street and it was quiet because this was the hour of Magreb, the sunset prayer. The car stopped at an unpretentious building in the government quarter and the small dark man got out.

He took the salute of a guard and went up a worn stairway into the smells of old crimes — the smells of any police headquarters anywhere in the world.

At the end of a narrow corridor was a door which had the inscription CHAFIK J. CHAFIK in black lettering on the frosted-glass panel.

Chief Inspector Chafik entered his office.

He had been absent for some days and there were red-tabbed papers on the desk demanding immediate action. And there was dust, so natural in Baghdad, so painful to Inspector Chafik. He exclaimed, “So this is what happens when I am away!” and took a dustcloth from the lower drawer of one of the many filing cabinets that walled his office. He was in process of dusting his chair when it came to him that he had made the complaint aloud.

Soliloquy was an uncontrollable habit, particularly when under stress. He realized he was thinking about the boy on the road, and also about his own son. In some way the elfin-faced, huge-eyed, faun-eared picture of the young Chafik became confused with the snub-nosed, tear-stained, freckled face of the redheaded foreign boy, and reproached him.

“But it’s none of your business!” the Inspector shouted at himself.

He threw down the dustcloth and telephoned the Police Chief at Bab-al-Sheik, the district which included the slums where the American boy had disappeared.

“My dear muffawadah, there is a boy—” he began and went on to tell about the meeting on the road.

The Police Chief was amused. “He had a toy gun? One needs something more lethal to deal with the rats over there.”

“He should be in bed!” cried Chafik.

“My dear Chief Inspector! Regretably we cannot order boys, foreign or otherwise, to go to bed at suitable hours. And as for running away from home — well!”

Laughter lilted the muflawadah’s voice and Chafik slammed down the telephone. He could see the man, the convexity of his uniform, the jowls of his cheery face. He was aware that the laughter had been directed at himself because of the devotion Chafik had for his son and thus the affection he had for all small boys.

Behind his back they called him in Arabic, “Father of Honeycakes.” He never failed to make a lavish purchase of that sweetmeat before he went home; it was his son’s addiction. The urchins who infested the city waylaid Chafik and he often had to go back for replenishment.

Angered by the Bab-al-Sheik Police Chief’s jest, the Inspector muttered, “May he be blessed only with daughters!” and gave attention to the papers on his desk.

There was a report about one Nasir Kareem, who had a master’s degree in crime. Prior to Chafik’s departure from Baghdad, the Chief Inspector had been given information by a police spy about a shipment of raw opium that Kareem was said to be bringing in from Persia. A trap had been set, the shipment seized, but Nasir Kareem had, as usual, an unbreakable alibi.

“Ah, that Father of Filth!” Chafik exploded.

A superior’s note attached to the report added to his anger. He stubbed out his cigarette, promptly lit another, and took refuge in work. The presence of a shadow that loomed against the pale green wall eventually disturbed him and he looked up.

“Sergeant Abdullah! Have you a djinn as an ancestor that you so ooze your entry?”

Abdullah apologized. “I knocked, sir, but failed to penetrate your concentration. There is a visitor, a very persistent foreign gentleman—”

“It is the curfew hour. Foreigners should not be about.”

“Yes, sir. But this one claims acquaintance. His name is Bell—”

“Bell? An American?” Before the Sergeant could reply, Inspector Chafik went on in a colorless voice, “Bell, Richard. North American. Age, 35. Dark hair, gray-blue eyes, fresh complexion. Height, six-one, English measurement. Weight, 185 pounds, American measurement. Profession, civil engineer, under contract to the Department of Works, special assignment the Samarrah dam. No known political associations. Married. Name of wife — name of wife—”

He rapped his forehead with the heavy signet ring on the smallest finger of his left hand. The recitation was from police records and he was always annoyed when memory failed him. “Yes, and there is a son, a preadolescent and a recent arrival in Baghdad,” he went on. “Doesn’t the mother have red hair?”

Inspector Chafik pushed his papers aside.

“Where is your foreigner?” he abruptly asked Sergeant Abdullah.

“We have detained him, sir. He so urgently wished to see you that he was aggressive to the guard.”

“And his stated business?”

“A missing son—”

“Yes, yes, I know! But this is the wrong department — our major clients are bodies with missing souls. Nevertheless, let the foreigner come to me — my heart is not a dried nut hanging on a tree.”

When the American entered, Inspector Chafik stood to receive him, his hand curved to his forehead in a half salute and half salaam. Bell was a very large man and Chafik dismissed Abdullah; the presence of two such men in his office had caused him to stand tiptoe. He dusted a chair for the visitor selected a cigarette from a silver case, and salaamed again as he offered it.

“I know you, Mr. Bell. We were guests at the annual dinner given by the Ministry of Works. We talked about our sons—”

“That’s why I came to see you.”

“Recklessly I jump hurdles! Your son has red hair, a freckled face, wears denium pantaloons, a soiled shirt, is armed with a toy gun and a large knife, and has run away from home but not from his tears. You disciplined him?”

The American jumped up. “How do you know all this? Yes, I did — he was rude to his mother and I spanked him and confined him to the house — but he’s got a real temper and ran away. Dot — my wife Dorothy — phoned me. The boy has been brooding all day and when it was about time for me to come home he ran away. Ricky doesn’t know Baghdad and I’ve got to find him — now!”

Bell slapped the Inspector’s desk with a square strong hand.

“You will calm yourself,” Chafik said. “I saw the boy on a road and I know the area where he is. They are already looking for him.”

One of the telephones on his desk called. He lifted it and said, “Nam?” He added after a moment of listening to an excited voice, “I have one uncalm man here, so please soothe yourself, muffawadah, and clearly enunciate your facts.”

When the Bab-al-Sheik Police Chief had made himself clear, Inspector Chafik rose from his chair, swept the loaded ashtray from the desk, slammed his fist against the wall, and turned a face like a bronze mask to the American. There were drifting shadows in his flat drab eyes and they were the shadows of vultures that gathered to a desert kill.

“Your son’s knife was sharp?”

“Yes — it’s a hunting knife. What’s all this about?”

“Mr. Bell, we have a dead man in the Bab-al-Sheik. He was repeatedly stabbed—”

“So what?”

“Mr. Bell, a constable reports seeing a boy who answers to the description of your son. He had a knife in one hand and a gun in the other—”

“What’s that got to do with your dead man?” The American’s anger was growing. “A scared kid would have his knife out,” he went on defensively. “When Ricky’s not play-acting he knows that gun’s only a toy.”

Inspector Chafik stood against the stature of the foreigner. His hands were clasped behind him and his sharp chin was tilted. The shadows had gone from his eyes, and there was only sadness.

“There is a toy gun in the hand of the corpse, Mr. Bell,” he said.

The body lay with rotting garbage in the slum area of the Bah-al-Sheik. The skeletons of abandoned houses stood around it and their eyeless windows gaped against the darkened sky. Night birds dived and fluted as they hunted the clouds of insects that danced on the spirals of air rising from the cooling rubble.

“Such a petty crook!” said Inspector Chafik as he touched the corpse with a neatly shod foot.

He recited from the dossier, “Badir, Yusif. Parentage, place, and date of birth unknown. Gutter raised. First conviction at age of eight — theft of bread. Second conviction at ten — stealing the begging bowl of a cripple. Third—” Chafik shrugged and turned to the American with an apology for the soliloquy.

“Yusif Badir is potter’s clay — he was never of any importance. We winked at his small crimes and made him one of our spies. Do you have police spies in your country, Mr. Bell? They disgust me yet they are a necessity — certain functions are. You can identify the gun?”

It lay in Yusif Badir’s half-open hand and Bell nodded. “That’s Ricky’s,” he said with emotion. “The kid prized it — he thought more of that gun than — if anybody tried to—”

The American stopped and looked quickly at the Iraqi detective, but the little man was kneeling to examine the corpse.

“So many stab wounds! Such anger!” commented Inspector Chafik.

They brought him a bowl of water and he cleansed his hands. He said to the officer who held the bowl, “Your name is Yacub?”

“Yes, sir—”

“You are the constable who saw a boy running through this rubble, a knife in one hand and what appeared to be a gun in the other?”

“Yes, sir — but I did not know — I—”

The man was not at ease. Chafik patted his arm and said gently, “Just tell it to me as the storytellers tell the tales of yesterday in our cafés.”

Officer Yacub relaxed.

“Sir, it is my duty to patrol this neighborhood and I was told to watch for a boy, a foreign boy oddly dressed and armed with a toy gun. Such a boy appeared but he had a knife which I had not been told about. It flashed in the half dark as I advanced to question him.”

“He menaced you with it?”

“No, sir. He menaced me with the toy gun, called me by name, then made explosive sounds.”

Chafik was puzzled. “He called you by name? Now how is this? You never met him before the incident?”

“It bewilders me, sir. Yet he called me ‘Yacub’ many times as he made the bang-bang sounds, sir—”

The Inspector held back laughter and looked at Bell whose rugged trouble face found relief in a grin. “Yah, cop!” Chafik said side-mouthed to the American and turned to Yacub. “So the boy evaded you?” he asked.

“He was under my arm and away before I could move a finger. I called after him, but he shouted my name again and was finally gone. I very much blame myself.”

“To grasp a running boy is to grasp quicksilver,” Chafik said soothingly. “But continue. You followed in the direction the boy had taken and then found the body?”

“Yes, sir—”

“And it was a fresh corpse?”

“Quite fresh, sir — it was still warm.”

Chafik dismissed the man and then faced the American, whose distress had changed to rage.

“You’re making a case against Ricky!” Bell shouted.

“Mr. Bell, a maker of carpets needs threads for his weaving. My threads are facts and my carpets do not always have pleasing designs... There is a boy with a hot temper and he runs away from home and he has with him a toy gun and a sharp hunting knife. He has an obsessive attachment to the gun as you unwittingly revealed when I was examining the corpse — you expressed concern about Ricky’s actions if anybody tried to take the toy from him.”

“I didn’t mean that! I meant—”

“But you had the thought, and it was not a nice thought,” said Inspector Chafik in a hard voice. “You envisaged your son meeting with Yusif Badir, pointing the gun playfully, as at Officer Yacub, and having it snatched from his hand. And then—”

He tactfully looked away.

“No! Ricky didn’t do this!” Bell made painful challenge to himself as well as to Chafik.

“Then believe what your heart tells you,” the little Inspector said gently. “For your comfort, Mr. Bell, I commend you to the constable’s evidence. Ricky did not menace him with the knife — only with the toy gun. So why should your son’s behavior pattern change when — if — he met Yusif Badir?”

He watched hope dawn and added briskly, “Now I will send you home.”

“But I’ve got to find Ricky!”

“Mr. Bell, we cannot have foreigners running about Baghdad at night — it would be necessary to deploy police to protect you. And have you forgotten your wife is alone with her fears?”

The American hesitated, then turned reluctantly to the waiting police car. Before he got in he said pleadingly, “You’ll bring Ricky home as soon as you find him?”

“He will be with you before the lark and the muezzin greet the dawn,” promised Inspector Chafik, his voice warm and confident.

When the car had driven away, Sergeant Abdullah reproved his superior.

“Sir, was it wise to give so much hope to a distracted father? The boy must be detained. The evidence of his guilt is overwhelming—”

“The evidence of a toy gun in the hand of the corpse?”

“That and the suspect’s temper, sir — his foreign, undisciplined upbringing—”

“Abdullah! Prejudice rides you. Give heed to the obstacles along your course. What, for example, was Yusif Badir doing in this forsaken neighborhood?”

“It would appear he had an assignation.”

“Would he have risked his throat for a sloe-eyed houri? This is a lonely place and he had so many enemies.”

“I meant a business associate,” the Sergeant said stiffly. “When we required his odious services we always arranged an eyeless and earless rendezvous such as this one.”

Chafik nodded. “Police spies and jackals howl best in the wilderness. But we had no use for Yusif Badir this time. On the last occasion—”

“He informed against Nasir Kareem, sir.”

“Ah, that Father of Serpents!” exclaimed the Inspector.

He threw down his cigarette, spat on it, and ground it into the dust. Briefly he had forgotten Nasir Kareem, the narcotics smuggler, and the report of the man’s evasion of arrest. Chafik hated drug peddlers. Also failure was wounding to his ego, especially when his superior requested an explanation.

To disperse anger he swallowed the tranquilizer of the night. The stars were lanterns hanging from a tented sky. There was no moon. The lights of Baghdad were reflected in the mottled mirror of the Tigris. It was a very still night desecrated only by the cacophony of radios and gramophones coming from the city’s cafés.

Somewhat soothed, the Inspector said, “Yusif Badir is in the Pit and Nasir Kareem will soon be flung there. It is as God wills. Our task is to find a runaway boy.”

“The fugitive’s whereabouts is a problem,” mused Sergeant Abdullah. “If he had fled into the city our men would have picked him up — his description has been generally circulated. Therefore we may assume—”

“The odds are that he is somewhere in the ruins of these abandoned houses,” said Chafik.

They looked at the ragged escarpment of broken walls that fringed the road. Beyond was a moonscape of desert.

“A likely place for the perpetrator to hide,” agreed Abdullah. He loomed to his full six feet two and said briskly, “I will alert the constables and make a diligent search—”

“You will take them all away.”

“Sir?”

“You will remove every heavy-footed ‘yah-cop.’ You will give this neighborhood back to the night, to the rats — and to me,” commanded Inspector Chafik.

He noted his subordinate’s disapproval and softened command with explanation. “We are not dealing with a ‘fugitive’ or a ‘perpetrator’ — only with a bewildered boy who is too stubborn or too afraid to go home. A police hunt would make him seek the remotest corner. Alone, I might coo him out of his hiding place.”

“There may be others in hiding,” warned the Sergeant.

“For those who have fangs I have this, and it is not a toy.” Chafik patted the slight bulge under his left armpit. “Now go, give me two hours,” he said with the rasp of rank. “And make inquiries about Nasir Kareem. I want a complete report about his movements,” he added as an afterthought.

This was the dark of the night. The early planets had set and the soft glimmer of the stars draped the ruins with a cobweb haze. “The dawn is not even a glint in the eye of tomorrow’s sun!” said Inspector Chafik to himself as he ventured into the labyrinth of the Bab-al-Sheik.

The fluting hunting birds of the evening had disappeared and a shift of the breeze had removed the city’s sounds. It was so quiet he could hear the life that went on under the rubble — the talk of rats and the squeak and hiss of creatures unknown.

A scrape of horned claws warned him. He stood motionless as a crab-like shadow mounted the toe of his shoe and went over it, barbed tail nervously waving.

He spat his loathing of scorpions and prayed for the boy.

It is good to pray for help from There, but prayer can also be a man’s evasion of responsibility. You, Chafik J. Chafik, are here to find a troubled youngster. You must approach the problem psychologically as well as prayerfully.

Now think! He applied the discipline of his signet ring to his forehead. What does a boy do to escape from phantoms? He goes under the bedcovers — I cannot see it, therefore it is not! — but there is no such refuge here. So he must pull another kind of foxhole over his head.

“His hiding place would be a cellar,” Chafik continued his reasoning aloud. “But what happens when the darkness, the odors, the company of rats and scorpions becomes unbearable?” he asked, and answered decisively, “The boy would be driven up into the clean air. He would seek the nearest refuge to God’s heaven — yes, the towering peak of a ziggurat.”

The Inspector permitted himself a smile. His Babylonian ancestors had probably raised the Tower of Babel to escape the fetid air of the fladands of the Euphrates River.

He frowned his undisciplined voice to silence and moved with maximum caution as he got deeper into the huddle of buildings. He also reproved the faint shadow that followed him and shifted direction to lose it.

Presently he reached an open area and crouched to get the silhouette of the walls of the surrounding buildings against the sky. Most of the houses in this old quarter were two-storied and flat-roofed. One rooftop, towering above its neighbors, became the target of Chafik’s interest.

The front of the roof was a flattened crescent with the horns lifted to the sky, a style of architecture dating back to the Turkish days of Baghdad. The place had been a pasha’s beyet and was topped by a terrace where the women of the hareem could unveil and enjoy the evening breezes.

Chafik nodded approval of his reasoning. The boy would be driven from the crawling catacombs to seek refuge in the high air. This was the place, the ziggurat, the Inspector decided as he slipped into the deep shadow of the walls.

A moldering arch led into a patio overhung by sagging balconies. In the garden an aged date palm, dusty and impotent, kept company with a spoutless fountain. Inspector Chafik intruded.

Knowledge of these old buildings took him to a partly hidden stairway guarded by a sentry-box niche. No eunnuch’s blade stopped him as he went up, lifting his knees to the high steps, stopping every now and then to listen.

He was disturbed by a faint sound like the rattle of miniature kettledrums, and eventually he traced it to the walls. Exploring with sensitive fingers, he traced the bulging tunnels of the termite runways that veined the crumbling plaster. Insect soldiers who protected the nests were drumming with their heads to warn the community of an alien presence.

Chafik wondered if he was the sole reason for their excitement. The noise grew louder as he mounted higher, and he guessed that the termite guards were concentrated near the exit to the roof. When Chafik made the last turn in the stairway, he could see the opening, a frame for the diamond chips of remote stars scattered on a background of velvet.

He lifted his foot to another step and then froze as his hunter’s nose caught the acrid smell of fear. The outline of a head and shoulders filled the opening. Something silvery flicked, was quickly withdrawn.

“Don’t you come any nearer! I’ll stick it in you!” the shrill voice broke off with a sob.

Inspector Chafik required no force to take the knife from the boy.

“But you wouldn’t have, would you, Ricky?” he said in casual English.

“I... no!... I—”

“You were frightened, Ricky. I came from nowhere, so you tried to defend yourself. You don’t generally point knives at people, do you? Only guns—”

“That’s playing. Pointing knives is wrong. Dad said so. He made me promise when he give it to me—”

“Gave it to me,” the Iraqi detective corrected the American boy’s English.

He was again reminded of his son, whose grammar, Arabic and English, sometimes required schooling. Chafik looked with tenderness on the freckled face turned up to him. He could sense the boy’s bewilderment, his fear, and he wanted to ruffle the bright red hair and comfort him. Then he noticed the brass-studded belt looped about the youngster’s slim hips; the leather flap of the gun holster hung as forlorn as an empty sleeve.

The Inspector remembered the toy gun in the dead hand of Yusif Badir. He also remembered his policeman’s duty.

“Did that man take it from you?” he asked harshly. “What did you do then, eh? What did you do?”

There was no answer. Ricky was staring at him. He pushed the boy away and examined the knife, touching the blade and checking it with his nose and the tip of his tongue. The haft was sticky, but it was a boy’s knife and nobody knew what a boy might get on his hands; a laboratory test would determine what a policeman suspected and a father did not want to believe.

He continued the accusing questions, but Ricky disarmed him by saying in a gay and friendly voice, “I know you! You were the man on the road — you had a cop in your car!”

“I too am a cop—”

“But you don’t wear a uniform and you didn’t chase me like he did!”

“Abdullah is a good cop. He wanted to help you—”

“Yah!” Ricky had recovered his cockiness.

Chafik went down on his knees to bring his eyes level with the boy. He took the thin shoulders and admired the way they were braced. This little one has much courage, he told himself. But there are times when chicks should seek refuge under their mother’s feathers.

“It’s all right, Ricky. I’m going to take you home,” the Inspector said gently. “But first you must answer a question. How did you lose your gun?”

“He took it.”’

“That man?” Chafik waved in the direction of the road.

“That guy dressed up in a nightshirt with a dishcloth wrapped around his head,” Ricky described the native dress of Yusif Badir. “He was there in the dark when I come along and he frightened me so I pointed the gun but he knocked it out of my hand and grabbed it and then... then—”

Ricky’s voice rose and his young body quivered as he flung himself against the Inspector and buried his tear-stained face in the immaculate white coat.

“They came! — the others! — and he—”

“What others, Ricky?” Chafik’s mind leaped and his heart sang.

“A lot of guys. They come out of nowhere and this other guy, he turned on them and pointed my gun and then... then somebody had a knife and jumped this other man and there was a lot of yelling and a scream, and I got scared and ran and hid in a dark hole and they come after me, but then they quit — something scared them I guess — and then... then—”

The flood of breathless words gave way to tears. Chafik rocked the sobbing boy and reprimanded his alter ego for a policeman’s unjust suspicions.

When Ricky stopped reliving the terror that had come to him out of the night, the Inspector asked other questions and filled in the details. He concluded that the search for Ricky had been called off because of the unexpected arrival of the constable who discovered the body of Yusif Badir. The boy had remained hidden during the police investigation; he could not know they were police and had not ventured out until they had left.

“It was nasty down there — those things, they rattle!” The boy shuddered. “And those red eyes — rats! — I got out and went up high, as high as I could get—”

“To find refuge.” The Inspector nodded, then yielded to impulse and rumpled the bright red hair. “Now tell me, Ricky,” he went on casually. “When — that thing — happened, were you close enough to see any of the men?”

“The one with the knife. He was big and fat and he was dressed in clothes like you wear, and he had a mustache that sort of hung down and big eyes that kind of popped, and a lot of rings — I saw them when his hand came up and he stuck the knife—”

Chafik stopped the repetition of nightmare. He took an index card from the filing cabinet of his brain and matched it with the boy’s description: Weight, 240 pounds. Broad face, thin drooping mustache, large bulging eyes. Neat dresser in European style, favors flashy jewelry, particularly rings. Expert with switchblade.

“Nasir Kareem!” He spat the name.

His fingers began a spider’s dance as he untangled the web that held killer and corpse. Kareem, he was sure, had lured Badir to this isolated spot to punish him for informing about the shipment of narcotics, but intent to kill was unlikely. An informer, however odious to his employers, was guaranteed protection. To murder such a man was to challenge the quintessence of police power, and the habitually cautious criminal would not take that risk.

As Chafik saw it, they had ambushed Yusif Badir to give him a beating and he had thrown up a hand with natural reflex to ward off the blows — a hand that held Ricky’s toy gun. Nasir Kareem, thinking it was a real gun aimed at him, had gone in with the knife.

“Which proves it is dangerous to point even a child’s cap pistol at people,” Chafik summed up.

He was thankful that his bilingual tongue had slipped into Arabic, not English, for this was no time to give Ricky a lesson about firearms. The Inspector had something more important on his mind.

“Did that fat man see you, Ricky?” he asked.

“Sure, he got a good look—”

So Nasir Kareem knows that the boy witnessed the killing of Yusif Badir, thought Chafik.

Ricky would be safe at home with a guard. But here on a rooftop in the abandoned area of the Bab-al-Sheik there was only one policeman to protect him — a small desk-based man who relied on the muscles of his bodyguard, the Inspector described himself to himself, regretting the absence of his familiar, the mahogany-hewn Sergeant Abdullah.

He looked at his watch. He had told Abdullah to give him two hours, and there was more than an hour to go before the Sergeant would return. The derelict area was close to Rashid Street, Baghdad’s main thoroughfare, but a labyrinth of alleyways lay between and he wondered if he should risk the boy where the police hesitated to go. Equally, there was danger in waiting, for Nasir Kareem must be looking for Ricky.

Decision was tipped by an alien sound. Somewhere nearby the rubble had crumbled under pressure and the Inspector’s heart drummed. The sound was repeated, this time from the other side. Then again from another location. A disembodied voice whispered a curse and other whispers slimed and coiled about the building.

“It’s them! They know I’m here!” Ricky said with a boy’s fear of approaching danger.

Chafik disciplined his arm to rest lightly about the young shoulders.

The rustle of the advance continued and he was reminded of the scorpion that had climbed his shoe.

Ricky said, “Of course you’ve got a gun, sir?” and the Inspector was pleased by the boy’s confidence. Briefly he saw himself as the heroic lawman of the American West and the picture amused him; but the time had come to give Ricky that lesson about firearms and he sobered as he showed the small automatic.

“This thing’s spit is effective at short range, so I keep it hidden—”

“Why hidden?” asked the boy with disgust. “I’d keep my gun out, I’d point it and pull the trigger — bang!—”

“And that would be your error,” Chafik told his pupil. “A danger that cannot be seen spawns terror — weren’t you frightened of the things in the cellar that you couldn’t see? So it is with my little gun. They know I have a gun and imagination gives it the dimensions and authority of a cannon.” The Inspector broke off and wagged an admonishing finger under the snub nose. “It is a very final thing to point a gun, Ricky. It unmasks one’s power — or the lack of it.”

He wanted to add that because Yusif Badir had pointed a toy gun he was now on a slab in the Baghdad morgue.

Chafik was careful not to say that on certain occasions such a weapon as Sergeant Abdullah’s heavy Mauser was the best of all deterrents.

There were noises in the courtyard and he looked anxiously at his watch. He wondered how long he could employ delaying tactics. The element of shock was, of course, his major weapon, but once they had recovered they would know he had found the boy.

The beams of flashlights searched the corners of the ruins and the hunt would soon reach the roof. The question was from which direction they would come, for the main staircase was not the only way up. There would be egress from the hareem quarters, and certainly a private entrance for the pasha.

It was too dark to see the layout and Inspector Chafik decided to pull the psychological trigger.

He pushed Ricky into a corner where the boy was protected by the brick shaft of a surdab ventilator. Then the Inspector called down in harsh Arabic, “I hear you and I see you, Fathers of Scorpions!” He exposed his face to the glare of the flashlights and with an actor’s skill twisted it into the likeness of a demon’s mask.

They were so still, so silent, that he could again hear the drumming of the termites. Perhaps it is Nasir Kareem’s men who hammer their heads against the wall, he thought; then with perfect timing Chafik withdrew as a barrage of oaths and bullets befouled the night.

“See how well they know me! Could a film star rouse so much emotion?” he jested to Ricky.

The boy’s answering giggle reassured the Inspector.

He returned to conduct the orchestra of hate. He knew his people so well; so long as their frenzy could be channeled into a verbal onslaught, they were manageable. When they ran out of insults they became a frightening monster, the street mob.

There were arguments about the best way to reach him, and even blows were exchanged. Confusion kept them concentrated where he wanted them, at the foot of the stairway. They were afraid to attack. They were not cool enough to think of looking for other ways up. They were a headless mob — they needed a leader.

A leader...

Chafik had not heard the voice of Nasir Kareem and it worried him. A silent Nasir Kareem was to the Inspector’s imagination what the silent gun was to the men below. He began to sweat and tried to peer through the smothering darkness.

He had gained valuable time. Sergeant Abdullah was due to return within half an hour and, like Death, the Sergeant was never late for an appointment. Half an hour, thirty minutes, eighteen hundred seconds, Chafik computed. For the first time he kept his finger on the trigger of the automatic.

The baton of his tongue appeared to have lost authority, the response to his insults was so subdued. He tried to smoke out Nasir Kareem by reaching into the dregs of Arabic nastiness and taunting that the grave of Nasir Kareem’s father had been defiled by a dog.

The diatribe was unanswered.

Then, as if to a signal, the barrage of oaths and shots broke out with new intensity. The Inspector pulled back from the stairway; he was more worried by the prelude of silence than by the fortissimo of the attack.

A diversion?

He confirmed the suspicion in the single moment it took him to turn. Ricky had moved out from the shelter and was looking back along the roof. The stiff set of his body indicated shock; the boy made a faint sound, either of protest or warning, as he pointed at the thing that had crept up behind him.

A bulky shadow.

Chafik saw the knife, held low and hooking for the thrust, and he knew as he swung up the little gun that he couldn’t make it. Ricky was in the way.

The heavy man with the bulging eyes cried out, “Father of Hangmen!” at Chafik, and went in to kill the boy.

Out of nowhere came a thunderclap. Nasir Kareem, arms extended and whirling like a dervish, was flung into his darkness.

A voice from below said, “Sir?”

Inspector Chafik looked at his watch and disciplined himself to say chidingly, “You are twenty minutes early, Sergeant Abdullah.”

“Yes, sir. But in accordance with your instructions I instituted inquiries into the activities of Nasir Kareem. He was reported coming here with a considerable force, so I deemed it advisable to follow him.”

The spotlights of police cars were probing the ruins and there was shouting and the sound of blows. Presently the Sergeant came up on the roof and apologized for the noise.

“Reaction, sir. I emphasized the necessity for silence when we moved in. Now the constables express themselves.”

He looked briefly at Nasir Kareem and said, “The deceased foolishly outlined himself against the sky. He did not present too difficult a target — for this—”

The Sergeant touched the worn holster on his hip with a hand expanded like a cobra’s hood. He had ignored Ricky. The boy was looking up at him, up and up to the military sidarah and the brass badge that seemed one of the constellation of the stars.

“Neat!” Ricky said in an awed voice, and he added, “Hi, Cop!” as he flicked his hand in a gay salute.

Inspector Chafik was not sure, but he thought the veneer of Sergeant Abdullah’s dour face cracked with a smile.