The Mysterious Caravan Read online

  “He did the same at the back entrance,” Joe said.

  “Well, we know for sure there’s something fishy going on,” Chet said.

  “This could be a branch of the ticket thieves,” Frank agreed. “But now that they’re tipped off, it will be hard to find evidence.”

  They walked back to the center of town, and looked at exotic merchandise displayed by vendors, whose little shops extended nearly to the curb. Several colorful hassocks made of multi-colored goatskin intrigued Frank and Joe.

  “Let’s send one home,” Frank suggested.

  Christine helped them pick out an unusual design of red and black and bargained with the shopkeeper over the price.

  “La,” she kept saying. “La.”

  The merchant gestured with a pleading expression until Christine finally agreed that the price was fair enough.

  “Something you should remember in Morocco,” she said, smiling. “You have to bargain, otherwise you pay double the price and the merchant is insulted. La means ‘no.’”

  “I figured that,” Joe said.

  “Now you have a nice pouf,” she added, and made arrangements to have it shipped to Bayport.

  “I’d like to buy a dagger,” Chet said.

  “Not here,” Christine objected. “Wait till you see the souq in Marrakesh. They make beautiful ones there.”

  “They also make clothing out of leather, don’t they?” Frank said.

  “Yes. That’s a specialty.”

  The boys returned to their hotel, where Christine said, “I would like to introduce you to Father.”

  “Is he here?” Chet asked.

  “No. In Marrakesh. But I promised to call him.”

  They phoned the Moroccan city, which lay many miles inland on a hot desert plain. When Dr. Cellier answered, Christine introduced the boys.

  “Ah, Frank, I have a cable from your father,” the doctor told him. “It came this morning.” He read it carefully. “Interpol identified fingerprints. Scott international thief. Born Frenchman. Speaks many languages, including Arabic.”

  Frank relayed their experience in Casablanca and the doctor said, “I do not like this. Your enemies must have been shadowing you. I suggest you check out of your hotel and try to evade them.”

  Frank thanked him, hung up, and told the others about his conversation.

  “If Scott speaks Arabic,” William reasoned, “he could be operating here in Morocco.”

  “Or, for that matter, anywhere in North Africa,” Christine added.

  Frank was thoughtful. “Your father is right,” he said. “Our enemies can strike any time. They know where we are. Let’s leave this place and get rooms somewhere else.”

  “It is past check-out time for the day,” William noted.

  “We won’t check out. We’ll just leave quietly and let the concierge think we’re still in our rooms.”

  Christine knew of a small hotel nearby, on the way to the railroad station where they would take the train next morning. One at a time, the boys unobtrusively carried their luggage out through a back entrance and followed Christine. They took a large room with two double beds.

  “I am going to visit my aunt now,” Christine said when they were checked in. “I will see you tomorrow morning at ten.”

  After supper, the boys watched television in the lobby. A French film was showing. Eventually they got bored since they could not follow the foreign language.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” Frank said. They went to their room, which looked out over the city.

  “We can see the Marhaba from here,” Chet noted. “Matter of fact, even the windows of our rooms.”

  As they skinned into their pajamas, the night sounds were interrupted by the strident hee-haw of sirens.

  “Boy, that’s a funny sound,” Chet said. “Is it fire engines?”

  William looked out the window and called to the others. “Look at the Marhaba!”

  The side of the hotel was illuminated by flood-lights.

  “Good night!” Frank exclaimed. “Smoke’s coming out of our windows!”

  CHAPTER XV

  The Spy at the Wall

  A PHONE call to the Marhaba Hotel revealed that the rooms occupied by the boys had been fire-bombed.

  “Two men broke into your quarters,” said the concierge. “We are very sorry. If your baggage was destroyed, we have insurance——”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Frank said. “We won’t be back.”

  “Frank, I am glad we followed Dr. Cellier’s advice,” William said. “We might have been killed had we stayed there!”

  “Which proves,” said Joe, “that we’ve come very close to the operation of the ticket thieves.”

  “Too close for comfort,” Chet added as he watched the smoke from the windows dissipate and the spotlights finally wink off.

  The boys decided to return to World Travel the next morning. “If someone’s there,” Frank said, “we might get a line on what’s doing.”

  After an early breakfast, they set off toward the back alleys. Proceeding carefully through the labyrinth, they arrived at the office.

  A sign in Arabic was posted against the door, which was locked. “This probably says ‘closed,’” William said.

  Joe noticed a woman dressed in a caftan, standing across the street. Her eyes, peering over the black veil followed their every move. Crouched directly above the boys on the rooftops was a man in a white burnoose. The woman sent him a hand signal.

  “Let’s get out of here before we’re attacked!” Chet urged.

  Frank agreed, and the boys retreated casually. At the hotel, Christine met them promptly at ten, bright faced with enthusiasm. When they told her what had happened, her eyes opened wide.

  “I think it is best to leave Casablanca right away,” she said. “At least in Marrakesh there will be some protection. My father is an influential man. By the way, I made reservations at the Hotel Manzur for you.”

  The boys thanked her, and they went to the railroad station. They boarded the train, took seats, and were soon rumbling eastward over the desert.

  “There will not be much to see until we reach our destination,” Christine said, looking out over the barren landscape. Sand, a few palm trees, camels, goats, and scrubby farms, no larger than an acre or two, flashed by.

  After a couple of hours a vendor arrived, selling sandwiches and drinks.

  “I thought you’d never come,” Chet said. He bought something for everybody.

  Christine put her head close to Frank’s and said, “See the man in the djellabah over there, on the other side?”

  The boy slowly moved his eyes in that direction. “The Arab eating the sandwich?” he asked.

  “Yes. Watch what he is doing with his right hand.”

  At first the boy saw nothing unusual, but then he noticed that the man was rolling a piece of bread into a tiny ball.

  Christine leaned close again. “He is not an Arab, Frank. He is a Frenchman. That is an idiosyncracy of the French, especially of the people who live in the Gueliz, the French quarter of Marrakesh.”

  “Another spy?” Frank asked.

  “Possibly.”

  When the fellow disappeared from his seat for a minute or two, Frank told the others, and they kept an eye on the man until a grove of palm trees and green lawns indicated that they had arrived at the Marrakesh station. The man jumped nimbly from the train and hurried off.

  “He kept his face well concealed, did he not?” Christine said.

  “It could have been that taxi driver,” William surmised.

  As the boys piled up their baggage on one side of the platform, Christine hailed two taxis. They were very small, and the young people had trouble squeezing into the narrow seats.

  “We will drive to your hotel first,” Christine said. “I picked the Manzur because it is quite close to our home.”

  As they neared the city, the wall that surrounded the ancient settlement loomed larger and larger. Located quite som
e distance apart were arched gates leading inside.

  “Our home is built right against the other side of the wall,” Christine explained as they approached one of the entrances.

  Just then Chet spied an Arab standing beside a camel, waving to tourists and pointing to the animal.

  “He’s selling rides!” Chet said. “I want to sit on the camel!”

  Christine asked their driver to stop, and the other cab pulled up in back.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “Try it.”

  The boys jumped out, smiling broadly, and paid the Arab. The beast lowered itself on his command, and Chet stepped aboard. With a great lurch, the animal’s back legs levered his rear into the air. Then the front legs unhinged as the camel stood up.

  The man led it around in a circle.

  “Whoopee!” Chet cried out.

  Then the others took turns riding the camel. Joe was the last in line. As he climbed onto the camel’s back, William drew Christine aside.

  “See that man against the wall? Is he the one from the train?”

  “I think so. Look at what he is doing!”

  The man had pulled a camera from his djellabah and was snapping a picture of Joe!

  “Maybe he took shots of all of you,” Christine said. She looked worried.

  William approached the man, but when the fellow saw him coming, he rose, turned, and disappeared in the crowd pushing through the gate.

  William returned to the others and told them about the incident.

  “What do you make of it, Frank?” he asked.

  “I think it’s bad news,” Frank replied. “No doubt he took those pictures for a reason.”

  The boys and Christine piled into the taxis again and went on to the Manzur Hotel. It was old-fashioned and roomy, and the mosaic tiles under their feet resounded as they walked to the concierge’s desk.

  Christine waited until they had put their bags into their large room, the French window of which looked out over a lovely garden. Then she said, “Now come and meet my family. It is only a short walk.”

  The Cellier home was located at the far end of the hotel’s extensive gardens. It was built of cement and red clay. On one side a stone stairway led to the top of the ramparts. “The view is beautiful from up there, especially at night,” Christine said.

  Inside, the travelers found a modern home with European decor, tastefully furnished. Dr. and Mrs. Cellier stood in the living room to meet them. Frank raised his eyebrows in surprise. No wonder, he thought, that Christine had such an odd and beautiful look. The doctor was an Oriental and his wife was a Frenchwoman.

  After introductions had been made, Dr. Cellier chuckled. “Did Fenton tell you I was Vietnamese?”

  “No,” Joe said.

  “Ah. Is that why you looked so surprised when you came in?” Cellier added with a wide grin.

  The boys liked Christine’s parents immediately. Mrs. Cellier was a charming woman with blond hair pulled back tightly.

  “Have a seat and relax,” she said in an accent that was much stronger than her daughter’s. Conversation bounced back and forth as the Hardys told the Celliers about their father’s work and their life in Bayport. Then Frank launched into a recital of the two cases that seemed to converge in Morocco.

  The Celliers showed a great deal of interest in the mask and the secret map. “My husband knows a lot about Sijilmasa,” Mrs. Cellier said.

  “Yes,” the doctor agreed. “I have been a student of North African history for years. The old city is buried, you know. Some day I would like to find it.”

  “Maybe we can search for it together,” Chet said enthusiastically.

  “Perhaps. I have been planning a holiday. We could rent jeeps and go on an expedition.”

  After an hour of animated conversation, the boys said good-by.

  “I have a music lesson late this afternoon, but I will take you sightseeing tomorrow morning,” Christine said. “How would you like to start with our souq?”

  “That’ll be great,” Frank said as they left.

  The boys spent the rest of the day swimming and diving in the hotel’s pool, and lounging under palm trees in the garden. The heat had been blistering. But in the evening, a breeze flowed out of the desert and a refreshing coolness settled upon the town.

  “It is like something out of the Arabian nights, is it not?” William said as they finished dinner.

  “Sure is,” Chet said. “All these exotic things, people, foods——” He yawned contentedly.

  Christine arrived the next morning during breakfast and chatted with them until they had finished. “Now remember what you have to say most in the souq,” she said.

  “Oo-la-la,” Chet said.

  The girl laughed. “And do you know ‘balik’? It means attention—get out of the way.”

  “We’ve learned that,” Joe said.

  The quintet went off on foot, deeply inhaling the fresh morning air as they traversed the circular driveway leading onto the street. Half a mile farther on they came to another inner gate, beside which loomed the minaret of a mosque.

  Passing through the gate, the boys were surprised to see a huge area comprising many acres. Part of it was a flat, open expanse, filled with a milling crowd, mostly in Arabic dress. On the left was a long, low, one-story enclosure.

  “What’s that?” asked Joe.

  “The souq,” Christine said. “Hundreds of stores open onto a lot of tiny lanes. They are all covered by slats of wood. And look over there!” She pointed to a circle of people gathered around a group of performers. “Story tellers and snake charmers. Arabs like to be entertained. See those jugglers from Nigeria? They have a ju-ju man with them today!”

  The boys looked at each other in amazement but said nothing as Christine continued. “We will go into the souq first. Later we can watch the acrobats.”

  Once inside, the Hardys understood the reason for the slatted covering. The midday sun beating down on the market would have been unbearable without some protection. Now the rays shone in tesselated patterns on the dirt floor.

  The aisles teemed with people. Customers wandered from stall to stall. Donkeys bearing produce pushed through the milling humanity. Shopkeepers, standing in front of their places, extolled their wares with rapid speech and gestures.

  “This seems like a madhouse,” Frank said as he walked in the lead with Christine.

  “To us it is quite orderly,” she said.

  “Hey, Chet. Here’s a sword place.” Joe pointed to a stall next to a rug bazaar.

  The boys stepped into the low, narrow store. Its walls were hung with scimitars, swords, be-jeweled daggers, and radiant hunting knives.

  The Americans, fascinated, examined the wares eagerly. The shopkeeper spoke French, and with Christine as an interpreter, they learned much about the exotic blades.

  Seemingly from nowhere, another salesman appeared. More loquacious than the first, he had the advantage of knowing some English. He took Frank by the arm and led him deeper and deeper into the store.

  “The best things are in back!” he said.

  Frank felt uneasy. When they reached the rear, the man pushed him through a doorway heavily hung with a curtain of beads.

  Before the boy could protest, he found himself facing an Arab holding a magnificent dagger. The fellow grinned and approached the boy!

  CHAPTER XVI

  Ghost in the Souq

  INSTANTLY Frank assumed a judo defense posture. If the man were to lunge, he would be ready! The thought of calling out flashed through his mind, but if the Arab were an assassin, he could strike before help arrived.

  The boy emitted a low guttural challenge and watched for the slightest move from his adversary. But instead of the anticipated thrust, the man smiled benignly.

  “You are not in danger,” he said. “This part of the shop is a special place. It contains nothing but my very best merchandise.”

  He proffered the dagger and Frank took it in his hand. The blade, curved slightly, w
as finely honed and the haft was inlaid with beautiful copper work. Then the salesman showed him the sheath. It was made of leather and copper, intricately patterned in a red-and-blue design.

  “This you will find nowhere else,” the shopkeeper said. “But for you a special price.”

  When he quoted it, Frank remembered Christine’s advice. “La!” he said. “Too much.”

  “Ah, you speak Arabic,” the man said, nodding his head in appreciation. “You know something about our country. We will reduce the price. Only for you.”

  But the twenty percent reduction, Frank reasoned, was not enough. They haggled back and forth, and every time Frank turned to walk away, the man clutched his arm and lowered the price by a few more dollars.

  Finally Frank made a counter-offer of half the original price. The shopkeeper rolled his eyes up, said his children would starve if he carried on business this way, and ended by saying, “Good. We have a bargain.”

  To make sure, Frank walked back into the main part of the shop to consult Christine. She agreed that the dagger was worth that much, and that it was a good buy.

  Frank paid and showed his purchase to the others. “I’m going to hang it on the wall of our room as a memento of Marrakesh,” he said.

  As they stepped out of the shop, Joe asked Christine where the leather store was located. She said it was not far ahead. They continued pushing through the crowd, and as the sun rose higher, the colors of the interior became even more vivid. Displayed in front of a boutique was a sky-blue djellabah with a black face veil, also a shocking pink one with a purple veil.

  William remarked that the clothes concealed the wearer’s figures, so their identity was unknown.

  “And what about the face?” Chet said. “All you can go by are the eyes. And every girl seems to have big brown eyes.”

  Joe laughed. “You came here to do a bit of detective work. Remember? Don’t worry about the girls.”

  They stopped at another shop and watched a group of men sewing the embroidered caftans worn by women and adding gold braids and trimmings of colored sequins.

  “Hey,” Joe said, “if we get one for Mother, do you think she’d wear it?”