Re-enter Fu-Manchu by Sax Rohmer

Products Co.”) and found a smart young Jewess seated before a typewriter.
    She greeted him with a brilliant smile. Many women greeted Brian that way.
    “Excuse me,” Brian began, “but I’m looking for someone called Mr. Ahmad. Can you—”
    The smile was wiped out. Dark eyes challenged him. “I’m sorry. There’s no one of that name here.”
    “I’m sorry, too, for troubling you. But, you see, I have a letter from him here”—he produced Ahmad’s letter—“and it has this address on it.”
    The dark eyes melted a little. “There are many offices in the building. Perhaps someone else could help you.”
    “I’ll try.” He turned to go.
    The girl said more softly, “Try the Aziza Cigarette Corporation, third floor. They’ve been here longer than we have. They may know. But don’t say I sent you.”
    Brian swung around, and met the brilliant smile again. “Thanks a million!” He gave her a happy grin.
    He was really getting somewhere. The cigarettes he had bought from old Achmed es-Salah were called “Aziza.”

CHAPTER FIVE

    T he office of the Azîza Cigarette Corporation was, if anything, even smaller than the one he had just left. An Egyptian youth, incredibly cross-eyed, looked out through a little window. What Brian could see of the room behind this window seemed to indicate that it was totally unfurnished.”
    “Can I see Mr. Ahmad?” he inquired.
    The young Egyptian looked blank, “Nobody here.”
    “Are you expecting Mr. Ahmad?”
    “Don’t know him, sir. Don’t know any of the gentlemen.”
    Brian frowned irritably. “What do you mean? You must know who employs you.”
    “Why for sure, sir. Mr. Quintero pays me to come here every morning and collect the letters. This business it has moved to Alex. This office is for renting.”
    He looked proud of having given so much information.
    “Who’s Mr. Quintero?”
    “The landlord, sir.”
    “Is he in the building?”
    “No, sir. He lives in Gezira. I go there now.”
    Brian turned abruptly and walked out. This game of blind man’s buff was beginning to get on his nerves. He couldn’t very well call at every office in the building and inquire for Mr. Ahmad.
    When he went out to the street he nearly fell over an old beggar seated on the ground right beside the doorway. This ragged object stood up.
“Bakshîsh,”
he whined, his hand stretched out.
    Brian walked across to the waiting
arabîyeh.
    “Do you know the house of the Sherîf Mohammed Ibn el-Ashraf?” he asked the driver.
    The man looked startled. “Yes, sir. But this house not open to visitors.”
    “Never mind. I want to go there.”
    Brian turned to open the door. But the old mendicant had it open already. “
Bakshîsh
, my gentleman.”
    Again the eager hand was extended. Brian threw him a coin as the cab was driven away.
    Before long he found himself once more in the odorous, noisy, narrow streets of the Oriental city. Here were the hawkers of fruit, vegetables, lemon water, and what not, intoning their time-worn cries, descendants of those who had hawked the same wares and cried the same calls when Harûn-al-Raschîd ruled Egypt from Baghdad.
    Before the iron gate his driver pulled up. “This is house of the Seyyîd Mohammed.”
    Brian got out and tried the gate. It was locked. He could see nothing resembling a doorbell, and was wondering what to do next when he realized that a man had come out of the house and was ponderously approaching.
    He was a fat fellow with a large, shiny face expressionless as a side of bacon. He wore native dress and a large white turban. Standing close to the locked gate, he said something in a fluty voice that Brian didn’t understand.
    “I want to see the Sherîf Mohammed,” Brian told him.
    The fat man shook his head, turned, and slowly walked back again.
    Brian rattled the bars angrily. “Did you hear me?” he shouted.
    The fat man went in, but came out almost at once with another man, and pointed to the gate. The second man,