Arabesque by Geoffrey Household Page B

waiting in Furney’s office and watched suspiciously by his duty clerk. Prayle gave him a sinister nod as from one conspirator to another, for he rejoiced in Montagne.
Those preposterous boots, the bush shirt, the very short (and somewhat ragged) shorts were so entirely right; if Montagne’s gaunt figure had to be clothed in uniform, though built for the
shabby tie and jacket of the agitator, then the uniform should have, as it did, the irregularity of the barricades.
    “
Mon vieux,
you do not look as if you had enjoyed your dinner,” said Furney.
    “Eating,” Montagne answered, “is an unwelcome interlude when there is no opportunity to smoke.”
    He detached from his lower lip a yellow scrap of paper, and helped himself to another cigarette from the box which Furney offered.
    “Otherwise,
ç
a va
?”
    “It would if not for the rats. They are worse than Loujon.”
    “Which rats?”
    “Nibbling away our sacred movement—all these damned Catholic, royalist, fascist sons of bitches. The poor general!”
    “Well, he’s a Catholic himself,” Furney remarked.
    “An exception, my dear man! God, it’s the dictatorship of the Church and the Families over again! But you must not make me talk politics, Guy, when I have come with a very serious
complaint.”
    “Official?”
    “Not yet.”
    “Thank God! Well, let’s have it.”
    “I tell you, it is serious,” said Montagne severely. “Was it not agreed that the French should collect all the arms in the Lebanon? We need them, you know.”
    “That was the arrangement,” Furney admitted. “We don’t like your methods, but it’s your funeral.”
    “Bah! These Arabs only understand force. What I want to know is: why the devil are you collecting arms yourselves?”
    “We are not,” Furney replied positively. “Have our Australians been up to something?”
    “Nothing! They are brave children, your Australians, and more honest than you.” Montagne drew a sheet of typed paper from his wallet. “No, it’s the R.A.O.C.”
    “Ordnance? Well, they would be the right people to receive any arms, but only on orders. May I see?”
    Montagne handed him the sheet. It read:
    This is to certify that Sheikh WADIAH GHORAIB of BEIT CHABAB has delivered to me for surrender to the proper authorities:
     

    French Army Marks
    Furney passed the receipt over to Prayle.
    “First impression—quick!” he demanded.
    It was signed by a major with the usual illegible and fairly cultured scrawl. The orderly room stamp was genuine. The paper, in size and texture, was a Stationery issue; the typewriter, an army
Oliver. The descriptions of the arms did not seem to have quite the professional exactitude of the Ordnance at leisure, but then the whole transaction was unprofessional.
    “Stage property,” said Prayle.
    “Why?”
    Sergeant Prayle hated to take the sense out of his own remarks by explanations.
    “Just in the noggin.”
    “How did you make Sheikh Wadiah give up his receipt?” Furney asked Montagne.
    “He replaced it in his pocket a little carelessly.”
    “But who on earth and … how much was he paid?”
    “He said that a detachment of British soldiers took the arms away in a truck and that the British Secret Service knew all about it,” answered Montagne primly.
    “How many times shall I have the honour to point out to you,
mon viex
,” asked Furney, exasperated, “that there is no such thing? There are various departments of
Intelligence with various jobs to do, just as in your army or any other, and some of their work is naturally secret. But anyone who blathers about the British Secret Service is immediately
suspicious. I permit myself to advise you to concentrate on facts.”
    “
Mon cher
,” said Montagne, unconcerned, “you are not now lecturing little bourgeois in your damned school.”
    “It’s not a damned school. It’s Cambridge University.”
    “
Je m’en fous!
If you want the facts, you must listen instead of interrupting. Are you