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about to fall on his knees, when Apollo clamped a hand over his mouth and dragged him behind the cargo.
    "Quiet." He released the little steward and flipped his eye-patch down into place, which made Haffe shake his head in bewilderment. "It's a disguise." Haffe still looked baffled. "I'm incognito. Hiding.
    Cachant ." The light finally dawned.
    "Did you see Miss Merchant leave?" Apollo said.
    "Meez Mer-chant? Oui ." He pointed to where the carriage had stood. " Avec sa pappa ."
    "He's not her papa, my friend," Apollo's nose curled. "Not by a long shot."

Chapter Five
    The Frenchman's carriage sent people scrambling for open doorways as it barreled through the narrow, deeply shaded streets of Casablanca. The air was hot and laden with the scents of dust, dung, and the dyed wool that hung in colorful skeins from lines strung across the streets. When the way broadened, a breeze dipped toward them, bringing scents of drying jute, foods cooking on charcoal braziers, and newly tanned leather.
    Exotic sounds floated from the buildings they passed: the rhythmic thud of treadles from rug-weavers'

    shops and the pling of stringed instruments floating out of cafes, the calls of food vendors in the markets.
    The turbans and sun-bronzed faces of the men; the jingling jewelry and veiled faces of the women…
    stalls packed with fabrics, slippers, and beaten brass… pushcarts overflowing with olives, oranges, dates, and melons… everything looked so foreign . And felt so foreign. Especially the heat.
    Her sensible demicorset, as Smith predicted, seemed to be squeezing her breathless. She fanned her reddened face with her hand and stifled the memory of his telling her she should abandon the garment and the senseless propriety it represented.
    Arrogant man. She hadn't asked for his advice. Thank heavens he hadn't been on the dock to see her lose her bags before she set foot on Moroccan soil.
    "Will we pass the British Consulate en route?" she asked her benefactor.
    "The British Consul maintains a house near the Bab el-Marrakech , but he spends most of his time in the city of Rabat," he informed her. "If you would contact him, you may have to wait for some time, mademoiselle. It is sometimes weeks between his visits."
    "B-but, I was given to understand that there was a permanent consulate here." She clamped her hands together in her lap and tried not to perspire.
    "London"—LaCroix's dark eyes glinted with amusement—"is very far from Casablanca, oui ?"
    She forced what must have been a weak smile.
    She hadn't been in Casablanca more than an hour and she had already had her luggage stolen, learned that her carefully drawn plans were probably based on Foreign Office fictions, and fallen into the debt of a Frenchman who was looking at her as if she were a well-braised brisket.
    Her spirits sank further when they drew up in front of the Hotel Marrat and she discovered her proposed lodging was a dusky stuccoed structure with patches of bare bricks showing through a crumbling surface, tile work in dire need of repair, and iron railings that gave a poor illusion of balconies beneath the upper-level windows. The paint was missing from the lower half of a pair of battered front doors that opened at the level of the street itself. She took a deep breath and prayed that the soured milk and moldy leather smells that assaulted her weren't coming from the hotel.
    The owner of the Marrat, a gaunt, pasty-faced fellow dressed in a rumpled western suit and fez, hurried out to greet them the instant their carriage stopped. He bowed and smiled excessively, revealing a number of missing teeth and a starched collar that was all but blackened with oily dirt. As Monsieur LaCroix escorted her inside the hotel lobby her nose reported both the good news and the bad. The soured milk smell, thankfully, had remained in the street, but the moldy leather smell was very much a part of the Marrat.
    Mister LaCroix—"Ferdi" as he insisted Abigail call him—instructed the