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especially; he felt useless and ineffective, and only too often, wrung with pity for misery he was helpless to relieve. This time he had a valid excuse. “I saw someone I want to talk with,” he explained. “I’ll join you in a bit.” “All right.” She didn’t ask who; her mind was already inside the building, anticipating the duties that awaited her. He went back along the lane, kicking a dead rat out of his path and trying to avoid the deeper pools of slime. The man he had seen was sitting on a bench outside one of the more pretentious cribs. He was asleep, his head fallen back and his mouth open. The flies crawling across his face did not disturb his slumber; he was used to them. Ramses nudged him and he looked up, blinking. “Salaam aleikhum, Brother of Demons. So you are back, and it is true what they say — that the Brother of Demons appears out of thin air, without warning.” Ramses didn’t point out that Musa had been sound asleep when he approached; his reputation for being on intimate terms with demons stood him in good stead with the more superstitious Egyptians. “You have come down in the world since I last saw you, Musa. Did el-Gharbi dismiss you?” “Have you not heard?” The man’s dull eyes brightened a little. It was a matter of pride to be the first to impart information, bad or good, and he would expect to be rewarded. He looked as if he could use money. As a favorite of el-Gharbi he had been sleek and plump and elegantly dressed. The rags he wore now barely covered his slender limbs. “I will tell you,” he went on. “Sit down, sit down.” He shifted over to make room for Ramses. The latter declined with thanks. Flies were not the only insects infesting Musa and his clothes. “We knew the cursed British were raiding the houses and putting the women into prison,” Musa began. “They set up a camp at Hilmiya. But my master only laughed. He had too many friends in high places, he said. No one could touch him. And no one did — until one night there came two men sent by the mudir of the police himself, and they took my master away, still in his beautiful white garments. They say that when Harvey Pasha saw him, he was very angry and called him rude names.” “I’m not surprised,” Ramses murmured. Harvey Pasha, commander of the Cairo police, was honest, extremely straitlaced, and rather stupid. He probably hadn’t even been aware of el-Gharbi’s existence until someone — Russell? — pointed out to him that he had missed the biggest catch of all. Ramses could only imagine the look on Harvey’s face when el-Gharbi waddled in, draped in women’s robes and glittering with jewels. Musa captured a flea and cracked it expertly between his thumbnails. “He is now in Hilmiya, my poor master, and I, his poor servant, have come to this. The world is a hard place, Brother of Demons.” Even harder for the women whose only crime had been to do the bidding of their pimps and their clients — many of them British and Empire soldiers. Ramses couldn’t honestly say he was sorry for el-Gharbi, but he was unhappily aware that the situation had probably worsened since the procurer had been arrested. El-Gharbi had ruled the Red Blind district with an iron hand and his women had been reasonably well treated; he had undoubtedly been replaced by a number of smaller businessmen whose methods were less humane. The filthy trade could never be completely repressed. “My master wishes to talk with you,” Musa said. “Do you have a cigarette?” So Musa had been on the lookout for him, and had put himself deliberately in Ramses’s way. Somewhat abstractedly Ramses offered the tin. Musa took it, extracted a cigarette, and calmly tucked the tin away in the folds of his robe. “How am I supposed to manage that?” Ramses demanded. “Surely you have only to ask Harvey Pasha.” “I have no influence with Harvey Pasha, and if I did, I wouldn’t be inclined to spend it on favors for el-Gharbi. Does