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they might tell lies for his sake, their servants would surely talk. Furthermore, he could not really trust them, for when his stepfather had died, Alex as the oldest son had got the house as well as a share of the inheritance, although he was European and an adopted, rather than natural, son. There had been some bitterness, and meetings with lawyers; Alex had stood firm and the others had never really forgiven him.
    He considered checking in to Shepheard’s Hotel. Unfortunately the police were sure to think of that, too: Shepheard’s would by now have the description of the Assyut murderer. The other major hotels would have it soon. That left the pensions. Whether they were warned depended on how thorough the police wanted to be. Since the British were involved, the police might feel obliged to be meticulous. Still, the managers of small guesthouses were often too busy to pay a lot of attention to nosy policemen.
    He left the Garden City and headed downtown: The streets were even more busy and noisy than when he had left Cairo. There were countless uniforms—not just British but Australian, New Zealand, Polish, Yugoslav, Palestinian, Indian and Greek. The slim, pert Egyptian girls in their cotton frocks and heavy jewelry competed successfully with their red-faced, dispirited European counterparts. Among the older women it seemed to Wolff that fewer wore the traditional black robe and veil. The men still greeted one another in the same exuberant fashion, swinging their right arms outward before bringing their hands together with a loud clap, shaking hands for at least a minute or two while grasping the shoulder of the other with the left hand and talking excitedly. The beggars and peddlers were out in force, taking advantage of the influx of naïve Europeans. In his galabiya Wolff was immune, but the foreigners were besieged by cripples, women with fly-encrusted babies, shoeshine boys and men selling everything from secondhand razor blades to giant fountain pens guaranteed to hold six months’ supply of ink.
    The traffic was worse. The slow, verminous trams were more crowded than ever, with passengers clinging precariously to the outside from a perch on the running board, crammed into the cab with the driver and sitting cross-legged on the roof. The buses and taxis were no better: there seemed to be a shortage of vehicle parts, for so many of the cars had broken windows, flat tires and ailing engines, and were lacking headlights or windshield wipers. Wolff saw two taxis—an elderly Morris and an even older Packard—which had finally stopped running and were now being drawn by donkeys. The only decent cars were the monstrous American limousines of the wealthy pashas and the occasional prewar English Austin. Mixing with the motor vehicles in deadly competition were the horse-drawn gharries, the mule carts of the peasants, and the livestock—camels, sheep and goats—which were banned from the city center by the most unenforceable law on the Egyptian statute book.
    And the noise—Wolff had forgotten the noise.
    The trams rang their bells continuously. In traffic jams all the cars hooted all the time, and when there was nothing to hoot at they hooted on general principles. Not to be outdone, the drivers of carts and camels yelled at the tops of their voices. Many shops and all cafés blared Arab music from cheap radios turned to full volume. Street vendors called continually and pedestrians told them to go away. Dogs barked and circling kites screamed overhead. From time to time it would all be swamped by the roar of an airplane.
    This is my town, Wolff thought; they can’t catch me here.
    There were a dozen or so well-known pensions catering for tourists of different nationalities: Swiss, Austrian, German, Danish and French. He thought of them and rejected them as too obvious. Finally he remembered a cheap lodging house run by nuns at Bulaq, the port district. It catered mainly for the