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Updated: May 14, 2025
At every new item she urged Rick to bring her one just like it. "I'll rent a jet just to carry my luggage," he said, grinning. "You've already ordered a ton, and I get only sixty-six pounds." Bartouki came to his rescue. "Let me show you a new tourist attraction. It just arrived by messenger this morning." He went to a cabinet, opened it, and produced a stone cat.
There was only one possibility, which Rick and Scotty had considered before, that the cat contained something more than the piece of lead Bartouki had described. But there was no seam in the cat, no sign that it was anything but a solid casting. Still, Rick reasoned, if a piece of lead could be cast into it, so could something of greater value. He had it!
"I think you've got something," Scotty agreed. "Bartouki could have mailed the cat, but for some reason he wanted a messenger ..." "... and we walked right into it," Rick finished. "Chances are that's why he showed us the cat in the first place." "Barby had the bright idea," Scotty reminded. "Bartouki wasn't the one who suggested it." "He didn't have to," Rick pointed out.
You could not buy a genuine Egyptian tapestry, or a stone carving from a tomb. Such things are beyond price. They are national treasures. But you can buy very attractive and authentic reproductions." "The people of Cairo wouldn't want reproductions, would they?" Barby asked. "So they have to be made just for tourists." "And for export," Bartouki added.
Hayret Ahmed was at the home of an Egyptian importer named Mohammed Bartouki. Barby, the boys, and Winston rang the bell of a brownstone house on New York's Upper East Side promptly at noon. Winston had checked with his host by phone, and his request that he be allowed to bring his young associates to meet Bartouki had been met with enthusiastic pleasure.
Allah protect you." Moustafa handed the phone to Rick. The boy said quickly, "Yes, sir?" "My dear boy, I am very upset by this affair." Bartouki sounded agitated, even across the miles. "Kemel will try to find out what has been going on. Meanwhile, please give him the model. And accept my apologies for getting you into such a situation, and my thanks for your loyalty to our model cat.
"I just don't think getting in touch with Bartouki is the right thing to do. I don't know why. Call it a hunch." Scotty had a deep respect for Rick's hunches. They had a way of turning out to be right. He remembered a description of a hunch Rick had once used and repeated it. "A hunch is only a conscious conclusion based on subconscious data you don't know you have. Isn't that about it?"
Bartouki described Cairo and promised that he would present them with guidebooks to be read on the way over. He told them about things to do in the ancient city, and listed places that were "musts" for tourists. They included the step pyramid at Sakkarah, the Egyptian Museum, the mosque of Sultan Hassan, and the mosque and college of El Azhar, founded in the ninth century.
There seemed to be no solution except to turn the cat over. Bartouki had approved, and the cat was his. Much as the boys hated to let go of an unsolved mystery, there wasn't any other way. Hassan drove Rick back into town, with the boy sitting in back. He would have preferred to be in the front seat with the dragoman, but the taxi meter took up too much room.
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