The False Door aka Adventure in Cairo

This is the story of a man who never belonged anywhere, whose backyard is the world, whose ways of life are the dreams of escape for those who want action but never find it. The man John Steele at Ventura.

The capital of Egypt, almost two million people, situated on the Nile Delta, Cairo, where the Arabs routed their Romans in 641 AD, and the modern Egyptians booted Peruk in 1952. Chiro, the city with its hand out, where there's a beggar, a rogue, a repettler every three feet, and wherever you turn a pickpocket.

Yeah, Chiro, where the natives have that native intelligence, a walk around with buttoned-down flaps on their pockets. But oh, those women of Chiro, many of them the most beautiful in the world. And so I get the chiral whenever I can, especially when a friend wires, prize relics stolen, need assistance.

I was lying on my back, not moving a muscle, trying to relax, trying not to move so the sweat wouldn't run in streams along my body. But it didn't do much good. The bed felt like a wet mop under me and rivers of perspiration rolled off my forehead and filled up my ears.

I had a tall, cooling, suffering bars to her beside me. gin, brandy, mint, lime, lemon, orange, ginger ale, betters and ice, all thrown together. I'd rate 95 cents for it. And every penny was turning into sweat, quickly, inefficiently.

I stared over the ceiling high, distant, almost 25 feet above my head. It wasn't very interesting, and the flies kept getting in my line of vision anyway. There seemed to be thousands of them, buzzing, diving, sweeping, crawling on my hands, my shoulders, my face.