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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/13498-0.txt b/13498-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..1b45313 --- /dev/null +++ b/13498-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9712 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13498 *** + +THE FORTIETH DOOR + +by + +MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY + + +AUTHOR OF _The Wine of Astonishment_, etc. + +1920 + + + + + + + +TO +ARTHUR MILLS CORWIN + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + I. A RASH PROMISE + II. MASKS AND MASKERS + III. IN THE PASHA'S PALACE + IV. EXPLANATIONS + V. AT THE GARDEN GATE + VI. A SECRET OF THE SANDS + VII. TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT + VIII. TEWFICK RECEIVES + IX. A WEDDING PRESENT + X. THE RECEPTION + XI. THE FORTY DOORS + XII. THE UNINVITED GUEST + XIII. THE BEY RETURNS + XIV. WITHIN THE WALLS + XV. UNDERGROUND + XVI. OUT OF THE DARKNESS + XVII. AZIZA + XVIII. AZIZA IS OFFENDED + XIX. AN INTERRUPTION + XX. BEYOND THE DOOR + XXI. MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL + XXII. FROM THE BAZAARS + XXIII. IN THE DESERT + XXIV. THE TOMB OF A KING + XXV. IN CAIRO + XXVI. THE PAINTED CASE + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A RASH PROMISE + + +He didn't want to go. He loathed the very thought of it. Every +flinching nerve in him protested. + +A masked ball--a masked ball at a Cairo hotel! Grimacing through +peep-holes, self-conscious advances, flirtations ending in giggles! +Tourists as nuns, tourists as Turks, tourists as God-knows-what, all +preening and peacocking! + +Unhappily he gazed upon the girl who was proposing this horror as a +bright delight. She was a very engaging girl--that was the mischief +of it. She stood smiling there in the bright, Egyptian sunshine, gay +confidence in her gray eyes. He hated to shatter that confidence. + +And he had done little enough for her during her stay in Cairo. One +tea at the Gezireh Palace Hotel, one trip to the Sultan al Hassan +Mosque, one excursion through the bazaars--not exactly an orgy of +entertainment for a girl from home! + +He had evaded climbing the Pyramids and fled from the ostrich farm. +He had withheld from inviting her to the camp on the edge of the +Libyan desert where he was excavating, although her party had shown +unmistakable signs of a willingness to be diverted from the beaten +path of its travel. + +And he was not calling on her now. He had come to Cairo for supplies +and she had encountered him by chance upon a corner of the crowded +Mograby, and there promptly she had invited him to to-night's ball. + +"But it's not my line, you know, Jinny," he was protesting. "I'm so +fearfully out of dancing--" + +"More reason to come, Jack. You need a change from digging up ruins +all the time--it must be frightfully lonely out there on the desert. +I can't think how you stand it." + +Jack Ryder smiled. There was no mortal use in explaining to Jinny +Jeffries that his life on the desert was the only life in the world, +that his ruins held more thrills than all the fevers of her tourist +crowds, and that he would rather gaze upon the mummied effigy of any +lady of the dynasty of Amenhotep than upon the freshest and fairest +of the damsels of the present day. + +It would only tax Jinny's credulity and hurt her feelings. And he +liked Jinny--though not as he liked Queen Hatasu or the little +nameless creature he had dug out of a king's ante-room. + +Jinny was an interfering modern. She was the incarnation of +impossible demands. + +But of course there was no real reason why he should not stop over +and go to the dance. + + * * * * * + +Ten minutes later, when she had extracted his promise and abandoned +him to the costumers, he was scourging his weakness. + +He had known better! Very well, then, let him take his medicine. Let +him go as--here he disgustedly eyed the garment that the Greek was +presenting--as Little Lord Fauntleroy! He deserved it. + +Shudderingly he looked away from the pretty velvet suit; he scorned +the monk's robes that were too redolent of former wearers; he +rejected the hot livery of a Russian mujik; he flouted the banality +of the Pierrot pantaloons. + +Thankfully he remembered McLean. Kilts, that was the thing. Tartans, +the real Scotch plaids. Some use, now, McLean's precious +sporrans.... He'd look him up at once. + +Out of the crowded Mograby he made his way on foot to the Esbekeyih +quarters where the streets were wider and emptier of Cairene +traffickers and shrill itinerates and laden camels and jostling +donkeys. + +It was a glorious day, a day of Egypt's blue and gold. The sky was a +wash of water color; the streets a flood of molten amber. A little +wind from the north rustled the acacias and blew in his bronzed face +cool reminders of the widening Nile and dancing waves. + +He remembered a chap he knew, who had a sailing canoe--but no, he +was going to get a costume for a fool ball! + +Disgustedly he turned into the very modern and official-looking +residence that was the home of his friend, Andrew McLean, and the +offices of that far-reaching institution, the Agricultural Bank. + +A white-robed, red-sashed and red-fezed houseboy led him across the +tiled entrance into the long room where McLean was concluding a +conference with two men. + +"Not the least trace," McLean was saying. "We've questioned all our +native agents--" + +Afterwards Ryder remembered that indefinite little pause. If the two +men had not lingered--if McLean had not remembered that he was an +excavator--if chance had not brushed the scales with lightning +wings--! + +"Ever hear of a chap called Delcassé, Paul Delcassé, a French +excavator?" McLean suddenly asked of him. "Disappeared in the desert +about fifteen years ago." + +"He was reported, monsieur, to have died of the fever," one of the +men explained. + +McLean introduced him as a special agent from France. His companion +was one of the secretaries of the French legation. They were trying +every quarter for traces of this Delcassé. + +Ryder's memory darted back to old library shelves. He saw a thin, +brown volume, almost uncut.... + +"He wrote a book on the Tomb of Thi," he said suddenly. "Paul +Delcassé--I remember it very well." + +Now that he thought of it, the memory was clear. It was one of those +books that had whetted his passion for the past, when his student +mind was first kindling to buried cities and forgotten tombs and all +the strange store and loot of time. + +Paul Delcassé. He didn't remember a word of the book, but he +remembered that he had read it with absorption. And now the special +agent, delighted at the recognition, was talking eagerly of the +writer. + +"He was a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance +to his generation--and he becomes so now through the whim of a +capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time +she has decided to make active inquiries." + +"But you said that Delcassé had died--" + +"He left a wife and child. Her letters of her husband's death +reached his relatives in France, then nothing more. They feared that +the same fever--but nothing, positively, was known.... A sad story, +monsieur.... This Delcassé was young and adventurous and an ardent +explorer. An ardent lover, too, for he brought a beautiful French +wife to share the hazards of his expedition--" + +"An ardent idiot," thrust in McLean unfeelingly. "Knocking a woman +about the desert.... Not much chance of a clue after all these +years," he concluded with a very British air of dismissal. + +But the French agent was not to be sundered from the American who +remembered the book of Delcassé. + +From his pocket he brought a leather case and from the case a large +and ornate gold locket. + +"His picture, monsieur." He pressed the spring and offered Ryder the +miniature. "It was done in France before he returned on that last +trip, and was left with the aunt. It is said to be a good likeness." + +Ryder looked down upon the young face presented to his gaze with a +feeling of sympathy for this unlucky searcher of the past who had +left his own secret in the sands he had come to conquer--sympathy +mingled with blank wonder at the insanity which had brought a woman +with it.... + +McLean couldn't understand a man's doing it. + +Jack Ryder couldn't understand a man's _wanting_ to do it. Love to +Ryder was incomprehensible idiocy. Woman, as far as he was +concerned, had never been created. She was still a spectacle, an +historical record, an uncomprehended motive. + +"Nice looking chap," he commented briefly, fingering the curious old +case as he handed it back. + +"I'll keep up the inquiries," McLean assured them, "but, as I said, +nothing will come of it.... It's been fifteen years. One more grain +lost in the desert of sand.... By luck, you know, you might just +stumble on something, some native who knew the story, but if fever +carried them off and the Arabs rifled their camp, as I fancy, +they'll jolly well keep their mouths shut. No white man will +know.... I don't advise your people to spend much money on the +search." + +"Odd, the inquiries we get," he commented to Ryder when the +Frenchmen had completed their courteous farewells. "You'd think the +Bank was a Bureau of Information! Yesterday there was a stir about +two crazy lads who are supposed to have joined the Mecca pilgrims in +disguise.... Of course our clerks are Copts and _do_ pick up a bit +and the Copts will talk.... I say, Jack, what are you doing?" he +broke off to demand in astonishment, for Jack Ryder had seated +himself upon a divan and was absorbedly rolling up his trouser leg. + +"The dear Egyptian flea?" he added. + +"Not at all. I am looking at my knees," said Ryder glumly. "I just +remembered that I have to show them to-night.... A ball--in +masquerade. At a hotel. Tourist crowd.... How do you think they'll +look with one of your Scotch plaidies atop?" he inquired feelingly. + +"Fascinating, Jack, fascinating," said the promptly sardonic McLean. +"You--at a masquerade!... So that's what brought you to town." + +He cocked a taunting eye at him. "Well, well, she must be a most +engaging young person--you'll be taking her out on the desert with +you now, like our friend Delcassé--a pleasant, retired spot for a +body to have his honeymoon ... no distractions of society ... +undiluted companionship, you might say.... Now what made you think +she'd like your knees?" he murmured contemplatively. "Aren't you +just a bit--previous? Apt to startle and frighten the lady?" + +"Oh, go on, go on," Ryder exhorted bitterly. "I like it. It's better +than I can do myself. Go on.... But while you are talking trot out +your tartans. Something clannish now--one of those ancestral rigs +that you are always cherishing ... Rich and red, to set off my dark, +handsome type." + +"Set off you'll be, Jack dear," promised McLean, dragging out a huge +chest. "Set off you'll be." + + * * * * * + +Set off he was. + +And a fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his +brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid +plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his +shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay +with big buckles. + +"Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the west," warbled McLean +merrily, as he straightened the shoulder pin of silver and Scotch +topaz. + +"Out of Hades," said Ryder, rather pointlessly, for he felt it was +Hades he was going into. + +Chiefly he was concerned with his knees and the striking contrast +between their sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his +face.... Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass.... Bony +hard, they flaunted their angles at every move.... He was grateful +that he was not a centipede. + + "Oh, 'twas all for my rightful king, + That I gaed o'er the border; + Twas all for-- + +"You didn't tell me her name, now, Jack." + +"Where's my mask?" Ryder was muttering. "I say, aren't there any +pockets in these confounded petticoats?" + +"In the sporran, man.... There!" McLean at last withheld his hand +from its handiwork. "Jock, you're a grand sight," he pronounced with +a special Scottish burr. "If ye dinna win her now--'Bonny Charley's +now awa,'" he sung as Ryder, with a last darkling look at his vivid +image, strode towards the door. + +"He's awa' all right--and he'll be back again as soon as he can make +it." + +With this cheerless anticipation of the evening's promise, the +departing one stalked, like an exiled Stuart, to his waiting +carriage. + +For a moment more McLean kept the ironic smile alive upon his lips, +as he listened to the rattle of the wheels and the harsh gutturals +of the driver, then the smile died as he turned back into the room. + +"Eh, but wouldn't you like it, though, Andy," he said to himself, +"if some girl now liked you enough to get you to go to one of those +damned things.... The lucky dog!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MASKS AND MASKERS + + +Moors and Juliets and Circassian slaves and Knights at Arms were +fast emerging from lift or cloak room, and confronting each other +through their masks in sheepish defiance and curiosity. Adventurous +spirits were circulating. Voices, lowered and guarded, began to +engage in nervous, tittering banter.... Laughter, belatedly +smothered, flared to betrayals.... + +The orchestra was playing a Viennese waltz and couple after couple +slipped out upon the floor. + +Lounging against the wall, Ryder glowered mockingly through his mask +holes at the motley. It was so exactly as he had foreseen. He was +bored--and he was going to be more bored. He was jostled--and he was +going to be more jostled. He was hot--and he was going to be hotter. + +Where in the world was Jinny Jeffries? He deserved, he felt, +exhilaratingly kind treatment to compensate him for this insanity. +He gazed about, and encountering a plump shepherdess ogling him he +stepped hastily behind a palm. + +He fairly stepped upon a very small person in black. A phantom-like +small person, with the black silk hubarah of the Mohammedan +high-caste woman drawn down to her very brows, and over the entire +face the black street veil. Not a feature visible. Not an eyebrow. +Not an eyelash, not a hint of the small person herself, except a +very small white, ringed hand, lifted as if in defense of his +clumsiness. + +"Sorry," said Ryder quickly, and driven by the instinct of +reparation. "Won't you dance?" + +A mute shake of the head. + +Well, his duty was done. But something, the very lack of all +invitation in the black phantom, made him linger. He repeated his +request in French. + +From behind the veil came a liquidly soft voice with a note of +mirth. "I understand the English, monsieur," it informed him. + +"Enough, then, to say yes in it?" + +The black phantom shook its head. "My education, alas! has only +proceeded to the N." Her speech was quaint, unhesitating, but oddly +inflected. "I regret--but I am not acquainted with the yes." + +A gay character for a masked ball! Indifference and pique swung +Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and +he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. + +He'd tell McLean just how darned captivating his outfit was, he +promised himself. + +And then he caught sight of a familiar pair of gray eyes smiling +over the white veil of an odalisque. Jinny Jeffries was wearing one +of the many costumes there that passed for Oriental, a glittering +assemblage of Turkish trousers and Circassian veils, silver shawls +and necklaces and wide bracelets banding bare arms. + +As an effect it was distinctly successful. + +"Ten thousand dinars could not pay for the chicken she has eaten," +uttered Ryder appreciatively in the language of the old slave +market, and stepped promptly ahead of a stout Pantalon. + +"Jack! You did come!" There was a note in the girl's voice as if she +had disbelieved in her good fortune. "Oh, and beautiful as Roderick +Dhu! Didn't I tell you that you could find something in that shop?" +she declared in triumph. + +"Do you imagine that this came out of a costumer's?" Ryder swung her +swiftly out in the fox trot before the crowd invaded the floor. "If +Andy McLean could hear you! Why this, this is the real thing, the +Scots-wha-hae-wi'-Wallace-bled stuff." + +"Who is Andy McLean?" + +"Andrew is Scotch, Single, and Skeptical. He is a great pal of mine +and also an official of the Agricultural Bank which is by way of +being a Government institution. These are the togs of his Hieland +Grandsire--" + +"Why didn't you bring him?" + +"Too dead, unfortunately--grandsires often are--" + +"I mean Andrew McLean." + +"It would take you, my dear Jinny, to do that. You brought me--and +I can believe in anything after the surprise of finding myself +here." + +Jinny Jeffries laughed. "If I could only believe what you say!" + +"Oh, you can believe anything I say," Jack obligingly assured her. +"I'm very careful what I _say_--" + +"I wish I were." + +"You'd have to be careful how you look, Jinny--and you can't help +that. The Lord who gave you red hair must provide the way to elude +its consequences.... I suppose the Orient isn't exactly a manless +Sahara for you?" + +She countered, her bright eyes intent, "Is it a girl-less Sahara for +you, Jack?" + +"The only woman I have laid a hand on, in kindness or unkindness, +died before Ptolemy rebuilt Denderah." + +"That's not right--" + +"No? And I thought it such a virtuous record!" + +"I mean," Jinny laughed, "that you really ought to be seeing more of +life--like to-night--" + +"To-night? Do you imagine this is a place for seeing life?" + +"Why not?" she retorted to the irony in his voice. "It's real +people--not just dead and gone things in cases with their lives all +lived. I don't care if you are going to be a very famous person, +Jack, you ought to see more of the world. You have just been buried +out here for two years, ever since you left college--" + +Beneath his mask the young man was smiling. A quaint feminine +notion, that life was to be encountered at a masquerade! This motley +of hot, over-dressed, wrought up idiots a human contact! + +Life? Living?... Thank you, he preferred the sane young English +officials ... the comradeship of his chief ... the glamor of his +desert tombs. + +Of course there was a loneliness in the desert. That was part of the +big feeling of it, the still, stealing sense of immensity reaching +out its shadowy hands for you.... Loneliness and restlessness.... +These tropic nights, when the stars burned low and bright, and the +hot sands seemed breathing.... Loneliness and restlessness--but they +gave a man dreams.... And were those dreams to be realized here? + +The music stopped and the ever-watchful Pantalon bore down upon +them. Abandoning Jinny to her fate, Ryder sought refuge and a +cigarette. + +The hall was crowded now; the ball was a flash of color, a whirl of +satins and spangles and tulle and gauze, gold and green and rose and +sapphire, gyrating madly in vivid projection against the black and +white stripes of the Moorish walls. The color and the music had sent +their quickening reactions among the throng. Masks were lending +audacity to mischief and high spirits. + +Three little Pierrettes scampered through the crowd, pelting right +and left with confetti and balloons, and two stalwart monks and a +thin Hamlet pursued them, keeping up the bombardment amid a great +combustion of balloons. A spangled Harlequin snatched his hands +full of confetti and darted behind a palm. + +It was the palm of the black phantom, the palm of Ryder's rebuff. +Perhaps the Harlequin had met repulse here, too, and cherished +resentment, not a very malicious resentment but a mocking feint of +it, for when Ryder turned sharply after him--oddly, he himself was +strolling toward that nook--he found Harlequin circling with mock +entreaties about the stubbornly refusing black domino. + +"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the +dance?" chanted Harlequin, with a shower of confetti flung at the +girl's averted face. + +There was such a shrinking of genuine fright in her withdrawal that +Ryder had a fine thrill of rescue. + +"My dance," he declared, laying an intervening hand on her muffled +arm. + +His tartan-draped shoulder crowded the Harlequin from sight. + +She raised her head. The black street veil was flung back, but a +black yashmak was hiding all but her eyes. Great dark eyes they +were, deep as night and soft as shadows, arched with exquisitely +curved brows like the sweep of wild birds' wings.... The most lovely +eyes that dreams could bring. + +A flash of relief shone through their childish fright. With sudden +confidence she turned to Ryder. + +"Thank you.... My education, monsieur, has proceeded to the Ts," she +told him with a nervous little laugh over her chagrin, drowned in a +burst of louder laughter from the discomfited Harlequin, who turned +on his heel and then bounded after fresh prey. + +"Shall we dance or promenade?" asked Ryder. + +Hesitatingly her gaze met his. Red and gold and green and blue +flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black +wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her +eye-lashes. + +"It is--if I have not forgotten how to dance," she murmured. "If it +is a waltz, perhaps--" + +It was a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution +before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within +the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her +young form. She was no more than a child.... No child, either, at a +masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight.... She was a leaf +blowing in the breeze.... She was the very breeze and the moonlight. + +And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over. Those moments had +seemed no more than one. + +"We must have the next," he said quickly. "What made you think you +had forgotten?" + +"It is nearly four years, monsieur, since I danced with a man." + +"With a man? You have been dancing with girls, then?" + +She nodded. + +"At a school?" + +"At a--a sort of school." The black domino laughed with ruefulness. +"At a very dull sort of school." + +"To which, I hope, you are not to return?" + +She made no answer to that--unless it was a sigh that slipped out. + +"At any rate," he said cheerily, "you are dancing to-night." + +"To-night--yes, to-night I am dancing!" There was triumph in her +young voice, triumph and faint defiance, and gayety again in her +changing eyes. + +Extraordinary, those eyes. Innocent, audacious, bewildering.... To +look down into them produced the oddest of excitement. + +He took off his mask. Masks were hindering things--he could see so +much better without. + +She, too, could see better--could see him better. Shyly, yet +intently, her gaze took note of him, of the clean, clear-cut young +face, bronzed and rather thin, of the dark hair that looked darker +against the scarlet cap, of the deep-set eyes, hazel-brown, that met +hers so often and were so full of contradictory things ... life ... +and humor ... and frank simplicity ... and subtle eagerness. + +He looked so young and confident and handsome.... + +"You are--a Scotchman?" slipped out from her black yashmak. + +"Only in costume. I am an American." + +She repeated it a little musingly. "I do not think I ever met an +American young man." She added, "I have met old ones--yes, and +middle-aged ones and the women--but a young one, no." + +"A retired spot, that school of yours," said Ryder appreciatively. +"You are French?" + +"That is for your imagination!" Teasingly, she laughed. "I am, +monsieur, only a black domino!" + +It was the loveliest laugh, Ryder was instantly aware, and the +loveliest voice in the world. Yes, and the loveliest eyes. + +He forgot the crowd. He forgot the heat. He forgot--alas!--Jinny +Jeffries. He was aware of an intense exhilaration, a radiant sense +of well-being, and--at the music's beginning--of a small palm +pressed again to his, a light form within his arm ... of shy, +enchanting eyes out from the shrouding black. + +"Do put that veil away," he youthfully entreated. "It's quite time. +The others are almost all unmasked." + +Her glance about the room returned to him with mock plaintiveness. +She shook her head as they spun lightly about a corner. + +"Perhaps, monsieur, I have an unfortunate nose." + +"My nerves are strong." + +"But why afflict them?" Prankishly her eyes sparkled up at him over +the black veil that made her a mystery. "Enjoy the present, +monsieur!" + +"Are you enjoying it?" + +Her lashes dropped, like black butterflies. She was a changeling of +a girl, veering from gayety to shyness.... Her gaze was now on her +wrist watch, a slender blaze of platinum and diamonds. + +"The present--yes," she said in a muffled little voice. + +He bent his head to hear her through the veil. + +A tormenting curiosity was assailing him. It had become not enough +to know that she was young and slender, with enchanting eyes and a +teasing spirit of wit.... Vaguely he had thought her to be French, +one of the quaint _jeunes filles_ so rarely taken traveling. + +But who was she? A child at her first ball? But what in the world +was she doing, back in the palms, away from her chaperon? + +He realized, even in the cloud of his fascination, that French +_jeunes filles_ are not wonted to lurk about palms at a ball. + +Was she a little Cinderella, then, slipping among the guests? Some +poor companion, stealing in for fun?... She was too young. And there +was that watch, that glitter of diamonds upon her wrist. + +"Have you just come to Cairo?" + +She shook her head. "For some time--I have been here." + +"Up the Nile yet?" + +"The Nile--no, monsieur." + +"But you are going?" + +"That--that I do not know. Sometime, perhaps." + +She sounded guarded.... He hurried into revelations. + +"I am staying not far from Cairo, myself. I am an excavator--on an +expedition from an American museum." + +"Ah, you dig?" + +"Well, not personally.... But the expedition digs.... We've had some +bully finds." + +"And you came from America--to dig in the sands?" The black domino +laughed softly. "For how long, monsieur?" + +"This is my second year." + +Still laughing, she shook her shrouded little head at him. "But I +cannot understand! What wonderful thing do you hope to find--what +buried secret--?" + +"Nothing half as wonderful as to know who you are," he said boldly. + +"That, too, is--is buried, monsieur!" + +"But not beyond discovery," he told her very gayly and confidently, +and danced the music out. + +As the last strains died, they paused for an instant as if the spell +still bound them, then his arms fell slowly away, and he heard the +girl draw a quick, startled breath. Her eyes sped to that tiny, +blazing watch; when she lifted them he thought he surprised a gleam +of panic. + +"How fast is an hour!" she said with an excited little laugh. "Time +is a--a very sudden thing!" + +Sudden, indeed! How long since he had been a badly bored, impatient +young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he +had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as +life? How long since he had looked into a pair of dark disquieting +eyes ... listened to a gay little voice.... + +Many important things in life happen suddenly. Juliet happened very +suddenly to Romeo. Romeo happened as suddenly to Juliet. + +But Jack Ryder was not remembering anything about Romeo and Juliet. +He was watching that glance steal to the wrist watch again. + +Then, as if with a determination of the spirit, they smiled up at +him. + +"Monsieur the American," said the black domino, "you have been most +kind to an--an incognita--of a masque. I hope that you dig out of +your sands all the secrets that you most desire." + +"You sound as if you were saying good-bye," said Jack Ryder with +quick denial in his blood. + +The smile in her eyes flickered. + +"Perhaps I have kept you too long from the other guests." + +He shook his head. "They don't exist." + +"Ah! I will give you the chance to say such nice things to them." + +"But I never say nice things--unless I mean them!" + +"Never--monsieur?" + +"Never. I am very careful what I say," he assured her, even as he +had assured another girl, in what different meaning, hours or +centuries before. "You can believe anything that I say." + +"A young man of character! Perhaps that goes with the Scotch +costume. I have read the Scots are a noble people." + +"They haven't a thing on the Americans. You must know me better and +discover--" + +But again her eyes had gone, almost guiltily, to that watch. And +when she raised them again they were not smiling but very strangely +resolved. + +"Monsieur, it is so hot--if you would get me a glass of sherbet?" + +"Certainly." Convention brought out the assent; convention turned +him about and marched him dutifully toward the crowded table she +indicated. + +But something deeper than convention, some warning born of that +too-often consulted watch and that strange look in her eyes, that +uneasy fear and swift resolve, turned him quickly about again. + +Other couples had strolled between them. He hurried through and +stepped back among the palms. + +The place was empty. The black domino was gone. + + * * * * * + +He wasted one minute in assuring himself that she was not hidden in +some corner, not mingled with the crowd. But the niche was deserted +as a rifled nest. Then his eyes spied the door that the green +decorations had conspired to hide and he wrenched it open. + +He found himself on a little balcony overlooking the hotel garden. +He knew the place in daytime--palms and shrubs and a graveled walk +and painted chairs where he had drunk tea with Jinny and watched a +Russian tourist beautifully smoking cigarettes. + +Now the place was strange. Night and a crescent moon had wrought +their magic, and the garden was a mystery of velvet dusks and ivory +pallors. The graveled path ran glimmering beneath the magnolias. +Over the wall's blankness the eucalyptus defined its crooked lines +against the blue Egyptian sky. + +No living thing was there ... nothing ... or did that shadow stir? +There, just at the path's end. + +Ryder's lithe strength was swift. There was one breathless moment of +pursuit, then his hand fell with gripping fierceness upon the +huddled dark figure that had sped so frantically to the tiny door in +the garden's end.... A moment more and she would have been through. + +His hand on her shoulder turned her towards him. Her eyes met his +with a dash of desperation.... He was unconscious how his own were +blazing ... how queerly white his face had gone under its desert +brown. + +She was actually running away. She had meant never to see him again. +He had frustrated her, but the blow she had meant to deal him was +still felt. + +His voice, when it came, sounded shaken. + +"You were going to leave me?" + +Strangely her eyes changed. The defiance, the panic fear, faded. A +cloud of slow despair welled up in them. + +"What else?" she said very softly. + +He did not lose his hold on her. He drew her back into the shadows +with involuntary caution, and he felt her slender body trembling in +his grasp. The tremors seemed to pass into his own. + +A sense of urgency was pressing upon him. He was not himself, not +any self that he had known. He stood there, in the Egyptian night, +in the motley of a Scotch chieftain, grasping this mysterious +creature of the masquerade, and he heard a voice that he did not +know ask of her again and again, "But why? Why? Why were you going?" + +It was not, he was telling himself, and her eyes were telling him, +as if she wanted to go. He knew what he knew.... Those had been +enchanted hours.... Yet she had deceived and fled from him. + +Her eyes looked darkly back at him through the dusk. + +"Because I must return to my own life." Her voice was a whisper. +"And I did not want you to know--" + +"To know what? Who are you? Where were you going?" A confusion of +conjecture, fantastic, horrible, impossible, was surging in him. +Dim, vague, terrible things.... + +"Who are you, anyway?" + +She looked away from him, to the door which she had tried to gain. + +"No masker, monsieur.... For me, there is no unveiling." + +Ryder's hand stiffened. He felt his blood stop a moment, as if his +heart stood still. + +And then it beat on again in a furious turmoil of contradiction of +this impossible thing that she was telling him. + +"That door, monsieur, is to the lane, and in the lane another door +leads to another garden--the garden of a girl you can never know." + +He was no novice to Egypt. Even while his credulity was still +battling with belief, his mind had realized this thing that had +happened ... the astounding, unbelievable thing.... He had heard +something of those Turkish girls, daughters of rich officials, whose +lives were such strange opposition of modernity and tradition. + +Indulgence and luxury. French governesses and French frocks ... +freedom, travel, often,--Paris, London, perhaps--and then, as the +girl eclipses the child--the veil. Still indulgence and luxury, +still books and governesses and frocks and motors and society--but a +feminine society. + +Not a man in it. Not a caller. Not a friend. Not a lover.... Not an +interview, even, with the man who is to be the husband--until the +bride is safe in the husband's home. Hidden women. Secret, secluded +lives.... Extinguished by tradition--a tradition against which their +earlier years only had won modern emancipation. + +And she--this slim creature in the black domino--one of those +invisibles? + +Stark amazement looked out of his eyes into hers. + +"You--a Turk?" he blurted. + +"I--a Turk!" Her head went suddenly high; she stiffened with +defensive pride. "I am ashamed--but for the thing I have done. That +is a shameful thing. To steal out at night--to a hotel--to a +ball--And to dance with a man! To tell him who I am--Oh, yes, I am +much ashamed. I am as bold as a Christian!" she tossed at him +suddenly, between mockery and malice. + +Still his wonder and his trouble found no words and the shadow on +his face was reflected swiftly in her own. + +"I beg you to believe, monsieur, that never before--never have I +done such a thing. My greatest fault was to be out in the garden +after sunset--when all Moslem women should be within. But my nurse +was indulgent." + +Almost pleadingly she looked up at the young man. "Believe this of +me, monsieur. I would not have you think of me lightly. But to-night +something possessed me. I had heard of the masque, and I remembered +the balls of the Embassy where I danced when I was so young and so I +slipped away--there was a garden key that I had stolen, long ago, +and kept for another thing.... I did not mean to dance. Only to look +on at the world again." + +"Oh, my good Lord," said Jack Ryder. + +And then suddenly he asked, "Are you--do you--whom do you live +with?" + +And when she answered in surprise, "But with whom but my father--he +is Tewfick Pasha," he drew a long breath. + +"I thought you'd tell me next you were married," he said limply. + +The next moment they were laughing the sudden, incredibly absorbed +laughter of youth. + +"No husband. I am one of the young revoltées--the moderns--and I am +the only daughter of a most indulgent father." + +"Well, that's something to the good," was Ryder's comment upon that. +He added, "But if that most indulgent father caught you--" + +He looked down at her. The secret trouble of her answering look told +him more than its assumption of courage. + +This was no boarding school girl lingering beyond hours.... This was +a high-born Moslem, risking more than he could well know. + +The escapade was suddenly serious, tremendously menacing. + +She answered faintly, "I have no idea--the thing is so impossible! +But of course," she rallied her spirit to protest, "I do not think +they would sew me in a sack with a stone and drop me in the river, +like the odalisques of yesterday!" + +She added, her voice uncertain in spite of her, "I meant only to +stay a moment." + +"Which is the way?" said Jack briefly. + +With caution he opened the gate into the black canyon of the lane. +Silence and darkness. Not a loiterer, only one of the furtive +starved dogs, slinking back from some rubbish.... + +The girl moved forward and keeping closely at her side he followed; +they crossed to the other wall, and turned towards the right, +stopping before the deeper shadow of a small, pointed door set into +the heavy brick of the high wall. From her draperies the girl drew +out a huge key. + +She fitted it into the ancient lock and turned it; carefully she +pressed open the gate and stared anxiously into the gloom of the +shadowy garden that it disclosed. + +Relief colored her voice as she turned to him. + +"All is quiet.... I am safe, now.... And so--good-bye, monsieur." + +"And this is where you live?" Ryder whispered. + +"There--in that wing," she murmured, slipping within the gate, and +he stole after her, and looked across the garden, through a fringe +of date palms, to the outlines of the buildings. + +Dim and dark showed the high walls, black as a prison, only here and +there the pale orange oblong of a lighted window. + +"Did you climb out the window?" he murmured. + +From beneath the veil came a little sound of soft derision. + +"But there are always bars, even in the garden windows of the +haremlik!... No, I stole down by an old stair.... That wing, there, +on the right." + +Barred on the garden, and on the street the impregnable wooden +screens of the mashrubiyeh, those were the rooms where this girl +beside him was to spend her life--until that most indulgent father +wearied of her modernity and transferred her to other rooms, as +barred and screened, in the palace of some husband!... That thought +was brushing Ryder ... with other thoughts of her present risk ... +of her lovely eyes, visible again, above the veil, thoughts of the +strangeness and unreality of it all ... there in the shrubbery of a +pasha's garden, the pasha's daughter whispering at his side. + +"What about your mother--?" he asked her. "Is she--?" + +"She is dead," the girl told him, with a drop in her voice. + +And after a long moment of silence, "When I was so little--but I +remember her, oh, indeed I do ... She was French, monsieur." + +"Oh! And so you--" + +"I am French-Turk," she whispered back. "That is very often so--in +the harems of Cairo.... She was so lovely," said the girl wistfully. +"My father must have loved her very much ... he never brought +another wife here. Always I lived alone with my old nurse and the +governesses--" + +"You had--lessons?" + +"Oh, nothing but lessons--all of that world which was shut away so +soon.... French and English and music and the philosophy--Oh, we +Turks are what you call blue stockings, monsieur, shut away with our +books and our dreams ... and our memories ... We are so young and +already the real world is a memory.... Sometimes," she said, with a +tremor of suppressed passion in her still little tones, "I could +wish that I had died when I was very young and so happy when my +father took me traveling in Europe.... I played games on the decks +of the ships ... I had my tea with the English children.... I went +down into the hold to play with their dogs..." + +She broke off, between a laugh and a sigh, "Dogs are forbidden to +Moslems--but of course you know, if you have been here two years.... +And emancipated as we may be, there is no changing the customs. We +must live as our grandmothers lived ... though we are not as our +grandmothers are..." + +"With a French mother, you must be very far from what some of your +grandmothers were!" + +"My poor French mother!" Whimsically the girl sighed. "Must I blame +it on her--the spirit that took me to the ball?... To-morrow +this will be a dream to me.... I shall not believe in my +shamelessness.... And you, too, must forget--" + +"Forget?" said Ryder under his breath. + +"Forget--and go. Positively you must go now, monsieur. It is very +dangerous here--" + +"It is." There was a light dancing in his hazel eyes. "It is more +dangerous every moment--" + +"But I mean--" Her confusion betrayed itself. + +"But I mean--that you are magic--black magic," he murmured bending +over the black domino. + +The crescent moon had found its way through a filigree of boughs. +Faintly its exploring ray lighted the contour of that shrouded head, +touched the lovely curves of her arched brows and the tender pallor +of the skin about those great wells of dark eyes.... From his own +eyes a flame seemed to pass into hers.... Breathlessly they gazed at +each other ... like dim shadows in a garden of still enchantment. + +And then, as from a palpable clasp, she tried to slip away. "Truly, +I must go! It is so late--" + +Ryder's heart was pounding within him. He did not recognize this +state of affairs; it was utterly unrelated to anything that had gone +before in his merry, humorous, rather clear-sighted and wary young +life.... He felt dazed and wondering at himself ... and +irresponsible ... and appalled ... but deeper than all else, he felt +eager and exultant and strangely, furtively determined about +something that he was not owning to himself ... something that +leaped off his lips in the low murmur to her, "But to-morrow +night--I shall see you again--" + +She caught her breath. "Oh, never again! To-night has no +to-morrow--" + +"Outside this gate," he persisted. "I shall wait--and other nights +after that. For I must know--if you are safe--" + +"See, I am very safe now. For if I were missed there would be +running and confusion--" + +He only drew a little closer to her. "To-morrow night--or another--I +shall come to this door--" + +"It must not open to you.... It is a forbidden door--forbidden as +that fortieth door in the old story.... There are thirty and nine +doors in your life, monsieur, that you may open, but this is the +forbidden--" + +"I shall be waiting," he insisted. "To-morrow night--or another--" + +She moved her head in denial. + +"Neither to-morrow nor another night--" + +Again their eyes met. He bent over her. He knew a gleam of sharpest +wonder at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding +drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in +the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft, +human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and +through the sheer gauze of her veil his lips pressed her lips.... + +Some one was coming down the walk: Footsteps crunched the gravel. + +Like a wraith the girl was out of his arms ... in anger or alarm +his whirling senses could not know, although it was their passionate +concern. But his last gleam of prudence got him through the gate he +heard her locking after. + +And then, for her sake, he fled. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN THE PASHA'S PALACE + + +Nearer sounded the footsteps on the graveled walk and in frightened +haste the girl drew out the key from the gate and slipped away into +the shrubbery, grateful for the blotting shadows. + +At the foot of a rose bush she crouched to thrust the key into a +hole in the loose earth, covering the top and drawing the low +branches over it. + +"Aimée," came a guarded call. "Aimée!" + +Still stooping, she tried to steal through the bushes, but the +thorns held her and she stood up, pulling at her robes. + +"Yes? Miriam?" she said faintly, and desperately freeing herself, +she hurried forward towards the dark, bulky figure of her old nurse, +emerging now into the moonlight. + +"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God!" ejaculated the old woman, but +cautiously under her breath. "Come quickly--he is here--thy father! +And thou in the garden, at this hour.... But come," and urgently she +gripped the girl's wrist as if afraid that she would vanish again +into the shadows of the shrubbery. + +Aimée felt her knees quake under her. "My father!" she murmured, +and her voice died in her throat. + +Had he discovered? Had some one seen her slip out? Or recognized her +at the ball? + +The panic-stricken conjectures surged through her in dismaying +confusion. She tried to beat down her fear, to think quickly, to +rally her force, but her swimming senses were still invaded with the +surprise of those last moments at the gate, her heart still beating +with the touch of Ryder's arms about her ... of that long, deep look +... that kiss, beyond all else, that kiss.... + +Little rivers of fire were running through her veins. Shame and +proud anger set up their swift reactions. Oh, what wings of wild, +incredible folly had brought her to this! To be kissed like--like a +dancing girl--by a man, an unknown, an American! + +How could he, how could he! After all his kindness--to hold her so +lightly.... And yet there had been no lightness in his eyes, those +eager, shining young eyes, so gravely concerned.... + +But she could not stop to think of this thing. Her father was +waiting. + +"He came in like a fury," the old nurse was panting, as they +scurried up the walk together, "and asked for you ... and your room +empty, your bed not touched!... Oh, Allah's ruth upon me, I went +trotting through the house, mad with fear.... Up to the roofs then +down to the garden ... sending him word that you were dressing that +he should not know the only child of his house was a shameless one, +devoid of sense." + +"But there is no harm in a garden," breathed the girl, her face hot +with shame. "To-night was so hot--" + +"Is there no coolth upon the roof?" + +"But the roses--" + +"Can roses not be brought you? Have you no maids to attend you?" + +"I am tired of being attended! Can I never be alone--" + +"Alone in the garden!... A pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father, +I will have a stop put to this--_hush_, would you have him hear?" +she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door +at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps. + +Like conspirators they fled up the staircase, and then with fumbling +haste the old nurse dragged off the girl's mantle and veil, +muttering at the pins that secured it. She shook out the +pale-flowered chiffon of her rumpled frock and gathered back a +strand of her dark, disordered hair. + +"Say that you were on the roofs," she besought her. + +For a moment the girl put the warm rose of her cheek against the old +woman's dark, wrinkled one. + +"But you are good, Dadi," she said softly, using the Turkish word +for familiar old servants. + +With a sound of mingled vexation and affection Miriam pushed her +ahead of her into the drawing-room. + +It was a long, dark room, on whose soft, buff carpet the little gilt +chairs and sofas were set about with the empty expectancy of a stage +scene in a French salon. French were the shirred, silk shades upon +the electric lamps, French the music upon the chic rosewood piano. + +And then, as if some careless property man had overlooked them in +changing the act, two window balconies of closely carved old wood, +of solidly screening mashrubiyeh wood, jutted out from one +cream-tinted wall, and above a gilded sofa, upholstered in the +delicate fabric of the Rue de la Paix, hung a green satin banner +embroidered in silver with a phrase from the Koran. + +Tewfick Pasha was at one side of the room, filling his match case. +He was in evening dress, a ribbon of some order across a rather +swelling shirt bosom, a red fez upon his dark head. + +At his daughter's entrance he turned quickly, with so sharp a gleam +from his full, somewhat protuberant black eyes that her guilty heart +fairly turned over in her. + +It made matters no more comforting to have Miriam packed from the +room. + +She would deny it all, she thought desperately ... No, she would +admit it, and implore his indulgence.... She would admit nothing but +the garden.... She would admit the ball.... She would _never_ admit +the young man.... + +With conscious eyes and flushing cheeks, woefully aware of +dew-drenched satin slippers and an upsettingly hammering heart, +Aimée presented the young image of irresolute confusion. + +To her surprise there was no outburst. Her father was suddenly gay +and smiling, with a flow of pleasant phrases that invited her +affection. In his good humor--and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be +kept in good humor--he had touches of that boyish charm that had +made him the _enfant gâté_ of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and +Constantinople. An _enfant_ no more, in the robustly rotund forties, +his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that +smiling acquiescence that kept life soft and comfortable. + +And now it suddenly struck Aimée, through her tense alarm, that his +smile was not a spontaneous smile, but was silently, uneasily asking +his daughter not to make something too unpleasant for him ... that +something that had brought him here, at an unprecedented midnight +... that had kept him waiting until she, supposedly, should rise and +dress.... + +If it were not then a knowledge of her escapade--? + +The relief from that fear made everything else bearable. She was +even able to entertain, with a certain welcome, the alternative +alarm that he had decided to marry again--that nightmare from whose +realization the unknown gods (or more truly, the unknown goddesses +of the Cairene demi-monde!) had assisted to save her. + +There was a furtive excitement about him that fanned the +supposition. + +Then, quite suddenly, the illuminating lightning cut the clouds. + +"My dear child, I have news, really important news for you. If I +have not been discussing your future," said Tewfick Pasha, staring +with stern nonchalance ahead and determinedly unaware of her instant +stiffening of attention, "I have by no means been neglectful of +it.... To-day--indeed to-night--there has been a consummation of my +plans.... It is not to every daughter that a father may hurry with +such an announcement." + +Her first feeling was a merciful relief. He knew nothing then of the +ball! She could breathe again.... It was her marriage that had +brought him. + +No new danger, that, but the eternal menace that she had always to +dread.... But how many times had he promised that she should have no +unknown husband, imposed by tradition! How many times had she +indulged dreams of Europe, of bright, free romance! + +And now he was off on some tangent from which it would need all her +coaxing wit to divert him. With wide eyes painfully intent, her +little, jeweled fingers very still in their locked grip in her lap, +the color draining from her cheeks, she sat waiting for the +revelation. + +What was it all? Had he really decided upon something? Upon some +one? + +Tewfick Pasha appeared in no hurry to inform her. He wandered +rather confusedly into a rambling speech about her age and her +position and the responsibilities of life and his inabilities to +prevent their reaching her, and about his very tender affection for +her and his understanding of all those girlish reticences and +reluctances which made innocent youth so exquisite, while silently +his daughter hung her head and wondered what he would be saying if +he knew that she had broken every canon of seclusion and convention, +had talked and danced with a man.... + +His astonishment would be so horrific that she flinched even from +the thought. + +And if he knew, moreover, that this man had caught her and kissed +her--! + +She told herself that she was disgraced for life. She had a dreamy +desire to close her eyes and lean back and dream on about that +disgrace.... + +But she must listen to her father. He was talking now about the +powers of wealth, not merely the nominal riches of his somewhat +precarious political affiliations, but solid, sustaining, invested +and invulnerable wealth. + +Unexpectedly Aimée laughed. "He must be very plain," she declared, +her face brightening with mockery, "if you take so long to tell me +his name!" + +Not, she added to herself under her breath, that any name would +weigh a feather's difference! + +"On the contrary," and the pasha's eyes met hers frankly for the +first time and he seemed delighted to indulge a laugh, "he has the +reputation of good looks. He is much _à la mode_." + +"Beautiful and golden--did you meet him just to-night, my father?" +Aimée went on, in that light audacity which he had loved to indulge. + +Now he smiled, but his glance went uneasily away from her. + +"Not at all. This is a serious affair, you understand--the devil of +a serious affair!" and for the first time she felt she heard the +accents of his candor. + +But again he was back to voluble protestation. This man was really +an old friend. He boggled over the word, then got it out resonantly. +A man he knew well. Not a young man, perhaps--certainly he was not +going to hand his only daughter to any boy, a mere novice in +life!--but a man who could give her the position she deserved. Not +only a rich man, but an influential one. + +His name, he brought out at last, was Hamdi Bey. He was a general in +the armies of the sultan. + +It was a long moment before she could piece any shreds of +recollection together. + +Hamdi Bey ... A general.... Why, that was a man her father had +disliked ... more than once he had dropped resentful phrases of his +airs, his arrogance ... had recounted certain clashes with malicious +joy. + +And now he was planning--no, seriously announcing-- + +A general ... He must be terribly old.... + +Not that it made any difference. Old or young, black or white, +general or ghikar, would mean nothing in her life. She would have +none of him ... none of him.... Never would she endure the +humiliation of being handed over like a toy, an odalisque, a +slave.... + +What had happened? She could only suppose that her father had been +overcome by that wealth of the general's on which he had made her +such a speech. Or perhaps his dislike of Hamdi had been founded on +nothing but resentment of Hamdi's airs of superiority, and now that +the bey was condescending to ask for her hand her father's flattered +appeasement was rushing into genial acceptance. + +Anything might be possible to Tewfick Pasha's eternally youthful +enthusiasms. + +She told her frightened heart that she was not afraid.... Her father +would never really fail her.... And she would never surrender to +this degradation; for all her fright and all her flinching from +defiance she divined in herself some hidden stuff of resistance, +tenacious to endure ... some strain of daring which had made her +brave that wild escapade to-night. + +Was it still the same night? Were the violins still playing, the +people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?... Was that +young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back +there dancing with some other girl? + +What was it he had said? To-morrow night, and another night, he +would be there in the lane.... If she would come! As if she would +demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate, +like a gardener's daughter--! + +Her thoughts were so full of him. And now she had this new horror to +face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey. Did her father dream that she +would not resist? It was against such a danger that she had long ago +stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had +neither a friend nor a piaster to save her.... + +"My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that +you really mean--that you really think you would like to--that you +would consider--this man--" + +He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look. + +"Aimée, I have _arranged_ this matter." + +He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you." + +In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort +to ignore her shocked dismay. He abandoned his airy pretense that +the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm. He sucked at his +cigarette like a rather sullen little boy. + +"I have always indulged you, Aimée," he said at last, without +looking round at her. "I hope you are not going to make me +infernally sorry." + +"I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry," said an unsteady +little voice. + +He looked about. His daughter was sitting very still upon the +gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two +great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks. + +With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace +up and down the room. + +This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who +indulged his daughter. This is what came of French and English +governesses and modern ideas.... After all he had done--more than +any other father! To sit and weep! Weep--at such a marriage! What +did she expect of life? Was she not as other women? Did she never +look ahead? Had she no pride, no ambition--no hopes? Did she wish +never to marry, then, to become an _old mees_ like her English +companion? + +"I am but eighteen," she said quiveringly. "Oh, my father, do not +give me to this unknown--" + +"Unknown--unknown! Do I not know him?" + +"But you promised--" + +Angrily he gestured with his cigarette. "Do I know what is good for +you or do I not? Have I your interest at heart--tell me! Am I a +savage, a dolt--" + +"But you do not know what it is to be unhappy. I beg of you, my +father,--I should die with such a life before me, with such a man +for my husband. I am too French, too like my mother--" + +"Ah, your mother!... Too French, are you?... But what would you have +in France?" he demanded with the bursting appearance of a man +making every effort to restrain himself within unreasonable bounds. +"Would not your parents there arrange your marriage? You might see +the fiancé," he caught the words out of her mouth, "but only for a +time or two--after the arrangements--and what is that? What more +would you know than what your father knows? Are you a thing to be +exhibited--given to a man to gaze at and appraise? I tell you, +no.... You are my daughter. You bear my name. And when you marry you +marry in the sanctity of the custom of your father--and you go to +your husband's house as his mother went to his father." + +Timidly she protested, "But my mother--and you--" + +"Do not speak of your mother! If she were here she would counsel +gratitude and obedience." He turned his back on her. "This is what +comes," he muttered, "of this modernity, this education...." + +He pitched away his stub as if he were casting all that he hated +away with it. + +She had never seen him so angry. Helplessly she felt that his vanity +and his word were engaged with the general more than she had +dreamed. She felt a surge of panic at the immensity of the trouble +before her. + +"But, my father, if you love me--" + +"No, my little one, if _you_ love _me_!" + +With a sudden assumption of good humor over the angry red mottling +his olive cheeks, he came and sat beside her, putting his arm about +her silently shrinking figure. + +"I am a weak fool to stay and drink a woman's tears, as the saying +goes," he told her, "but this is what a man gets for being good +natured.... But, tears or not, I know what is best.... Come, Aimée, +have I not ever been fond of you--?" + +He patted her hand with his own plump one where bright rings were +sparkling deep in the encroaching flesh. Aimée looked down with a +sudden wild dislike.... That soft, ingratiating hand, with its +dimples and polished nails, which thought it could pat her so easily +into submission.... + +It was nothing to him, she thought, chokingly, whether she was happy +or unhappy. He had decided on the match--perhaps he had foreseen her +protests and plunged into it, so as to be committed against her +entreaties!--and he was not stopped by any thought of her feelings. + +After all her hopes! After all he had promised! + +But she told herself that she had never been secure. Beneath all her +trust there had always been the silent fear, slipping through the +shadows like a serpent.... Some instinct for character, more +precocious than her years, had whispered through her fond blindness, +and initiated her into foreboding. + +"Come now, my dear," he said heartily, "this is a surprise, of +course, but after all you will find it is for the best--much for the +best--" + +His voice died away. After a long pause, "You may make the +arrangements," she told him in a still, tenacious little voice, "but +you cannot make me marry him.... I will never put on the marriage +dress.... Never wear the diadem.... Never stir one step within his +house." + +A complete silence succeeded this declaration. He got up violently +from beside her. She did not dare look at him. He was going away, +she thought. + +It would be the beginning of war. She did not know what he would do +but she knew that she would endure it. + +And the gossip of the harems would be her protection. Her +opposition, bruited through those feminine channels, would not be +long in reaching Hamdi Bey.... And no man could to-day be so callous +of his pride or the world's opinion that he would be willing to +receive such a revolting bride. + +Did her father think of that, that poor, pale power of hers? He +stood irresolute, as if meditating a last exhortation, and then +suddenly turned on her the haggard face of a violent despair. + +"Would you see me ruined?" he said passionately. + +Sharply he glanced about the room, at the far, closed doors where it +was not inconceivable that old Miriam was lurking, and strode over +to her and began talking very jerkily and huskily, over her bent +head. + +"I tell you that Hamdi is making this a condition--it is the price +of silence, of those papers back.... He came to me to-night. I knew +that hound of Satan had been smelling about, but I could not +imagine--as if, between gentlemen--" + +At that, she lifted her stupefied head.... Her father, with the face +of a cornered fox!... She caught her breath with the shock of it. +Her lips parted, but only her mute eyes asked their startled +questions. + +Hurriedly, shamefacedly, with angry resentments and +self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at +her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the +imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And +then the word _hasheesh_. + +Sharply then the truth took its outlines. Her father had been +smuggling in hasheesh. Hamdi Bey had discovered this, and Hamdi Bey, +unless silenced, had threatened betrayal. + +The danger was real. English laws were stringent. Vaguely the +horrors loomed--arrest, trial.... Even if he escaped the scandal was +ruin.... + +Small wonder that her father had come flying upon the wings of his +danger and its deliverance, small wonder that his brow was wet and +his lips dry and his eyes hard with terror. + +Thrown to the winds now his pretense of affection for Hamdi Bey! He +hated and feared him. The old fox had done this, he declared, to get +a hold upon him, for always there had been bad blood. + +And the bey had heard, of course, of the beauty of the pasha's +daughter. Some cousin had babbled.... And undoubtedly the rumor of +that beauty--Tewfick Pasha received his inspiration upon the moment, +but that was not gainsaying its truth--had determined the bey to +find some vulnerable hold. + +He was like that, a soft-voiced, sardonic devil! And this accursed +business of the hasheesh had served his ends. To-night, he had come +with his proofs.... + +"So you see," muttered Tewfick Pasha, "what the devil of a serious +business this is. And how any talk of--of unreadiness--if you were +not amiable, for example, to his cousin when she calls upon +you--might serve to anger him.... And so--" + +Significantly his glance met hers. Her eyes fell, stricken. The +color flooded her trembling face. She quivered with confused pain, +with shame for his shame, with terror and fright ... with a hot, +protective compassion that tore at her pride.... + +She struggled against her dismay, trying for reassuring little words +that would not come. Her heart seemed beating thickly in her throat. + +She never knew just what she said, what little broken words of pity, +of understanding, of promise, she achieved. But her father suddenly +dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the _enfant gâté_ +of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their +soft, quiescent palms.... She drew one away and placed it upon his +dark head from which the fez had tumbled. + +For the moment she was sorry, as one is sorry for a hurt child. And +her sorriness held her heart warm, in the glow of giving comfort. + +She had need of that warmth. For a cold tide was rising in her, a +tide of chill, irresistible foreboding.... + +For all the years of her life.... For all the years.... + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +EXPLANATIONS + + +The remaining hours of Jack Ryder's night might be divided into +three periods. There was an interval of astounding exhilaration +coupled with complete mental vacancy, during which a figure in a +Scots costume might have been observed by the astonished Egyptian +moon striding obliviously along the silent road to the Nile, past +sleeping camels and snoring _dhurra_ merchants--a period during +which his sole distinguishable sensation was the memory of +enchanting eyes, of a voice, low and lovely ... of a slender figure +in a muffling tcharchaf ... of the touch of soft lips beneath a +gauzy veil.... + +This period was succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he +lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean's domicile and stared +into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned high heaven and +himself. + +Had he really done this? Had he actually caught and kissed this +girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never +seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a +Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and +self-preservation? + +In the name of wonder, what had possessed him? The night? The moon? +The mystery of the unknown?... If he had never really kissed her he +might have convinced himself that he had never really wanted to. But +having kissed her--! + +He looked upon himself as a stranger. A stranger of whom he would be +remarkably wary, in the days and nights to come ... but a stranger +for whom he entertained a sort of secret, amazed respect. There had +been an undeniable dash and daring to that stranger.... + +During the third period he slept. + +When he awoke, late in the morning, and descended from a cold tub to +a breakfast room from which McLean had long since departed, he +brought yet another mood with him, a mood of dark, deep disgust and +a shamed inclination to dismiss these events very speedily from +memory. For that shadowy and rather shady affair he had abandoned +the merry and delightful Jinny Jeffries and got himself involved now +in the duty of explanations and peacemaking. + +What in the world was he going to say? + +He meditated a note--but he hated a lie on paper. It looked so +thunderingly black and white. Besides, he could not think of any. +"Dear Jinny--Awfully sorry I was called away." + +No, that wouldn't do. He could take refuge in no such vagueness. +Unfortunately, he and Jinny were on such terms of old intimacy that +a certain explicitness of detail was expected. + +"Dear Jinny--I had to leave last night and take a girl home--" + +No, she would ask about the girl. Jinny had a propensity for +locating people. It wouldn't do. + +His masculine instinct for saying the least possible in a matter +with a woman, and his ripening experience which taught him to leave +no mystery to awaken suspicion, wrestled with the affair for some +time and then retired from the field. + +He compromised by telephoning Jinny briefly--and Jinny was equally +as brief and twice as cool and cryptic--and promising to take her +out to tea. + +He reflected that if he took her to tea he would really have to stay +over another night, for it would be too late to regain his desert +camp. But the circumstances seemed to call for some social amend.... +And no matter how many nights he stayed he certainly was not going +to lurk about that lane, outside garden doors! + +He must have been mad, stark, staring, March-hatter mad! + + * * * * * + +That morning, during its remainder, he concluded his buying of +supplies and saw to their shipment upon the boat that left upon the +following morning. That noon he lunched with an assistant curator of +the Cairo museum who found him a good listener. + +That afternoon he escorted Jinny Jeffries and her uncle and aunt, +the Josiah Pendletons, to tea upon the little island in the Cairo +park, where white-robed Arabs brought them tea over the tiny bridge +and violins played behind the shrubbery and white swans glided upon +the blue lake, and then he carried them off in a victoria to view +the sunset from the Citadel heights. + +Not a word about the dance--except a general affirmative to Mrs. +Pendleton's question if he had enjoyed himself. The Pendletons had +not stayed to look on for long, and Jinny had apparently not worn +her bleeding heart upon her sleeve. + +But this immunity could not last. He could not hug the protecting +Pendletons to him forever. + +Nor did he want to. They waned upon him. Mrs. Pendleton's +conversation was a perpetual, "Do look at--!" or dissertations from +the guide books--already she had imparted a great deal of Flinders +Petrie to him about his tombs. Mr. Pendleton was neither +enthusiastic nor voluble, but he was attacking the objects of their +travels in the same thorough-going spirit that he had attacked and +surmounted the industrial obstacles of his career, and he went to a +great deal of persistent trouble to ascertain the exact dates of +passing mosques and the conformations of their arches. + +The travelers had already "done" the Citadel. They had climbed its +rocky hill, they had viewed the Mahomet Ali mosque and its columns +and its carpets and had taken their guide's and their guidebook's +word that it was an inferior structure although so amazingly +effective from below; they had looked studiously down upon the city +and tried to distinguish its minarets and towers and ancient gates, +they had viewed with proper quizzicalness the imprint in the stone +parapet of the hoof of that blindfolded horse which the last of the +Mamelukes, cornered and betrayed, had spurred from the heights. + +So now, no duty upon them, Ryder led them past the Citadel, up the +Mokattam hills behind it, to that hilltop on which stood the little +ancient mosque of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy, where the sunset spaces +flowed round them like a sea of light and the world dropped into +miniature at their feet. + +Below them, in a golden haze, Cairo's domes and minarets were +shining like a city of dreams. To the north, toy fields, vivid +green, of rice and cotton lands, and the silver thread of the +winding Nile, and all beyond, west and southwest, the vast, +illimitable stretch of desert, shimmering in the opalescent air, +sweeping on to the farthest edge of blue horizon. + +"A nice resting place," said Jack Ryder appreciatively of the tomb +of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy. + +"I presume the date is given," Mr. Pendleton was murmuring, as he +began to ferret with his Baedecker. + +Mrs. Pendleton sighed sentimentally. "He must have been very fond of +nature." + +"He was very distrustful of his wives," said Ryder, grinning. "He +had three of them, all young and beautiful." + +"I thought you said he was a saint?" murmured Jinny, to which +interpolation he responded, "Wouldn't three wives make any man a +saint?" and resumed his narrative. + +"And so he had his tomb made where he could overlook the whole city +and observe the conduct of his widows." + +"They could move," objected Miss Jeffries. + +"The female of the Mohammedan species is not the free agent that you +imagine," Ryder retorted, beginning with a smile and ending with a +queer, reminiscent pang. He had a moment's rather complicated twinge +of amusement at her reactions if she should know that to an +encounter with a female of the Mohammedan species was to be +attributed his departure from her party last night. + +And then he remembered that he hadn't decided yet what to tell her +and the time was undoubtedly at hand. + +The time _was_ at hand. The Pendletons were too thorough-going +Americans not to abdicate before the young. They did not saunter +self-consciously away and make any opportunity for Jack and Jinny, +as sympathetic European chaperons might have done; they sat +matter-of-factedly upon the rocks while their competent young people +betook themselves to higher heights. + +Conscientiously Ryder was pointing out the pyramid fields. + +"Gizeh, Abusir, Sakkara, Dahsur--and now here, if you look--that's +the Medun pyramid--that tiny, sharp prick. If we had glasses...." + +"Yes; but why didn't you like the ball?" murmured Jinny the direct. + +"I did like the ball. Very much." + +"Then why didn't you stay?" + +"I--I wasn't feeling top-hole," he murmured lamely, wondering why +girls always wanted to go back and stir up dogs that had gone +comfortably to sleep. + +"Did it come on suddenly?" said Jinny, unsympathetically, her eyes +still upon the pyramids. + +Something whimsical twitched at Jack Ryder's lips. "Very suddenly. +Like thunder, out of China crost the bay." + +"I suppose that dancing with the same girl in succession brings on +the seizures?" + +So she had noticed that!... Not for nothing were those bright, gray +eyes of hers! Not for nothing the red hair. + +"Well, I rather think it did," he said deliberately. "That girl was +a child who hadn't danced in four years--so she said, and I believe +her." + +And Jinny received what he intended to convey. "Stepped on your +buckled shoon and you felt a martyr?... But why bolt? There were +other girls who _had_ danced within four years--" + +"I went into the garden," he murmured. "The fact is, I was feeling +awfully--queer," he brought out in an odd tone. + +Queer was a good word for it. He let it go at that. He couldn't do +better. + +Jinny looked suddenly uncertain. Her pique was streaked with +compunction. She had been horribly angry with him for running away, +and she remembered his opposition to the idea enough to be +suspicious of any disappearance--but there was certainly an accent +of embarrassed sincerity about him. + +Perhaps he _had_ been ill. Sudden seizures were not unknown in +Egypt. And for all his desert brown he didn't look very rugged. + +She murmured, "I hope you hadn't taken anything that disagreed with +you." + +"H'm--it rather agreed with me at the time," said Jack, and then +brought himself up short. "I expect I haven't looked very sharp +after myself--" + +But Jinny did not wholly renounce her idea. "Does it always take you +at dances you don't want to go to?" + +"That's unfair. I came, you know." + +"You came--and went." + +"I'd have been all right if I hadn't come," he murmured, and Jinny +felt suddenly ashamed of herself. + +"Do you suppose that you would stay all right if you came to +dinner?" she offered pacificably. "It's our last night, you know, +till we come back from the Nile." + +"I wish I could." Ryder stopped short. Now, why didn't he? Certainly +he didn't intend-- + +But his tongue took matters promptly out of his hesitation's hands. +"Fact is, I've an engagement." He added, appeasingly, "That's why I +was so keen on getting you for tea." And Jinny told him +appreciatively that it was a lovely tea and a lovely view. + +"We're going to be at the hotel, I expect," she threw out, +carelessly, "and if you get through in time--" + +Rather hastily he assured her that indeed, if he got through in +time-- + +She was a nice girl, was Jinny. A pretty girl, with just the right +amount of red in her hair. Sanity would have sent him to the hotel +to dine with her. + +Sanity would also have sent him to the Jockey Club with McLean. + +Certainly sanity had nothing to do with the way that he kept himself +to himself, after his farewells at the hotel with the Pendletons, +and took him to an out-of-the-way Greek café where he dined very +badly upon stringy lamb and sodden baklava. + +Later he wandered restlessly about dark, medieval streets where +squat groups were clustered about some coffee house door, intent +upon a game of checkers or some patriarchal story teller, +recounting, very probably, a bandied narration of the Thousand and +One Nights. Through other open doors drifted the exasperating nasal +twang of Cairene music, and idly pausing, Ryder could see above the +red fezes and turbans that topped the cross-legged audiences the +dark, sleek, slowly-revolving body of some desert dancing girl. + +Irresolutely he drifted on to the Esbekeyih quarters, to the streets +where the withdrawn camels and donkeys had left pre-eminent the +carriages and motors of that stream of Continental night life which +sets towards Cairo in the season, Russian dukes and German +millionaires, Viennese actresses and French singers and ladies of no +avowed profession, gamblers, idlers, diplomats, drifters, vivid +flashes of color in the bizarre, kaleidoscopic spectacle. + +It was quite dark now. The last pale gleam of the afterglow had +faded, and the blue of the sky, deepening and darkening, was pierced +with the thronging stars. It was very warm; no breeze, but a fitful +stirring in the tops of the feathery palms. + +The streets were growing still. Only from some of the hotels came +the sound of music from lighted, open windows. + +Jinny would be rather expectant at her hotel. He could, of course, +drop in for a few minutes since he was so near.... He walked past +the hotel.... Jinny would be packing--or ought to be. A pity to +disturb her.... And his dusty tweeds and traveling cap was no +calling costume.... + +He walked past again. And this time he paused, on the brink of a +dark canyon of a lane, running back between walls hung with +bougainvillea. + +Quite suddenly he remembered that he had told that girl, whose name +he did not know, that he would come. It was a definite promise. It +was an obligation. + +He could do nothing less. It might be unwelcome, absurd, a nuisance, +but really it was an obligation. + +He sauntered down the lane, keeping carefully in the shadow. He +loitered within that deep-set door--and felt a queer throb of +emotion at the sight of it--and so, sauntering and loitering, he +waited in the darkening night, promising himself disgustedly through +the dragging moments to clear out and be done with this, but still +interminably lingering, his pulses throbbing with that disowned +expectancy. + +Very cautiously, the gate began to open. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AT THE GARDEN GATE + + +Inch by inch the gate edged open. Warily he presented himself. The +furtive crack gave him an instant's glimpse of a dark form within +the shadows, then, in his face, it closed. + +Ryder waited. In a moment it was opened wider, and he saw the +dark-shrouded head and the veiled face of the Turkish girl, and out +from the blackness the sparkle of young eyes. + +"Is it--but who is it?" whispered a doubtful voice, and at his, "Why +it is I--the American," quickly drawing off his cap, a little hand +darted out of the darkness to pluck him swiftly within and the door +was closed to within an inch of its opening. + +Then the black phantom, drawing him back among the shrubbery, +against the wall, turned with a muffled note of laughter. + +"But the costume! Imagine that I--I was looking again for a Scottish +chieftain with red kilts and a feather in his cap!" + +"And instead--" Ryder glanced down at his tweeds with humorous +recognition of his change of figure. Then his eyes returned to her. + +"But you are the same," he murmured. + +She was indeed the same. The same black street mantle, down to her +very brows. The same black veil, up to her very eyes. And the +eyes--! Their soft mysterious loveliness--the little winged tilt of +the brows! + +Apparently their effect was disconcertingly the same. He was +conscious of a feeling that was far from a normal calm. + +"So you were all right?" he half whispered. "Those steps, last +night, you know, made me horribly afraid for you--" + +"But, yes, I am all right." + +As excitement gained upon him, a constraint was falling upon her. +They were both remembering that moment, overlooked in the rush of +recognition, when they had parted in this place, when he had had the +temerity to clasp and kiss her. + +Aimée was standing rigid and wary, ready for flight at the first +fear. She told herself that she had only come through pride, the +pride that insisted upon humbling his presumption. She would let him +see how bitterly he had offended.... She had only come for this, she +told herself--and to see if he had come. + +If he had _not_ come! That would have dealt a sorrily humiliating +blow. + +But he was here. And reassured and haughty, repeating that she was +mortally offended, her spirit alternating between pride and shame +and a delicious fear, she stood there in the shrubbery, fascinated, +like a wild, shy thing of another age. + +"That was old Miriam," she explained constrainedly. "My father had +come in--with unexpectedness." + +"Lord, it was lucky you were back!" + +"Yes, it was--lucky," she assented. "If it had been half an hour +before--" + +She broke off. There came to the young man a sobering perception of +the risk she ran, of the supreme folly of this escapade to which +they were entrusting themselves. + +It was a realization that deserved some consideration. But, +obstinately, with young carelessness, he shook it off. After all, +this was comparatively safe for her. She was not out of bounds. At +an alarm he could slip away and no one could ever know. What risk +there might be was chiefly his own. + +"When you asked who it was," he murmured, "it occurred to me that +you did not know my name--nor I yours. My own," he added, as she +stood unresponsive, "is Ryder--Jack Ryder. You can always get a +letter to me at the Agricultural Bank. That is the quickest way. My +friend, McLean there, always knows where my diggings are. When in +Cairo I stop with him; or at the Rossmore House." + +"I shall not need to get a letter to you, monsieur," she told him +stiffly. + +"But, if you did, how would you sign it?" + +"Aimée.... That is French--after my mother." + +"Aimée. That means Beloved, doesn't it?" + +She was silent. + +Surely, she thought with a swelling heart, if he were sorry he would +tell her now. It was the moment for contrition, for appeasement, for +whatever explanation his American ways might have. + +She had thought about him all night. She had given his declaration a +hundred forms--but always it had been a declaration. + +Now she waited, flagellating her sensitive pride. + +Ryder was conscious of the constraint tightening about them and in +the dragging pause an uncomfortable common sense had time to put its +disconcerting questions. + +What did it matter what her name meant? What in the world was he +doing here?.... And what did she think she was doing here?... Not +that he wanted her to go.... + +And suddenly it didn't matter--whatever they thought. It was enough +that they were together in that still, soft, jasmine-scented dark. +He was breathing quickly; his pulses were beating; he had a feeling +of strange, heady delight. + +The crescent moon was up at last, sailing clear of the house tops, +sending its bright rays through the filigree of tall shrubs. A +finger of light edged the contour of her shrouded head. + +He bent a little closer. + +"Won't you," he said softly, "take off your veil for me?" + +Appalled, she clasped it to her. He had no idea in the world of the +shock of that request. It would be only a faint parallel of its +impropriety to suggest to Jinny Jeffries that she discard her frock. +Even Ryder's acquaintance with Egypt could not tell him how that +swift, confident eagerness of his could startle and affront. + +"I want to see you so very much," he was murmuring, and met the +chill disdain of her retort, "But it is not for you to see my face, +monsieur!" + +"Who is to see it?" he demanded. + +"Who but the man I am to marry," she gave distinctly back. + +The word hit him like stone. + +He was conscious of a shock. Did she intend to rebuke--or to +imply--to question his intention? The steadiness of her low voice +suggested a certain steadiness of design.... He had heard of girls +who knew their own minds ... girls with unexpectedly far-sighted +vision.... Perhaps, poor child, she looked upon him as romantic +escape from all that was restrictive in her life. Secluded women go +fast--when they start. + +The devil take him for that kiss! + +A somewhat set look upon his thin face guarded the fluctuations of +his soul, but the blood rose strongly under his dark skin. + +For a moment he did not venture upon a reply, and in that moment he +was suddenly aware that she had caught his meaning from him--and +that it was a horrible mistake. It was one of those instants of +highly-charged exchanges of meanings whose revelation was as useless +to be denied as powerless to be explained. + +Then her words came in tumultuous, passionate refutation of his +thought. "That is what my father had come to tell me--that he had +arranged my marriage. It is a very splendid thing. To a general--a +rich general!" + +She had not meant to tell him like that! But for the moment she was +savagely glad to hurl it at him. + +He made no answer. His eyes were inscrutably intent. A variety of +things were rearranging themselves in his head. + +"You're--you're going to marry him?" he said slowly. + +"What else?" But she felt the phrase unfortunate and plunged past +it. "It is not for me to say no, monsieur. It is for my father to +arrange." + +"But his indulgence--? You were telling me, you know, that he was so +fond of you. And that you were one of the moderns--the revolting +moderns--" + +Jack Ryder's tone was questioningly cynical and its raillery cut +through her brief sham of pride. + +"So I thought, too, last night." A tinge of infinite disillusionment +was in her young voice. "But it is not so." + +"Then you accept--?" + +The shrouded head nodded. + +"But you can't want to," he broke out with sudden heat. "You don't +know him at all, do you--this general?" + +"Know him? I have never seen his face nor heard his voice--and I +would die first," she added with bitter, helpless fierceness under +her breath. + +The veil muffled that from him. "But why--why?" he repeated in an +angrily puzzled way. + +She made a little gesture of weary impotence. Out of the dark +draperies her hands were like white fluttering butterflies. + +"What can I do?" + +"I should think you could do the Old Harry of a lot." + +"Weep?" said the girl with a pale irony not lost upon him. + +"Weep--or row. Or run," he added, almost reluctantly. + +She turned away her head. "I know, I thought once that I could run. +For that I stole the key to this gate. But where would I run, +monsieur? I have neither friends, nor--nor the resources.... There +have been girls--two sisters--who ran away last year--but they were +already married and they had cousins in France. For me, my cousins +do not exist. I do not know my mother's family. They disowned her +for her marriage, my father says. And so--but it is not possible to +evade this.... It is not possible. This marriage is required." + +"Required--rot! Can't you--don't you--" he paused, looking down upon +her in tremendous and serious uncertainty. The impulse was strong +upon him to tell her that he would help her. The accents of her +voice had seemed to tear at his very heart. + +It was utter madness. Where, in the map of Africa, would he hide +her? And how would he take care of her? What would he do to her? +Make love to her? Marry her? Take home a wife from an Egyptian +harem--a surprising acquisition with which to startle and enchant +his decorous family in East Middleton! + +And a pretty end to his work here, his reputation, his +responsibilities-- + +It was madness. And the fact that the thought had presented itself, +even for his flouting mockery, indicated that he was mad. He told +himself to be careful. Better men than he had everlastingly done for +themselves because upon a night of stars and moonshine some +dark-eyed girl had played the very devil with their common sense. + +He reminded himself that he had never set eyes on her until last +night, that she might be the consummate perfection of a minx, that +there might not be a word of truth in all of this. + +This general, now! Sudden. Not a word about it last night. And now-- + +He had an inkling that even Mohammedan fathers do not rush matters +at such a pace. + +For all he knew the girl might be inventing this general--for some +artless reasons of her own. For all he knew she might be married to +him and desirous of escape. + +But he didn't believe it. She was too young and shy and virginal. +The accents of her candor rebuked his skepticism. He merely told +himself these things because the last vestige of his expiring common +sense was prompting him. + +And after all these creditable and excellent exhortations, to the +utter extinction of the last vestige of that common sense he heard +himself saying abruptly, "But isn't there anything in the world that +I can do--?" + +"Nothing, monsieur." + +"But for you to submit--like this--" + +"It is not to be helped." + +"But it _is_ to be helped--if you really dislike it," he added +jealously. + +"I cannot help it, because--because my father--" She hesitated. The +honor of her father and her family pride and affection were all +involved, yet suddenly the sacrifice of these became more tolerable +than to consent to that image of herself which she saw swiftly +defining itself in his mind, that slight, weak creature, whose +acquiescent passivity submitted to this marriage. + +The thought was unbearable. She was burning beneath her veil. She +would tell him.... And perhaps she was not averse, in her childish +pride, to the pitiful glory of having him see her in the beauty of +her filial sacrifice. + +"My father has--has done something against the English laws," she +faltered, "and Hamdi Bey, this general, knows of it, and will inform +unless--unless my father makes this marriage. A cousin of his has +seen me," she added, her young vanity forlornly rearing its head, +"and told Hamdi that I am not--not too ill-looking a girl--" + +Her essay of a laugh died. + +Ryder's look deepened its sharp, defensive concentration. + +"This is true--I mean your father is not just putting something +over--telling you to get your consent?" + +Her thoughts flew back to her father's haggard face. "Oh, it is +true! I know." + +"And he's going to hand you over--What sort is this Hamdi?" + +"A general. Old. Evil enough to lay traps to obtain me." + +"It's abomination." The anger in the young man surged beyond his +control. "You must not do it.... If your father is clever enough to +break a law let him be clever enough to mend it--by himself. Such a +sacrifice is not required.... You must realize what this means to +you. You must realize--Look here, I'll help you. I'll plan some +escape. There must be ways. I have friends--" + +She stifled the leap of her heart. She held her head high and made +what she thought was a very noble little speech. "It is for my +father, monsieur. You do not understand. It is to save my father." + +He looked at her in silence. He was afraid to answer for a moment; +he could feel the unruly blood beating even in the lips he pressed +together. + +"But don't you understand--" he blurted at last and broke off. + +After all, he did not know this girl. If he swayed her judgment now, +and dragged her away, what life, what compensation could he offer +her? How did he know that she would not regret it? Would she be +happier in a world unknown?.... + +She had been brought up to this sort of thing. It was bred in +her.... Marriage was her inevitable game. This very charm she +exercised, this subtle, haunting invasion of his senses, what was +that but another proof of the harem existence where all influences +were forced to serve the ends of sex ... + +And she was so maddeningly resigned to taking this general! + +A queer hot rage was gaining possession of him. "Oh, well, if you +prefer this," he said brutally, with a youthful desire to wreak pain +in return for that strange pain which something was inflicting upon +him. + +A girl who would let him kiss her one night--and on the next inform +him that she was giving herself to an unknown--an old Turk.... If +she could go like that, to some other's arms and lips ... + +He wanted to take her fiercely in his arms and crush her lips +against his and then fling her away and say, "Oh, go to him now--if +you can!" + +And at the same time he wanted to gather her to him as tenderly as +if she were a flower he was guarding and tell her that he would +protect her against all the world. + +He was divided and confused and blindly angry. He felt baffled and +frustrated. He was both aching and raging. And yet he was capable of +reminding himself, in some corner of his uninvaded mind, that this +was undoubtedly the best thing for them both. + +What else? For him? For her? + +And yet his tongue went on stabbing her. + +"If this is what you are determined to do--" he heard himself saying +hardly, yet with a hint of deferred finality. + +It was as if he had said, "If this, then, is what you are like! If +you are the soft, submissive harem creature, the toy, the +odalisque--If you will endure undesired love rather than face the +world--" + +And she knew that was what he was saying to her. The injustice +brought a lump of self-pity to her throbbing throat.... That he +should not realize and honor the courage of her sacrifice.... That +he should reproach, despise.... She had expected other entreaties +... protestations.... + +Her heart ached with a throb of steady dreariness. + +But she did not stir. Not a line of her drooping draperies wavered +towards him. And swallowing that lump in her throat, she achieved a +toneless, "That is what I am going to do." + +At the other end of the garden a sound came from the house. + +Ryder seemed to rouse himself. "Good-bye, then," he said, +uncertainly. + +"Good-bye, monsieur." + +He looked oddly at her. "Good-bye," he muttered again, and turned, +and stumbled out of the gate. + +A pool of moonlight lay without its arches, and he stepped into it +as if coming out of the shadows of an enchanted garden. He stood and +straightened himself as if throwing off that garden's spell. He put +back his shoulders and took a quick step down the lane. + +A slight sound drew his eyes back. + +She had followed him to the gate; she stood there, in the moonlight, +against the inky wells of shadow into which her black robe flowed, +and in the moonlight her face, gazing after him, was an exquisite, +ethereal apparition, like a spirit of the garden. + +She had cast off her veil. He had a vision of her dark eyes shining +over rose-flushed cheeks, of deeper-rose-red lips in curves of +haunting sweetness, of the tender contour of her young face, fixed +unforgettingly in the radiant moonlight--only an instant's vision, +for while the blood stopped in his veins the darkness engulfed her, +like a magician's curtain. + +But he waited while he heard the gate closed. Still he waited while +he heard her locking it. And then for all his hot young pride, he +turned back and knocked upon it. He called softly. He whispered +entreaties. + +Not a sound. Not an answer. + +In a revulsion of feeling he turned and made his way blindly from +the lane. + +She had heard his voice. Like a creature utterly spent, she had been +leaning against the great gate from which she had withdrawn the key. +But she uttered not a breath in answer, and after she had heard his +footsteps die away she turned slowly back and groped among the rose +roots for the key's hiding place. + +Mechanically she smoothed it over and moved on towards the house. +All was quiet there. That sound had been no alarm. Unobserved she +slipped within the little door, and up the spiral steps. + +She had not seen the dark eyes that were watching her, from the +other side of the rose thicket. After the girl had gained the house, +the old woman came forward and stooped before the marked bush, +muttering under her breath at the thorns. After a few moments she +gave a little grunt of satisfaction and her exploring hand drew out +the key. + +Smoothing again the rifled hiding place among the roses, she made +her careful way into the house. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A SECRET OF THE SANDS + + +The siesta was past. The sun was tilting towards the west and +shadows were beginning to jut out across the blazing sands. + +Over the mounds of rubbish the bearers had resumed their slow +procession, a picturesque frieze of tattered, indigo-robed, ebony +figures, baskets on heads, against a cloudless cobalt sky, and again +the hot air was invaded with the monotonous rise and fall of their +labor chant. + +A man with a short, pointed red beard and an academic face beneath a +pith helmet was stooping over the siftings from those baskets, +intent upon the stream of sand through the wire screens. Patiently +he discarded the unending pebbles, discovering at rare intervals +some lost bead, some splinter of old sycamore wood, some fragment of +pottery in which a Ptolemy had sipped his wine--or a kitchen wench +had soaked her lentils. + +Beyond the man were traces of the native camp, a burnt-out fire, a +roll of rags, a tattered shelter cloth stuck on two tottering +sticks, and distributed indiscriminatingly were a tethered goat, a +white donkey with motionless, drooping ears, and a few supercilious +camels. + +The camp was in the center of a broken line of foothills on the +desert's edge. North and south and west the wide sands swept out to +meet the sky, and to the east, shutting out the Nile valley, the +hills reared their red rock from the yellow drift. + +Among the jutting rock in the foreground yawned dark mouths that +were the entrances of the discovered tombs, and within one of these +tombs was another white man. He was conducting his own siftings in +high solitude, a lean, bronzed young man, with dark hair and eyes +and, at the present moment, an unexhilarated expression. + +It had been two weeks since Jack Ryder had returned to camp. Two +interminable weeks. They were the longest, the dullest, the +dreariest, the most irritatingly undelighting weeks that he had ever +lived through. + +But bitterly he resented any aspersion from the long-suffering +Thatcher upon his disposition. He wanted it distinctly understood +that he was _not_ low-spirited. Not in the least. A man wasn't in +the dumps just because he wasn't--well, garrulous. Just because he +didn't go about whistling like a steam siren or exult like a cheer +leader when some one dug up the effigy of a Hathor-cow.... Just +because he objected when the natives twanged their fool strings all +night and wailed at the moon. + +The moon was full now. Round and white it went sailing blandly over +the eternal monotony of desert.... Round and white, it lighted up +the eternal sameness of life.... He had never noticed it before, but +a moon was a poignantly depressing phenomenon. + +He couldn't help it. A man couldn't make himself be a comedian. It +wasn't as if he wanted to be a grump. He would have been glad to be +glad. He wanted Thatcher to make him glad. He defied him to. + +He didn't enjoy this flat, insipid taste of things, this dull grind, +this feeling of sameness and dullness that made nothing seem worth +while.... A feeling that he had been marooned on a desert island, +far from all stir and throb of life. + +Suppose he did dig up a Hathor-cow? Suppose he dug up Hathor +herself, or Cleopatra, or ten little Ptolemies? What was the good of +it? + +Not Jinny Jeffries herself could have cast more aspersions upon the +personal value of excavations. + +When he was tired of denying to himself that there was anything +unusual the matter with him, he shifted the inner argument and took +up the denial that anything which had happened in Cairo those two +weeks before had anything to do with it. As if that rash encounter +_mattered_! As if he were the silly, senseless sentimental sort of +idiot to go mooning about his work because of a girl--and a girl +from a harem with a taste for secret masquerades and Turkish +marriages! + +As if he cared--! + +Of course--he admitted this logically and coldly now to himself, as +he sat there in the ray of his excavator's lantern, on the sanded +floor at the end of the Hall of Offerings--of course, he was sorry +for the girl. It was no life for any young girl--especially a +spirited one, with her veins bubbling with French blood. + +The system was wrong. If they were going to shut up those girls, +they had no business to bring them up on modern ideas. If they kept +the mashrubiyeh on the windows and the yashmak on their faces they +ought to keep the kohl on their eyes and the henna on their fingers +and education out of their hidden heads. + +It was too bad.... But, of course, they were brought up to it. Look +how quickly that girl had given in. She was Turkish, through and +through. Submissive. Docile.... And a darned good thing she was, +too! Suppose she had taken him at his fool word. Suppose she had +really wanted to get away! + +Lucky, that's what he'd been. And it would be a lesson to him. Never +again. No more masked young things with their stolen keys and their +harem entrances. No more whispered tales of woe in a shady garden. +No more-- + +Violently he wrenched himself from his No Mores. Recollection had a +way of stirring an unpleasant tumult. + +But it was all over. He had forgotten it--he _would_ forget it. He +would forget _her_. Work, that was the thing. Normal, sensible, +every day work. + +But there was no joy in this tonic work. Somewhere, between a night +and a morning, he had lost that glow of accomplishment which had +buoyed him, which had made him fairly ecstatic over the discovery of +this very tomb. + +For this tomb was his own find. It had been found long before by the +plundering Persians, and it had been found by Arabs who had +plundered the Persian remains--but between and after those findings +the oblivious sands had swept over it, blotting it from the world, +choking the entrance hall and the shafts, seeping through +half-sealed entrances and packing its dry drift over the rifled +sarcophagus of the king and over the withered mummy of the young +girl in the ante-room. The tombs had been cleared now, down almost +to the stone floors, and Ryder was busy with the drifts that had +lodged in the crevices about the entrance to the shaft. + +It was really an important find. Although much plundered, the walls +were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls +were exceptional examples. And there were some very interesting +things to decipher. A scholar and an explorer could well be +enthusiastic. + +But Ryder continued to look far from enthusiastic. Even when his +groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard +substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance. +Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it +off. A gleam of gold shone in his hand. But it was no ancient amulet +or necklace or breast guard--nor was it any bit of the harness of +the plundering Persians. It was a locket, very heavily and ornately +carved. + +He stood a moment staring down at the thing with a curious feeling +of having stood staring down at exactly the same thing before--that +subconscious feeling of the repetition of events which supports the +theories of reincarnationists--and then, quite suddenly, memory came +to his aid. + +In McLean's office. That day of the masquerade. Those visiting +Frenchmen and that locket they had shown him. Of course the thing +reminded him-- + +And it was remarkably alike. The same thick oval, the same ponderous +effect of the coat of arms--if it should prove the same coat of arms +that would be a clue! + +With his mind still piecing the recollection and surmise together +his fingers pressed the spring. There was a miniature within, but it +was not the picture of Monsieur Delcassé. Ryder was looking down +upon the face of a girl, a beautiful, spirited face, with merry eyes +and wistful lips--dark eyes, with a lovely arch of brow, and +rose-red lips with haunting curves. + +And eyes and brows and lips and curves, it was the face of the girl +who had gazed after him in the moonlight against the shadows of the +pasha's garden. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT + + +"It is no end of good of you, Jack, to take this trouble," Andrew +McLean remarked appreciatively, looking up from his scrutiny of the +packet which his unexpected luncheon guest had pushed over to his +plate. + +"Uncommon thoughtful. It's undoubtedly a twin to that locket, the +portrait of the man's wife--whatever his name was." + +"Delcassé," said Jack Ryder promptly. + +Gratefully he drained the second lemon squash which the +silent-footed Mohammed had placed at his elbow. It had been a hard +morning's trip, this coming in from camp in high haste, and he was +hot and dusty. + +"You might have sent the thing," McLean mentioned. "I daresay that +special agent chap has left the country, for I recollect he said he +was at the end of his search.... And, of course, this isn't much of +a clue--eh, what?" + +"It's everything of a clue," insisted Ryder. "It shows where this +Frenchman was working, for the first thing--" + +"Unless it had been stolen by some native who lost it in that +tomb." + +"Natives don't lose gold lockets. Of course it might have been +stolen and hidden--but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely +that this was the very tomb where Delcassé was working at the time +of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous +excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern +got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of +the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcassé wrote his +book about--looks very much as if it might be by the same artist. +There's a flock of hippopotami in a marsh scene with the identical +drawing, and there's the same lovely boat in full sail--but there, +you bounder, you don't know the Tomb of Thi from a thyroid gland. +You're here to administer financial justice, the middle, the high, +and the low; your soul is with piasters, not the past. But take my +word for it, it's exactly the spot where an enthusiast of the Thi +Tomb would be grubbing away.... Lord, they could choose their find +in those days!" + +"It's uncommonly likely," McLean conceded, abandoning his demolished +cherry tart and pulling out his briar. "And if the locket proves the +duplicate of the other it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame +Delcassé, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame +Delcassé.... Though in a general way," McLean deduced with Scotch +judicialness, "it supports the theory of foul play. The woman would +hardly have lost her miniature, or have sold it, except under +pressing conditions. In fact--" + +Ryder was brusque with his facts. + +"That doesn't matter--Madame Delcassé doesn't matter. The thing that +matters is--" + +As brusquely he broke off. His tongue balked before the revelation +but he goaded it on. + +"That there is a girl--the living image of that picture." + +"I say!" McLean looked up at that, distinctly intrigued. "That's +getting on.... You mean you've seen her?" + +Ryder nodded, suddenly busy with his cigarette. + +"Where is she, now? In Cairo? That's luck, man!... And you say she's +like?" + +"You'd think it her picture." + +"It's an uncommon face." McLean bent over it again. "I fancied the +artist had just been making a bit of beauty, but if there's a girl +like that--! Fancy stumbling on that!... But where is she? And what +name does she go by?" + +"Oh, her name--she doesn't know her own, of course." Ryder paused +uncertainly. "She's in Cairo," he began again vaguely. "She'd be +just about the right age--eighteen or so. She--she's had awf'ly +hard luck." Distressfully he hesitated. + +The shrewd eyes of McLean dwelt upon him in sorrowful silence. "Eh, +Jock," he said at last, with mock scandal scarcely veiling rebuke. +"I did not know that you knew any of that sort--the poor, wee lost +thing.... Tell me, now--" + +"Tell you you're off your chump," said Jack rudely. "She's no lost +lamb. Fact is, she's never spoken to a man--except myself." He +rather enjoyed the start this gave McLean after his insinuations. It +helped him on with his story. + +"The girl doesn't know her own name at all, I gather. She thinks +she's the daughter of Tewfick Pasha. Her mother married the Turk and +died very soon afterwards and he brought up this girl as his own. +She says she's his only child." + +He paused, ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually +to enjoy McLean's astonishment. As astonishment, it was distinctly +vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into +his friend's mind. + +McLean knew--slightly--Tewfick Pasha. He knew--supremely--the +inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the +utter impossibility of any man's speech with her. + +Yet here was Ryder telling him-- + +Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the +girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He +touched lightly upon her attempted flight and his pursuit. Even more +lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate +and the exchange of confidences. + +"She said that her dead mother had been French. And that her name +was her mother's--Aimée. So there is--" + +"But the likeness, man--her face? She never unveiled to you?" + +"Well, the next night--" + +"The _next_ night?" + +It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of McLean's +astonishment. + +"Yes, the next night," he repeated with careful carelessness.... "I +told the girl I would come and see if she got in all right--there +had been some footsteps the night before--" + +"And you went? And she came?" + +"Do you suppose she sent her father?" + +"You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch," McLean retorted +grimly. "Well, get on with your damning story. The girl took off her +veil--" + +"Nothing of the kind," said Jack a trifle testily--so soon does +conventional masculinity champion the conservatism of the other sex! +"That was just as I was going--gone, in fact. I looked back and she +had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face--I saw her +as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a +picture of her. She is Delcassé's daughter and she doesn't know it. +Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old Turk--" + +"Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago Tewfick could hardly have been +thirty and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love +affair or it may have been plunder.... The girl remembers her?" + +"Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that +the father was so in love that he never married again." + +"H'm ... It seems to me that I've heard tales of our Tewfick and of +pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and +tattlers. However--as to this Delcassé inheritance, I'll just notify +the French legation--" + +"We'll have to look sharp," said Ryder quickly. "There's no time to +lose. The girl is to be married." + +"Married?... But she'll inherit the money just the same." + +"But she doesn't want to be married," Ryder insisted anxiously. "Her +father--her alleged father--has just sprung this on her. Says there +are political or financial reasons. He's been caught in some dirty +work by this Hamdi Bey and he's stopping Hamdi's mouth with the +girl.... And we've got to stop that." + +"I wonder if we can," said McLean thoughtfully. + +"If we can? When the girl is French? When she's been lied to and +deceived?" + +"She seems to have been taken jolly well care of. Brought up as his +own and all that. Keep your shirt on, Jack," McLean advised dryly +with a shrewd glance from his gray eyes at the other's unguarded +heat. + +Then his eyes dropped to the miniature again. A lovely face. A +lovely unfortunate creature.... And if the daughter looked like +that, small wonder that Jack was touched.... Beauty in distress. + +Some men had all the luck, McLean reflected. He had never taken Jack +for the gallivanting kind, either, yet here he was going to +masquerades with one girl and coming home with another.... + +Jack was too good looking, that was the trouble with the youngster. +Good looking and gay humored. The kind that attracted women.... +Women and romance were never fluttering about lank, light-eyed, +uninteresting old Scotchmen of twenty-nine! + +A mild and wistful pang, which McLean refused to name, made itself +known. + +"I'll see the legation," he began. + +"At once. I'll wait," urged Ryder. + +And at once McLean went. + + * * * * * + +The result was what he had foreseen. The legation was appreciative +of his interest. That special agent had returned to France but his +address was left, and undoubtedly the family of Delcassé would be +grateful for any information which Monsieur McLean could send. + +"Send!" repudiated Ryder hotly. "Write to France and back--wait for +somebody to come over! Can't the legation do something now?" + +"The legation has no authority. They can't take the girl away from +the man who is, at any rate, her step-father." + +"They can put the fear of God into him about this marriage. They +can deny his right to hand her over to one of his pals. They can +threaten him with an inquiry into the circumstances of her mother's +marriage." + +"And why should they? They may regard it as a very natural marriage. +And remember, my dear Jack, that the legation has no desire to +alienate the affections of influential Turks, or criticize +fifteen-years-ago romances. You have a totally wrong impression of +the responsibilities of foreign representatives." + +"But to let him dispose of a French girl--" + +"He is disposing of her, as his daughter, in honorable marriage to a +wealthy and aristocratic general. There can be no question of his +motives--" + +"Of course, if you think that sort of thing is all right--" + +Carefully McLean ignored the other's wrath. + +Patiently he explained. "It's not what I think, my dear fellow, it's +what the legation thinks. There's not a chance in the world of +getting the marriage stopped." + +"Then I'll do it myself," declared Ryder. "I'll see this Tewfick +Pasha and talk to him. Tell him the money is to come to the girl +only when she is single. Tell him the French law gives the father's +representatives full charge. Tell him that he kidnapped the mother +and the government will prosecute unless the girl is given her +liberty. Tell him anything. A man with a guilty conscience can +always be bluffed." + +In silence McLean gazed upon him, perplexed and clouded, his +quizzical twinkle gone. Jack was taking this thing infernally to +heart.... And it was a bad business. + +"You will let me do the telling," he stated at last, grimly. "What +can be said, I'll say. Like a fool, I will meddle." + +And so it happened that within another hour two very stiff and +constrained young men were ringing the bell at the entrance door of +Tewfick Pasha. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +TEWFICK RECEIVES + + +A huge Soudanese admitted them. They found themselves in a tiled +vestibule, looking through open arches into the green of a +garden--that garden, Ryder hardly needed to remind himself, with +whose back door he had made such unconventional acquaintance. + +Now he had a glimpse of a sunny fountain and fluttering pigeons, +and, on either side of the garden, of the two wings of the building, +gay white walls with green shutters more suggestive of a French +villa than an Egyptian palace, before the Soudanese marshaled them +toward the stairs upon the right. + +The left, then, was the way to the haremlik. And somewhere in those +secluded rooms, to which no man but the owner of the palace ever +gained admission, was Aimée. + +The Soudanese mounted the stairs before them and held open a door +into a long drawing-room from which the pasha's modernity had +stripped every charm except the color of some worn old rugs; the +windows were draped in European style, the walls exhibited paper +instead of paneling; in one corner was a Victrola and in another, +beside a lounge chair, stood a table littered with cigarette trays +and French novels with explicit titles. + +The only Egyptian touch to the place was four enormous oil portraits +of pompous turbaned gentlemen, in one of whom Ryder recognized the +familiar rotundity of Mahomet Ali in his grand robes. + +As a pasha's palace it was a blow, and Ryder's vague, romantic +notions of high halls and gilded arches, suffered a collapse. + +Tewfick Pasha came in with haste. He had been going out when these +callers were announced and he was dressed for parade, in a very +light, very tight suit, gardenia in his button-hole, cane in his +gloved hands, fez upon his head. For all their smiling welcome, his +full, dark eyes were uneasy. + +He had grown distrustful of surprises. + +It was McLean's affair to reassure him. Far from fulminating any +accusations the canny Scot announced himself as the bearer of glad +tidings. A fortune, he announced, was coming to the pasha--or to the +pasha's family. A very rich old woman in France had decided to +change her will. + +There he paused and the pasha continued to smile non-committally, +but the word fortune was operating. In the back of his mind he was +hastily trying to think of rich old women in France who might change +their wills. + +"I am afraid that it is my stupidity which has kept you from the +knowledge of this for some weeks," McLean went on. "I had so many +other matters to look up that I did not at once consult my records. +And it has been so many years since you married Madame Delcassé that +the name had slipped general recollection.... It was twelve years +ago, I believe, that she died?" + +Casually he waited and Jack Ryder held his breath. He felt the full +suspense of a pause long enough for the pasha's thoughts to dart +down several avenues and back. If the man should deny it! But why +should he? What harm in the admission, after all these years, with +Madame Delcassé dead and buried? And with a fortune involved in the +admission. + +The Turk bowed and Ryder breathed again. + +"Ten years," said Tewfick softly. + +"Ah--ten. But there has been no communication with France for twelve +years or even longer?" + +"Possibly not, monsieur." + +"This old aunt," pursued McLean, "was a person of prejudice as well +as fortune--hence it has taken a little time for her to adjust +herself." He paused and looked understandingly at the Turk, who +nodded amiably as one whose comprehension met him more than half +way. + +"My own aunt was of a similar obstinacy," he murmured. He added, +"This fortune you speak of--it comes through my wife?" + +"For her inheritors. Madame Delcassé--the former Madame Delcassé I +should say--left but one daughter?" + +Again the pasha bowed and again Ryder felt the throb of triumph. He +looked upon his friend with admiration. How marvelously McLean had +worked the miracle. No accusations, no threats, no obstacles, no +blank walls of denial! Not a ruffle of discord in the establishment +of these salient facts--the marriage of Madame Delcassé to the pasha +and the existence of the daughter. + +Wonderful man--McLean. He had never half appreciated him. + +But the pasha was not wholly the simple assenter. + +"Do I understand," he inquired, "that there is a fortune coming from +France for my daughter?" And at McLean's confirmation, "And when you +say fortune," he continued, "you intend to say--?" and his glance +now took in the silent American, considering that some cue must be +his. + +But McLean responded. "The figures are not to be divulged--not until +the aunt is in communication with her niece. But they will be large, +monsieur, for this aunt is a person of great wealth." + +"And yet alive to enjoy it," said Tewfick with smiling eyes. + +"An aged and dying woman," thrust in Ryder in haste. "Her only care +now is to see her niece before she dies." + +"Ah!... But that could be arranged," said Tewfick amiably. + +"We have at once communicated with France," McLean told him, "but we +came instantly to you, to, inform you--" + +"A thousand thanks and a thousand! The bearers of good tidings," +smiled their host. + +"Because we understand that there is a question of the young lady's +marriage," pursued McLean, "and you would, of course, wish to defer +this until these new circumstances are complied with." + +The pasha stared. "Not at all. A fortune is as pleasant to a wife as +to a maid." + +"There are so many questions of law," offered McLean with purposeful +vagueness. "French wardship and trusteeship and all that. It would +be advisable, I think, to wait." + +"Absurd," said the pasha easily. + +"You would want no doubts cast upon the legality of the marriage," +McLean persisted thoughtfully, "and since mademoiselle is under age +and the French law has certain restrictions--" + +"Pff! We are not under the French law--at least I have not heard +that England has relinquished her power," retorted Tewfick not +without malice. + +"But Mademoiselle Delcassé is French," thrust in Ryder. He knew that +McLean had ventured as far as he, an official and responsible +person, could go, and that the burden of intimation must rest upon +himself. "And under her father's will his family there is +considered in trusteeship. So there would be certain technicalities +that must be considered before any marriage can be arranged, the +signature of the French guardian, the settlement of the dot--this +inheritance, for instance--all mere formalities but involving a +little delay." + +Tewfick Pasha turned in his chair and cocked his eyes at this +strange young man who had dropped from the blue with this extensive +advice. He looked puzzled. This American fitted into no type of his +acquaintance. He was so very young and slim and boyish ... with not +at all the air of a legal representative.... But McLean's position +vouched for him. + +"You speak for the French family, monsieur?" + +Unhesitatingly Ryder declared that he did. + +"Then you may inform the family," announced Tewfick, bristling, +"that my daughter has been very well cared for all these years +without advice from France." + +"I haven't a doubt of it," said Ryder quickly, "but the French law +might begin to entertain doubts of it, if mademoiselle were married +off now without consultation with the authorities.... Already," he +added a little meaningly, as the other shrugged the suggestion away, +"there have been questions raised concerning the mother's marriage +and the separation of the little Mademoiselle Delcassé from her +relatives in France, and now if she were to be married without any +legal settlement of her estate--" + +Steadily he sustained the other's gaze, while his unfinished thought +seemed to float significantly in the air about them. + +"Have a cigarette," said the pasha hospitably, extending a gold case +monogrammed with diamonds and emeralds. "Ah, coffee!" he announced, +welcomingly, as a little black boy entered with a brass tray of +steaming cups. + +"I hope, gentlemen, that you like my coffee. It is not the usual +Turkish brew. No, this comes from Aden, the finest coffee in the +world. A ship captain brings it to me, especially." + +Beamingly he sipped the scalding stuff, then darted back to that +suspended sentence. "But you were saying--something of a +trusteeship?... Do I understand that it is an aunt of Madame +Delcassé--the former Madame Delcassé--who is leaving this money?" + +"Not of Madame but of Monsieur Delcassé," McLean informed him. + +"Ah!... That accounts ... But in that case, then, there need be no +concern in France over my daughter's marriage...." He turned his +round eyes from one to the other a moment. + +"There is no Mademoiselle Delcassé." + +"Sir?" said Ryder sharply. + +"There is no Mademoiselle Delcassé," repeated the pasha, his eyes +frankly enlivened. + +"But--we have just been speaking--you cannot mean to say--" + +"We have been speaking of my daughter--the daughter of the former +Madame Delcassé." + +Smilingly he looked upon them. "A pity that we did not understand +each other. But you appear to know so much--and I supposed that you +knew that, too, that the daughter of Monsieur Delcassé was dead." + +Neither of the young men spoke. McLean looked politely attentive; +Ryder's face maintained that look of concentration which guarded the +fluctuations of his feelings. + +"It was many years ago," the pasha murmured, putting down his coffee +cup and selecting another cigarette. "Not long after her mother's +marriage to me.... A very charming little girl--I was positively +attached to her," Tewfick added reminiscently. + +"Well, well, well, what a pity now," said McLean very slowly. +"This will be a great disappointment.... And so the present +mademoiselle--" + +"Is my daughter." + +McLean was silent. Ryder could hardly trust himself to speak. + +"What did she die of?" he asked at last, in a voice whose edged +quality brought the pasha's glance to him with a flash of hostility +behind its veil. + +But he answered calmly enough. "Of the fever, monsieur.... She was +never strong." + +"And her grave... I should like to make a report." + +"It was in the south ... desert burial, I am afraid. You must know +that the little one was hardly a true believer for our cemetery." + +"And you would say that she was only five or six years old?" Ryder +persisted. + +The pasha nodded. + +"I should like to get as near as possible to the date if it is not +too much trouble.... The father died about fifteen years ago and the +mother was married to you soon after?" + +"Really, monsieur, you--" + +Tewfick was frankly restive. + +"I know nothing of the father," he said sullenly. "And as to the +child's death--how can one recall after these years? In one, two +years after she came to me--one does not grave these things upon the +eyeballs." + +"But you do remember that it was long ago--when your own daughter +was very little?" + +"Exactly. That is my recollection, monsieur.... And I recall," said +the pasha, suddenly obliging and sentimental, "that even my little +one cried for the child. It was afflicting.... Assure the family in +France of my sympathy in their disappointment." + +"I am sorry that my news is after all of no interest to you," +observed McLean, setting the example for rising. "You will pardon my +error of information--and accept my appreciation of your courtesy." + +"It is I who am indebted for your trouble," their host assured +them, all smiles again. + +But Ryder was not to be led away without a parting shot. + +"The name of the Delcassé child--was Aimée?" + +Imperceptibly Tewfick hesitated. Then bowed in assent. + +"Odd," said young Ryder thoughtfully. "And your own daughter's name, +also, is Aimée.... Two little ones with the same name." + +With a slight, vexed laugh, as one despairing of understanding, the +pasha turned to McLean. "Your young friend, monsieur, is uninformed +that Turkish children have many names.... After the loss of the +elder we called the little one by the same name.... I trust I have +made everything perfectly clear to you?" + +"As crystal," said McLean politely. + + * * * * * + +"As lightning," said Jack Ryder hotly, striding down the street. "It +was a flash of invention, that yarn. When I spoke about the +questions raised by his marriage the old fox sniffed the wind and +was afraid of trouble--he decided on the instant that no future +fortune was worth interference with his plans, and he cut the ground +from under our feet.... Lord, what a lie!" + +"Masterly, you must admit." + +"Oh, I admired the beggar, even while I choked on it. But +fever--desert burial--two Aimées! And the sentimental face he +pulled--he ought to have had a spot-light and wailing woodwinds." + +McLean chuckled. + +"I'll believe anything of him now," Ryder rushed on. "I'll bet he +murdered Delcassé and kidnapped the mother--and now he is selling +their daughter--" + +"I fancy murder's a bit beyond our Tewfick. That's too thick. He's +probably telling the truth there--he may never have known Delcassé. +And as for the widow--she must have been in no end of trouble with a +dead man and a wrecked expedition and a baby on her hands, and +Tewfick may have offered himself as a grateful solution to her. +You'd be surprised at the things I've heard. And if she looked like +her picture Tewfick probably laid himself out to be lovely to +her.... I rather like the chap, myself." + +"I love him," Ryder snorted. "The infernal liar--" + +"Steady now--suppose it's all the truth? Nothing impossible to it. +Fact is, I rather believe it," said McLean imperturbably. "It hangs +together. If this girl you met thinks she's his daughter, that's +conclusive. She'd have some idea--servants' gossip or family +whisperings.... And why should he have brought her up as his own?" + +"No other children. And he'd grown fond of her, of course. If you +could see her!" retorted Ryder. + +"Just as well, I can't.... And I think he could hardly have kept her +in the dark.... We'd better call it a wild goose chase and say the +man's telling the truth." + +"If this girl were his daughter she couldn't be more than fourteen +years old. And I've seen the girl and she's eighteen if she's a +day--you might take her for twenty. _Fourteen_!" said Ryder in +repudiating scorn. + +Hesitating McLean murmured something about the early maturity of the +natives. + +"Natives?" Ryder flung angrily back. "This girl's French!" + +"As far as we are concerned, Jack, this girl is Turkish--and +fourteen.... We can't get around that, and you had better not forget +it," his friend quietly advised. "We've done everything that we can +and there is no use working yourself up.... If anybody's to blame in +this business, I don't think it's Tewfick--he's done the handsome +thing by her--but the fool Frenchman who took his baby and his wife +into the desert, and it's too late to rag him. Cheer up, old top, +and forget it. There's nothing more to be done." + +It was sound advice, Jack Ryder knew it. They had done all that they +could. McLean had been a brick. There remained nothing now but to +notify the Delcassé aunt that Tewfick Pasha claimed the child. + +"And I've a notion, Jack," said McLean thoughtfully, "that he might +not have done that if you hadn't rushed him so, trying to break off +the marriage. That was what frightened him." + +"I thought you said she was his own daughter," Ryder responded +indignantly, and to that McLean merely murmured, "She will be now, +to all time." + +It was a haunting thought. It left Ryder with the bitter taste of +blame in his mouth, the gall and wormwood of blame and a baffled +defeat. + +But for that sense of blame he might have taken McLean's advice. He +might--but for that--have gone the way of wisdom, and accepted the +inevitable. + +As it was, he did none of these things. + + * * * * * + +He said to himself that all that he could do now--and the least that +he could do--was to let the girl know as much of the story as he +knew and draw her own conclusions. Then, if she wanted to go on and +sacrifice herself for Tewfick, very well. That was none of his +affair. + +But she had a right to the truth and to the chance of choice. + +He did not know what he could do, but secretly and defiantly he +promised himself that he would do something, and in the back of his +mind an idea was already taking shape. It was manifest in the +tenacity with which he refused to send the locket to the Delcassés. +He had the case and the miniature photographed very carefully by the +man who did the reproductions for museum illustrations, and he sent +that, conscious of McLean's silent thought that he was cherishing +the portrait for a sentimental memory. + +But he had other plans for it. + +He did not return to his diggings. He sent a message to the deserted +Thatcher, faking errands in Cairo, and he took a room at the hotel +where Jinny Jeffries--now up the Nile--had stayed. He spent a great +deal of time evenings in the hotel garden, staring over the brick +walls to the tops of distant palms beyond, and not infrequently he +slipped out the garden's back door and wandered up and down the dark +canyon of a lane. + +He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepheard's +Hotel. + +And yet the girl had her key. She could get away if she wanted to +and she might want to if she knew the truth. + +But how to get that truth to her? That was his problem. A dozen +plans he considered and rejected. There were the mails--simple and +obvious channel--but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan +seclusion do not receive their letters directly. And now, +especially, Tewfick would be on his guard. + +Then there was the chance of a message through some native's hands. +The house servants--? There were hours, one day, when Ryder +sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy-trousered +_sais_ who stood holding a horse in the sun or the tattered baker's +boy, approaching the entrance with his long loaves upon his head, +but Ryder's Arabic was not of a power or subtlety to corrupt any +creature, and he stayed his tongue. + +Bitterly he regretted his wasted years. If he had not misspent them +in godly living he would now be upon such terms of intimacy with +some official's pretty wife who had the entrée to a pasha's daughter +that she could be induced to make use of it for him. + +Desperately he thought of remedying this defect. There were several +charming young matrons not averse to devoted young men, but the time +was short for establishing those confidential relations which were +what he required now. + +Jinny Jeffries would do it for him if she could, but Jinny would not +return for another week. And if she changed her mind and took the +boat back--as he, alack! had advised--instead of the express, then +she would be longer. + +And meanwhile the days were passing, four of them now since he and +McLean had heard the Soudanese locking the door behind them. + +There seemed nothing for it but to trust to that idea which had been +slowly shaping in his mind. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A WEDDING PRESENT + + +In a room high in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. +Before a tall pier glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging to +the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly +from the image in the glass. + +Through the open window, banded with three bars, she looked into the +rustling tops of palms, from which the yellow date fruit hung, and +beyond the palms the hot, bright, blue sky and the far towers of a +minaret. + +"A bit more to the left, h'if you please, miss," the woman entreated +through a mouthful of pins, and apathetically the young figure +moved. + +"A bit of h'all right, now, that drape," the woman chirped, sitting +back on her heels to survey her work. + +She was an odd gnome-like figure, with a sharp nose on one side of +her head and an outstanding knob of hair on the other. Into that +knob the thin locks were so tightly strained that her pointed +features had an effect of popping out of bondage. + +She was London born, brought out by an English official's wife as +dressmaker to the children, remaining in Cairo as wife of a British +corporal. Since no children had resulted to require her care and +the corporal maintained his distaste for thrift, Mrs. Hendricks had +resumed her old trade, and had become a familiar figure to many +fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening, +sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have +graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the +family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a +vis-à -vis when the men in the family dropped in for luncheon. + +As the girl did not turn her head she looked for approbation to the +third person in the room, a tall, severely handsome Frenchwoman in +black, whose face had the beauty of chiseled marble and the same +quality of cold perfection. This was Madame de Coulevain, teacher of +French and literature to the _jeunes filles_ of Cairo, former +governess of Aimée, returned now to her old room in the palace for +the wedding preparations. + +There was history behind madame's sculptured face. In an incredibly +impulsive youth she had fled from France with a handsome captain of +Algerian dragoons; after a certain matter at cards he had ceased to +be a captain and became petty official in a Cairo importing house; +later yet, he became an invalid. + +Life, for the Frenchwoman, was a matter of paying for her husband's +illness, then for his funeral expenses, and then of continuing to +pay for the little one which the climate had required them to send +to a convent in France. + +There was, at first, the hope of reunion, extinguished by each +added year. What could madame, unknown, unfriended, unaccredited, +accomplish in France? The mere getting there was impossible--the +little one required so much. Her daughter was no dependent upon +charity. And in Cairo madame had a clientèle, she commanded a price. +And so for the child's sake she taught and saved, concentrating now +upon a dot, and feeding her heart with the dutifully phrased letters +arriving each week of the years, and the occasional photographs of +an ever-growing, unknown young creature. + +It was to madame's care that Aimée had been given when the +motherless girl had grown beyond old Miriam's ministrations, and for +nearly nine years in the palace madame had maintained her courteous +and tactful supervision. Indeed, it was only this last year that +madame had undertaken new relations with the world outside, +perceiving that Aimée would not longer require her. + +"Excellent," she said now in her careful, unfamiliar English to Mrs. +Hendricks, and in French to Aimée she added, with a hint of +asperity, "Do give her a word. She is trying to please you." + +"It is very nice, Mrs. Hendricks," said the girl dutifully, bringing +her glance back from that far sky. + +The little seamstress was instantly all vivacity. "H'and now for the +sash--shall we 'ave it so--or so?" she demanded, attaching the wisp +of tulle experimentally. + +"As you wish it.... It is very nice," Aimée repeated vaguely. She +picked up a bit of the shimmering stuff and spread it curiously +across her fingers. A dinner gown.... When she wore this she would +be a wife.... The wife of Hamdi Bey.... A shiver went through her +and she dropped the tulle swiftly. + +In ten days more.... + +Gone was her first rush of sustaining compassion. Gone was her +fear for her father and her tenderness to him. Only this numb +coldness, this dumb, helpless certainty of a destiny about to be +accomplished.... Only this hopeless, useless brooding upon that +strange brief past. + +There was a stir at the door and on her shuffling, slippered feet +old Miriam entered, handing some packages to Madame de Coulevain. +Then she turned to revolve about the bright figure of her young +mistress, her eyes glistening fondly, her dark fingers touching a +soft fold of silver ribbon, while under her breath she chanted in a +croon like a lullaby, "Beautiful as the dawn ... she will walk upon +the heart of her husband with foot of rose petals ... she will +dazzle him with the beams of her eyes and with the locks of her +hair, she will bind him to her ... beautiful as the dawn...." + +It was the marriage chant of Miriam's native village, an old love +song that had come down the wind of centuries. + +Mrs. Hendricks, thrusting in the final pins, paid not the slightest +attention and Madame de Coulevain displayed interest only in the +packages. If she saw the stiffening of the girl's face and the rigid +aversion of her eyes from the old nurse's adulation she gave no +sign. + +Towards Aimée's moods madame preserved a calm and sensible +detachment. Never had she invited confidence, and for all the young +girl's charm she had never taken her to her heart in the place of +that absent daughter. As if jealously she had held herself aloof +from such devotion. + +Perhaps in Aimée's indulged and petted childhood, with a fond pasha +extolling her small triumphs, her dances, her score at tennis at the +legation, madame found a bitter contrast to the lot of that lonely +child in France. Certainly there was nothing in Aimée's life then to +invite compassion, and later, during those hard, mutinous months of +the girl's first veiling and seclusion, she had not tried to soften +the inevitable for her with a useless compassion. + +So now, perceiving this marriage as one more step in the +irresistible march of destiny for her charge, she overlooked the +youthful fretting and offered the example of her own unmoved +acceptance. + +"What diamonds!" she said now admiringly, holding up a pin, and, +examining the card. "From Seniha Hanum--the cousin of Hamdi Bey." + +A moment more she held up the pin but the girl would not give it a +look. + +"And this, from the same jeweler's," continued madame, while the +dressmaker was unfastening the frock, aided by Miriam, anxious that +no scratch should mar that milk-white skin. + +"How droll--the box is wrapped in cloth, a cloth of plaid." + +Aimée spun about. The dress fell, a glistening circle at her feet, +and with regardless haste she tripped over it to madame. + +"How--strange!" she said breathlessly. + +A plaid ... A Scotch plaid. Memories of an erect, tartan-draped +young figure, of a thin, bronzed face and dark hair where a tilted +cap sat rakishly ... memories of smiling, boyish eyes, darkening +with sudden emotion ... memories of eager lips.... + +She took the box from madame. Within the cloth lay a jeweler's case +and within the case a locket of heavily ornamented gold. + +Her heart beating, she opened it. For a moment she did not +understand. Her own face--her own face smiling back. Yet unfamiliar, +that oddly piled hair, that black velvet ribbon about the throat.... + +Murmuring, madame shared her wonder. + +It was Miriam's cry of recognition that told them. + +"Thy mother--the grace of Allah upon her!--It is thy mother! Eh, +those bright eyes, that long, dark hair that I brushed the many hot +nights upon the roof!" + +"But you are her image, Aimée," murmured the Frenchwoman, but half +understanding the nurse's rapid gutturals, and then, "Your father's +gift?" + +With the box in her hands the girl turned from them, fearful of the +tell-tale color in her cheeks. "But whose else--his thought, of +course," she stammered. + +That plaid was warning her of mystery. + +The dressmaker was creating a diversion. Leaving, she wished to +consult about the purchases for to-morrow's work, and madame moved +towards the hall with her, talking in her careful English, while +Miriam bent towards the dropped finery. + +Aimée slipped through another door, into the twilight of her +bedroom, whose windows upon the street were darkened by those +fine-wrought screens of wood. Swiftly she thrust the box from sight, +into the hollow in the mashrubiyeh made in old days to hold a water +bottle where it could be cooled by breezes from the street. + +Leaning against the woodwork, her fingers curving through the tiny +openings, she stared toward the west. The sky was flushing. Broken +by the circles, the squares, the minute interstices of the +mashrubiyeh, she saw the city taking on the hues of sunset. + +Suddenly the cry of a muezzin from a nearby minaret came rising and +falling through the streets. + +"_La illahé illallah Mohammedun Ressoulallah_--" + +The call swelled and died away and rose again ... There is no God +but _the_ God and Mahomet is the Prophet of God ... From farther +towers it sounded, echoing and re-echoing, vibrant, insistent, +falling upon crowded streets, penetrating muffling walls. + +"_La illahé illallah_--" + +In the avenue beneath her two Arabs, leading their camels to market, +were removing their shoes and going through the gestures of +ceremonial washing with the dust of the street. + +"_La illahé_--" + +The city was ringing with it. + +The seamstress and the Frenchwoman, still talking, had passed down +the hall. In the next room Miriam's lips were moving in pious +testimony. + +"_Ech hedu en la illahé_--! I testify that there is no God but _the_ +God." + +In the street the Arabs were bowing towards the east, their heads +touching the earth. + +And in the window above them a girl was reading a note. + + * * * * * + +The last call of the muezzin, falling from the tardy towers of Kait +Bey drifted faintly through the colored air. With resounding whacks +the Arabs were urging on their beast; Miriam, her prayers concluded, +was shaking out silks and tulle with a sidelong glance for that +still figure in the next room, pressing so close against the +guarding screens. + +She could not see the pallor in the young face. She could not see +the tumult in the dark eyes. She could not see the note, crushed +convulsively against the beating breast, in the fingers which so few +moments ago had drawn it from the hiding place in the box. + +Ryder had not dared a personal letter. But clearly, and distinctly, +he stated the story of the Delcassés. He gave the facts which the +pasha admitted and the ingenious explanation of the two Aimées. And +for reference he gave the address of the Delcassé aunt and agent in +France and of Ryder and McLean at the Agricultural Bank. + + * * * * * + +The pasha did not dine with his daughter that night. He had been +avoiding her of late, a natural reaction from the strain of +too-excessive gratitude. A man cannot be continually humble before +the young! And it was no pleasure to be reminded by her candid eyes +of his late misfortunes and of her absurd reluctance towards +matrimony. + +As if this marriage were not the best thing for her! As if it were a +hardship! To make sad eyes and draw a mouth because one is to be the +wife of a rich general.... Irrational ... The little sweetmeat was +irritating. + +To this point Tewfick's buoyancy had brought him, and all the more +hastily because of his eagerness to escape the pangs of that +uncomfortable self-reproach. To Aimée, in her new clear-sightedness +of misery, it was bitterly apparent that he was reconciled with her +lot and careless of it. + +So blinded had been her young affection that it was a hard +awakening, and she was too young, too cruelly involved, to feel for +his easy humors that amused tolerance of larger acquaintance with +human nature. She had grown swiftly bitter and resentful, and deeply +cold. + +And now this letter. It dazed her, like a flame of lightning before +her eyes, and then, like lightning, it lit up the world with +terrifying luridity. Fiery colored, unfamiliar, her life trembled +about her. + +Truth or lies? Custom and habit stirred incredulously to reject the +supposition. The romance, the adventure of youth, dared its swift +acceptance. How could she know? Intuitively she shrank from any +question to the pasha, realizing the folly and futility of exposing +her suspicion. If he needed to lie, lie he would--and in her +understanding of that, she read her own acceptance of the +possibility of his needing to lie. + +Madame de Coulevain? Madame had never known her mother. Only old +Miriam had known her mother and Miriam was the pasha's slave. But +the old woman was unsuspecting now, and full of disarming comfort in +this marriage of her wild darling. + +Through dinner she planned the careless-seeming questions. And then +in her negligée, as the old nurse brushed out her hair for the +night, "Dadi," said the girl, in a faint voice, "am I truly like my +mother?" and when Miriam had finished her fond protestation that +they were as like as two roses, as two white roses, bloom and bud, +she launched that little cunning phrase on which she had spent such +eager hoping. + +"And was I like her when I was little--when first she came to my +father?" + +"Eh--yes. Always thou wast the tiny image which Allah--Glory to his +Name!--had made of her," came the nurse's assurance. + +"I am glad," said Aimée, in a trembling voice. + +She dared not press that more. Confronted with her unconscious +admission the old woman would destroy it, feigning some evasion. But +there it was, for as much as it was worth.... + +Presently then, she found another question to slip into the old +woman's narrative of the pasha's grief. + +"Eh, to hear a man weep," Miriam was murmuring. "Her beauty had set +its spell upon him, and--" + +"And he lost her so soon. Three or four years only, was it not," +ventured Aimée, "that they had of life together?" + +It seemed that Miriam's brush missed a stroke. + +"Years I forget," the nurse muttered, "but tears I remember," and +she began to talk of other things. + +But it seemed to Aimée that she had answered. As for that other +matter, of the dead Delcassé child, she dared not refer to it, lest +Miriam tell the pasha. But how many times, she remembered, had she +been told that she was her mother's only one! + +Yet, oh, to know, to hear all the story, to learn Ryder's discovery +of it! It was all as strange and startling as a tale of Djinns. And +the life that it held out to her, the enchanted hope of freedom, of +aid--Oh, not again would she refuse his aid! + +She had no plans, no purposes. But that night over her +hastily-donned frock she slipped the black street mantle and when at +last, after endless waiting, the murmuring old palace was safely +still and dark, she stole down the spiral stair and gained the +garden. And then, a phantom among its shadows, she fled to the rose +bushes by the gate. + +Breathlessly she knelt and dug into the hiding place of that gate's +key. To the furthest corner her fingers explored the hole, pushing +furiously against the earth. And then she drew back her hand and +crushed it against her face to check the nervous sobs. + +The hole was empty. The key was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE RECEPTION + + +In Tewfick Pasha's harem everything was astir. + +It was the morning of the marriage, almost the very hour when the +wedding cortège would bear the bride from her father's home to the +house of her husband. + +The invited guests were already arrived and streaming through the +reception rooms, a bright, feminine tide in evening toilettes, +surrounding the exhibited gifts or pausing about tables of cool +syrups, and their soft, low voices, the delicious musical tones of +highbred Turkish women, rose like a murmuring of somnolent bees to +the tenser regions about, tightening the excitement of haste. + +The bride was not yet ready. Still and white, she was the only image +of calm in that fluttering, confusing room. Her nearer friends were +hovering about her, and her maids of honor, two charming little +Turks in rose robes, were draping her veil while old Miriam, +resplendent in green and silver, endeavored jealously to outmaneuver +them. + +On her knees, the gnome-like Mrs. Hendricks was adding an orange +blossom to the laces on the train. Then she sat back on her heels, +her head a-tilt like a curious bird's, her eyes beaming +sentimentally upon the bride. + +"The prettiest h'I h'ever did see," she pronounced with +satisfaction, "H'as pretty as a wax figger now--h'only a thought +_too_ waxy." + +And like a wax figure indeed, immobile, rigid, the bride was +standing before them, arrayed at last in the shimmering white of the +sweeping satin, overrich of lace and orange flowers, and shrouded in +the clouding waves of her veil. White as her robes, pale as death +and as still, the girl looked out at them, and only that sick pallor +of her face and the glitter of her dark eyes betrayed the tumult +within. + +"Your diadem, my dear--you are keeping us attending," came Madame de +Coulevain's voice from the door. + +The diadem, that heavy circlet of brilliants which crowned the +Eastern bride in place of the orange wreath of Western convention, +must not be touched by the bride's fingers but placed by one of her +friends, married and married but once, and exceptionally happy in +that marriage. + +Ghul-al-Din, Aimée's selection from her friends, stepped hastily +forward now, a soft, dimpled, slow-smiling girl, her eyes drowsy +with domesticity. No question of Ghul-al-Din's happiness! She +extolled her husband, a young captain of cavalry, and she adored her +infant son, a prodigy among children. Life for her was a rosy, +unquestioning absorption. + +A shaft of irony sped through Aimée, as she bent her head for its +crowning at this young wife's hands, and received the ceremonial +wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once +in her lifetime. Irony was the only salvation for the hour; without +that outlet for her tortured spirit she felt she would grow suddenly +mad, hysterical and babbling or passionate and wild. + +So many moods had stormed through her since that night when she had +found all hope of rescue gone with her lost key! So many impulses +seethed frantically now beneath her quiet, as she faced for the last +time that white-misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing +to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy robe, to scatter the +ornaments and drive out all those maddening spectators, all those +interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of her +humiliation. + +Arranging her veil, draping her satins, as if gauze and silk were +all that mattered to this hour! Wishing her happiness--as if +happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing! Smiling, +fluttering, complimenting, lending to the ghastly sacrifice the +familiar acceptances of every day.... + +If only she could wake from this nightmare and find that it was all +a dream. If only she could brush this confusion from her senses and +from her heart its dumb terrors.... If only she had the courage for +some desperate revolt, some outburst of strength-- + +"I am ready," she said faintly, turning from the glass, and moved +towards the door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that +train of three yards length, which stretched so regally behind her +in her slow descent of the stairs. + +In the French drawing-room below her father was waiting for the +ceremonial farewell, in which the father received the daughter's +thanks for all his care of her. + +Mechanically Aimée advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her +eyes--and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless, +questioning intensity that it was like something palpable.... She +had not foreseen this, sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant +passion of her spirit.... + +Her father? Was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so, +careless, callous--or was it only a father's semblance, and did +there lie in the background of those petted, childish years some +darker shadow, of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and +broken her heart--? + +Like flashing light that look passed between them. It penetrated +Tewfick's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his +olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's +pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his +power,--but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in +that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul. + +It was a moment in which the last cord of their relationship was +severed forever. + +She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom +dictated, but to sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a +maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but +with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered. + +And yet there was wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear +and supplication. + +Useless to beg now. She knew it, and yet the eyes implored. + +And then she smiled. And before that smile Tewfick faltered in his +paternal benediction and hastened the phrases. + +Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a +hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs +for the journey to the bridegroom's house. + +That day Aimée did not put on her veil. On either side of her, as +she went out her father's gate, huge negroes held up silken walls of +damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that +awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulevain and the two little +maids of honor. + +It was when the carriage began to move that the panic inside of her +grew to whirlwind. The horse' hoofs, trotting, trotting, the motion +of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If +she could only stop it! If she could only cry out, tear open the +windows, scream to the passers by. She knew these were only the +impotent visions of hysteria, but she indulged them pitifully. + +She saw herself, in those moments, helpless, and hopeless, passing +on into the slavery of this marriage--Aimée, no longer the daughter +of Tewfick Pasha, but Aimée Delcassé, child of a dead Frenchman, +inheritor of freedom, sold like any dancing girl.... + +And her own lips had assented. In the supreme, silly uselessness of +sacrifice she had given herself for the safety of that man who had +spent such careless indulgence upon her ... that man whom perhaps +her mother had loved and perhaps had hated.... + +Faster and faster the horses were trotting, leading the long file of +carriages and impatient motors that bore the relatives and guests +and trousseau, rolling on under the lebbeks and sycamores of the +wide Shubra Avenue, once the delight of fashionables before the +Gezireh Drive had drained it of its throngs and its prestige. + +Now some bright-eyed urchins ran out from their games in the dust to +curious attention, and through a half open gate Aimée caught once a +glimpse of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled +greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Farther on came +glimpses of farm lands, the wheat rising in bright spears, and of +well-wooded heights and in the distance the white houses of +Demerdache against the Gibel Achmar beyond. + +But where were they bearing her? Aimée had a despairing sense of +distance and desolation as the carriage turned again--Abdullah, the +coachman, having traversed unnecessary miles to gratify his pride +before the house of his parents--and made a zigzag way towards the +river, where old palaces rose from the backwaters, their faces +hidden by high walls or covered with heavy vines and moss. + +Deeper and deeper grew the girl's dismay. It was a different world +from that bright, modern Cairo that she knew; this was as remote +from her daily life as the old streets of Al Raschid. Her thoughts +flew forward to that unknown lord, that Hamdi Bey, whose image she +had refused to assemble to her consciousness. Now she comforted her +terror with a sudden assumption of age and dignity and kindness, of +a courtesy that would protect her and a deference that would assuage +the horror of a life together, when unknown, fearful familiarities +would alone vibrate in the empty monotonies. + +Before a high wall the carriage had stopped. A huge, repellent +Ethiopian was standing before an opened doorway, through which a +rich carpet was spread. + +"Ah, but he looks like an ogre, that new eunuch of yours, Aimée," +murmured one of the little Turks. The other, more touched with +thought, gave her a disturbed glance, and laughed in nervousness. + +Madame, alone serene, ignored the dismaying impression. + +"The palace is of a fine, ancient beauty, I am told," she mentioned +cheerfully. + +For one wild instant Aimée thought to plead with her, to implore her +to tell Abdullah to drive on, to give her the freedom of flight, if +only flight down those deserted streets. And then a mad vision of +herself in her bridal robes in flight, brought the hysterical +laughter to her throat. The time for flight had gone by ... And as +for madame's pity on her--this was not the first time that Aimée had +thought of invoking her aid, but she had always known, too well, +that thought's supreme futility. + +Sympathetic as Madame de Coulevain might be in her inmost heart--and +Aimée divined in her an understanding pity for the necessities of +existence--never would that sympathy betray her to rashness. She +never would believe that in serving Aimée she would not be ruining +her; and even if assured of Aimée's safety, she could never be +brought to betray her own reputation for truthworthiness among the +harems of Cairo.... As well appeal to the rocks of the Mokattam +hills. + +The carriage stopped. The negroes extended the damask walls, and one +sprang to open the carriage door and bear the bride's train. In one +moment's parting of the silken walls the girl saw a sun-flooded +cluster of staring faces, thronging for her arrival, and then the +damask intervened and through its lane, followed by her duenna and +her maids of honor, she entered the arched doorway. + +She was in a garden, a great gloomy place, over-spread with ancient, +moss-encrusted trees. A broken, marble fountain flung up waters into +which no sunlight flashed, and the heavy stepping stones, leading to +it, were buried in untrodden grass. A garden in which no one +lingered. + +The Ethiopian was marshaling them to the left, to an entrance in the +dark palace walls before them. Behind them the oncoming guests were +streaming out in veiled procession. + +He opened a door. Ancient, beautiful arches framed a long vestibule +and against a background of profuse cut flowers a man's figure +stepped forward in the glittering uniform of the Sultan's guard. +Aimée had a confused impression of a thin, meager, dandified figure +with a waspish waist ... of a blond mustache with upstanding ends +... of sallow cheek-bones and small, light eyes smiling at her in a +strained, eager curiosity.... + +Through all her sinking dismay she had a flash of clear, +enlightening irony at that look's suspense. If she were not as +represented! If his cousin's fervor had misled his hope--! + +But in that instant's encounter his eyes cleared to triumph and +gayety, and he smiled--a smile curiously feline, ironic, for all its +intended ingratiation--a conqueror's smile, winged to reassure and +melt. + +He stepped forward. There were formal words of welcome to which she +returned a speechless bow, and then he offered his arm and conducted +her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its scabbard, to the +apartment which was to be her home, and the prison for the spirit +and the body. + +She knew in a moment that she hated this man and that he inspired +her with fear and horror. + +Across a long expanse of drawing-room he conducted her to the +ancient marriage throne upon its platform, surmounted by a pompous +crown from which old, embroidered silks hung heavily. + +Then with an unheard phrase, and another bow, he left her to the +day-long ordeal of the reception while he withdrew to his own +entertainment at her father's house. She would not see him again +until night, when he would pay her a call of ceremony. + +She saw his figure hesitating a moment, as he faced the oncoming +guests, such a flood of femininity, unmantled now and unveiled, +sparkling in rainbow hues of silks and tulle and gauze that he had +never before faced and never would again. Like a bright wave the +throng closed about him and then surged on towards the bride upon +the throne. + +How often, in the last years, Aimée had pitied that poor puppet of a +bride, stuck there like some impaled, winged creature, helpless for +flight, to the exhibition of the long stream of passersby! How often +she had promised herself that never would this be her fate, never +would she be given to an unknown! And now-- + +She was smiling as she faced them, that light, fixed smile she had +seen so often on others' lips, the smile of pride trying desperately +to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious. +Satiric, cynical, or sympathetic, that light smile defied them all, +but beneath its guard she felt she was slowly bleeding to death of +some mortal hurt. + +The sympathy unconsciously betrayed, was hardest. The whispers of +her young maids of honor, "Really, Aimée, he looks so young! One +would never surmise," were more galling in their intended +consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends' own +shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man than the barbed dart +of the uncaring, inquisitive, "How do you find him, my dear? He has +the reputation for conquest!" + +They were all there, her friends, young, slim, modish Turkish girls +whose time had not yet come, glancing quizzically about the ancient +drawing room, with its solid side of mashrubiyeh, its old wall +panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their +glances back at her, as if to ask, "And is this our revoltée? Is +this her end, in this dim, old palace among the ghosts of the past?" + +Some, the frankest, murmured, "But why did you not refuse?" and +others attempted consolation with a light, "As well the first as the +last--since we must all come to it." + +Of the married women there were those who raised blank, bitter eyes +to her, and others, more mild, romantic, affectionate, tried to +infuse encouragement into their smiles as if they said, +"Come--courage--it's not so bad. And what would you? We are women, +after all; we do not need so much for happiness. + +"Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your +spirit in place of a master delighting in your beauty alone, what +are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies? For other +races, perhaps--but for you, take hold of life. There are realities +yet in it to bring you joy." + +It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their +pressure of her hands. + +And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile +demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening +unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in +vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes +saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of +terror rose higher and higher in her soul. + +Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night +when she found the key was gone. + +Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen +back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the +breaking sobs of rebellion and despair--and of a longing so deep and +so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a +pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar. + +Never again would she see him now.... Never would she know--never +would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe +her still aloof, incredulous.... It was finished--forever and ever. + +She had told herself that before. But always there had been the key. +And now there was no key and no escape and her heart broke itself +against the iron of necessity. + +She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion, +not peace but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison +gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never +again the sight of that too-remembered face and the sound of that +voice--why, then, as well one fate as another. And it was too late +now to recede. + +So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its +part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half-contemptuous +pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she +would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she +would keep its own, in its unsullied dreams ... and in its +memories.... Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly borne. + +But now she had seen the man. Now this wild dislike, this sickening +terror. + +To be alone with him, to have only the few days grace of courtship +which the Mohammadan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be +forever at his mercy in this solitary palace, with its echoing +corridors, its blackened walla, its damp breath of age.... + +She thought wildly of death. + +And all the time she was smiling, bending her cheek to the kiss of a +friend, feeling the fingers of some well-wisher press upon her, +listening to praises of her beauty.... + +For she was beautiful. No image of wax now. The scarlet of her +frightened blood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as +the jewels in her diadem, and beneath the thrown-back veil her dark +hair revealed its lovely wealth. + +"Is she not a rose--will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard +that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared +on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal +youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated +master. + +And still the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the +flickering light and shadow of the mashrubiyeh, slender young Turks +or blonde Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or +malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some +rotund matron grave and serene, her head encircled with an old +fashioned turban of gauze, her stout flesh encased in heavy silks, +bought at Damask so as not to enrich the Unbelievers at Lyons. + + * * * * * + +And then the spectacle changed, the black street mantles appeared, +yashmaks and tcharchafs, for now the doors were opened to all the +feminine world, and there came strange, unknown women, slipping out +from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace, old-timers often, +draped and turbaned in the fashion of some far province of their +youth; women, incredibly fat, in rich stuffs of Asia, their bright, +deep-sunken eyes spying delightedly upon the scene, or furtive, poor +women, keeping courage in twos and threes. + +Now, too, at four, came the women from the Embassies, a Russian girl +with whom Aimée had played tennis in ages past, rosy now with +yesterday's sun and sleepy with last night's dance, who touched the +bride's hand as if it were the hand of one half-dead, already +consigned to the tomb; other girls she did not know, who stared at +her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities; older women, +experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and smoking cigarettes +and gossiping of their own affairs, and occasionally among them a +tourist agog with wonder and exultation, storing away details for a +lifetime of talk, asking amiably the most incredible questions.... + +"And is it true you have never met your husband? Listen, Jane--she +says she has never met him--" + +A girl in a creamy white silk came forward a little uncertainly. She +was a pretty girl, with a curve of ruddy hair visible under her +smart straw, and very bright eyes, where shyness was at variance +with a friendly smile. + +Indeed Jinny Jeffries was extraordinarily intimidated by the +occasion. She had a distinct sense of intrusion mingling with her +delight at having intruded, and she murmured her good wishes in an +almost inaudible tone. + +"It is very good of you to let us come ... I wish you every +happiness," she said. + +Beside her a tall slender figure, in black tcharchaf and yashmak, +made its appearance. + +Aimée's eyes slipped past the pretty American; the mechanical smile +was frozen on her lips. Over the black veil she saw the hazel eyes, +bright with excitement, vivid as speech; the eyes of the masquerader +in the Scotch costume, the eyes of the man at the garden gate--Jack +Ryder's eyes ... the eyes of her dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE FORTY DOORS + + +When Ryder had despatched from the jeweler's who had polished the +locket for him, that package with its secret note, and its warning +plaid, he had no real assurance that the message would fall into +Aimée's hands. But he could think of nothing better, and he argued +very favorably for his stratagem. + +That miniature should have some effect, and given the miniature, and +the bit of plaid cloth, Aimée's quick wit ought to divine a message. + +She had always the key, he remembered, and the power of egress from +her prison. And surely it ought not to be difficult for her to +devise some way of getting a letter into the post. + +So his hope fluctuated between the garden gate and the daily mail at +the Bank, and he rather surprised McLean by the frequency and +brevity of his visits, and by the duration of his stay in Cairo. + +For that he had an excuse, both to McLean and to the deserted +Thatcher, at the excavation camp, two excuses in fact--some belated +identification work to be done at the Museum and a cracked wisdom +tooth. + +Chiefly he spoke of the necessity for dentistry and accounted for +his moods with his molar. + +Of moods he had many. Moods when he contemplated his behavior +lightly and brightly or darkly, in unrelieved disgust, moods when he +refused to contemplate it at all. But he stayed. That was the +conspicuous and enduring thing. He stayed. + +Jinny Jeffries returned from the Nile by express to find him +ensconced at her hotel, and her bright confidence suffered no +diminution of its self respect. And it was through Jinny that chance +set another straw of circumstance dancing his way. + +Jinny had a frock she wished repaired. Mrs. Heath-Brown, whom she +had met upon the Nile, recommended to her a Mrs. Hendricks, wife of +a British soldier and a most clever little needle woman. Jinny +looked up Mrs. Hendricks and found it impossible to secure her for +some days as she was busy refitting for a fashionable wedding in the +Mohammedan world. + +A night later, and two nights before the wedding, Jinny made a +narrative of the circumstances for Jack Ryder's benefit. + +"Such frocks h'as h'I 'ave to do--and the young lady no more +caring!" had been a saying of the Hendricks that Jinny passed +interestedly on to Jack. She had no memory of the young lady's name, +but distinctly she recalled that she was young and beautiful and to +marry a general. + +It was enough to launch Jinny's eager interest in Mohammedan +marriages and foster the wish that she might attend one. She +regretted Mrs. Heath-Brown's absence and her lack of acquaintance, +and suggested that Jack ought to know some one-- + +"Better than that, _I'll_ take you," said Jack with a promptness +that brought a light to Miss Jeffries' eyes. + +There was also a light in Jack Ryder's eyes, a swift burning of +excitement and adventure. + +Why not? The thing was possible. Muffled in a tcharchaf and veiled +with a heavy yashmak, armed with enough Arabic for the briefest of +encounters, he might dare the danger. Who in the world would +discover him? Who would ever know? + +The thing was unthinkable. It was a desperate desecration, +comparable only, in his vague analogies, to the Mecca pilgrimage and +profanation of a Holy Tomb. But its very improbability would prevent +detection. + +Only Jinny had to keep her mouth extremely shut--before and +afterwards. + +He impressed this upon her so thoroughly, as they did their shopping +for the costume together the next morning, that she had compunctious +moments of solicitude when she said he really ought not to.... She +would feel responsible.... + +Thereupon he laughed, and dared her to be game, and she grew all +mirthful confidence again. + +But that night, sitting alone in a native café over his Turkish +coffee, Ryder was grimly serious. + +He knew that it was a mad thing to do. He felt, not so much the +danger he ran from discovery, but the danger to his already +shattered peace of mind from another glimpse of that strange girl +... that young unknown, on whom he had spent such time and thought, +of late, that she seemed a very part of his existence. + +What was the good of going to her wedding reception? Feebly he told +himself that it was his only chance to inform her upon the history +of the Delcassés. There might have been reasons for her +non-appearance at the gate, for her not writing.... He could have no +glimmering of what went on behind those barred windows. This was his +only chance--he meant to say, to tell her--but his eager senses +murmured, to see her again. + +That was it--to see her again. He owned the lure, at last, with a +bitter ruefulness. But--he brightened up at that--it was partly his +duty to himself. Now he had all sorts of fool imaginings about this +girl. He was remembering her as something lovelier than a Houri, +more enchanting than fairy magic, more sweet than spring. He owed it +to himself to rout these imbecile prepossessions and prove clearly +and dispassionately that the girl was just a very nice little girl, +a pretty bride, marrying into a very distinct life from his own--and +a girl with whom he would not have an idea in common. A girl, in +fact, far inferior to any American. A girl not to be compared to +Jinny Jeffries. + +Besides, there was fun in the thing. It tempted him tremendously. +It was adventurous, romantic forbidden. + +He heard the word echoed in Turkish behind him. + +So engrossed in his thoughts had he been that he had been +inattentive to the rhythm of old Khazib, the tale teller's voice, as +he held forth, from the divan, beside his long-stemmed pipe, to his +nightly audience, of men and boys, camel drivers, small merchants, +desert men from the long caravans who were the frequenters of this +café. + +To-night there were few about the old man, and Ryder had small +difficulty in drawing nearer the circle. A green-turbaned Arab, with +the profile of a Washington and the naïve eyes of youth, whispered +to him courteously that it was the tale of the Third Kaland, and the +Prince Azib was in the palace of the forty damsels who were +farewelling him, as they were to depart, according to custom, for +forty days. + +Khazib, with a faint salutation of his turban towards the newcomer, +went slowly, sonorously on with his tale. + +"We fear," said the damsel unto Azib, "lest thou contraire our +charge and disobey our injunctions. Here now we commit to thee the +keys of the palace which containeth forty chambers and thou mayest +open of these thirty and nine, but beware (and we conjure thee by +Allah and by the lives of us!) lest thou open the fortieth door, for +therein is that which shall separate us forever." + +For a moment the café faded from Ryder's eyes. He was in the gloom +of a garden, a shadowy darkness just touched by a crescent moon, and +beside him in the shrubbery a dark-shrouded form, shaking its +shawled head at him in denial, and whispering, lightly but +tremblingly. "It is a forbidden door ... forbidden as that +fortieth.... There are thirty and nine doors in your life, monsieur, +that you may open, but this is the forbidden...." + +He had meant to look up that tale. And now chance was reminding him +of it again. A superstitious man--Ryder's great grandfather, +perhaps, would have felt it an omen of warning, and a devout +man--Ryder's grandfather, perhaps--would have taken it for a sign +from Heaven to divert his steps. Ryder reflected upon coincidence. + +"When I saw her weeping," Khazib was intoning, and now Ryder +attended, his scanty knowledge of the vernacular straining and +overleaping the blanks, "Prince Azib said to himself, 'By Allah, I +will never open that fortieth door, never, and in no wise!'" + +"A wise bird," thought Ryder to himself, drawing on his cigarette. + +"And I bade her farewell," continued the voice slipping into the +first person. "Thereupon all departed, flying like birds, leaving me +alone in the palace. When evening drew near, I opened the door of +the first chamber and found myself in a place like one of the +pleasances of Paradise. It was a garden with trees of freshest +green and ripe fruits of yellow sheen. And I walked among the trees +and I smelt the breath of the flowers and heard the birds sing their +praise to Allah, the One, the Almighty." + +"_Allhamdollillah_," murmured Ryder's neighbors reverently. + +"And I looked upon the apple, whose hue is parcel red and parcel +yellow ... and I looked upon the quince whose fragrance putteth to +shame musk and ambergris ... and upon the pear whose taste +surpasseth sherbet and sugar, and the apricot, whose beauty striketh +the eye as she were a polished ruby.... + +"On the morrow I opened the second door and found myself in a +spacious plain set with tall date palms and watered by a running +stream whose banks were shrubbed with rose and jasmine, while privet +and eglantine, oxe-eye, violet and lily, narcissus, origane and the +winter gilliflower carpeted the borders; and the breath of the +breeze swept over those sweet-smelling growths...." + +How inadequate, Ryder realized, had been the description given by +the Book of Genesis to the Garden of Eden. + +"And the third door," droned on the rhythmic voice, "into an open +hall, hung with cages of sandal-wood and eagle-wood; full of birds +which made sweet music, such as the mocking bird, and the cusha, the +merle, the turtle dove--and the Nubian ring-dove." + +A trifle restively Ryder stirred. He liked birds but he wanted to +be getting on to that fortieth door and this was slow progress. Not +a sign of impatience marred the bright, absorbed content of the +other listeners, intent now upon the wonders behind that the fourth +chamber revealed, stores of "pearls and jacinths and beryls, and +emeralds and corals and carbuncles and all manner of precious gems +and jewels such as the tongue of man could not describe." + +The story teller proceeded, "Then, quoth Prince Azib, now verily am +I the monarch of the age, since by Allah's grace this enormous +wealth is mine; and I have forty damsels under my hand nor is there +any to claim them save myself." + +The handsome Arab beside Ryder inhaled his pipe luxuriously. "By the +grace of Allah!" he said reverently. + +"Then I gave not over opening place after place until nine and +thirty days were passed and in that time I had entered every chamber +except that one whose door I was charged not to open. But my +thoughts ever ran upon that forbidden fortieth and Satan urged me to +open it for my own undoing...." + +"I see his finish," said Ryder interestedly to himself--and he +thought of the analogy. + +"So I stood before the chamber, and after a few moments' hesitation, +opened the door which was plated with red gold and entered. I was +met by a perfume whose like I had never before smelt; and so sharp +and subtle was the odor that it made my senses drunken as with +strong wine, and I fell to the ground in a fainting fit which lasted +a full hour. When I came to myself I strengthened my heart, and +entering found myself in a chamber bespread with saffron and blazing +with light.... Presently, I spied a noble steed, black as the murks +of night when murkiest, standing ready saddled and bridled (and his +saddle was of red gold) before two mangers one of clear crystal +wherein was husked sesame, and the other, also of crystal containing +water of the rose scented with musk. When I saw this I marveled and +said to myself, 'Doubtless in this animal must be some wondrous +mystery, and Satan--'" + +"Satan the Stoned!" murmured Ryder's neighbor religiously. + +"Satan cozened me, so I led him without and mounted him ... and +struck him withal. When he felt the blow he neighed a neigh with a +sound like deafening thunder and opening a pair of wings flew up +with me in the firmament of heaven far beyond the eyesight of man. +After a full hour of flight he descended and shaking me off his back +lashed me on the face with his tail, and gouged out my left eye, +causing it to roll along my cheek. Then he flew away." + +On rolled the voice, narrating the prince's descent to the table of +the other one-eyed youths, but Ryder was unheeding. And at the close +he inclined his head with the other listeners, murmuring "May Allah +increase thy prosperity," as he felt in his pockets for the silver +which the others were drawing from turban and sleeves and sash to +lay in the patriarch's lap, and then raised his head to question +diffidently, "Would you interpret, O Khazib, the meaning of that +door? For I hear that it hath now become a saying of a forbidden +thing." + +The sage hesitated, sucking at his pipe. Then he said slowly, "To +every man, O Youth, is there a forbidden door, beyond which waits +the steed of high adventure ... with wings beyond man's riding. And +so the rider is lost and his vision is gone." + +"But for him who could ride?" Ryder suggested. + +"Inshallah! Who can say till he has tried his destiny--and better +are the nine and thirty chambers of safe pleasance than the lonely +sightlessness of the outcast one.... It is a tale which if it were +written upon the eye-corners with needle-gravers, were a warning to +those who would be warned." + +For a moment their eyes held each other, smiling but grave. Ryder's +thoughts were of the morrow, of that forbidden entry he was planning +to make, of the risks, the wild uncertainties.... + +Wisdom and counsel looked significantly out at him out of those +patriarchal eyes. Prudence and sanity clamored within him for a +hearing. + +And then he smiled, the whimsical, boyish smile of young +adventuring. + +"But whoever, O, my father, had opened that forbidden door +the veriest crack, and breathed its scent and glimpsed its +dazzlement--then for him there is no turning back," he confided. + +He rose and Khazib's eyes followed him. + +"Luck go with you, my son," he said clearly, "in Allah's name," and +smiling in faint ruefulness, "May Allah heed thee!" Ryder murmured +piously. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE UNINVITED GUEST + + +Now as he stood before Aimée, and saw her eyes widen with +recognition, he knew that he would have need of all his luck and all +his wit. He stepped hastily forward. + +"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God that he has permitted me to behold +you this day," he murmured, in the studiously sing-song Arabic that +might be expected from a humble Turkish woman in plain mantle and +yashmak. "May Allah continue to spread before thee the carpet of +enjoyment--" and then lower, almost muffled by the thick veil, "Can +you give me a moment--?" + +Eagerly, significantly, his eyes met hers. + +Half fearfully, Aimée flashed an excited look around her. The space +before the marriage throne had thinned, for there were no more +arrivals waiting to offer their congratulations and the guests were +clustering now about the tables for refreshment or drifting into the +next salon where behind firmly stretched silken walls a stringed +orchestra was playing. + +Miss Jeffries alone was lingering near, but she moved off now--at a +secret look from Ryder--with an appearance of unconcern. + +"I am going to try my vernacular on the bride," Ryder had told her. +"Don't linger or look alarmed. I won't give the show away." + +So there was no one to overhear a low-toned colloquy between the +bride and the veiled woman, no one to note or wonder that the veiled +woman was speaking, strangely enough, in rapid English. + +"When I didn't hear from you I had to come, to know if you received +the package and letter I sent--" + +With a swift gesture of her little ringed hand Aimée drew from the +laces on her bosom that heavy gold locket. + +"Indeed I have it--and the note, too, I found. But I could not write +you. There was no way--no one to trust to mail it. And they had +stolen my key," she whispered, and the confessing words with their +quiver of forlornness told Ryder something of the story of those +helpless days and nights. + +He murmured, "I didn't dare write you more personally for fear they +would find the note." + +"I understood. That plaid about the box--that was so clever a +warning. I kept the box and hunted in it." + +"I wanted to tell you more about that locket. I dug it up myself +from the tomb I was excavating--do you remember how you wished that +I would dig from the sands whatever secret I most desired? And I +found that.... And it happened that at McLean's I had met the French +agent who was searching for any trace of the Delcassés, of the wife +and child of the explorer who had disappeared fifteen years before. +That miniature was your image, and I guessed at once. McLean and I +went to the pasha--Oh, I didn't tell him I'd met you!" he flung in, +his eyes twinkling, "and we pretended we knew all about his marriage +to Madame Delcassé and he owned up without a quiver. But when we +tried to claim you for the French family, he doubled like a hare. He +said the Delcassé child was dead, died when his own child was a +baby, and that you were his own. But I was sure that you were more +than fourteen, and that he was simply putting it over on us so as to +have this marriage go on without interference--and so I tried to get +the story to you. Even now I thought you ought to know," he added, +as if in palliation of his invasion here. + +For he realized now how tremendous an invasion it was. + +All the guests about him had not given him that feeling, all that +sea of femininity, those grave matrons whose serenely unveiled faces +would burn with shame to be beheld by this stranger, those bright, +slim girls in their extravagant frocks, their tulle, their lace, +their pearls, their diamonds, all the hidden charms that no man had +yet seen stirred in him no more than an excited and adventurous +curiosity. + +But the vision of Aimée--that delicate beauty in its tragic irony +of throne and diadem! It touched him to tenderness and to an actual +sense of sacrilege at the freedom of his gaze. No moonlight vision +this, ethereal and dream-like, but a vivid, disquieting radiance of +dark, shining eyes and rose-flushed cheeks. He had never seen her +hair before, midnight hair, escaping little curls from the veil and +the diadem. And he had never really seen her mouth--wistful and gay, +like the mouth of the miniature ... nor her chin, so tender and +willful ... nor her skin, satin-soft, in its veiling from the +daylight.... + +She was more than young and sweet and fair. She was beauty, beauty +with its elusive, ineluctable spell, entangled with the appeal of +her helplessness. + +A bright blush flooded her now and her eyes fell in confusion, +before the prolonging of his look. + +"But it is dangerous--your being here," she murmured. + +"The fortieth door," he reminded her. + +Under her breath, "Ah, you remember?" + +"I remember. And but last night I heard Khazib, the story teller, +tell the tale, and I thought of you and your warning--of the door +that hid you, that it was forbidden for me to open." + +"And so you opened it, monsieur." Faintly she smiled, with downcast +lashes. + +"And I came as you first came to me--in mantle and veil." + +For a moment their thoughts fled back to that masquerade, which +seemed so long ago. + +"But it is too late," she said tremulously. + +"_Is_ it too late--for me to help you?" + +At that her eyes rose to his again in a swift flash of hunted fear. + +"Oh, take me away from him!" she breathed suddenly, unpremeditately. +"Somehow--somewhere--" + +Another figure came towards them. Madame De Coulevain in all her +severe elegance of black. + +"Come and join your friends at the supper, my dear; there is no need +for you to be pilloried here any longer," she observed with an +indifferent scrutiny of the persistent veiled woman, and Ryder moved +slowly away while Aimée came dutifully down from the throne, a huge +black bending to hold her train. + +"I thought you were _never_ coming! What _were_ you talking about?" +demanded a voice in Ryder's ear, and he found Jinny Jeffries at his +side, her bright gray eyes pouncing upon him with curiosity. + +"Oh, I wished her joy--native phrases--that sort of thing," he +answered mechanically as they drew back into an embrasure of the +mashrubiyeh that formed one side of the great room. + +"But you were talking forever. I saw you holding forth at a +tremendous rate. Why wouldn't you let me stay and listen--?" + +"You'd have put me off my shot, I had to feel unobserved to play +up." + +"You must be fearfully good at Arabic," said Jinny guilelessly. +"And what did she say?" + +"Why--she didn't say anything in particular--" + +"But what was that she was showing you? I saw her bend forward with +a locket or something--?" + +A plague upon Jinny's bright eyes! "Oh, yes, the locket," said Ryder +with an effort. "She--ah--she showed it to me." + +"But _why_? Wasn't that awfully funny--" + +"Oh, I believe it's a custom, courtesy stunt you know, to show a +poor guest some of the presents," he explained, manufacturing under +pressure. + +"I wish she'd show _me_ her rings. Did you ever see so many? It was +the only thing about her you'd call really Eastern--all those +glittering diamonds on her fingers. And did you notice her hands?" +Jinny went on enthusiastically. "Jack, I never knew there was +anything so lovely as that girl in the world. She's simply +_exquisite_.... I suppose it's her whole life," Miss Jeffries +reflected, "keeping herself beautiful." Her eyes rested curiously on +the feminine groups before them. "They haven't anything else to do +or think about, have they?" + +"I understand some of them are remarkably educated young women." + +"What's the use of it?" said the practical daughter of an American +college. "They can't ever meet any men, but just a husband--" + +"They can read for themselves, can't they? And talk to each other. +And--well, what do you girls do with your education anyway? You +don't lug anything very heavy about the golf course and the ball +room." + +"Who wants us to? But we do bring something to committees and clubs +and--and welfare work," Miss Jeffries maintained stoutly. "And we +are always into arguments at dinners. While these girls, they can't +dine out, they haven't anybody but themselves to argue with, and it +doesn't matter a straw politically what they think--they can't even +change the customs that their great, great, great grandfathers +imposed. + +"If I were one of these girls," she declared positively, "I wouldn't +bother about Kant and chemistry and history--I'd stuff myself full +of sweetmeats and loll around on a divan and not care what happened +outside. Or else I'd be miserable." + +"Perhaps they are miserable." + +"They ought to fight. Think, _think_," said Jinny dramatically, "of +marrying some man you've never seen--the way that lovely girl is +doing. Suppose she doesn't like him? Suppose he's dull and cranky +and mean and greedy? Suppose he bores her? Suppose she actually +hates him? Why, Jack, it's horrible! And yet she submits--she +_submits_ to it--" + +"Suppose she has to submit, that she hasn't a soul on earth to help +her? How would you fight, I wonder--" + +"Well, you don't need to shout about it! That woman's looking +now--that one with the green turban and the stuffed-date eyes." + +Nervously Jinny glanced around. + +"It's a fearful lark," she murmured, "but I don't believe I'd ever +have had the nerve if I'd realized.... What do you suppose they +would _do_, Jack, if they found you out?... Those big blacks look +so--so uncivilized." + +Her eyes rested upon the huge eunuch at the far entrance of the +salon, a huge hideous fellow, with red fez, baggy blouse and +trousers, and a knife handle sticking piratically from a sash. + +"He has on English oxfords," said Ryder lightly. "That's a saving +something. But they aren't going to find out..... I have an idea we +ought to make our getaway now, and that we had better not go +together. You go first and then I'll stroll along, and whisk off +these duds in some quiet corner.... I have to meet a man to-night, +but I'll probably see you to-morrow. And _don't_," he entreated, +"don't as you love your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, +breathe a word of my being here like this to any one--any +time--anywhere. I was an unmitigated ass to link you up with it. So +be wary." + +"Oh, I shall!" Jinny Jeffries promised vividly and with a last look +about the old palace, the empty marriage throne and the dissolving +knots of guests, she gave a little nod to her veiled companion, +sauntered without visible trepidation past the staring eunuch at +the door, went down the long stairs where other departing guests +were drawing on mantles and veils, and so made her way across a +shadowy garden and out the gate that another black opened. + +And then she drew a sudden breath of relief and glanced up at a sky +of sunset fires and felt the free airs play with her hair and face +and so shook off, lightly and gratefully, that darkening impression +of shuttered rooms and guarding blacks. + +Little rivers of wine and fire were bubbling in Aimée's veins. She +was gay at supper, as a bride should be gay. It was enough, for +those first few moments, that she had seen him again, that he had +dared to come and try to help her--that he cared enough to come! + +Her heart sang little pæans of joy and triumph. She sketched +impossible scenes of escape--she saw herself, in a shrouding mantle, +slipping with him past the guests at the door, she saw them speeding +away in a motor, she saw France, the unknown Delcassés--a bright, +gay world of freedom and romance. + +Or, perhaps, if not to-night, then to-morrow.... They would plan ... +she would obtain permission to take a drive and there would be a +signal, a waiting car.... + +But, better now. She could not endure even the call of ceremony from +that man who called himself her husband. The very memory of his eyes +on her.... + +Decidedly, it must be to-night. And Ryder would think of a way. She +must get back to him ... he would be lingering. She must get away +from this hateful table, these guests and companions.... + +A wild impatience tore at her. She grew uneasy, anxious, fretted at +the frightening way that time was slipping past.... + +Her radiance vanished, her smile was nervous, forced, as she sat at +her table of honor, amid the circle of her friends, with a linked +wreath of candelabra sending its sparkle of lights over the young +faces and jewel-clasped throats, over the glittering silver on the +white satin cloth among the drift of pink and white rose petals. + +She began to bite her lips nervously... she did not hear what her +bridesmaids were chattering about ... her eyes went often, with that +stealth that invites regard, to the tiny platinum and diamond watch +upon her wrist. + +Would they never finish? Would they never be free? She wondered if +she dared feign an illness to rise and leave them; but no, that +would mean solicitude, companions.... + +And now the slaves were bringing still another round of trays.... + +Oh, hurry, hurry, her tightening nerves besought. + +At last! The older women were going. Not even for a wedding would +they deeply infringe upon that rule which keeps the Moslem women +indoors after the sun has set. Ceremoniously each made to the bride +her adieux and good wishes, and ceremoniously a frantically +impatient Aimée returned the formal thanks due for "assistance at +the humble fête." + +She did not see that black mantle anywhere. + +Her heart sank. Stupid, she told herself with quivering lips, to +dream that he could dare to linger, that he had any way to get her +out. By help he meant no more than getting letters to France for +her.... And yet his eyes when they had met hers.... Surely he had +meant--but when she had disappeared from the reception room to +attend the supper, when there seemed no way of speaking again to +her, and all the outsiders, all but the invited guests were +departed, he had been, obliged to go, too. + +Perhaps some one had begun to notice him.... She wondered if he had +been careful about his shoes, his hands.... How had he managed about +the dress anyway? + +And then she remembered that girl, that pretty American with the +ruddy hair to whom she had seen him talking, and she conjectured +that there was feminine aid and confidence.... + +A wave of bitterness swept over her. He had told that girl about +her--he knew that girl well enough to tell her! And perhaps he was +only sorry for the poor little French girl in the Turkish harem, +perhaps they were _both_ sorry.... + +Had he told that girl, she thought with bitter mutiny, that he had +kissed her? + +That girl must have been very sure of him not to be jealous of his +interest in herself! + +And now they could be somewhere together, perhaps talking her over, +while she was here ... here forever.... + +She was so white now, so silent, so distrait, that all the chatter +of the younger girls who were lingering around her could not dispel +the feeling of depression. They cast covert glances of discomfort at +each other, begged for more music from the orchestra, tallied with +an effort of the size and spaciousness of the palace and the +magnificence of the feast. + +She had told herself that she had ceased to hope. She did not know +how false it was until the eunuch brought his message. Then hope +really died. + +The general was below and begged to be announced to madame. + +"We fly!" whispered a lingerer with nervous laughter, and hastily +the young people hurried into their tcharchafs and veils, murmuring +among themselves, with sidelong glances at that white figure whose +cold hand and cheek they had just touched, hastily they sped, like +light-footed nymphs in some witches' robes, down the long room, +while Madame de Coulevain drew back a strand of the girl's dark hair +and murmured, "But smile, my dear," to the still figure and escaped +with the guests. + +And then Aimée was alone in the great room, deserted of its throngs, +a darkening room, full of burned-down candles and fallen flower +petals, with here and there the traces of the revelers, a scented +handkerchief ... a fan ... a buckle from some French slipper ... or +a feather from some ancient turban clasp.... + +Like the ghost of some deserted queen, with her regal satins and +glittering circlet, she waited. There was a moment of grace in which +she tried, to turn a gallant face toward the next moment. + +Then he came, advancing.... It may have been her distorted fancy, +but down the long perspective, that figure looked more mincing, more +waspish, more unreal than ever. And she was conscious of that swift +rising of dislike, of antagonism touched with reasonless fear. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE BEY RETURNS + + +He kissed her hands. She caught the murmur of compliments and the +mingled scent of musk and wine. He had been dining at his reception +for the men, but he called now for a table and more refreshment. + +A small table was brought to the end of the room near the marriage +throne where all the day she had paraded; a richly embroidered cloth +of satin was flung over it, and from crowding candelabra fresh +lights shed down a little circle of brilliance. + +Faintly Aimée protested that eat she could not, and then she made a +feint of eating, lingering over her sherbets, because eating was, +after all, so safe and uncomplicated a thing. + +The black brought champagne in its jacket of ice and filled their +glasses. + +The general rose. "_À notre bonheur_--to our happiness," he +declared, holding out his glass, and she clinked her own to it and +brought her lips to touch the brim, but not to that toast could she +swallow a single one of the bubbles that went winking up and down +the hollow stem. + +The glass trembled suddenly in her hand as she set it down. An +overpowering sense of fatigue was upon her. With the death of her +poor hope, with the collapse of all those flighty, childish dreams, +the leaden weight of realities seemed to descend crushingly upon +her. She felt stricken, inert, apathetic. + +It was all so unreal, so bizarre. This could not possibly be taking +place in her life, this fantastic scene, this table set with lights +and food at the end of a dark, deserted old room opposite this +grimacing, foppish stranger.... + +She could barely master strength for her replies. How had it all +gone? Excellently? She was satisfied with her new home? With the +service? The appointments? + +He plied her with questions and she tried to summon her spirit: she +achieved a few perfunctory phrases, the words of a frightened child +struggling for its manners. She tried to smile, unconscious of the +betrayal of her eyes. + +He told her, sketchily, of his day. A bore, those affairs, those +speeches, he told her, gazing at her, his wine glass in his hand, a +flush of wine and excitement in his face. She found it unpleasant to +look at him. Her glance evaded his. + +She stammered a word of praise for the palace. It must be very +ancient, she told him. Very--interesting. + +He waved a hand on which an enormous ruby glittered. He could tell +her stories of it, he promised. It had been built by one of the +Mamelukes, his ancestor. Its old banqueting hall was still +untouched--the collectors would give much to rifle that, but they +would never get their sharks' noses in. Nothing had been changed, +but something added. Once the Mad Khedive had borrowed it for some +years and begun his eternal additions. + +"Forty girls, they say, he kept here," smiled Hamdi Bey. "They +gulped their pleasure, in those days. It is better to sip, is it +not?" + +He smiled. "But these are no stories for a bride! I only trust that +you will not find your palace dull. It is very quiet now, very much +of the old school. You may miss your pianos, your electricity, all +your pretty Parisian modernity." + +She glanced at the glittering table. + +"But I do not find this so--so much of the old school. Here one does +not eat rice with the fingers!" + +"And I?" said the bey, leaning suddenly towards her on his outspread +arm. "Do you find me too much of the old school? Eh? eh?" + +"But you, monsieur," she stammered, still looking down, "you--I do +not know you--not yet." + +"Not--yet. Excellent! There will be time." + +"I confess that now I am weary--" + +"Ah,--and that diadem is heavy. Your head must ache with it," he +said solicitously. + +Perhaps it was the diadem that gave her that leaden, constricted +sense of a band tightening about her forehead. She put up her hands +to it. + +"Permit me," he said quickly, springing to his feet. "Permit me to +aid you." + +He stepped behind her and bent over her. She held her head very +still, stiff with distaste, and felt the weight lifted. He surveyed +the circlet a moment then placed it upon the marriage throne behind +her. She had an ironic memory of the false omen of her crowning, of +soft, satisfied little Ghul-al-Din's bestowal of her own +happiness.... Happiness, indeed.... + +"And that veil--surely that is incommoding?" suggested the suave +voice, and she felt the touch of his hands on her hair where the +misty veil was secured. + +She stammered that it was quite light--she would not trouble him-- + +Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil +aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled +sanctities, for a Moslem, the back of her neck. + +She did not stir. She sat fixed and tense. Then slowly the blood +came back to her heart, for he was moving away from her again to his +place at the table. + +Laughing a little, pulling at his blond mustache in a gesture of +conquest, his kindling eyes glinting down at her, "You must forgive +the precipitateness--of a lover," he murmured. "You do not know your +own beauty. You are like a crystal in which the world has thrown no +reflections. All is pure and transparent--" + +If she did not find words to answer him, to divert his admiration, +she felt that she was lost. + +"You are not complimentary--a bit of glass, monsieur, instead of a +diamond! But I am too weary to be exacting.... If now, you will +permit me to bid you good evening and withdraw--" + +"Little trembler," said the general facetiously, and reached out a +hand to touch her cheek, the light, reassuring caress that one might +give a petted child, but it almost brought a cry of nervous terror +from her lips. + +She thought that if he touched her again she would scream. He +inspired her with a horrible fear. There was something so false, so +smiling in him... he was like an ogre sitting down to a delicate +dish of her young innocence, her childish terrors, her frank +fears.... + +She could not have told why she found him so horrible, but +everything in her shrank convulsively from him. + +And the need of courtesy to him, of propititation--! + +The cup was bitterer than her darkest dreams.... She wondered how +many other women had drained such deadly brews... had sat in such +ghastly despair, before some other bridegroom, affable, confident, +masterful.... + +She told herself that she was overwrought, hysterical. The man was +courteous. He was trying to be agreeable, to make a little expected +love. He had drank a little too much--another time she might find +him different. He was probably no worse than any other man of her +world. + +It was not in her world, each young Turkish girl said in those days, +that one could find love. + +But it was _not_ her world! It was an alien world, enforced, +imprisoning.... That was the bitterest gall of all the deadly cup. + +"There is no need for haste," he was assuring her. "In a moment I +will call your woman. Fatima, her name is, an old slave of our +house." + +"I could wish," said Aimée, "that I had been permitted to bring my +old nurse, Miriam, without whom I feel strange--" + +"No old nurses--I know their wiles," laughed the bey, setting down +his drained cup with a wavering hand. "They are never for the +husbands, those old nurses--we will have no old trot's tricks here!" + +He laughed again. "This Fatima is a watch dog, I warn you, my little +one ... but if she does not please you, we can find another. And as +for the rooms--I have assigned this suite to you, the suite of +honor. This is the salon, and there," he pointed to a curtained door +behind them, opening into a small room that Aimée had already seen, +"there is your boudoir and beyond that, your sleeping apartment. I +have had them done over for you, but you shall choose your own +furnishings--everything shall be to your taste, I promise you. You +are too sweet to deny. You have but to ask--" + +Certainly, she thought, he was drunk. He moved his head so jerkily +and his whole body swayed so queerly. Desperately she fought against +her horror. Perhaps it was better for him to be drunk. + +Drunken men grow sleepy. Perhaps he would fall down and sleep. +Perhaps she ought to urge him to drink. Long ago the black had left +the bottle at his elbow and gone out of his room. + +But she did not move. She sat back in her chair, withdrawn and +shrinking, watching him out of those dark, terrified eyes. + +"You are beautiful as dreams," he told her, leaning towards her with +such abruptness that his sword struck clankingly against the table. +"Beyond even the words of my babbling cousin--eh, Allah reward +her!--but she did me a good turn with her talk of you!" + +Fixedly he stared at her, out of those intent, inflamed eyes. + +"I did not know that there was anything like you in the harems of +Cairo. You are like a vision of the old poets--but I suppose that +you do not know the ancient poetry. You little moderns are brought +up upon French and English and music and know little of the Arabic +and the Persian.... I daresay that you have never heard of the poet +Utayyah." + +Still leaning towards her he began to intone the stanzas in a very +fair tenor voice, and if his movements were at all unsteady, his +speech was most precise and accurate. + + "From her radiance the sun taketh increase when + She unveileth and shameth the moonlight bright." + +He chuckled.... "Ah, I shall put the triple veil upon you, my little +moon.... How Is this one? + + "'On Sun and Moon of Palace cast thy sight, + Enjoy her flower-like face, her fragrant light, + Thine eyes shall never see in hair so black + Beauty encase a brow so purely white.'" + +He got up and drew his chair closer to her. "That is the song for +you, little white rose of beauty." + +Back went her own chair, and she rose to her feet. + +"I thank you for the compliment, monsieur. But now have I your +permission to retire? For it has been a long day and I am indeed +fatigued--" + +To her vexation her voice was trembling, but she steadied it +proudly. + +"I bid you good evening." + +"Nonsense, my little white rose. This is not so fatiguing--a few +words more. But you are like the flower that flies before the +wind.... But your room, yes, to be sure. Shall I show you the way?" + +"I can discover it, monsieur." + +"Monsieur--fie on you, my little dove.... Hamdi, I tell you, your +lover Hamdi." + +He laughed unsteadily, and put a hand on her arm. "You are running +away, I know that. And I have so much to tell you ... Oh, it was +tedious in that villa of your father's! 'Yes,' I thought to myself, +'that is a fine story, a funny story, but I have heard them all +before. And you are in no haste, you revelers--you have no little +bride waiting for you at home.'... That one glance at you--I tell you +it was the glance of which the poet sings--the glance that cost him +a thousand sighs. I was on fire with impatience.... For I am +beauty's slave, little dove.... You may have heard--but no matter. A +wife must be a pearl unspotted.... I am not as the English who take +their wives from the highways, where all men's glances have rested +upon them. Have I not been at their balls? Their women dance in +other men's arms. They marry wives whose hands other men have +pressed. Sometimes--who knows?--their lips have been kissed.... And +then a husband takes her.... Oh, many thanks!" + +He laughed sardonically and waved his hands a little wildly. "Oh, I +know English--all the Europeans. I have seen their women. I have +seen them selling their wares--stripping themselves half bare in the +evenings, the shameless--For me, never! My wife is a hidden +treasure. You know what the poet says: + + "'An' there be one who shares with me her love + I'd strangle Love tho' Life by Love were slain, + Saying, O Soul, Death were the nobler choice, + For ill is Love when shared twixt partners twain.'" + +"You are fond of your poets," said Aimée with stiff lips. + +"You--you kindle poetic fires, my little one. You--I--" He stammered +a moment, then forgot his fierce speech against foreign ways. "You +have the raven hair--" + +His hand went out to it. He smoothed it back out of her eyes, then +tried to draw her to him. + +Desperately she resisted. "Monsieur, one does not expect a +gentleman--" + +"Expect! Ho--what should one expect when a man has such a little +sweetmeat, such a little syrup drop, such a rose petal--Come, come, +you would not struggle--" + +But it was not the struggling hand of the frightened girl that sent +the general back. + +It was a brown, sinewy hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from +a well tailored gray sleeve and lilac striped cuff, that caught +Hamdi Bey by the epauleted shoulder and sent him spinning about. + +Another hand was holding a revolver very directly at him. + +"Silence!" said Jack Ryder in his best Turkish and repeated it, with +amplification, in English. "Not a sound--or I'll blow your head +off." + +Aimée gave a strangled gasp. + +He had not gone, then! He had hidden there, in some nook of that +boudoir behind those shadowy curtains, waiting to protect her, to +rescue.... + +Over one arm he had the black mantle and veil, "Better put these +on," he suggested, without taking his eyes from the rigid bey, "and +then run for it." + +"But you--you--?" + +"I'll take care of myself. After you are out of the way. Dare you +try that? Or what do you suggest?" + +"Oh, not alone. Together--" + +"So--so--" said Hamdi Bey inarticulately, his head nodded, he +staggered, his knees gave way and he crumpled very completely upon +the floor, and lay like a felled log. + +After a quick look down at him Ryder turned to Aimée. "Quick, then. +We'll make a run for it--" + +He did not finish. Hamdi Bey, upon the floor, fallen half under the +folds of the white cloth, made a swift and very expert roll and +darted to his feet beside Aimée, whirling her about, with pinioned +elbows, for his shield. + +And so screened, he gave a shrill whistle. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +WITHIN THE WALLS + + +Ryder sprang forward, trying to reach the bey, but he dodged +skillfully; his holding Aimée blocked Ryder in his attack. + +He knew that high, peculiar whistle had been a signal, a call for +aid, and he flung a lightning glance down that long room, tightening +his hold on the revolver--but he did not see the small door that +opened in the shadowy paneling behind him, nor the shadow that grew +into the gorilla-like shape of the black as it launched itself +through the air upon his back. + +He only heard Aimée's scream, and then before the crashing weight +upon his shoulders he staggered and went down. + +The bey flung Aimée aside and rushed upon the prostrate figure, +kicking the revolver from the outspread hand. The black knelt +swiftly down, unfastening his silken sash. + +Giddily the room whirled about Aimée.... In the candle light, +leaping in the rush of conflict, she saw the bey and the black, and +their distorted shadows in a goblin blur.... And beneath them she +saw Ryder, helpless, his hands and feet pinioned.... With the +madness of despair she rushed forward, but the general intercepted +her. + +"He is quite helpless.... You need not be alarmed for my safety, +madame!" + +The cold, biting fury of his voice steadied her. She saw his face +was distorted, livid with anger. His breathing was stertorous. + +She stood helplessly by the table; the general turned and looked +down upon the face of the man who had dared to violate the sanctity +of his harem and attempt to steal his bride; beyond the man's head +Yussuf, the black, was squatting with a grinning, dog-like +watchfulness. + +But Ryder did not require watching. That sash had been tied strongly +about his hands and feet. He was as helpless as a baby. + +But the peculiar flavor of his helplessness was not so much fear +before the fanatic fury of this man he had outraged, although he had +a clear notion that his position was not enviably secure, but a +bitter, black chagrin. + +To have had the game in his hands and have bungled it! To have been +surprised by that simple strategy, taken off his guard by a feigned +collapse! The wily old Turk for all his champagne had the clearer, +quicker brain.... + +To have let him get to Aimée and call in his black! To have been +thrown, disarmed.... It was crass stupidity. It was outrageous +mismanagement, abominable, maddening.... + +And Aimée must pay for it. He tried to think very quickly what could +best clear her. + +He fixed his eyes on those glittering eyes, staring down upon him. + +"I realize I owe you an explanation," he said grimly. "If you will +let me tell you--" + +The bey turned to Aimée with a smile that was the lifting of a lip +and the distention of his nostrils. + +"This fool thinks he has the time to talk--his English." + +Desperately Ryder grasped for his vernacular. "I want to tell +you--why I came. This--this young lady doesn't know me." + +Past the general he shot a look of warning at the girl. + +"I was trying to get hold of her for her family in France--She is +really a French girl. Tewfick Pasha is not her father but her--" +he could not find the word and dropped into English. "Her +step-father--do you understand? And he had no business to marry her +off, so I tried to steal her for the French family. It was a mad +attempt which has failed--but for which the young lady should not be +blamed. She had never seen me before. She had no idea I was here." + +After a pause, "A remarkable story," said the general distinctly. He +turned about to the table and drank off the last of a glass of +champagne, then wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that +trembled. + +He turned back to stand over his prostrate invader. "Now, you--you +dog of Satan," he snarled in a sudden snapping of restraint, "how +did you get here? Who admitted you?" + +And at that, for all his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder +grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird of yours here." + +"Yussuf--never!" + +"The very one. But he didn't know it--I was in that black +mantle--and veil." + +"Oh, the mantle, I had forgot. So you stole in, disguised, to +violate my hospitality, to outrage my harem, to gaze upon the +forbidden faces of women and to steal the bride--" + +"I tell you I was trying to rescue the girl for her French family. +She _is_ French and Tewfick Pasha is only--" + +"And what is that to me? Do I--" the bey broke off and then turned +to the silent girl who stood leaning towards them, a trembling ghost +in white. + +"And you, my little one," he murmured sardonically with a savage +irony of restraint, "you, the little dove secluded from the world, +who trembled at a kiss, the crystal vase who had never reflected the +blush of love, whose virginal praises I was chanting when I was so +oddly assaulted, do you support this idiot's story?" + +Mechanically her head moved in assent, her eyes, dilated with fear, +were like the dark, fascinated eyes of some helpless bird. + +"You never saw this young man?" the bey pursued. "And yet you were +ready to run off with him--a pretty character you give yourself, my +snowdrop!--and you liked his eyes and hastened to obey?" + +Aimée was silent. From his ignominy upon the floor Ryder hastened to +interpose. + +"It is true she had never seen me, but I had already written to her +and acquainted her with the story. I tried to reach her first +through her father but that was useless so I resorted to these +desperate means." + +"Oh you wrote! And you told her you would be here, and murder her +husband--" + +"I told her nothing of the kind. She didn't know that I was coming +until I spoke to her here, and then she had no idea that I was going +to wait and carry her off--" + +"In the name of Allah! Do you take me for a dolt, an ass? You, with +your writing and your masquerade and your secrets! Do any families +try to recover their relatives with such means? Daughter or +step-daughter, it is nothing to me--" + +"But it is true," Aimée insisted, in a trembling voice. "My father +was Paul Delcassé--" + +"_Yahrak Kiddisak man rabbabk_--curse the man who brought thee up! +Delcassé or devil, it is Tewfick Pasha who is your step-father, your +guardian, who gave you to me for wife--what has your genealogy to +do with this affront upon my honor?" + +"But he did not intend to affront your honor--only to aid the family +in France--" + +"I ask you again, do I resemble an ass that you should put such a +burden of lies upon me? As if I did not know why young men risked +their lives, in the dead of night, in other men's rooms! If I did +not know what turns their brains to mush and their hearts to leading +strings! And you--you--you little white rose of seclusion--!" + +His venom leaped out at her in his voice. It was a terrible voice, +the cold, grating menace of a madman. + +"You, who had never seen this man but who fluttered to him like a +white moth to a fire, you who cowered from your husband's hand but +who turned to follow this strange dog into the streets--there will +be care taken of you later. But now--you complained of fatigue. +Surely this scene is overtaxing for your delicacy. If you will come +to your rooms--" + +She drew back from the hand he laid upon her. "Do not injure him! +By Allah's truth! He is rash, mad, but a stranger. He did not +know--" + +"He needs enlightenment. He needs to learn that a nobleman's harem +is not a café of dancing girls, where all may enter and stare and +fondle. _Bismallah_--he shall learn!... And now come--" + +"I shall not go," she said breathlessly. + +"What--struggle? But your father has been strangely remiss with his +discipline.... Permit me." + +His hand tightened in a grasp of iron. + +"My train is caught," she said in a tone of sudden pettishness; she +stooped to lift it with her hand that was free. + +"My train--!" he mimicked her in a quivering falsetto. "Have a care +of my frock--do not crush my chiffons.... And these are the women +for whom men break their heads and hearts!" + +"I tell you, sir," came urgently from Ryder, "that the girl is +innocent of all--" + +"Keep your tongue from her name--and your eyes from her face!... +Come, madame." + +With his iron grasp on her elbow he thrust her towards the boudoir +at the end of the drawing-room, behind whose curtains Ryder had so +long been hiding. + +The chamber was in darkness, lighted only by a pale gleam from the +other room. Aimée stumbled across the rug and found herself upon a +huge divan against a window screen. + +"Fatima is in the next room to come at a call. But perhaps you would +prefer to wait for me alone? I shall not be long." + +Desperately she caught at his arm, imploring, "I beg you, monsieur. +He has done no real harm. Let him go. He is a stranger--he +did not know. And he will never trouble you again. I will do +anything--everything you desire--if only you will not injure him--" + +"You trouble yourself strangely for a stranger." + +"He is a stranger in danger for my sake. For it was in his duty to +my--my family--" her trembling lips stumbled over the ridiculous +lies, "that he has blundered into this. He has no idea how shocking +a thing he has--" + +"And you had no idea, either, I suppose. You had never heard of +honor or treachery or--" + +"I was wrong, oh, I was wrong! I did want to go to France--I own it. +And I was not ready for marriage. And I had heard that you--I was +afraid. But now--if you will let him go for my sake, if you will not +visit my sins upon him, oh, I should be so grateful--so grateful +that anything I can ever do--" + +"But you will be grateful, anyway, my little blossom. I promise you +that you will learn to be very grateful--" + +"It is easier to die than to learn to love a hated one," she +reminded him softly, leaning towards him. "I can die very willingly, +monsieur.... And you would not want a wife before whom there was +always an object of terror--" + +Through the dusk her great eyes sought his. + +"Be generous--and harm him not," she breathed. "I beg of you, I +implore--" + +"And if I am--lenient--you will always be grateful?" + +Mutely she nodded, her eyes trying pitifully to read that shadowy +mask of mockery he turned towards her. + +"And how grateful could you be, little dove?" + +Pitifully she smiled. + +"Could you," he murmured, "could you learn to kiss?" + +He leaned nearer and involuntarily she shrank back. Faintly, "At +this moment--I beg of you, monsieur--" + +"Oh, if it is to be an affair of moments! We shall never find the +right one. But you were so full of promises--" + +"I will do anything," said Aimée, convulsively, "if you will promise +me--" + +"Come, then a kiss. A peck from my little dove." + +She looked at him out of wretched eyes. + +"And you promise to free him, not to hurt him--" + +"I promise not to hurt a hair of his head. Come, that is generous, +isn't it? As to freeing him--h'm--that is for later. Perhaps, if you +are very good. A kiss then... and later...." + +He bent over her. She shut her eyes and heard the taunt of his +laugh. She kissed him, and he laughed again. + +"What is it the Afghan poets say? 'Kissed lips lose no sweetness, +but renew their freshness with the moon.' Certainly if you have ever +been kissed, little bud, you have lost no dew.... Delicious.... I +shall hurry back." + +He cast a hard look down at her as she sat there, her arms drooping +at her sides. He looked about the room as if consideringly, then +nodded at an unseen door at the right. + +"Fatima is there if you want lights or assistance.... And Alsamit, +Yussuf's brother, is at the other door beyond. Do not stir, little +bird. I shall be back very soon." + +"And he--you promised--" + +"I shall not hurt a hair of his head." + +But he was smiling evilly in the darkness as he drew shut the door +and returned to the bound figure by the guarding black. + +For a moment he stood silent, considering, while Yussuf looked up +with glistening-eyed intentness like an eager dog ready for the word +of attack. + +Then in hasty Turkish the general gave his directions and the black +nodded and strode to a portière, jerking it down, which he wrapped +about Ryder's helpless form. + +Then he hoisted his burden over his huge shoulder and bore it on +after the general. + +Across the great room they went and down the long stairs up which +that day a most complacent Hamdi Bey had escorted his just-glimpsed +bride. + +Now at the bottom of the stairs a shadowy figure of a sleeping +eunuch was stretched. + +Hamdi Bey spoke sharply, giving a quick order. The black scrambled +to his feet, yawned, nodded, and strode away into the main vestibule +and out into the garden to investigate a shadow which the general +had just reported, and when he was out of sight the general and +Yussuf, with his unwieldy burden, came quietly down the stairs and +turned back into a long, dark hall. + +For a moment they paused outside a wide, many-columned banqueting +room, and there Hamdi Bey stood listening, straining attentive ears +for the faint sounds from the service quarters on the other side of +the room. He caught the guttural of a half inaudible voice, and the +wash of water and clink of a dish, showing that the belated work of +the reception was going draggingly on, but it was all far away and +invisible. + +Satisfied he went on a few steps to a pointed door set in the heavy +stone. From a nail he took down a lantern of heavy, fretted brass +and lighted it, not without some difficulty, for his hands were +still trembling. Then he took from the black a cumbersome key which +he fitted into the lock and turned heavily. + +Drawing back the door he motioned Yussuf ahead, and followed, +drawing the door shut. Down a steep, stone spiral stair they went, +and at the bottom, at the general's order, the black set Ryder down +from his shoulder and flung aside the portière. + +From its muffling folds Ryder looked out bewilderedly into the +darkness about him, illumined only by the yellow flare of the +ancient lantern. The general cautioned him to silence while Yussuf +knelt and untied the strip that bound his feet, then, his arms still +bound, he was ordered to march on before them. + +This, he said to himself, as he silently obeyed that order, this +really was the time to pinch himself and wake up! Of all the dark, +eerie nightmares! This slow procession through these underground +halls, the giant black on his heels, the general's lantern throwing +its flickering rays over the huge, seamed blocks of granite +foundations. + +It made him think of the Catacombs. It made him think of the +Serapeum. It made him think of those damp, tortuous underground ways +of the Villa Bordoni.... + +They seemed to be in the wine cellars. He saw bins and barrels and +barred vaults that would have done credit to an English squire, and +he reflected fleetly that wine bibbing was forbidden to Mohammedans +and that Hamdi Bey was a fanatic Moslem.... Then he saw open spaces +of ancient stuffs, broken tables and dismantled caiques and a broken +oar. His earlier observation of the palace had told him that it had +a water gate and he thought now that they might be near some +opening. + +He wondered if they were going to throw him, pinioned, into the +river. He wouldn't put it past this livid, silent, shaking man--and +yet the thing appeared so impossible, so theatric, so utterly +unrelated to any of the ways that he, Jack Ryder, might be expected +to end his days, that it couldn't possibly send more than a shiver +of speculation down his spine. + +And yet men _had_ been thrown into rivers--this very river. And men +had disappeared from just such palaces as this. There was the story +about young Monkton. He knew it perfectly; he had reminded himself +of it the last evening while he reflected upon this escapade, but he +had never actually appreciated the peculiar poignancy of the thing +until now. + +Monkton had met--so rumor reported--a Turkish lady of position, +flirted with her, it was said, while on horseback outside her motor +when caught in the crush at Kasr-el-Nil bridge. There had been a +meeting or two in the back of shops, and then he had boasted, +lightheartedly, of a design to take tea in her harem. + +He had never boasted about the tea. No one had ever seen Monkton +again and he was generally reported, after a stifled inquiry, to +have been thrown from his horse in the desert, or spilled out of his +sailing canoe. + +The government, English or Egyptian, assumed no interest in the +matter of gentlemen found in other gentlemen's harems. + +There were other stories, too. There was one of a little Viennese +actress who after a dramatic escape reported a whole winter of +captivity in one of these old palaces, and there was a vaguer rumor +of a rash young American girl, detained for days.... + +Ryder had always known these stories. They were part of the gossip +and thrill of Cairo. But he had never till now realized how +exquisitely possible was their occurrence. + +Anything, everything might happen in these hidden, secret chambers. +These Turks were as much masters here as their old predecessors who +had reared these stones. This black upon his heels might have been +the grinning, faithful executioner of some Khedive or Caliph--he +might have been the very Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance of Al +Raschid. + +He told himself that it was no time to think of the past. His +business--acutely--was the present. If only he could get his hands +untied! If only he could get those untied hands upon that demoniac +Turk! + +But, strain as he could upon the knots, they held. + +It seemed to him that they had been walking for an interminable +distance, in odd, roundabout ways. Once they had stopped and he had +involuntarily glanced back over his shoulder, but at a word from the +general he had kept his head forward again, while he heard the black +behind him gathering something that clinked. Later, a stolen glance +had revealed the eunuch with some tools in one hand and bag slung +over his shoulder. + +The bag disquieted him. Bags filled a foreboding place in the +Eastern literature of vengeance. He wondered if he were to go into +the river in that bag, with the tools for weight. + +He decided, feeling now a very odd and definite disturbance in the +region of his stomach, that he would tell that general that he was a +cousin of the late Lord Cromer and a nephew of Lord Kitchener. +Something insistent would have to be done about this. + +They were passing now through a strange, open space, between old +arches that for an instant arrested his excavator's interest. He saw +in the shadows about them, a crumpled, crumbling dome and broken +shafts, with half a wall of masonry pierced with Arabesques. Traces +of old ruins, fragments of some old, forgotten mosque over which the +palace had spread its foundations in bygone days.... Buried +treasure, looted, some of it, for the palace overhead, but still +rare and lovely.... That was a gleam of lapis lazuli that winked at +him from the crumbling mortar under his feet. + +Then they were between other walls, not crumbling ones, but the +solid, pillared blocks of the palace masonry with here and there +broad arches of old brick. + +They stopped. Between two arches the general held his lantern high, +flashing it over the surface while Yussuf swung down his sack and +knocked with the handle of his tool. + +Suddenly he stopped and looked at his master, nodding cheerfully. +The general lowered his light and stepped back and Yussuf reared the +pickaxe in his powerful arms and sent it dexterously at the wall, +between two broken bits of brick. + +It caught, and sent the mortar spraying; another blow and another +loosened a hole in which the black inserted a short iron and began +nervously grinding and prying. + +Ryder, watching with oppressed and helpless fury, saw the bricks at +last break and tumble faster and faster in a cloud of dust, and saw +a pocket in the wall become revealed, a long, upright niche, the +size, perhaps, of a man's coffin, on end. + +He tried, very suddenly, to talk. His tongue felt thick and swollen +and there seemed no words in all the world to fit his need of +overcoming this fanatic madman,--and after all, he had no chance for +them, for Yussuf, with a huge palm upon his mouth, urged him +suddenly backwards towards that horrible niche. + +"Gently, Yussuf, gently," said the general, suavely and with a slow +distinctness that was for Ryder's ears. "I gave my word that I would +not hurt a hair of his head--" + +Grinning, the black lifted him over the remaining wall, and set him +down into the niche, leaving him standing in there like a helpless +statue, tasting to the full fury of his heart the bitterness of his +helplessness and the ludicrous impotence of all struggle. + +"Good God, sir, you must be mad," he said in a strained sharp +voice that his ears would not have known as his own. "Do you +realize--there will be an inquiry--there is such a thing as law--" + +It seemed to him that he talked, in English and stammering Arabic, +for a long time. The black was kneeling, out of sight, stooping over +a basin of water and his abominable sack, and Ryder was facing that +silent, sardonic face, with its fantastic mustache, its evil, +gloating eyes.... + +He stopped for very shame. The man was mad. Mad and drunk--and there +was no appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.... Mad or drunk, he +had devised his vengeance shrewdly. + +Upon Ryder's helpless body a cold sweat of incredulous horror broke +softly out. + +At his feet he heard the black beginning to fit his bricks and +smooth his mortar. + +"You do well to save your breath," said Hamdi Bey at last, as Ryder +still stood silent. "You will need it in this chamber I am +providing.... But it may be," he said thoughtfully, "that your +breath will last your need. Thirst may be the more impatient for her +victim; they tell me thirst is an obtrusive visitor. As you were, +this evening.... Still, why do you not cry out a little? It will +amuse my black." + +Yes, this was real, Ryder reminded himself. And these things could +happen--had happened. He remembered suddenly the hideous scene, +outside the dungeons, in "Francesca da Rimini," when that bestial +brother goes in to the helpless prisoners. He remembered the sick +horror of those groans.... + +He remembered also various excursions of his in the Tower of London +and the Seigniory of Florence, and the sight of old rings and stakes +and racks and the feeling of their total unrelatedness to every +actuality. + +And yet they had happened. And this thing, for all its fantastic +medieval horror, was happening. Brick by brick the imprisoning wall +was rising. Brick by brick it intervened between him and sane, +sensible, happy, normal life. + +Eye for eye he gave the general back his look. He had always +wondered about the poor devils in underground torture chambers. Had +wondered how they had the stuff to hold out, against such odds, for +some belief, some information.... Now he knew the stiffening stuff +of a personal hate, upholding to the very grave.... + +That sardonic, devil's face.... That face which was going back +upstairs to Aimée.... But he must not think of that or he should +give way and begin to babble, to plead.... He must simply stand and +meet that glance.... + +And there came the incredible, insane moment when Ryder looked out +on that face through one last breathing space, and then saw the +fitted brick, settled into place, blot the world to darkness before +his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +UNDERGROUND + + +Alone in the gloom of that strange room, Aimée sat rigid. Listening. +Not a sound, beyond the closed door, from the long drawing room. Not +a sound, beyond the other door, from the room where the slave, +Fatima, waited to assist in her disrobing. + +Silence everywhere--save for a low lapping of water against the +masonry beneath her windows. + +The palace was on the river, then, or on some old backwater. She +remembered glimpses of dark canals on her drive that morning--had it +only been that morning? The sound of that soft, hidden water added +to her feeling of isolation and remoteness from everything that had +been her life before--she thought fleetingly, almost indifferently +of her friends, Azima, who to-day had crowned her for happiness, and +fond, foolish old Miriam and Madame de Coulevain and Tewfick Pasha, +weakly cruel, but amiable; she thought of them all, as unreal +figures from whom she had long taken leave. + +The old life was over. It had died for her when she passed through +the dark doorway and met that arrogant, sardonic, fatuous man, the +master of this palace.... + +Or more truly that old life had died for her when she had flung a +black mantle about her chiffon frock and a street veil across her +sparkling face and had stolen, daring and breathless, into the +lights and revelry of that hotel masquerade. There, when she had +shrunk back from the Harlequin and had looked up to meet the +kindling glance of that mask in tartans--yes, there, the old life +had died for her forever if only she had known it. + +And now--she would only like to die, too, she thought miserably, +after she had been assured of Ryder's safety. She was tense with +fear for him, distrusting in every fiber the assurance of that +fanatic, outraged Turk. + +She was not utterly resourceless. When Ryder's revolver had dropped +to the floor she had maneuvered, unseen by Hamdi Bey, to get her +train over it, and when she had stooped for her train her one free +hand had closed over the revolver handle beneath the satin and lace. + +Now the revolver lay on the divan, and very eagerly she drew it out, +feeling it in the darkness, curling her finger about the trigger. +Never in her life had she fired a shot, for her most formidable +weapon had been the bows and arrows of the Children's Archery +Contest of the English Club, but she felt in herself now that +highstrung tensity which at all cost would carry her on. + +Carefully she bestowed the small, steel thing in the bosom of her +dress, then she stared questioningly at the dress itself, hastily +unpinning the veil, and tying the long train up to her girdle. Then, +with a wary glance for the closed door behind which waited that +Fatima she dreaded, she stole to the door the general had shut and +pressed it softly ajar, peering out into the deserted throne room. + +Like a great cave of darkness the room stretched before her, peopled +with goblin shadows from the dying candles upon the disordered, +abandoned table; she saw the chair pushed back where she had risen +to struggle with the bey, the long folds of white cloth, sweeping +the floor, behind which Hamdi had rolled so agilely; a stain was +still spreading about an upset glass, and from the overturned cooler +the ice water was dripping, dripping with a steady, sinister +implication. + +She thought of flight.... There was another black, the general had +warned her, beyond the door, and there would be bars and bolts on +any egress from the harem, but with the revolver in her possession +some desperate escape might be achieved. + +But Ryder.... No, the gun was for another purpose.... She would not +squander it yet upon herself.... + +From the boudoir she moved slowly, carrying one of the gilt +candelabra from the table to light the room. She would need light +for her plan.... + +For ages, long, unending ages, she sat there, waiting.... A hundred +times it seemed to her that she could stand no more, that she must +make her way out at all costs, must discover what fate they were +dealing to Ryder, but still she forced herself to sit there, her +pulses racing, her heart sick with suspense, but desperately +waiting.... + +She felt a sudden wave of weakness go through her at an advancing +step from the next room. But her chin was up, her eyes fixed and +desperate as the figure of the general appeared in her opening door. + +"Ah, light! This is more cheerful, little one." + +She had risen, half moved towards him. "Is he safe?" + +"The stranger? Safe as treasure--buried treasure, little one." + +The bey laughed, and that laughter and the glittering satisfaction +of his eyes, filled her with foreboding although his next words came +with smiling reassurance. + +"Not a hair of his head is hurt, I give you my word." + +"But where is he--what have you done?" + +"Shut him up, to be sure. Kept him as hostage for your sweet +humility--a novel way to win a bride, oh, essence of shyness!" + +Malevolently he smiled down at her and in the back of her frightened +mind she realized that this man did well to be angry, that the +affront to him had been immeasurable, and that many a Turk would +have simply driven his dagger through the intruder's heart--and her +own, too. + +But though she tried to tell herself that there was forbearance in +him, she felt, instinctively, that there was deeper kindness in +direct, thrusting fury than in this man's sinister mockery. + +She had sunk back upon the divan on the bey's approach; now as he +stood before her with that mask of a smile upon his face, drawing a +silk handkerchief across a forehead she saw glistening in the +candlelight, she leaned towards him again, her hands involuntarily +clasping. + +"Monsieur, I seem to have done you a great wrong," she said +tremblingly, "but it is not so great as you suppose. Will you listen +to me? I--" + +"Useless, useless." He waved the handkerchief negligently at her. "I +have had words enough. You are not the daughter of Tewfick +Pasha--you are his step-daughter--your French family desires to +capture you--I know the rigmarole by heart, you observe. And of +course when a French family desires to obtain possession of a +charming step-daughter, on the eve of her marriage, that family +always employs a handsome young man to break into the bride's +chamber--and point a gun at the husband--" + +His mustache lifted in a grimacing sneer. + +"But it _is_ true, and I _am_ French," she interposed swiftly. + +"Excellent--I do not object in the least." He shot his handkerchief +up his cuff, and turned to her with eyes that lightly mocked +the agonized appeal of the young face. "French blood is +delightful--quicksilver and champagne. You will enliven me, I +promise you." + +"But the marriage--it is not legal, monsieur," she said desperately, +summoning all her courage. "Tewfick Pasha has no right to give me to +you--" + +Indulgently he smiled down at her, then his narrowed eyes traveled +slowly about the room. + +"But this is a strange time--and place!--to talk of legalities. Do +not distress yourself--your step-father is your guardian and your +marriage will be as binding as the oaths of the prophet. Have no +qualms.... And now, if your French blood will smile a little--" + +He started to seat himself beside her, but in that instant she was +on her feet. With all the courage in her beating heart she whipped +out that revolver and pointed it at him. + +"If you call--I shoot," she said breathlessly. + +The round mouth of the gun shook ever so slightly in the excited +hand gripping it, but in the blazing look she turned on him was the +unshaken, imperious passion of a woman swept absolutely beyond all +fear. + +Meeting that look Hamdi Bey stood extremely still and made no sound. + +"There are plenty of shots--for you, at the first noise, and for +the servants, if they come," she went on in that fierce undertone, +and then, passionately, "What did you do to him? Take me to him--at +once!" + +Irresolutely the man stood and looked up at her under his +half-lowered lids. He was near enough for a spring--and yet if that +excited finger should press.... The girl was capable of anything. +She was possessed.... And men had died of such accidents before +that.... + +"May I speak?" he murmured, in a tone scarcely audible, yet +preserving somehow its flavor of sardonic amusement. + +"Under your breath. One sound, remember--and I am a very good shot." + +"But what a wife," he sighed. "All the talents--" + +"I tell you that I will see him for myself. Take me to him, this +moment--" + +"Shall I give orders and have him brought here? He is quite safe, I +assure you." + +"Orders? If you summon a servant I will shoot. No, lead the way, and +I will follow you. And if you make one sound--one false move--" + +Decidedly the girl was possessed. She stood there like a white image +of war, her hand on that infernal automatic.... He hesitated, gnawed +his mustache, then swung sullenly upon his heel. + +Like some fantastic sculpture from an Amazonian triumph, they +crossed the long drawing-room, the erect, gilt-braided general +preceding, very slowly, the white-clad feminine creature, who held +one hand extended, with something boring almost into his shoulder +blades. + +He did not lead her down the long stairs, past the guarding eunuch. +He took, instead, an inner way through the late supper room which +led down into the pillared hall of banquets. That way was safe of +servants now; crossing the pillared hall there were no more sounds +of late work from the service quarters beyond. Oblivious of the wild +developments of that wedding reception, the tired servants, stuffed +with the last pasty, warmed with the last surreptitious drop of +wine, were asleep at last. + +Outside the door in the stone wall the bey took down the lantern +which so short a time before he had replaced upon its nail and +lighted its still smoking wick. He had not restored the key to +Yussuf, and he drew it now from his pocket and fitted it into the +lock, drawing back the door. + +"These stairs are steep," he murmured. "I hardly like you to descend +them unaided, but if you insist--" + +"Go on," she said imperiously. + +Down he went, and after him she came, following the way he led her +down the long stone underground ways. + +"We have, of course, very pleasant stairs down to our water gate," +he murmured apologetically, "but since you prefer this way--really +not the way that I would have chosen to have you first explore your +palace, madame! These, you perceive, are the cellars and old +storerooms--" + +"I do not want you to talk," she said urgently. + +"But you would not shoot me for it? Only for raising an alarm? And +surely you cannot be unreasonable about a few words--you must be +very careful, here, this doorway is low--" + +It was not past the old ruined mosque, included in the palace's +underground world, that he was leading her, but down a narrow +branching way, between walls so low that the general's head was +bowed in caution. + +"This part of the palace is very old," he murmured, over his +shoulder. "An ancestor of mine, Sharyar the Wazir, raised these +walls during the wars--for the dispensing of that sacred duty of +hospitality which Allah enjoins upon the faithful. It is reported +that he was host here to fifty of the enemy during their remaining +lifetime--although they had the delicacy not to cumber him with +overlong living. It is not, as I said, a pleasant place, but the +walls are strong and so I selected a spot here--" + +Here, somewhere, then, in these grim ruins, Ryder was penned, +helpless and questioning the to-morrow. The girl trembled with +excitement when she thought of his joy, his deliverance--and at her +hands. For their escape she had no plans, only the decision to +thrust the gun into his hands and follow him unquestioningly ... +Perhaps they could leave the general in his place and he could wear +the general's uniform for disguise.... + +Everything was possible now that she was nearing him and his safety +was at hand. She thrilled with a reanimating excitement that flew +its scarlet banners in her cheeks ... Only a few steps now.... + +"Go on," she said breathlessly. + +The bey had stopped and now flashed his lantern over a low, timbered +door, studded with ancient nail heads in a design whose artistry did +not arrest her. From a peg beside it he took down a key of brass, +fitted it to the lock and turned it with a deliberation maddening to +her tense nerves. + +Her heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds. Only a moment +or two-- + +He had trouble with that door. It took his shoulder; at last he set +it swinging inward slowly on its creaking hinges. Then he stepped +back and with a wave of his hand invited her to enter. + +"Not a chamber of luxury, you understand, but substantial, as you +will see--" + +"Go first," she ordered. + +He laughed. "Ever distrustful, little thorn-of-the-rose! Follow, +then," and he stepped within, into the darkness, which his failing +lantern but little illumined, calling out in a louder tone in his +halting English, "A visitor, my friend. A tourist of the +subterranean." + +She had followed him to the threshold, seeing nothing in the +blackness but the seamed blocks of stone within the lantern's rays, +afraid always to turn her eyes from him or her hand from its +outstretched pointing. + +He said very quickly to her in Turkish, "If you will wait by the +door. The floor is bad and there is another lantern, here on the +wall--" + +At her left he fumbled along the stone wall. She heard him mutter +... and then reach.... And then--she did not know what was +happening. For the very ground on which she stood, the solid block +of stone began to slip swiftly beneath her feet--she staggered--and +felt herself falling, falling, into some precipitately opened +abyss.... + +She gave a wild scream, flinging out her arms in terror, and then +cold waters closed above her, and the scream ended in a gurgling +cry. + +It was no great distance that she fell. What the dropped stone had +revealed, answering the signal of the old lever in the wall that the +general had pressed, was a stone well, narrow, deep, implanted there +by some ingenious lord of the palace in by-gone days, for the subtle +elimination of friend or foe or rival. + +But it was not part of Hamdi's plan to leave the young girl there +and close the obliterating stone. Scarcely had the waters met above +her head than he was flinging down a rope ladder whose upper ends +were fastened to rings in the floor and descending this with swift +agility until the waters reached his waist. + +Then he leaned out and clutched the floating satin bubbling and +ballooning yet unsubmerged above the stagnant depths and drew it +towards him. As the struggling girl came gasping within his reach, +he carried her panting up the ladder again, and laid her down in the +darkness, while he drew up the ladder and closed the stone by +pressing that hidden lever. + +But the stone which had dropped so swiftly, was slow and heavy in +slipping back in place, and when he turned again to Aimée, she had +ceased her choking cough and was sitting up, thrusting back the +dripping hair from her black eyes, staring bewilderedly about the +gloom as murky as any genie's cave. + +The lantern light was almost out. In its expiring gleams she saw no +more inky water, but only the damp, moss-grown stones, on which a +pool was widening from her wet garments, and the half-defined figure +of the general stooping over to squeeze the streams from his own wet +clothes. + +The nightmarish horror of it overwhelmed her. For a moment she could +have screamed with horror, and then she felt a cold and terrible +despair lay its paralyzing hand upon her heart. + +Somewhere, she felt, beneath those secret stones lay Ryder, drowned +... And she was living, in her helplessness ... No revolver now. +That was gone ... in the water, perhaps.... + +There was no resource, now, no refuge.... Strength went out of her, +and passive in a dream of evil darkness she felt herself being +hurried, stumblingly, back through the secret corridors and the dark +halls. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +OUT OF THE DARKNESS + + +There was no measure of time for Ryder in that walled coffin of +death. The seconds seemed hours, the minutes ages. + +He drew quick, short breaths as if economizing the air that was so +soon to fail him; he tugged at his bonds till the veins rose on his +forehead, but the silk held and the confines of the prison permitted +him no room for struggle; then he leaned forward, to press with all +his might upon the bricks before him; he grunted, he sweated with +the agony of his exertions, but not a brick was stirred, not a crack +was made in the mortar that gripped them tighter every instant. + +He died a thousand deaths in the horror that invaded him then. +Already he felt strangling, and the painful pumping of his heart +seemed the beginning of the end. + +Cold sweat stood out all over him; it ran down his face in trickling +streams and his body was drenched with that clammy dew of fear. + +He tried to count the minutes, the hours, to estimate how long he +would hold out.... + +And then he heard his own voice saying very distinctly and clearly +and dispassionately, "This thing is absurd." + +It was absurd. It was idiotic. It was utterly irrational. It was an +impossible end for an able-bodied young American, an excavator of no +mean attainments, a young scholar and explorer of twentieth century +science, a sane, modern, harmless young man, to die immured in the +ancient walls of a Turkish palace--because he had invaded a marriage +reception and intervened between man and wife. + +Violent death in any form must always appear absurd to the young and +energetic. And the fantastic horror of his death removed it +definitely from any realm of possibility. The thing simply could not +happen.... He thought of the amazement and the incredulity of his +friends.... + +Dangers in plenty they had warned him against, to his youthful +amusement--sand storms and chills and raw fruit and unboiled waters, +but they had not warned him against veiled women and the resentments +of outraged lords and masters. + +He thought of his mother's consternation and dismay. He thought of +his father's stern amazement.... What an awful jolt it would give +them, he reflected, with an irrational tickling of young humor. + +But no, it would not. They would never know. Not a word of this fate +would percolate into the world without. Not a comment upon his true +end would enliven the daily columns of the East Middleton +_Monitor_. Never would it regret the tragic and romantic interment +of a young native son of talent, buried alive by a revengeful +general of the Sultan.... + +He amused himself by writing the paragraph that would never be +written. Then he told himself that he was lightheaded and hysterical +and that he had better wonder what would actually be written. What +explanation would be found? + +A desert storm perhaps, or some accident. McLean would poke +about--but for all McLean knew he might be on his way back to camp +that very moment. And sometimes he went by sailing canoe, and a +rented horse, and sometimes by the accredited steamer and a camel, +and sometimes by tram or train to the nearest station. Even McLean's +mind and McLean's Copts wouldn't make much of all the alternatives +that his unsettled habits had afforded. + +Was there any possibility of his being traced, of any rescue +reaching him? He thought hard and long upon his last free moments. +Jinny Jeffries knew that he was in the palace, and Jinny had been +reiteratedly warned about the danger of betraying that knowledge. It +would take some little time for alarm before Jinny said anything. +And it would take a little time for Jinny to begin to worry. + +He had not been so instant in attendance upon Jinny of late, for all +their residence in the same hotel, that she would suspect that his +absence of twenty-four hours was due to actual incarceration. + +His cursed passion for freedom in which to ramble up and down that +deserted lane without Tewfick Pasha's garden! His inane love of +solitary mooning.... + +No, Jinny would not soon wonder about him. She had not expected to +see him that evening, anyway--he had muttered something to her about +a man and an engagement. + +She _would_ rather look to see him the next day and talk about their +adventure.... But still she would feel no more than pique at his +absence; positive worry would not develop until later. + +Besides, all the revelations that Jinny could make would do no good. +Jinny could only report that he had maintained a disguise at a +wedding reception, and talked a few moments, apparently undetected, +to a bride. Hamdi Bey, and Hamdi's eunuchs, would be blandly +ignorant of such a scandal. What his disappearance would indicate +would be some further frolic on his part, some tempting of a later +Providence before he had abandoned his disguise.... If he were +discovered, for instance, in some of those native quarters, behind a +woman's veil.... + +Decidedly the only effect of Jinny's revelations would be an +unsavory cloud upon his character. + +There was no hope to be looked for. + +And yet he could not believe it. There were moments when the black +terror mastered him, but involuntarily his young strength shook it +off. He could not believe in its reality. He could not believe that +he was actually here, bricked and bound, in this infernal coffin.... + +But, indisputably, the evidence was in favor of belief.... Only to +believe was to feel again that horror.... + +He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter. One had to die some +time. Everybody did. One might as well go out young and strong and +still interested in life. + +But that was remarkably cold comfort. He didn't want to go out at +all. He didn't want to die, not for fifty or sixty years yet, and of +all the ways of dying, he wanted least to smother and choke and +stifle like a rat walled in its hole in the wall. + +He recalled, with peculiar pain, a woodchuck that he had penned up +as a boy, and he hoped with extraordinary passion that the poor +beast had made another hole. Never again, he resolved, would he pen +up a living creature, never again, if only again he could see the +light of day and breathe the free air.... + +He thought of Aimée. And when he thought of her his heart seemed to +turn to water. Useless to repeat to himself now those old reminders +that he had seen her so little, known her so slightly. Useless to +measure that strange feeling that drew him by any artifice of time +and acquaintance. + +She was Aimée. She was enchantment and delight. She was appeal and +tenderness. She was blind longing and mystery. She was beauty and +desire.... + +Even to think of her now, in the infernal horror of this cramping +grave, was to feel his heart quicken and his blood grow hot in a +helpless passion of dread and fear. She was alone, there, helpless, +with that madman. + +He tried to tell himself that she was not wholly helpless, that she +had wit and spirit and courage, and that somehow she would manage to +quell the storm; she might persuade Hamdi to their story, make him +remember that this was the twentieth century wherein one does not go +about immuring inconvenient trespassers as in the earlier years of +the Mad Khedive--years which had probably formed the general's +impulses--but in telling himself this there was no comfort for the +thought of the price that Aimée would have to pay. + +It was pleasanter to pretend that Hamdi was really only joking, in a +shockingly exaggerated, practical way, and that presently, when the +suitable time had elapsed, he would present himself, smiling, to end +the ghastly, antiquated jest. + +For some time he continued to tell himself that. + +And then suddenly he told himself that the time for intervention had +surely come. It was very hard to breathe. + +The next minute he was assuring himself that this was merely some +devil's trick of his apprehensive imagination. There must be a +great deal of air left.... But he was distressingly ignorant of the +contents of air, and his calculations were lamentably unsupported by +any sound basis of fact. + +Mistake, not to have gone in for chemistry and physics. A chap who'd +done time in those subjects wouldn't now be rocking with suspense; +he'd comfortably and satisfactorily know just how many hours, +minutes and seconds were allotted before his finish and he could +think his thoughts accordingly. + +Undoubtedly, so he insisted to himself, there was air enough here to +last him till morning. This gasping stuff was all imagination. He +wanted to keep cool and quiet. But for all his reassurance there +_was_ something a little queer with his lungs, and his heart was +lurching sickeningly in his side, like a runaway ship's engine. + +And then he heard his own voice repeating very tonelessly, "O God, O +God," and the horror of it all came blackly over him and a feeling +of profound and awful sickness.... + +It _was_ a sound. The faintest scraping and knocking without that +wall. It went through him like an electric current.... And then a +roar burst from him that fairly split his ears, the reaction of his +quivered nerves and racking fears of his uncertainties, his +tightening terrors. + +But now--nothing. He could not hear a thing. A delusion? A torture +of his final hours?... No, it came again. More definitely now, a +little grinding and scraping. + +Faster and faster, a muffled, driving thud. + +A jubilant reassurance sang gayly through him. He had expected +this--this was what he had predicted. Hamdi was no foul friend. He +was a devilish uncomfortable customer with antiquated notions of +revenge, but now he had shot his wad and was going to undo his +tricks. + +Ryder braced himself to present a carefree jauntiness--an air +somewhat difficult to assume when one is trussed like a spitted +bird, in a hot coffin space, with hair falling dankly over a +steaming brow, with a collar like a string, and an indescribable +pallor beneath the bronze of one's face. + +Something stirred. One end of a brick was driven in against his +chest. Then he felt the blind working of some tool that caught it +and worried it free. + +It seemed to him that through that dark aperture a current of cold, +delicious air came rushing in about him. The blows sounded against +the adjoining bricks and he thought of the glorious joy of seeing +out again, feeling that he would welcome even the sight of Hamdi's +blond mustache and the eunuch's hideous grin. + +Now the aperture admitted a pale gleam upon his chest. Staring +steadily down he caught a glimpse of the fingers curving about a +brick, and his heart that had steadied, began to race again wildly. +For they were not the fingers of the black nor yet the wiry joints +of the general. + +They were soft, white fingers, with a gleam of rings. + +Aimée! Somehow, somewhere, she had managed to come to him, to +achieve this rescue.... + +"Aimée!" He breathed the name. + +"S-sh!" came a warning little whisper, and impatiently he waited +until that opening should be greater and permit of sight and speech. + +His helplessness was maddening. If only he could raise his hands, +could get those bonds off! He twisted, he writhed, he tried to lift +his elbows and get his wrists in reach of the opening, but the +coffin was too diabolically cramped for movement until the hole was +very much larger. Then with a convulsive pressure he swung his +wrists within reach and after a moment's wait he felt a thin blade +drawn across the silk. + +The relief was glorious. He swung his hands free, rubbing the chafed +wrists, then thrust an opened hand out into the opening, and with +instant comprehension a short, pointed bit of iron was put within +it. + +Now he could do something! With furious strength he attacked the +bricks edging the hole and as he pried free each brick he could +again get a glimpse of those white delicate fingers lifting it +carefully away. + +And now the hole was large enough. He twisted about and thrust out a +leg, and then, with a feeling of ecstasy which made the official +literary raptures of saints and conquerors but pale, dim moods, he +wormed his way out of that jagged hole and turned, erect and free, +to the shrouded figure of his rescuer. + +She had drawn back a little against the wall, a gauzy veil across +her face. Beside her, upon the stone floor, a solitary candle sent +its flickering rays into the shadows, edging with light her slender +outlines. + +Ryder took one quick step to her, his heart in his throat, and put +out eager arms. But in the very moment that he was gathering her to +him, even when he felt her pliant body, at first resistant, then +softly yielding, swept against his own, he felt, too, a little palm +suddenly upon his mouth. + +"Hsh!" said the soft, whispering voice, cutting into his low murmur +of "Aimée!" and then, in slow emphatic caution, "Be--careful!" + +He had need of that caution. For under the saffron veil was not the +face of Aimée. He was clasping a young creature that he had never +seen before, a girl with flaming henna hair and kohl darkened brows, +a vivid blazoning face that smiled enigmatically with a certain +mockery of delight at the amazement he reflected so unguardedly. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +AZIZA + + +From the slackening grip of his astounded arms she stepped backward, +still smiling faintly and holding up in admonishment the palm she +had pressed against his mouth. + +"But what--what the dev--" muttered Ryder. + +She nodded mysteriously, and beckoned. + +"Come," she whispered, catching up her candle, and after holding it +high for a moment, staring at him, she extinguished it suddenly, and +turned to lead the cautious way across the stone spaces while Ryder +closely followed. + +Not Aimée, then. But some messenger, he could only suppose. Some +confidante, at need. A handmaid? The whisper of her silks, the +remembered gleam of jewels in the henna hair flouted that thought, +and not troubling his ingenuity with alternatives he was content to +follow her swift steps. + +They were now in those open rubbishy spaces where he remembered the +crumbling masonry and broken arches of old, disregarded mosques; now +they were again enclosed in narrow stone walls, winding past cellars +and store rooms. + +The girl's advance grew more cautious. Often she stopped and +listened, peering ahead into the darkness, and now, as she took +another turning, her care redoubled and Ryder needed no exhortation +to imitate it. Obeying a gesture of her arm, he followed at a +greater distance, prepared, at the warning of a sound, to flatten +himself against the wall or dart into some cranny of retreat. + +They were now in the cellars. The corridor was widening out before +them with a pallid showing of light, crossed with many bars, at some +far end.... They stole towards it. It was a window, or barred gate, +he saw, and he heard again that lapping of restless water against +stone. + +He could see, too, in the dimness the curve of a stair near the +gate. + +Abruptly his guide checked him. Wary and noiseless he waited while +she stole forward to those stairs, peering up into the gloom, +attentive for any sound from above.... Apparently satisfied, she +went on towards the barred gate, and bent down over a spot of +darkness which Ryder had taken for a shadow. + +He saw now that it had some semblance to a human outline. + +Closely the girl bent and he caught the pallor of her hands, +searching swiftly, and then a muffled clink.... Next moment, a +wraith with soundless steps, she was back at his side again, urging +him on with her. They passed the stairs; he felt the soft yield of +carpet beneath his feet; they passed that recumbent figure and now +he heard the rhythm of a sleeper's heavy breath, escaping muffledly +from the folds of a thick mantle which the sleeper's habits had +wrapped about his head. For all the mantle he was aware of the fumes +of wine. + +"I saw that Ja'afar had his drink," said the girl suddenly in softly +whispered Turkish, her head close to his. "He is my friend. I do not +neglect him," and under her breath she laughed, as she exhibited the +great bunch of keys she had taken from the imbiber. + +Stooping now before the gate she fitted the key into the lock. Then +over her shoulder she looked up at the young man, and asked him a +quick question. + +He did not understand. That was the trouble with his vernacular. It +would go on very well for a time, when he had a clue to the sense, +or when it was a question of every day expression, but a sudden +divergence, an unexpected word, was apt to prove a hopeless +obstacle. + +Now she repeated her question again, more slowly, and again he shook +his head. + +Now she stood up, frowning a little and began again in English, +"You--no, I not know--This way? You do it?" A sudden smile broke +over her face as she made a swift pushing gesture with her hands, +that, with her pointing to the water outside, sent Ryder a sudden +enlightenment. + +"Swim? You mean--do I swim?" + +She nodded. "Not go--" She made a swift downward movement of her +hands and then pointed again to that water just outside the gate. + +"Not go down--not sink?" interpreted Ryder. "No, indeed, I can +swim," he assured her, and revisited with smiling satisfaction she +knelt again before the barred gate. + +Open it swung with so sharp a crack that both glanced at the figure +behind them, and then at the shadowy gloom of the stairs. But no +alarm sounded. Outside the gate Ryder saw the darkness of fairly +wide rippling waters, visited with floating stars, and beyond a +low-lying, dun bank. + +Escape was there. Freedom. Safety. He felt an exultant longing to +plunge in and strike out, but he turned, questioningly, to the +mysterious rescuer. + +"Aimée?" he asked, under his breath. "Where is she?" He repeated it +in the vernacular, distrusting her English, and in the vernacular +she answered, "You want her? You want to take her away with you?" + +She laughed softly at the quick flash in his eyes and hardly waited +for his speech. + +"Good--what a lover! You are not afraid?" + +Mendaciously he assured her that he was not. + +"Good!" she said again, with a showing of white teeth between her +carmined lips. "You take her--you take her away from him. That is +what I want. You understand?" + +Very suddenly he understood. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +AZIZA IS OFFENDED + + +This was no emissary from Aimée. This was no philanthropic +bystander. It was some girl of the palace, jealous and daring, +conspiring shrewdly for the removal of her rival. + +"Take her away," she was saying urgently. "Out of this palace. We +want no brides here." Lowering and sullen, she turned bitter on the +word. + +"To-night, I was watching," she went on swiftly. "I heard--the +noise--and then the whispering.... The darkness has ears and +eyes--and a tongue. And so I waited out there...." + +He could not distinguish all the quick flow of her speech, but he +caught enough to understand how she had lurked in the halls, +jealously spying, defying the eunuchs' authority, and how she had +caught with passionate delight that stifled alarm of scandal. Later, +hanging over some banister, she had seen the Ethiopian pass with his +burden and had stolen down afterwards, stalking like a cat, and had +discovered the lantern gone, the door unlocked.... And then she had +watched until the pair emerged without the burden. + +She had not been able to get hold of the key to the door. But she +had resolved to explore and so she had furnished the waterman with +his wine, drugged, Ryder gathered, and so stolen past him on the +other route to those underground foundations to which her suspicions +had been directed by the mortar and dust upon Yussuf. + +Evidently she knew the possibilities of the place and the mind of +its master. And when she found the old niche freshly bricked and the +mortar at hand she had not needed more to assure her that here was +the burial place of her rival's lover. + +Now, for the boon of his life, he was to relieve her of that rival. +Or try to. + +"For once--he might not kill her," she whispered, "but if again--" +Her eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark. "Take her away. Make her +name a spitting and a disgrace.... Her memory a shame and a +sting.... Is she beautiful?" she broke off to demand. "They say--but +slaves lie--" + +"Can you believe a lover?" he said whimsically for all his +impatience. "She is a pearl--a rose--a crescent moon--" + +"They say she is very pale and thin--" + +"She is an Houri from Paradise," he said distinctly. "And now, in +the name of Allah, let me get to her. Tell me the way--" + +"Will she go gladly with you?" the low, insistent voice went on, and +at his quick nod, "Holy Prophet, what a bride!" + +She clapped her two ringed hands to smother the impish joy of her +laugh. "A warning to those who can be warned--he will not be so +eager for another stripe from that same stick!--It was his cousin, +Seniha Hanum--Satan devour her!--who made this marriage. Always she +hated me.... But now I will tell you how to get to her. Look out, +with me." + +Kneeling at the gate, over the dark flow of the water, she drew him +down beside her, and thrusting out her veiled head, she pointed +upward and to the right to a jutting balcony of mashrubiyeh, where a +pale light showed through the fretwork. + +"There--you see? That is my room. And if you climb up, I can let you +in.... There... Up," she repeated in English, resolved to make +certain. + +"I see. I can get there," he assured her, measuring with his eye the +dim distance. + +"At once," she said. "I will be there. I cannot take you with me +through the upper hall--it is dangerous even for me to be caught. +But no eunuch wants my displeasure." + +He could believe it, watching the subtle, malicious daring of her +face. Even in the gloom he caught the steady-lidded arrogance of her +kohl-darkened eyes and the bold insolence of a high cheek bone. She +had a hint of gypsy.... + +"And you can get me in? You're a wonder!" he whispered. "I can't +thank you enough--" + +"Rid me of her," said the girl swiftly. "But not--not him. You must +swear--what is it that Christians swear by?" she broke off to +demand. "By the grave of your father? Yes? You will swear not to +hurt him, to hurt Hamdi, by the grave of your father? Yes?" + +Ryder nodded quickly. His father, to be sure, was in no grave at +all. He was, allowing hastily for the difference in time, in his +treasurer's cage at the bank in East Middleton, but he did not wait +to explain this to the girl. + +"I swear it," he repeated. "I won't hurt your Hamdi, since that's +your condition. But we're wasting time--" + +"Up, then. And if you fall down--do like this." + +Smiling mischievously, she made the gesture of swimming. "Allah go +with thee--and with me also," he heard her murmur, as he stepped out +to the ledge of the entrance, twisted himself agilely about and +climbing up the opened gate swung himself up to the stone carving +overhead. + +Below him, he heard the gate swing shut. He did not hear her lock +it. Fervently he hoped she had not, since it was a possible exit for +any one in a hurry, but at any rate, he need not worry about a way +out of the place until he had got into it again. + +And the getting in was not any too simple. It was work for a +mountain goat, he reflected, after a short interval devoted to +tentative reaches and balancing and digging in of hands and feet. +The distances were far greater than the first-glimpsed, +foreshortened perspective had allowed him to guess, and there was +only the starlight to illumine the gray face of the palace. + +He had no idea of the time. Somewhere about the middle of the night +or early morning, he judged vaguely by the stars, although it seemed +impossible that so few hours had passed. + +The river was all silence and darkness. No nuggars with their +sleeping crews were moored below. He seemed the only living, +breathing thing clambering across the face of time and space. + +Gingerly he kicked off the nondescript black shoes he had worn with +his disguise that afternoon and essayed a perilous toehold while he +reached for the interstices of a mashrubiyeh window just overhead. + +Once gripping the rounds he pulled himself up, reflecting that it +was well it was night and that no lady was sitting within her +shelter to be affrighted at this intrusion of fingers and toes. + +From the jutting top of this projection he surveyed his further +field of operation. The window with a light was two stories higher +yet and to the right. There were two other windows with lights on +the second story, very much farther along, and he wondered painfully +if these were the rooms of Aimée. + +That boudoir in which he had hidden through the end of the long +reception had been upon the water. And there had been a door into an +adjoining room, for he had seen a sallow-faced attendant passing in +and out. + +A wild longing seized him to crawl on and over into those windows. +But it was a difficult, almost an impossible distance, and even when +there he would be like a fly on the outside of a pane with no way of +getting in. + +The unknown girl had promised him a way through her window and he +had confidence in her ingenuity and daring. + +So he went on, worming cautiously along old gutters and ledges and +jutting balconies until at last he was clasping the lower grill of +that mashrubiyeh from which her light gleamed. + +Instantly the light went out. + +"Wait!" he heard her voice say sharply over his head. She was +standing by the window fumbling with the woodwork, and in a moment +he heard the click of a knob and then, just opposite his head, the +screening grill slipped aside and an aperture appeared. + +"Quick!" admonished the voice, and quickly indeed he drew himself up +and in, reflecting whimsically as he did so that this girl had first +helped him out of a hole and then into one. + +The next moment she had moved the grill into place and lifted the +cover she had placed over her triplet of candles on a stand. + +Triumphant, her eyes dancing, her teeth a gleam of light between +those scarlet lips of hers, she looked at him for the admiration +she saw twinkling back at her in his eyes. + +"But not me--no!" she protested, her supple hands gesturing towards +the magic casement. "I found it here. It is very old--you +understand? Some other, long ago, found time dull and so--" + +Delightedly she shared the flavor of that secret of the vagabond +lady of long ago who had devised this cunning entrance for her +lover. + +On some dark night like this, with the gatekeeper drowsy with old +wine, some other stripling had climbed that worn façade before him +and slipped through the secret space and stood triumphantly before +some daring, laughing girl who had cast aside for him her veil and +her fear of death. + +What ingenuity, Ryder wondered fleetly, had smuggled in the +carpenter for the contrivance, what jewels had gone to the bribing, +what lies had been told!... And what had been the end of it all? + +Evidently not the discovery of the opening.... + +He hoped, with singular intensity, for the safety of the daring +young lovers, that unknown youth whose feet had foreworn the path +for his feet and that dead and gone young girl, who had dared +anything rather than endure the mortal ennui of those hours behind +the veil.... + +These thoughts all went through him like one thought as he stood +there, his eyes roving about the dim, shadowy room of old divans and +Eastern hangings, and then turning back to the glimmering figure of +its mistress. + +She was staring frankly at him, her eyes boldly curious and +examining. They were not dark eyes, he saw now; that had been the +impression given by the kohl about them and the black line of the +brows penciled into one line; they were yellow eyes, golden and +glowing, scornful and lazy-lidded. + +As she looked at him, these eyes smiled slowly. She was seeing in +this lover of her rival a singularly delightful looking young man, +for all his dust and disarray, a slender, bronzed, hardy-looking +young man, with dark, disordered hair straying across a white brow, +and audacious, eager eyes in which the fear of death, so lately +glimpsed, had left no daunting reflection. + +Slowly she lifted her hand and with deliberate softness put back +that straying hair of his. + +"Poor boy," she said slowly in English, and then, smiling ruefully, +she held out her hands for his inspection. The grime of the bricks +had discolored their scented delicacy and he saw bruised finger tips +and a torn nail. + +"I'm infernally sorry," he said quickly. + +Her smile deepened at his look of concern, as he held, a little +helplessly, the witnesses of her work of rescue which seemed somehow +to stray into his keeping. + +"It is nothing--but you--poor boy," she said again, in that English +of which she seemed naïvely proud. + +"If you could give me some water," he suggested, and drank deep +with delight the last drop she brought him from an earthen jar. It +seemed to wash from his throat the taste of that dust and fear. + +"I can't begin to thank you," he murmured. "I only wish that I could +do something for you--" + +She looked up at him. They were standing close together, their +voices cautiously low. + +"Perhaps, yes, you can--" + +"It's not doing anything for you to save Aimée," he told her. +"That's what you are doing for her and for me.... But if ever you +want me for anything after this--my name is Ryder, Jack Ryder, and +you can reach me at the Agricultural Bank." + +He had a vague vision of some day repaying his enormous debt by +assisting this girl, grown tired of her Hamdi, out of this aperture +and into a waiting boat. He would do it like a shot, he told himself +gladly; he would do anything on God's green earth if only she helped +him get Aimée away from that infernal villain. + +"Jack," she repeated, under her breath, and then in her slow +English, "I like--Jack." + +"Don't forget it. I'll always come and do anything for you. And if +you'll tell me your name--" + +"Aziza." + +"Aziza. I'll never forget that. And now, if you'll tell me how I can +get to her and then the best way out--" + +"Why you so hurry--" + +"Why?" he looked a little blank. "I can't lose a minute--he may be +with her--" + +She came a little nearer to him, her head tilting back with a slow, +indolent challenge. + +Gone was the silken mantle that had been about her below stairs and +he saw now that she was a vivid, exotic shimmer of gauzy green +against the saffron veil that fell from her henna hair. There was +barbaric beauty in her, in the bold, painted face, the bare, +gold-banded arms, the slender, sinuous lines, and there was barbaric +splendor in the heavy jewels that winked and flashed.... + +It struck Ryder that she was gotten up regardless.... In pride, +perhaps, on her rival's wedding night?... Or had there been some +defiant, desperate design upon Hamdi--? + +She did not miss that sudden prolonging of his look upon her. + +"You like me--yes?" she murmured, and then slipping back into +the vernacular, "I--I am not the stupid veiled girl of the +seclusion--not forever. I come from the west, the deserts. I have +seen the world: Men--men, I know ... I danced before them, not the +dances of the Cairene cafés," she uttered with swift scorn, "but the +dance of the two swords, the dance of the serpents.... Men threw the +gold from their turbans about my feet when I had danced to them ... +And others, English, French--" + +She broke off, but her eyes told many things. "Then--Hamdi," she +said slowly. "Him I ruled--and his palace.... But I have known other +things." + +Closer yet she came to him. Her eyes, golden fires of eyes, were +smiling up into his, her scarlet lips gathered in soft, sensual +curves ... her whole silken scented body seemed to slip into his +embrace. A bare arm touched his neck, resting heavily. + +"Sweet--heart," she said slowly, in her difficult English. + +It was the deuce of a position. + +No man can rudely snatch from his neck the arm of the lady who has +just saved him from a harrowing death. And a lady who was risking +more than her life in sheltering him--decidedly the situation was +delicate. + +It was not the lady's fault that her impetuosity, the impetuosity +which had been his salvation, now plunged her into amorous caprice. +There were obvious handicaps, moral, social and ethical, in her +upbringing. She was a child of nature, a nature undisciplined, +unruly, tempestuous. + +And even queening over Hamdi and his palace must have offered little +diversion to a wild dancing girl familiar with the excitement of +more varied conquest. + +Ryder was horribly embarrassed. He was visited with a fearful +constraint, a chivalrous wish not to hurt her feelings, and a sharp +prevision of the danger of offending her. + +He took the first turn of least resistance. + +He did not need to bend his head; their eyes were on a level. He +simply kissed her. And she kissed him back. + +He hated himself for the leap of his blood... and for the +Puritanical discomfort of his nature.... + +Her arm about his neck was pressing closer. It was the moment for +action and Ryder acted. Very firmly he put his hand upon her hand, +withdrew it from its clasp about him, and raised it to his lips. + +His kiss was respectful gratitude and an abdication of the delights +of dalliance. + +"Good-bye, my dear," he murmured. "Now, if you will show me the way +out--" + +Her eyes agleam between half-closed lids, she studied him. It +occurred to Ryder that probably never before had her hands been +detached--and kissed--and put away. He must be a phenomenon, an +enigma. + +Then her lips parted in a faintly scornful smile. + +"You afraid--you? You want--run?" + +"I'm horribly afraid," he said earnestly. "I want to get out of here +as quick as I can." + +That was putting, he considered, the very wisest construction upon +it. + +Negligently her gesture reminded him of the opening in the window. +"Here you are safe." she murmured in the vernacular. "And the doors +are locked--" + +"Yes, but--but Aimée isn't safe, you know--and I must get her out of +here." + +"Aimée?" In those yellow eyes he caught the flash of capricious +resentment at the reminder. Then, indifferently, she brushed the +distraction away. + +"There is time enough for Aimée. She is not lonely now." + +"Not lonely?" he shivered at the cold carelessness of her tone. "I +must get to her quickly then." + +"But that is not safe.... A little--later." + +Uncomfortably he tried to infuse his glance with innate innocence +and utter lack of understanding. + +"I shan't hurt him--if I have the chance," he told her. "I've given +you my word--" + +"And I trust you--much." Her gaze sought his in a trifle of +impatience at such simplicity. "But it is not safe for you now.... +Later ... By and by." + +"You don't want him to have a chance to make love to her, do you?" +said Ryder sharply. "I thought that was the very thing you +_didn't_--" + +Her smile was a subtle, confessing caress. "I shall have my +revenge," she murmured, and pressed closer to him again, every +sensuous, sumptuous line of her a challenge and an enticement. + +"I give you life," she whispered, very low in her throat. "You give +me, perhaps, an hour--?" + +"I _haven't_ an hour," said Ryder very desperately and unhappily. +"Not when Aimée is with that devil--" + +It took every thought of Aimée to get the words out. + +He felt a brute about it, a low, ungrateful dog. She _had_ given him +life and every fiber in him clamored to save her pride and champion +her caprice. + +It seemed so dastardly to wrench away from her now, like some +self-centered Joseph, leaving that beastly stab in her vanity.... +And she was a stunning creature, lawless, elemental, hot and cold +like the seventh wind of the inferno.... + +But it was Aimée who was in his blood like a fever.... Aimée, that +frail white rose of a girl, in her bonds of terror.... + +He saw the flame in Aziza's eyes. He saw the stiffening of her +defiance, of half-incredulous affront. Then, her form drawn up, her +bared arms outflung, her vivid, painted, furious face challenging +him. "I am not beautiful--like Aimée?" she said in a voice of venom, +and in the English, for double measure, "You not like me--no?" + +"You _are_ beautiful and I _do_ like you," Ryder combated, feeling a +bungling fool. And then went on to thrust into that half-second of +suspended fury, a faint breath of appeasing. "But--don't you +see--it's my duty--" + +"You go--?" she said clearly. + +Even in that moment he had a sharp prescience of the unwisdom of his +rejection. A cold calculator of chance and probabilities would have +reckoned that a half hour of assuagement here would have been a +wiser investment of his mortal moments than any virtuous plunge into +single-hearted duty. + +But Ryder did not calculate. He could not, with Aimée under that +beast's hand. His heart and soul were possessed with her danger and +his heart and soul carried his body instinctively back from the +dancing girl's advance, and he whispered, "I must go. There is no +time--" + +She flung back her fiery-hued head with a gesture of intolerable +rage. Her eyes were lightnings. + +"Dog of a Christian!" she said chokingly and flew to the doors. + +Back she thrust the heavy hangings, turning a quick key in the lock +and wrenching the door wide. And before Ryder could understand, +before he could bring himself to realize that she was not simply +violently expelling him from her room, she gave a shriek that rang +wildly down the long-unseen corridors. + +At the top of her lungs, with one hand out to thrust him back or +cling to him if he attempted to pass, she shrieked again and again. + +Instantly there came a running of feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +AN INTERRUPTION + + +When Hamdi Bey had taken Aimée back to her apartments he pulled +sharply upon a bellcord. In a few moments the slave woman, Fatima, +made her appearance, no kindly-eyed old crone like Miriam, but a +sallow, furtive-faced creature, with an old disfiguring scar across +a cheek. + +The general pointed to the wet and fainting girl huddling weakly +upon the divan. + +"Your new mistress has met with an accident, out boating--a curse +upon me for gratifying forbidden caprice!" he said crisply. "Be +silent of this and array her quickly in garments of rest. I will +return." + +Very hurriedly he took himself and his own wet condition away. He +was furious, through and through. What a night--what a wedding +night! Scandal and frustration... a bride with a desperate lover... +a bride who, herself, drew revolvers and threatened. + +It was beyond any old tale of the palace. For less, girls had had +his father's dagger driven through their hearts--his grandfather, at +a mere whisper from a eunuch, had given his favorite to the lion. +The whisper was found incorrect at a later--too late--date, and the +eunuch had furnished the lion another meal. + +His modern leniency in this case would have outraged his ancestors. + +But it was not in the bey's nature to deal the finishing stroke to +anything so soft and lovely as Aimée. He had no intention of +depriving himself of her. If she were red with guilt he would feign +belief in her, to save his face until his infatuation was gratified. + +But actually he did not believe in any great guilt of hers. Tewfick +Pasha, for all his indulgent modernity, would keep too strict a +harem for that. What he rather believed had happened was that the +young American--now so happily immured in his masonry--had become +aware of the girl through the story of her French father, and in +that connection had struck up the clandestine and romantic +correspondence which had led to their mutual infatuation and his +desperate venture there that afternoon. + +The young man had been dealt with--and the thought of the very +summary and competent way he had been dealt with drew the fangs from +the bite of that night's invasion. + +His fury felt soothingly glutted. + +He had been a match for them both. He recalled his own subtlety and +agility with a genuine smile as he exchanged his dripping uniform +for more informal trousers and a house coat. He had taught that +young man a lesson--a final and ultimate lesson. And he was +beginning to teach one to that girl. Before he was done with +her ... + +He felt for her a mingled passion for her beauty and a lust for +conquest of her resistant spirit that fed every base and cruel +instinct of his nature. + +A find--a rare find--even with her circumvented lover! He would have +his sport with her.... But though he promised this to himself with +feline relish, apprehension and chagrin were still working. + +The fond fatuity with which he had welcomed that starry-eyed little +creature had been rudely overthrown. And his pride smarted at the +idea of the whispers that might echo and re-echo through his palace. +He was too wise an old hand to flatter himself that it would +preserve its bland and silent unawareness of this night. + +So far, he believed, he had been unobserved. In Yussuf's silence he +had absolute confidence.... But of course there were a hundred other +chances--some spying, back-stairs eye, some curious, straining +ear.... + +And for this matter of the boating mishap--he cursed himself now, as +he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his +thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his +malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have +done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his +dramatic itch--and now had paid for it with that idiotic story of +the boating expedition. + +He had reason to trust Fatima--there was history behind the old +sword scar upon her cheek, and he had a hold over her through her +ambition for a son. But Fatima was a woman. And she--or some other +who would see that drenched satin would be curious of that boating +story.... + +And of course they could find out from the boatman. + +It occurred to him to go and see the boatman and order him away so +that afterward the man could say he had been sent off duty, and the +story of a nocturnal river trip would not appear too incredible. It +was a small concession to stop gossip's mouth. + +So drawing on a swinging military cloak, the general stole down +through the stair of the water entrance into the lower hall, where +the pale light gleamed through the cross-barred iron of the gate and +the gatekeeper slept like a log in his muffling cloak. + +The soundness of that slumber--loudly attested by the fumes of +wine--afforded the general a profound pleasure. He took the man's +keys softly, and went to the gate; it afforded him less pleasure to +observe that the gate was unlocked, but he put this down to the +keeper's muddleheadedness. + +Carefully he turned the lock and pocketed the keys--for a lesson to +the man's overdeep sleep in the morning and to attest his own +presence there that night; then he went back and brought out an oar, +which he placed conspicuously beside the smallest boat, drawn up +just within the gates. + +He was afraid to alter the boat's position lest the noise should +prove too wakening, but he considered he had laid an artistic +foundation for his story and with a gratifying sense of triumph he +mounted the stairs. + +He was not conscious of fatigue. He had always been a wiry, +indefatigable person, and the alarms and emotions of this night had +cleared his head of its wines and drowsiness. He felt the sense of +tense, highstrung power which came to him in war, in fighting, in +any element of danger. + +Youth! He snapped his fingers at it. Youth was buried in +his masonry--and helpless in its shuttered room. Power was +master--power, craft, subtlety. + +But his elation ebbed as he crossed again that long drawing room +with its faded flowers about the marriage throne, and its abandoned +table with its cloth askew, its crystal disarrayed, its candles +gutted and spent. + +The memory of that insolent moment when a man's hand had gripped +him, had whirled him from Aimée--when a man's voice and gun had +threatened him--that memory was too overpowering for even his +triumph over the invader to lay wholly its smart of outrage. + +He felt again the tightening of his nerves, like quivering wires, as +he crossed the violated reception room and entered the boudoir. It +was empty, but on the divan the flickering candle light revealed the +damp, spreading stain where Aimée's drenched satins had been. + +He thrust aside a hanging and pushed open the door into the room +beyond. + +It was a small bedroom evidently very recently furnished in new and +white shining lacquer of French design, elaborately inlaid with +painted porcelains and draped with a profusion of rosy taffeta. +Among this elegance, surprisingly unrelated to the ancient paneled +walls, stood the hastily opened trunk and bags of the bride, their +raised lids and disarranged trays heaped with the confusion of +unaccustomed, swiftly searching hands. + +Aimée herself, in a gay little French boudoir robe of jade and +citron, sat huddled in a chair, like a mute, terrified child, in the +hand of her dresser, who was shaking out the long, damp hair and +fanning it with a peacock fan. + +At the bey's entrance Fatima suspended the fanning, but with easy +familiarity exhibited the long ringlets. + +Curtly the bey nodded, and gestured in dismissal; the woman laid +down her fan, and with a last slant-eyed look at that strangely +still new mistress she went noiselessly out a small service door. + +With an air of negligent assurance Hamdi Bey gazed about the room +and yawned. "Truly a fatiguing evening," he remarked in his dry, +sardonic voice. "But you look so untouched! What a thing is radiant +youth." + +He sauntered over to her, who drew a little closer together at his +approach, and lifted one of the long dark curls that the serving +woman had exhibited. + +"The ringlets of loveliness," he murmured. "You know the old saying +of the Sadi? 'The ringlets of the lovely are a chain on the feet of +reason and a snare for the bird of wisdom.'... How long ago he said +it--and how true to-day ... Yet such a charming chain! Suppose, +then, I forgive you, little one, since sages have forgiven beauty +before?" + +She was silent, her eyes fixed on him with the silent terror with +which a trapped bird sees its captor, in their bright darkness the +same mute apprehension, the same filming of helpless despair. + +Ryder was dead, she thought. This cruel, incensed old madman had +killed him, for all his oaths. Somewhere beneath those ancient +stones he was lying drowned and dead, a strange, pitiable addition +to the dark secrets of those grim walls. + +He had died for her sake, and all that she asked now of life, she +thought in the utter agony of her youth, was death. And very +quickly. + +"I am so soft hearted," he sighed, still with that ringlet in his +lifted hand, his hand which wanted palpably to settle upon her and +yet was withheld by some strange inhibition of those fixed, helpless +eyes. "Who knows--perhaps I may forgive you yet? You might persuade +me--" + +"He is dead," she said shiveringly. + +"Dead? He?... Ah, the invader, the intruder, the young man who +wanted you for a family in France!" The bey laughed gratingly. "No, +I assure you he is not dead--I have not harmed a hair of his head. +He is alive--only not with quite the widest range of liberty--" + +He broke off to laugh again. "Ah, you disbelieve?" he said politely. +"Shall I send, then, for some proof--an ear, perhaps, or a little +finger, still very warm and bleeding, to convince you?... In five +minutes it will be here." + +Then terror stirred again in her frozen heart. If Ryder were alive +and still in this man's power-- + +"You are horrible," she said to him in a voice that was suddenly +clear and unshaken. "What is it you want of me--fear and hate--and +utter loathing?" + +Her unexpected spirit was briefly disconcerting. The Turk looked +down upon her in arrested irony and then he smiled beneath his +mustaches and bent nearer with kindling gaze. + +"Not at all--nothing at all like that, little dove with talons. I +want sweetness and repentance--and submission. And--" + +"You have a strange way to win them," she said desperately. + +"You have taken a strange way with me, my love! Little did I +foresee, when I escorted you up the stairs this morning--" He broke +off. "There are men," he reminded her, "who would not consider a +cold bath as a complete recompense for your bridal plans." + +She was silent. + +"But I," he murmured, "I am soft hearted." He dropped on one knee +before her and tried to smile into her averted face. "I can never +resist a charming penitent.... I assure you I am pliability itself +in delicate fingers--although iron and steel to a threatening +hand.... If you should woo me very sweetly, little one--" + +She could not overcome and she could not hide from his mocking eyes +the sick shrinking that drew her back from his least touch. But she +did fight down the wild hysteria of her repugnance so that her voice +was not the trembling gasp it wanted to be. + +"How can I know what you are?" she told him. "You mock me--you +threaten to torture that man--it would be folly not to think that +you are deceiving me. If you would only prove to me so that I could +believe--" + +"If you would but prove to _me_ so that _I_ could believe--! Prove +that you are mine--and not that infidel's. Prove that you bring me a +wife's devotion--not a wanton's indifference." He caught her cold +hands, trying to draw her forward to him. "Prove that you only pity +him," he whispered, "but that your love will be mine--" + +She felt as if a serpent clasped her. And yet, if that were the only +way to win Ryder's safety--if it were possible for her sickened +senses to allay this madman's suspicions and undermine his revenge-- + +Quiveringly she thought that to save Ryder she would go through +fire. + +But the hideous, mocking uncertainties! Her utter helplessness--her +lost deference.... + +It was not a sudden sound that broke in upon them but rather the +perception of many sounds, muffled, half heard, but gaining upon +their consciousness. Running feet--a stifled voice--something faint +and shrill-- + +Aimée sprang to her feet; the general rose with her and turned his +head inquiringly in the direction. Then he jerked open the door +through which Fatima had disappeared; it led to a dark service +corridor and small anteroom, from whose bed the attendant was +absent. An outer door was ajar. + +No need to question the sounds now. Faint, but piercingly shrill +shrieks were sounding from above, while the footsteps were racing, +some down, some up-- + +The bey flung shut the door behind him and hurried towards the +confusion. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +BEYOND THE DOOR + + +Ryder had stood stock still with amazement when the girl began to +scream. She had gone mad, he thought for an instant, in masculine +bewilderment, and then her madness revealed its treacherous cunning, +for she began crying wildly for help against an invader, an infidel, +a dog of a Christian who had stolen into her rooms. + +She had chucked him to the lions, Ryder perceived; one furious flash +of lightning jealousy and Oriental anger had overthrown, in that +wild and lawless head, every other design for him for which she had +risked so much. + +He had scorned her.... He had flouted her caprice.... He had dared +to refuse the languors of those dangerous eyes.... + +The hurrying footsteps appeared to him the tread of a legion in +action, and he had no desire to rush out upon the oncomers; he had, +indeed, distinct doubts of his ruthless ability to pass that supple, +clawing, incensed creature at the door. + +He whirled and made a bolt for the window, striking at the fastened +grill. He heard the snapping of wooden bolts and the splintering of +wood and out through the hole he climbed to a precipitous, head-long +flight that fairly felt the clutching hands upon his ankle. + +He had meant to make a jump for it. A three-story plunge into the +Nile appeared a gentle exercise compared to the alternative within +the palace, but in the very act of releasing his hold he changed his +mind. + +Quicker than he had ever moved before, in any vicissitude of his +lithe and agile youth, he clambered up, not down, and crouching back +from sight upon the jutting top of the window, he sent his coat +sailing violently through space. + +He dared not look over for its descent upon the water, for other +heads were peering from below and he could hear an excited outburst +of speech, that broke sharply off. + +Evidently they were hurrying down to the water gate. Swiftly he +utilized this misdirection for his own ends. + +The roofs. That was the refuge to make for. Flat, long-reaching +roofs, from which one could climb off onto a wall or a palm or a +side street. + +He had only a story to ascend and he made it in record time, fearful +that the searchers whom he heard now launching a boat below would +turn their eyes skywards. + +But he gained the top without an outcry being raised and found +himself upon the roof where the ladies of the harem took their air +unseen of any save the blind eyes of the muezzin in the Sultan +mosque upon the hill. There were divans and a little taboret or two +and a framework where an awning could be raised against the sun. + +There was also a trap door. + +And here, tempestuously he changed his mind again. He abandoned the +goal of outer walls and chances of escape. He wrenched violently at +that trap door. It was bolted but the bolt was an ancient one and +gave at his furious exertions, letting him down into a narrow spiral +staircase between walls. + +Down he plunged in haste, before some confused searcher should dash +up. It was no place to meet an opposing force. Nor was the corridor +in which he found himself much better. + +It was black and baffling as a labyrinth, with unexpected turnings, +and he kept gingerly close to the wall with one hand clutching a bit +of iron which he had taken into his possession and his pocket when +Aziza had led him out of the underground walls--the very bit of +pointed iron, it was, with which the volatile creature had effected +his rescue. + +He considered it an invaluable souvenir and twice, in his nervous +apprehension, he almost brought it down upon shadows. + +Direction he judged vaguely by the screaming which was still going +on at a tremendous rate--evidently the girl had gone off into +genuine hysterics or else she had determined not to leave her +agitation at the intrusion in any manner of question. No doubt the +outcries were a relief to her mingled emotions--remorse at her +impetuosity and chagrin that her thwarted plans might conceivably be +now among those emotions--and since the vicinity of those shrieks +must be a gathering place to be avoided by him he stole on, down the +upper hall, and finding a stair, he went down for two continuous +flights. + +Aimée's rooms, he knew, had been upon the water, and recalling the +general direction of those two lighted windows that he had seen so +recently from without, his excavator's instinct led him on. Once he +saw the flitting figure of a turbaned woman in time to draw back +into a heaven-sent niche and again he flattened into a soundless +shadow against the wall as two young serving girls ran by on +slippered feet, their anklets tinkling, chattering to each other in +delighted excitement. + +And then the stealthy opening of a door--it was the very door by +which Yussuf had precipitated himself upon the struggle at the +supper table some age-long hours ago--gave him a glimpse into the +far glooms of the reception room, where its long side of mashrubiyeh +windows revealed now between its fretwork tiny chinks of a paling +sky. + +He could make out the dark-draped marriage throne and the pallor of +the disordered cloth upon the abandoned table below, and behind the +table the dark draperies of the remaining portières before the +doorway into the boudoir where he had hidden himself and into which +he had last seen Aimée thrust. + +At the other end of the great room were the entrance stairs to the +harem, and there, he imagined, a watchman was stationed, or else +stout bolts and bars were guarding the situation. There remained an +arched doorway into other formal rooms through which he had seen +Aimée and the guests disappear for the wedding supper, and that way +led, he surmised, down into the service quarters. + +A sorry choice of exits! He could form no plan in advance but trust +blindly to the amazing chances of adventure. And first, before he +rushed for escape, there was Aimée to find. + +Yet for all the mad hazard of the situation he was elated with life. +He felt as if he had never fully lived until now, when every breath +was informed with the sharp prescience of danger. He was at once +cool and exultant, wary yet reckless, with the joyous recklessness +of utter desperation. + +With cat-like care he surveyed the drawing-room; it appeared +deserted but as he watched his tense nerves could see the shadows +forming, taking furtive, crouching shape--and then dissolving +harmlessly into a rug, a chair, or a stirring drapery. His eyes +grown used to the dimness he identified the mantle upon the floor in +which he had come and which he had extended to Aimée in that brief +moment of fatuous triumph, and beyond it, across a chair, was the +portière which the black had torn down from the doorway to wrap +about Ryder's helpless form as he had carried him down to living +death. + +That mantle, he thought, might yet be useful, and he stole forward +and recovered it, but, as he straightened, another shadow darted out +from the boudoir door and silhouetted for an instant against the +lighted, room he saw a figure in a long, swinging military cloak. + +Discovery was inevitable and Ryder made a swift plunge to take the +cloaked figure by surprise, but even as one hand shot out and +gripped the throat while the other held his threatening iron aloft, +his clutch relaxed, his arm fell nervelessly at his side. + +For from the figure had come the broken gasp of a soft voice, and +the face upturned to his was a pale oval under dark, disordered +hair. + +"Aimée!" he breathed in exultant, still half-incredulous joy. +"Aimée!... Did I hurt you--?" + +"Oh, no, no!" came Aimée's shaken voice. "Oh, you are safe!" + +He felt her trembling in his clasp and he swept her close to him. +For one breathless instant they clung together, in a sharp, +passionate gladness which blurred every sense of dread or danger. +They were safe--they were together--and for the moment it was +enough. Every obstacle was surmounted, every terror conquered. + +They clung, obliviously, like children, her pale face against his +shoulder, her hair brushing his lips, her wild heartbeats throbbing +against his own. + +Then the girl, remembering, lifted her head. + +"Quick--we must go," she whispered. "For there I made a fire--" + +He followed her frightened, backward glance at the boudoir door and +suddenly saw its cracks and key hole strangely radiant with light. + +"He left me, to go to those screams," she was saying rapidly. "I +tried to run that way--and found that woman coming back. And I told +her to wait--in her own room--and I slipped back in there--and +suddenly it came to me to thrust the candle about. I thought I would +run out and if I met any one I would call, 'Fire', and say the +general was burning and perhaps in the confusion--" + +The terrible desperation of her both stirred and wrung him. She was +so little, so helpless, so trembling in his clasp ... so made for +love and tenderness.... And to think of her in such fear and horror +that she went thrusting reckless candles into her hangings, setting +a palace on fire in the blind fury for escape.... + +To such work had this night brought her.... This night, and three +men--for he and the craven Tewfick and the fanatic bey were all +linked in this night's work. Yes, and another man--and he thought +swiftly, in a lightning flash of wonder, how little that Paul +Delcassé had known when he set his eager face toward the Old World, +with his wife and baby with him, that he was setting his feet into +such a web ... that his wife would die, languishing in a pasha's +harem, and his little daughter would one night be flying in mad +terror from the cruel beast the weak pasha had sold her to! + +And how little, for that matter, he had known when he had set his +own face toward those same sands what secrets he would discover +there and what forbidden ways his heart would know. + +These thoughts all went through him like one thought, in some clear, +remote background of his mind, while he was swiftly drawing on the +military cloak she gave him and wrapping her in the black mantle. +There was a veil on the mantle's hood that she could fling across +her face when she wished, but Ryder had no fez to complete the +deceptive outline of his masquerade. He must trust to the dark and +to the concealment of the high, military collar of the cloak. + +"Do you know a way?" he whispered and at her shaken head, "The water +gate," he said, thinking swiftly. + +There would be a crowd now about the gate, but if they could only +manage to gain those cellars and hide somewhere they could steal out +later upon that waterman. + +It seemed the most feasible of all the desperate plans. The roofs +might be a trap. The harem entrance led into a garden and the garden +was guarded by an impassable wall. But if he could only get to the +river he knew that he was a strong enough swimmer to save Aimée, or +he might even terrorize the watchman into furnishing a boat. + +She did not question but guided him swiftly through the arch that +led down into the banqueting hall. Twice that day she had gone down +those stairs. Once in her bridal state, her eyes shining, her cheeks +glowing with the wild joy of Ryder's arrival and dreams of escape, +and again, scarcely an hour gone by, she had descended them, tense +and desperate, her revolver at the general's head, seeking vainly +Ryder's rescue. + +And now a third time, a guilty, reckless fugitive in the night, she +stole down those stairs into the many-columned hall where she had +been fêted in state among her guests. Here her only knowledge was of +the stone corridor and the locked door through which the bey had led +her, but Ryder knew the way that Aziza had brought him and he turned +cautiously toward those wide, curving stairs. + +Keeping Aimée a few steps behind him, he went down the soft carpet +and peered out at the bottom towards the water gate. He saw no bars; +the gate was open and against the pale square of the water were the +black silhouettes of the general and the gateman, both leaning out +at some splashing in the river. + +He knew a boy's reckless impulse to shove them both in. It was an +unholy thought his better judgment rejected--unless driven to +it--yet some prankish element in his roused recklessness would not +have deplored the necessity. + +If they looked about--! + +But they did not stir as, with Aimée's cold hand in his, he made the +tiptoed descent and slipped softly about the corner of the steps. +Then, instead of going on down the hall to some hiding place in the +ruins, he took a suddenly revealed, sharper turn into a narrow +passage just beyond the stairs. + +It might lead to another gate, some service entrance, perhaps, it +ran so straight and direct between its walls. + +Intuitively that excavator's sense of his defined the direction. +They were going parallel with the river, although a little way back +from the water wall, and in the direction of the men's part of the +palace, the selamlik. + +He recalled the selamlik vaguely as an irregular mass of buildings, +and though the formal entrance was of course through the garden from +the avenue, there was a narrow side street or lane leading back to +the water's edge between this part of the palace and the nest +building, and very likely there was some entrance on that lane. + +Bitterly he blamed himself for his lack of complete inspection that +morning. To be sure he had told himself, then, as he strolled about +the high garden walls and peered down the narrow lane on one side of +the Nile backwaters, that he didn't need a map of the place for his +arrival at an afternoon reception; he was simply going in and out, +and clothes and speech were his only real concern. + +He had even said to himself that he might not reveal himself to +Aimée--if she did not discover him. He wanted merely to see her +again, and be sure that she understood her own history--he had no +notion of attempting any further relations with her, any resumption +of their forbidden and dangerous acquaintance. + +And it was true that had been the defiant and protesting surface of +his thoughts, but deep within himself there had always been that +hot, hidden spark, ready to kindle to a flame at her word--and with +it the unowned, secret longing that she would speak the word. + +And when she had called on him for help, when the trembling appeal +had sprung past her stricken pride, and he had seen the terror in +her soft, child's eyes, then the spark had struck its conflagration. +He had become nothing but a hot, headstrong fury of devotion. + +And he said to himself now that he might have known it was going to +happen, and that if he had not been so concerned that morning about +saving his face and preserving this fiction of indifference he would +know a little more about the labyrinth they were poking about +in--the little more that tips the scale between safety and +destruction. + +But he did not know and blind Chance was his only goddess. + +The passage had brought him to a wall and a narrow stairs while +another passage led off to the right, apparently to the forward +regions of the place. + +He took the stairs. He had had enough of underground regions when +they did not lead to water gates and the stairs promised novelty at +least. + +He wished he knew more about Turkish palaces. He supposed they had a +fairly consistent ground plan, but beyond a few main features of +inner courts and halls he was culpably ignorant of their intentions. +If it were an early Egyptian tomb or temple now! But then, perhaps +the Turks were more indefinite in their building and rebuilding. + +At the head of the stairs a door stood half ajar. Through the crack +he strained his eyes, but his anxious glance met only the darkness +of utter night. Not a gleam of light. And not a sound--except the +far, hollow stamping of some stabled horse. + +Softly he pushed the door open and he and Aimée slipped within. The +place, whatever it was, appeared deserted, a dark, bare, backstairs +region--for he stumbled over a bucket--from which to the right he +could just discern a hall leading into the forward part of the +palace, wanly lighted some distance on, with the pale flicker of an +old ceiling lamp. + +They seemed to be at the end of the hall and the darker shadows in +the walls about them appeared to be a number of doors--closed, so +his groping hands informed him. + +Oh, for his excavator's steady light, or a pocket flash! Oh, for a +light of any kind, even a temporary match! But he dared not risk the +scratch, for now he caught the thud of footfalls overhead, heavy +footfalls, and there might be stairs unexpectedly close at hand. + +He turned to Aimée but the girl shook her head helplessly and +hesitant and dashed, for all their young confidence, they wavered a +moment hand in hand in the dark, fearful of what a rash move might +bring upon them. And in the beating stillness Ryder became conscious +that the muffled, monotonous stamping of a horse is a gloomy, +disheartening thing in the night, and that footsteps overhead are of +all noises the most nervous and unsettling. + +What was behind those doors? Not a spark of light came from them, +that was one comfort. The rooms, kitchen, service, store rooms or +whatever they were, appeared in the same blackness and oblivion.... +But any door might open on a roomful of sleeping gardeners and +grooms.... + +Life and more than life hung on the blind goddess. + +It was only an instant that they hesitated there, yet it appeared an +eternity of indecision, then nearer footsteps sounded, coming down +that hall. No more wavering of the scales! + +Ryder turned to the door at his left, at the very end of the wall +beyond which came that far stamping, and wrenched it open, closing +it swiftly behind him. He saw a light now, a mild, yellow ray +through an opened door ahead that vaguely illumined the strange old +vehicles of the palace, and the stables were beyond. + +Some one else was beyond, too, in the stables, for that very instant +he saw a black horse backed restively into sight, its tossing head +evading the hands that were trying to bridle it. + +"The Fortieth Door!" said Ryder to himself with an involuntary +thrust of humor. + +The door of the horse! The door of forbidden daring! He knew now the +vague associations that had stirred in him as he had stared blindly +about that place of doors.... But he had opened so many forbidden +doors of late that this last was welcome as the supreme test. + +And nothing in the world could have been more welcome than a +horse--a horse with a way out behind it! + +"Stay back," he said under his breath to Aimée, and clasping his bit +of iron he moved toward the door. + +He could see the attendant now, who was finishing his bridling, and +it was Yussuf, the eunuch, so busy gentling and soothing the horse +that he cast only one glance in the direction of the sounds he heard +and that one glance misled him in its glimpse of the general's +cloak. + +"By your favor--but an instant," he called out, "and he is ready--" + +"Stand aside," said Ryder very clearly, emerging from the shadows at +the horse's heels. "Out of the way with you. The horse is for me." + +A moment Yussuf gaped. Then he dropped the bridle and his hand went +swiftly to the knife hilt in his belt. + +"Fool!" said Ryder contemptuously. "Would you tempt fate? Do you +think I am such that your knife could harm me? Must I prove to you +again that walls are nothings--that I but let myself be taken to +prove my powers?" + +Ethiopians are superstitious. And Yussuf knew that his brick and +mortar had been strong.... Yet they have great trust in a crooked, +short-bladed knife, and Yussuf did not relax his hold upon his and +for all that Ryder could See there was no hesitation in the grinning +ferocity of his black face. + +Yet his spring was an instant delayed and in that instant Ryder +spoke again. + +"Look, now at the wall behind you," he said quickly. + +Yussuf looked. And as he turned his bullet head Ryder jumped close +and brought his iron down upon it with a sickening force he thought +scarcely short of murder. + +To his amazement the black did not fall, but staggered only, and +Ryder had need to send the knife spinning from his grasp and strike +again before the eunuch's knees sagged and his huge bulk sank at +Ryder's feet. + +This time Ryder took no chance with a shammed unconsciousness. He +snatched down bits of leather from the wall and bound the man's +hands and feet in tight security and seeing that he was breathing, +although heavily, he thrust a gagging handkerchief into his mouth. + +Then he dragged the heavy body towards a pile of hay he saw +in a vacant stall and concealed it effectively but not too +smotheringly--although Yussuf, he felt, would be no grievous loss +to society. + +Vaguely in the back of his consciousness he had been aware of the +excited plunge of the horse and then of a low, soothing murmur of +speech, and now he turned to find Aimée holding the bridle and +stroking the quivering creature with gentle, fearless hands. + +"Is he dead?" she asked quietly of the eunuch. + +"Stunned," said Ryder, meaning reassurement and was startled by the +passion of her cry, "Oh, I could kill them all--all!" + +"I will--if they try to stop us," he promised grimly, forgetful of +that oath to Aziza. + +Hastily he glanced about the stalls. There was no other horse there, +only a pair of mild-eyed donkeys, and though there might conceivably +be other horses behind other doors there was no instant to spare in +search. + +This luck was too prodigious to risk. + +The door to the street had already been unbolted and now he threw +it back with a quick look into the dark emptiness of the narrow side +street, and then, with a tight hold of the reins, he swung himself +into the saddle and Aimée up into his arms, her head on his +shoulder, her arms clasping him. + +It was a huge Bedouin saddle with high-arched back and curved pummel +and the slender pair no more than filled it, making apparently no +weight at all for the spirited beast which tore out of the stalls at +the charging gallop beloved of Eastern horsemen. + +For a moment Ryder felt wildly that he might meet the fate of the +rash youth in his patron story. He had never ridden a horse like +this, which, like all high-mettled Arabs, resented the authority of +any but his master, and though a good horseman Ryder had all he +could do to keep his seat and Aimée in his arms. + +Around the corner of the lane the horse went racing, and down the +dark, lebbek-lined avenue his flying feet struck back their sparks +of fire. Across an open square he plunged, while irate camels +screamed at him and a harsh voice shouted back loud curses. It +seemed to Ryder that other voices joined in--that there was a +pursuit, an outcry--and then they were out down an open road, wildly +galloping, like a mad highwayman under a pale morning sky. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL + + +That morning Miss Jeffries ate two eggs. She ate them successively, +with increasing deliberation, and afterwards she lingered +interminably over her toast and marmalade. + +Still Ryder made no appearance and since the Arab waiter had +informed her that he had not yet breakfasted she concluded that he +was not at the hotel but had spent the night with some friend of +his--probably that Andrew McLean to whom he was always running off. + +Nor was he in to luncheon. That was rank extravagance because he was +paying at pension rates. His extravagance, however, was no affair of +hers. Neither, she informed herself frigidly, was his appearance or +his non-appearance. It was only rather dull of Jack to lose so many, +well, opportunities. + +She was not going to be in Cairo forever. Not much longer, in fact. +There were adages about gathering rosebuds while ye may and making +hay while the sun shone that Jack Ryder would do well to observe. + +Other men did, reflected Jinny Jeffries with a proud lift of her +ruddy head. Only somehow, the other men-- + +Well, Jack _was_ provokingly attractive! Only of course, if he was +going to rely upon his attraction and not upon his attentions-- + +Deliberately Miss Jeffries smiled upon a stalwart tourist from New +York and promised her society for a foursome at bridge in the hotel +lounge that evening. + +Later, when Jack still failed to materialize and behold her +inaccessibility, the exhibition seemed hardly to have been worth +while.... And there were difficulties getting rid of the New Yorker +the next day. He had ideas about excursions. + +It was during the forenoon of the next day that the first twinge of +genuine worry shot across the sustained resentment which she was +pleased to call her complete indifference. She recalled the vigor of +Ryder's warnings about mentioning his adventure and the grave +dangers of disclosure, and she began to wonder. + +She wished, rather, that he had gone safely out of the house before +she went away. + +Of course nothing could happen. He had done nothing to give himself +away. He was simply a veiled shadow, moving humbly as befitted a +lowly stranger among the high and hospitable surroundings. + +But still, it would have been better if he had gone.... + +Those turbaned women had looked queerly at them when they were +talking so long in the window. Perhaps it was not simply at the +intimacy between a young American and a veiled Oriental. Perhaps +their voices had been unguarded or Jack's tones had awakened +suspicion. Perhaps he had given himself away in his long talk with +the bride. She remembered a Frenchwoman who had come to interrupt +that talk who had looked rather sharply at Jack.... And that +dreadful eunuch was always staring.... + +She thought of a great many things now, more and more things every +minute. + +And still she told herself that she was absurd, that Jack would be +the first to ridicule her alarm. He was probably enjoying himself, +staying on with his friends, forgetting all about herself.... Still +his room at the hotel had not been slept in for two nights now nor +had he called at the hotel and he certainly didn't have an extensive +supply of clothes and linen upon him beneath the mantle. + +Particularly she remembered that he had exhibited some funny black +tennis shoes which he had thought would go appropriately with a +woman's robes. Absurd, to think of him as spending two days in +tennis shoes, and absurd to say that he would go to the shops and +buy more when he had plenty of footgear in his hotel room. + +Unless he wore McLean's. + +She had always regarded the unknown McLean as a most unnecessary +absorbent of Jack Ryder's time and attention and now that view was +deeply reinforced. + +By noon she decided to do something. She would telephone that +Andrew McLean and see if Jack had been there. The Agricultural Bank, +that was the place. An obliging hotel clerk--clerks were always +obliging to Miss Jeffries--gave her the number and she slipped into +the booth feeling a ridiculous amount of excitement and suspense. + +She had never telephoned in Cairo--only been telephoned to--and she +was not prepared for the fact that the telephone company was French. +At the phone girl's "_Numero?--Quel numero, s'il vous plait?_" Jinny +hastily choked back the English response and clutched violently at +French numerals. + +"_Huit cent--no, quatre vingt--un moment!_" she demanded desperately +and hanging up the receiver, sat down to write out her number in +French correctly. + +And then she got the Bank, and, still clinging to her French, she +requested to speak to Monsieur McLean and was informed that it was +Monsieur McLean himself. + +"_Je suis_--oh, how absurd! Of course you speak English," she +exclaimed. "This French telephone upset me.... I wanted to speak to +Mr. Ryder if he is there--or else leave a message for him, if you +know when he will come in." + +"Ryder?" There was a faint intonation of surprise in the voice. +"I've no idea really when he'll be in," said McLean, "but you may +leave the message if you like." + +"Hasn't he--haven't you seen him for some time?" stammered Jinny, +feeling that McLean must be taking her for a pursuing adventuress. + +"Well--not for some time." + +Her heart sank. + +"Not--not for two days?" + +"It might be that," said the Scotchman cautiously. + +Two days. Forty-eight hours, almost, since she had left him in that +harem! And McLean had not seen him. Of course there might be other +friends who had and McLean might know of them. + +"I'm afraid I'll have to see you," she said desperately. "It's +rather important about Jack Ryder--and if I could just talk with you +a minute--this afternoon--?" + +"I have no appointment for three fifteen," McLean told her +concisely. + +Evidently he expected her to call at the Bank.... He was used to +being called on.... "Shall I come--?" she began. + +"I can see you at three fifteen," McLean reassured her, and she +repeated "Three fifteen," with an odd vibration in her voice. + +"I wonder," she murmured, "if I came at three ten--or three +twenty--?" + + * * * * * + +But she didn't. She was humorously careful to make it exactly a +quarter past the hour when she left her cab before McLean's +official looking residence and stepped into the tiled entrance. + +She had no very clear notion of Andrew McLean except that he was, as +Jack had said, Scotch, single, and skeptical, that he was Jack's +intimate friend and an official sort of banker--and the word banker +had unconsciously prepared her for stout dignity and middle age. + +She was not at all prepared for the lean, sandy-haired, rather +abrupt young man who came forward from the depths of the gratefully +cool reception room, and after a nervous hand clasp waved her to a +chair. + +He was still holding her card, and as he glanced covertly at it she +recalled that she had given him no name over the telephone and that +he had known her only by the time of her appointment. Decidedly she +must have made an odd impression! + +Well, he could see for himself now, she thought, a trifle defiantly. +Certainly he was taking stock of her out of those shrewd swift gray +eyes of his. He could see that she was, well--certainly a nice girl! + +As a matter of fact McLean could see that she was considerably more. +Rather disconcertingly more! It was not often that such white-clad +apparitions, piquant of face and coppery of hair, teased the eyes in +his receiving room. + +"You wanted to see me--?" he offered mechanically. + +"Perhaps you have heard Jack Ryder speak of me--of Jinny Jeffries?" +began the girl, determined to put the affair on a sound social +footing as soon as possible. + +McLean considered and, in honesty, shook his head. "He very seldom +mentioned young ladies." + +"Oh--!" Jinny tried not to appear dashed. "We are very old +friends--in America--and of course I've seen a good deal of him +since I've been in Cairo. In fact, he is stopping now at the same +hotel with us--with my aunt and uncle and myself." + +McLean smiled. "He said it was a tooth," he mentioned dryly. + +In Jinny's eyes a little flicker answered him, but her words were +ingenuous. "Oh, of course he _has_ been having a time with the +dentist. That's why he couldn't return to his camp. What I meant +was, that at the hotel we have been seeing him every day until--he +has just disappeared since day before yesterday and we--that is, +I--am very much concerned about it." + +"Disappeared? You mean, he--" + +"Just disappeared, that's all. He hasn't been at the hotel--he +hasn't been anywhere that I know of, and I haven't heard a word from +him--so I telephoned you and then when I found he hadn't been +here--" + +McLean looked off into space. "Eh, well, he'll turn up," he said +comfortingly. "Jack's erratic, you may say, in his comings and +goings. He means nothing by it.... I've known him do the same to +me.... Any time, now; you're likely to hear--" + +Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter and her cheeks burned with +brighter warmth. + +"It isn't just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean," she took quietly +distinct pains to explain. "It's because I am anxious--" + +"Not a need, not a need in the world. Jack knows his way about.... +He may have been called back to the diggings, you know--if they dug +up a bit porcelain there or a few grains of corn the boy would +forget the sun was shining." + +Perhaps his caller's burnished hair had shaped that thought. "Jack +knows his way about," he repeated encouragingly, as one who +demolishes the absurd fears of women and children. + +"You don't quite understand." Jinny's tones were silken smooth. "You +see, I left him in rather unusual circumstances. It was a place +where he had no business in the world to be--" + +At McLean's unguardedly startled gaze her humor overtook her wrath. + +"Oh, it was quite all right for _me_" she replied mischievously to +that look. "Only not for him. You see, he was masquerading--" + +"Again?" thought McLean, involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the +lassies that lad was--and he had thought him such an aloof one! + +"Masquerading as a woman--so he could take me to a reception." + +Jinny began to falter. Just putting that escapade into words +portrayed its less commendable features. + +"It was a woman's reception," she began again, "at a Turkish house. +A marriage reception--" + +She had certainly secured McLean's whole-hearted attention. + +"A marriage reception--a Turkish marriage reception?" he said very +sharply and amazedly as his caller continued to pause. "Do you mean +to say that Jack Ryder went into a Turkish house dressed as a +woman--?" + +There was a pronounced angularity of feature about the young +Scotchman which now took on a chiseled sternness. + +Swiftly Jinny interposed. "Oh, you mustn't blame him, Mr. McLean! +You see, I wanted very much to go to a Turkish reception and I +didn't have the courage to go alone or drag some other tourist as +inexperienced as myself, and so Jack--why, there didn't seem any +harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish +mantle and a veil up to his eyes and he was sure he'd never be found +out. I ought not to have let him, I know--it was my fault--" + +She looked so flushed and innocent and distressed that McLean's +chivalry rose swiftly to her need. + +"Indeed you mustn't blame yourself Miss--Miss Jeffries. You don't +know Egypt--and Jack does. He knew that if he had been discovered +there would have been no help for him--and no questions asked +afterwards. And it might have been very dangerous for you. The +blame is just his now," he said decisively, yet not without a +certain weak-kneed sympathy with the culprit. + +For if the girl had looked like this ... he could see that she would +be a difficult little piece to withstand ... though any man with an +ounce of sense in his head would have behaved as a responsible +protector and not as a reckless school boy. + +"What happened?" he said quickly. + +"Oh, nothing happened--nothing that I know of. We got along very +well, I thought, although now I remember that some people _did_ +stare.... But I wasn't worried at the time. I thought it was just +because I was an American and he was apparently a Turkish woman, but +there was no reason why an American might not get a Turkish woman to +act as a guide, was there?... And then Jack told me to go home +first--he said it would be simpler that way and that he would slip +over to some friend's or to some safe place and take his disguise +off. He wore a gray suit beneath it, and the only funny thing was +some black tennis shoes.... So I left him. And he hasn't been back +since." + +She added as McLean was silent, "He told me that he had some +engagement for that evening, so I did not begin to worry until the +next day." + +"Now just how long ago was this?" + +"Two days ago. Day before yesterday afternoon." + +She looked anxiously at McLean's face and took alarm at his careful +absence of expression. + +"Oh, Mr. McLean, do you think--" + +He brushed that aside. "And where was it--this reception?" + +"At an old palace, forever away on the edge of the city. I don't +remember the street--we drove and I had the cab wait. But it +belonged to a Turkish general. Hamdi Bey," she brought out +triumphantly. "General Hamdi Bey." + +McLean did not correct her idea of the title. His expression was +more carefully non-committal than ever, while behind its quiet guard +his thoughts were breaking out like a revolution. + +Hamdi Bey.... A wedding reception.... The daughter of Tewfick +Pasha.... + +In the secret depths of his soul he uttered profane and troubled +words. That French girl, again.... So Ryder had not forgotten that +affair, although he had kept silent about it of late. He had bided +his time and taken that rash means of seeing the girl again--and he +had involved this unknowing young American in a risk of scandal and +deceived her into believing herself responsible for this caprice +while all the time she had been a mere cloak and it had been his own +diabolical desire.... + +Miss Jeffries was surprised to see a sudden sorry softness dawn in +the young man's look upon her. And she was surprised, too, at his +next question. + +"I wonder, now, if you were the young lady who took him to a +masquerade ball--some time ago?" + +Lightly she acknowledged it. "You'll think I'm always taking him to +things," she said brightly, but McLean's troubled gaze did not +quicken with a smile. + +He was experiencing a vast compassion. She was so innocent, so +unconscious of the quicksands about her.... Probably she had never +heard a breath of that first adventure. + +And it was this fair Christian creature whom Jack Ryder had +abandoned for a veiled girl from a Turk's harem! + +McLean filled with cold, antagonistic wonder. He forgot the lovely +image of the French miniature, and remembering Tewfick's rounded +eyes and olive features he thought of the veiled girl--most +illogically, for he knew that Tewfick was not her father--as some +bold-eyed, warm-skinned image of base allure. + +Sorrowfully he shook his head over his friend. He determined to +protect him and to protect this girl's innocence of his behavior. He +would help her to save him.... She could do it yet--if only she did +not learn the truth and turn from him. If ever she had been able to +make Jack go to a masquerade--that cursed masquerade!--she could +work other, more beneficent, miracles. + +So now he asked, very cautiously, his mind on divided paths, "Do you +say there was nothing to draw suspicion--he did not talk to any +one, the guests or the bride--?" + +"Oh, yes, he did talk to the bride," said Miss Jeffries with such +utter unconsciousness that McLean's heart hardened against the +renegade. + +"He talked quite a while to her," she said. + +"Did you notice anything--?" + +"Oh, I couldn't hear what was said. He was the last in line and he +stayed for some time. He said afterward that it was all right. She +was very nice to him," said Jinny earnestly, producing every scrap +of incident for McLean's judgment. "She showed him some of her +presents--something about her neck." + +In mid-speech McLean changed a startled "God!" to "Good!" + +"She wasn't suspicious, then?" he said weakly. + +"Not as far as I could see. Oh, nothing _seemed_ to be wrong. But I +did feel uneasy until I got away and then, Jack hasn't come back--" + +Again she looked at the young Scotchman for confirmation of her fear +and again she saw that careful expressionless calm. + +"It's no need for alarm," he told her slowly, "since nothing went +wrong. I see no reason why Jack couldn't have walked out of that +reception. If we only knew where he was going later--" + +"Yes, something might have happened later," Jinny took up. "I +thought of that. He might have wanted some more fun and felt more +reckless--Oh, I _am_ worried," she confessed, her gray eyes very +round and childlike. + +And if anything had happened she would always blame herself, thought +McLean ironically.... The unthinking deviltry of the young +scoundrel!... When he found him he'd have a few things to say! + +"That's why I came to you," Jinny went on. "I hesitated, for he had +warned me so against telling any one, but no one else knows--" + +"And no one must know," McLean assured her crisply. "I daresay it's +a mare's nest and Jack will be found safe and sound at his diggings +or off on a lark with some friend or other, but it's well to make +sure and you did quite right in coming to me." + +Jinny thought she had done quite right, too. + +There was a satisfying strength about McLean. She resented a trifle +his masculine way of trying to keep the dark side from her; she was +not greatly misled by that untroubled look of his and yet she was +unconsciously reassured by it.... And although he refused to be +stampeded by alarm he was not incredulous of it, for his manner was +frankly grave. + +"I'll send out at once," he said decisively, "and see if I can pick +up any gossip of that reception. I've a very clever clerk with +brothers in the bazaars who is a perfect wireless for information. +He has told me the night before a man was to be murdered." + +He paused, reflecting that was not a happy suggestion. + +"Then I'll send out to Jack's diggings. That express doesn't stop +to-night, but I'll find a way. And I'll let you know as soon as I +can." + +"You're very kind," said Jinny gratefully. + +His competent manner brought her a light-hearted sensation of +difficulties already solved. Jack was as good as found, she felt in +swift reaction. If he was in any trouble this forceful young man +would settle it. + +But probably he wasn't in any trouble. Probably he was just at his +diggings--rushing off from her in the exasperating way he seemed to +do whenever they were getting on particularly well.... She +remembered how he had bolted from that masquerade which had begun so +happily. He had said he was ill, but she had never completely slain +the suspicion that his illness sprang from ennui and disinclination. + +She rose. "I mustn't take any more of your time, Mr. McLean--and you +probably have a four fifteen engagement." + +But her light raillery failed of its mark. + +"Eh? No, I have not," seriously he assured her. "You are quite the +last one I took on--the last before tea." + +He paused confused with a strange suggestion.... Tea.... His servant +did it rather well.... And it was time-- + +Usually he had it in the garden. It was a charming garden, full of +roses, with a nice view of the Citadel--and his strange suggestion +expanded with a rosy vision of Jinny among the roses, beside his +wicker table.... Would she possibly care to--? + +He struggled with his idea--and with his shyness. And then the sense +that it wasn't quite decent, somehow, to be offering tea to this +girl whom anxiety for Ryder's unknown lot had brought to him +overcame that unwonted impulse. + +He dismissed the idea. And like all shy men he was oddly relieved at +the passing of the necessity for initiative, even while he felt his +mild hope's expiring pang. + +He stepped before her to open the doors to which she was now taking +herself. + +In the entrance he saw his clerk--the clever one--going out, and +excusing himself he went forward to detain the man. For a moment +there ensued a low-toned colloquy. Then the clerk, a dark-browned +keen-featured fellow in European clothes with a red fez, began to +relate something. + +When McLean turned back to Jinny Jeffries she saw that his look was +sharply altered. There was a transfixed air about him and when he +spoke his voice told her that he had had a shock. + +"My man tells me," he said, "that Hamdi Bey's bride is dead. He +buried her yesterday." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +FROM THE BAZAARS + + +There was a moment's pause. + +"What? That lovely girl?" said Jinny in startled pity. She added +incredulously, "Yesterday?... And only the day before--why, what +_could_ have happened?" + +That was what McLean was asking himself very grimly. + +Aloud he told her slowly. "They say that fire happened. Some +accident--a candle overturned in her apartments. And of course the +windows were screened--" + +"_Fire_--how terrible! That lovely girl," said Jinny again. She was +genuinely horrified and pitiful, yet she found a moment to wonder at +the evident depths of McLean's consternation. For of course he had +never seen the girl. + +Yet he looked utterly upset. + +"It's one of the most dreadful things I ever heard of," Jinny +murmured. "On her wedding night.... And she was so young, Mr. +McLean, and so exquisite. She didn't look like a real girl.... She +was a fairy creature.... I never dreamed there _really_ were +rose-leaf skins before but hers was just like flower petals. Jack +and I talked about it, I remember. And her face had something so +bewitching about it, something so sweet and delicate--" + +She broke off revisited with that vision of Aimée's sprite-like +beauty.... How little that poor girl had thought, as she stood there +in the bright splendor of her robes and diadem, that in a few hours +more-- + +"Oh, I hope that fire--that it was merciful--that she didn't +suffer," she said almost inaudibly. + +But speech itself was too definitive of horrors. + +"It's tragic," she finished simply. + +It was tragic, with a complicated tragedy, thought Andrew McLean as +he stood there, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed, his mind +invaded with a dark swarm of conjecture, surmise, suspicion, his +vision possessed by a flitting rush of pictures. + +He saw Jack talking with the girl at the reception.... The girl +showing him something about her neck--that accursed locket, he +thought acutely.... Jack sending Miss Jeffries home.... Had he +arranged that purposely? Was there some mad, improvised scheme of +escape in the air? + +The pictures became mere flitting wraiths of conjecture, yet touched +with horrifying possibility.... Jack lingering, hiding.... Jack +making love to the girl, attempting flight.... Jack discovered--and +the quick saber thrust--for both. + +A fire?... Very likely--to screen the darker tragedy. Hamdi was +capable of it to save his pride. And it would dispose so easily of +the--evidence. + +McLean's thoughts flinched from the grim outcome of his fear. He +tried to tell himself that he was inventing horrors, that the fire +might be the simple truth, that Ryder's talk with the girl might +actually have ended in farewell--at least a temporary farewell--and +that his consequent low spirits had taken him off to mope in camp. + +That was undoubtedly the thing to believe, at least until there was +actual necessity to disbelieve it, and looking at the story in that +way, McLean's Scotch sense of Providence was capable of pointing out +the stern benefits of the sad visitation. + +Whatever mischief might have been afoot between his friend and that +unfortunate young girl the fire had prevented. And however hard Jack +might take this now, decidedly the poor girl's death was better for +him than her life. + +No more wasting himself now on sad romance and adventure. No more +desire and danger. No more lurking about barred gates and secret +doors and forbidden palaces. No more clandestine trysts. No more +fury of mind, beating against the bars of fate. + +Jack was saved. + +Even if he had succeeded in rescuing the girl--what then? McLean was +skeptical of felicity from such contrasting lives. Better the +finality, the sharp pain, the utter separation. And then-- + +His eyes returned to the young American before him. She was the +unconscious answer to that future. She would save Ryder from regret +and retrospection.... In after years, looking back from a happy and +well-ordered domesticity, this would all become to him a fantastic, +far-off adventure, sad with the remembered but unfelt sadness of +youth, yet mercifully dim and softened with young beauty. + +Jack must never tell this girl the story. McLean had read somewhere +of the mistakes of too-open revelation to women and now he was very +sure of it.... She must never receive this hurt, never know that +when she had been troubling over Jack's disappearance he had been +agonizing over another girl--that the escapade she thought so +intimate a lark had been a trick to see the other--that the young +creature whose loveliness she so innocently praised had been her +rival, drawing Jack from her.... + +McLean would speak clearly to Ryder about this and seal his lips.... +But first he would have to be found. + +He became conscious that he had been a long time silent, following +these thoughts, while Jinny waited. + +"I'll do everything I can to find out about that fire," he told her. +"I mean, about any discovery of Jack in the palace," he quickly +amended as her face was touched with instant question. "And I'll see +if any one in Cairo knows where he is. Then if nothing turns up I'll +just pop out to his diggings in the morning and make sure he's all +right.... I'll get back that night and telephone you. And until +then, not a word about it. Much better not." + +"Not a word," Jinny promised. "And if you should happen to find out +anything to-night--" + +"I'll let you know at once. Well, rather. But don't count on that. +The old boy is out in his tombs, dusting off his mummies. You may +get a letter, yourself, in the morning," he threw out with +heartening inspiration, "And while you are reading it, I'll be +tearing along to the infernal desert--" + +He had brought the smile to her eyes as well as lips. Bright and +reassured and comfortably dependent upon his resourceful strength, +she took her leave. + +But there was no smile remaining upon Andrew McLean's visage. + +Twenty-four hours. Two nights and a day.... And the girl was dead +and in her grave--Moslems wasted no time before interment--and Jack +was--where? + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +IN THE DESERT + + +Clinging to that plunging horse Ryder made little attempt at first +to guide the flight. It was enough to keep himself in the saddle and +Aimée in his arms while every galloping moment flung a farther +distance between them and that palace of horror. + +His heart was beating in a wild, triumphant exultation. Glorious to +be out under the free sky, the wind in his face, the open world +ahead! He felt one with that dashing creature beneath him. + +And Aimée was in his arms, untouched, unhurt, out from the power of +that sinister man and the expectation of dread things. + +The moment was a supreme and glorious emotion. + +They were headed south. And to Ryder's exhilaration this seemed +good. Cairo offered no hiding place for that fugitive girl. Even the +harbor that McLean could give would not be proof against the legal +forces of the Turks. Law and order, power and police were all in the +hands of the husband or father. Even now the alarm might be given, +the telephones ringing. + +Aimée must be hidden until she could be smuggled to France--or +until the French authorities could get out their protective +documents. The hiding place that occurred to Ryder was a wild and +desperate expedient. + +The American hospital at Siut. The isolation ward--the pretense of +contagious illness. And then later travel north, in the care of +nurses-- + +All this, if he could win over one of the doctors. At that moment +winning over a doctor appeared a sane and simple thing to Ryder's +mind. The only difficulty he recognized was getting Aimée into that +hospital. + +But they would not be looking for him in the south. He could manage +it, he felt jubilantly. He could smuggle her into his diggings at +night and then make his arrangements. Anything, everything was +possible, now that the nightmare of a palace was left behind them. + +South they went then, at a quieter pace, the Arab's rhythmic +footfalls ringing through the still, gray world of before dawn. +Across the Nile they made their way, working out on sandbars to the +narrow depths, where Ryder swam beside the swimming horse while +Aimée clung to the saddle. Then south again along the river road. + +The sky was light now. And the river was light. Only the palms and +the villages and the flat dhurra fields were dark. And in the east +behind the Mokattam hills a thin band of gold began to brighten. + +Life was stirring. Small black boys on huge black buffaloes +splashed in the river. Veiled girls with water jars on their +high-held heads from which the shawls trailed down to the dust filed +past from the villages like a Parthenon frieze. On the high banks +the naked fellaheen were already stooping to the incessant dipping +of the shadouf, while from the fields came the plaintive creaking of +the well sweep, as some harnessed camel or bullock began its eternal +round. + +A flock of sheep came down the river road, driven by their ragged +shepherds, and a string of camels, burdened beyond all semblance to +themselves, bobbed by like rhythmic haystacks, led by a black-robed, +bare-footed child, carrying a live turkey in her arms while before +her rode her father, in shining pongee robes on a white donkey +strung with beads of blue. + +And by these travelers there passed in that brightening dawn two +other travelers from the north, a pair on a powerful but tired black +horse, a man in a military cloak and a green and gold turban about +his bronzed head, and behind him, on a pillion, a black-mantled, +black-veiled girl, with bare, dangling feet. + +It was Aimée who had evolved the disguise, constructing the turban +from the negligee beneath her mantle, and it was Aimée who bargained +with the villagers for their breakfast, eggs and goats' milk and +bread and rice, while her lord, as befitted his dignity, stayed +aloof upon his steed, returning a courteous response of "_Allah +salimak_--God bless you" to their greetings. + +Then as the day brightened and the last soft veil of mist was +burned away before a blood-red sun, that pair of travelers left the +highroad and turned west upon a byway that led past fields of corn +and yellow water and mud villages where goats and naked babies and +ragged women squatted idly in the dust, and on through low, +red-granite hills swirled about with yellow sand drift and out into +the desert beyond. + +Here fresh vigor came to the Arab horse, and tossing his mane and +stretching out his nostrils to the dry air he broke into a gallop +that sent sand and pebbles flying from his hoofs. To right and left +the startled desert hares scattered, and from the clumps of spiky +helga the black vultures rose in heavy-winged flight. + +Then the breeze dropped, and the swift-coming heat rushed at them +like a furnace breath, and slower and slower they made their way, +Ryder leading the jaded horse and Aimée nodding in the saddle, mere +crawling specks across the immensity of sand. + +Then, in the shade of a huge clump of gray-green _mit minan_ beside +a jutting boulder they stopped at last to rest. The horse sank on +his knees; Ryder spread out his cloak and Aimée dropped down upon +its folds, lost in exhausted sleep as soon as her head touched the +sands. Ryder, his back against the rock, kept watch. + +It was not the exultant Ryder of that first hour of flight. The +excitement of the night had subsided and withdrawn its wild +stimulation. It was a hot and tired and immensely sobered young man +who sat there with eyes that burned from lack of sleep and a brow +knit into a taut and anxious line. + +Realization flooded him with the sun. Responsibility burned in upon +him with the heat. + +Alone in the Libyan desert he sat there, and at his feet there slept +the young girl whose life he had snapped utterly off from its roots. + +He was overwhelmingly responsible for her. If she had never met him, +if he had never continued to thrust himself upon her, she would have +gone on her predestined way, safe, secluded, luxurious--vaguely +unhappy and mutinous at times, perhaps, in the secret stirrings of +her blood, but still an indulged and wealthy little Moslem. + +And now--she lay there, like a sleeping child, the dark tendrils of +hair clinging to her moist, sun-flushed cheeks, her long lashes +mingling their shadows with the purple underlining of the night's +terrors, homeless, exhausted, resourceless but for that anxious-eyed +young man. + +Desperately he hoped that she would not wake to regret. Even a +sardonic tyrant in a palace might be preferable in the merciless +daylight to a helpless young man in the Libyan desert. + +And she was so slight, so delicate, so made for rich and lovely +luxury.... Looking down at her he felt a lump in his throat ... a +lump of queer, choking tenderness.... + +He wanted to protect her, to save her, to spend himself for her.... +He felt for her a reverent wonder, a stirring that was at once +protective and possessive and denying of all self. + +He would die to save her. He tried to tell himself reassuringly that +he _had_ saved her.... If only he could keep her safe.... + +He thought of the life before her. He thought of that family in +France in whose name he had urged his interference. That unknown +Delcassé aunt who had sent out her agents for her lost heirs--would +she welcome and endow this lovely girl? + +He could not doubt it.... Aimée's youth and beauty would be treasure +trove to a jaded lonely woman with money to invest in futures. Aimée +would be a belle, an heiress.... + +He looked down at her with a sudden darkness in his young eyes.... +And still she slept, wrapped in the sorry mantle of his masquerade, +the torn chiffons of her negligée fluttering over her slim, bare +feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE TOMB OF A KING + + +There were several approaches to the American excavations. McLean, +on that morning after his visit from Jinny Jeffries, chose to borrow +a friend's motor and man and break the speed laws of Upper Egypt, +and then shift to an agile donkey at the little village from which +the gulleys ran west through the red hills into the desert. + +It was a still, hot day without cloud or wind and the sun had an air +of standing permanently high in the heavens, holding the day at +noon. Shimmering heat waves quivered about the base of the farther +hills and veiled the desert reaches. It was not conducive to comfort +and Andrew McLean was not comfortable. He was hot and sticky and +sandy and abominably harassed. + +Not a creature, as far as he could discover, had seen Jack Ryder in +Cairo since the afternoon of that reception at Hamdi Bey's. He had +not been seen at the Museum nor the banks, nor at Cook's, nor the +usual restaurants, nor at the clubs with his friends. And the clever +clerk--with the two brothers in the bazaar--had unearthed quite a +bit of disquieting news about that reception--disquieting, that is, +to one with secret fears. + +There had been a fire in the apartments of the bride of Hamdi Bey +and the bride had been killed instantly--that much was known to all +the world. The general had been distracted. He had sat brooding +beside his bride's coffin, allowing no one, not even her father, to +look upon the poor charred remains that he had placed within. He had +been a man out of his mind with grief, gnawing his nails, beating +his slaves,--Oh, assuredly, it had been a calamity of a very high +order! + +One of the brothers in the bazaar had himself talked with an old +crone whose sister's child was employed in the general's kitchen, +and the fourth-hand story had lost nothing on the route. + +The bride's youth and beauty, her jewels, her robes, the general's +infatuation, and the general's grief, the reports of these ran +through the city like wildfire. And from the particular channel of +the kitchen maid and the old aunt and the brother in the bazaars +came news of the very especial means that Allah had taken to +preserve the general from destruction. + +For he had been in the bride's apartments just before the fire. But +the power of Allah, the Allseeing, had sent a thief, a prowler, by +night, upon the palace roofs, and the screams of a girl in the upper +story had called the general to that direction. + +And so his preservation had been accomplished. + +It was that rumor of the thief upon the roofs which sent the chill +of apprehension down McLean's spine. For though the bazaars knew +nothing of the thief's identity and it was reported he had escaped +by the river yet McLean felt the sinister finger of suspicion. If +the thief had not been a thief--unless of brides!--and if he had +_not_ escaped--? + +Impatiently the young Scotchman clapped his heels against the +donkey's sides, enhancing the efforts of the runner with the +gesticulating stick. + +Suppose, now, that he should not find Jack at the excavations? + +It was encouraging, somehow, to hear the monotonous rise and fall of +the labor song proceeding as usual, although McLean immediately told +himself that the work would naturally be going on under Thatcher's +direction whether Ryder were there or not. The camp knew nothing of +Cairo. The camp would be as usual. + +And yet, after his first moment's survey, he had an indefinite but +uneasy idea that the camp was not as usual. + +True, the tatterdemalion frieze of basket bearers still wove its +rhythmic way over the mounds to the siftings where Thatcher was +presiding as was his wont, but in the native part of the encampment +there appeared a sly stir and excitement. + +The unoccupied, of all ages and sexes, that usually were squatting +interminably about some fire or sleeping like mummies in +hermetically wrapped black mantles, now were gathered in little +whispering knots whose backward glances betrayed a sense of +uneasiness, and as McLean rode past, a young Arab who had been the +center of attention drew back with such carefulness to escape +observation that McLean's shrewd eyes marked him closely. + +It might be that his nerves were deceiving him, but there did seem +to be something surreptitious in the air. + +Over his shoulder he glimpsed the young Arab hurrying out of the +camp. + +It might be anything or nothing, he told himself. The man might be +going shopping to the village and the others giving him their +commissions, or he might be an illicit dealer in curios trying to +pick up some dishonest treasure. In native diggings those hangers on +were thick as flies. + +He dismounted and hurried forward to meet Thatcher's advance. +The men had rarely met and Thatcher's air of hesitation and +absent-mindedness made McLean proffer his name promptly with a +sense of speeding through the preliminaries. Then with a manner +he strove to make casual he put his question. + +"I say, is Ryder back?" + +He knew, in the moment's pause, how tight suspense was gripping him. +Then Thatcher glanced toward the black yawning mouth of a tomb +entrance. + +"Why, yes--he's down there." He added. "Been a bit sick. Complains +of the sun." + +For a moment his relief was so great that McLean did not believe in +it. Jack here--Jack absolutely safe-- + +Mechanically he put, "When did he come in?" + +"When?" Thatcher hesitated, trying to recall. "Oh, night before +last--rode in after dark." He added reassuringly, as the other swung +about towards the tomb, "He says there's nothing really wrong with +him. There's no temperature." + +McLean nodded. His relief now was acutely compounded with disgust. +He felt no lightning leap of thanksgiving that his friend was safe, +but rather that flash of irritated reaction which makes the +primitive parent smack a recovered child. + +Not a thing in the world the matter! A mare's nest--just as he had +prophesied to Miss Jeffries. Why in heaven's name hadn't Jack the +decency to send that over-anxious young lady a card when he +abandoned town so suddenly?... Not that McLean blamed Miss Jeffries. +Given the masquerade and Jack's disappearance and a zealous feminine +interest her concern was perfectly natural. + +But McLean had left a busy office and taken an anxious and +uncomfortable excursion, and his voice had no genial ring as he +shouted his friend's name down the dark entrance of the tomb shaft. + +In a moment he heard a voice shouting hollowly back, then a +wavering spot of light appeared upon the inclined floor and Ryder's +figure emerged like an apparition from the gloom. + +"I say! That you, Andy?" + +Evidently he had been snatched from sleep. His dark hair was +rumpled, his face flushed, and he yawned with complete frankness. + +McLean knew a sudden yearning to put an arm about him.... Dear old +Jack.... Dear, irresponsible scamp.... His reaction of the +irritation vanished.... It was so darned good to see the old chap +again.... + +He muttered something about being in the vicinity while Ryder, +rousing to hostship, called directions to the cook boy to bring a +tray of luncheon. + +"It's cool down here," he told McLean, leading the way back. + +It was cool indeed, in the Hall of Offerings. It was also, McLean +thought, satisfying a recovered appetite, a trifle depressing. + +They sat in a small island of light in an ocean of gloom while about +them shadowy columns towered to indistinguishable heights and +half-seen carvings projected their strange suggestions. + +It seemed incongruous to be smoking cigarettes so unconcernedly at +the feet of the ancient gods. + +But McLean's feeling of depression might have been due to his +renewed awareness of catastrophe. For though Jack was here, safe and +sound enough, although a bit unlike himself in manner, yet Jack +_had_ been at that confounded reception in a woman's rig and Jack +had seen the girl and talked with her--apparently on terms of +understanding. + +And if Jack had left Cairo that night, as he said he did--claiming +delay on the way due to a tired horse--then Jack knew nothing in the +world of the palace fire, and the girl's sudden and tragic death. + +And McLean would have to tell him. He would have to tell him that +the girl he was probably dreaming of in some fool's paradise of +memory and hope was now only a little mound of dust in an Oriental +cemetery. That a shaft of temporary wood already marked the grave of +Aimée Marie Dejane, daughter of Tewfick Pasha and wife of Hamdi +Bey.... + +And however much McLean's sound senses might disapprove of the whole +fantastic affair and his sober judgment commend the workings of +Providence, he loved his friend, and he feared that his friend loved +this lost girl. + +He had to end love and hope and romance and implant a desperate +grief.... + +He thought very steadily of Jinny Jeffries. He cleared his throat. + +"Jack, old man--" + +He started to tell him that there had been a fire in Cairo, a most +shocking fire in a haremlik. It seemed to him that Jack was not +listening, that he had a faraway, yet intent look upon his face, as +of one attending to other things. And then suddenly Jack seemed to +gather resolution and turned to his friend with an air of narration +of his own. + +"Look here, McLean, there's something I want to tell you--" + +"Wait a minute now," said McLean quietly. "I want you to hear +this.... It was a fire in the palace of your friend, Hamdi Bey." + +He had Jack's attention now--he was fairly conscious of arrested +breath. Not looking about him he went grimly on, "The night of the +wedding a fire started in the haremlik.... It was a bad business, a +very bad business, Jack. For the girl--the girl Hamdi had just +married--" + +He was conscious of Jack's look upon him but he did not turn to meet +it. + +"She died," he said heavily. "He buried her yesterday." + +He thought that Jack was never going to speak. + +Then, "Died?" said Ryder in an odd voice. + +"I expect she breathed in a bit of smoke," said McLean, trying for a +merciful suggestion. + +"And he buried her--?" + +Jack was like a child, trying to fit bewildering facts together. +McLean's sympathy hurt him like a physical pain. He wondered what it +could be like to realize that some loved one you had just talked +with, in radiant life, was now gone utterly.... + +And then he heard Jack laugh. Mad, he thought quickly, turning now +to look at him. + +Ryder's head was tilted back; Ryder's shoulders were shaking. "Oh, +my Aunt!" he gasped hysterically. "My Aunt Clarissa--is _that_ what +Hamdi says!" + +He sobered instantly and leaned towards McLean. "That looks as if +he's done with her--what? Saving his face that way? You're sure it +was Aimée--the girl he had just married? Not some other girl--some +co-wife or something?" + +And as McLean bewilderedly muttered that he was sure, Ryder began to +laugh again. To laugh jubilantly, joyously, triumphantly. + +"He's given her up--he's got a saving explanation to thrust in the +world's face! Oh, blessed Allah, Veiler of all that should be +veiled! The man's through. He's had enough. He isn't going to try +to--" + +Across the bright oblong of the entrance a shadow appeared. + +"Ryder--I say, Ryder," said a hurried voice--Thatcher's voice--and +Thatcher came hastily forward in perturbed urgency. + +"There's a lot of men outside--police and natives and what not. With +warrants. They're searching the place. And they want to see you.... +Hang it all, Ryder," said Thatcher explosively but apologetically, +"they say you've made off with some sheik's daughter." + +He paused, shocked at the monstrosity of the accusation. He was a +delicate-minded man--outside of his knowledge of antiquities--and he +evidently expected his young associate to fall upon him and slay him +for the slander. + +"A sheik's daughter--?" said Ryder in a mildly wondering voice. From +his emphasis one might have inferred he was saying, "How odd! I +don't remember any sheik's daughter--" + +A queer uncomfortable flush spread fanways from Thatcher's thin +temples and rayed across his high cheekbones. He did not look at +either of the men as he murmured, "It's most peculiar, but that Arab +horse--the sheik claims the horse is his, too. He says you rode off +on it, with his daughter." + +"That's all right," said Ryder absently. "I don't want the horse.... +But you say the sheik's there? What does he look like? Thin--with +blond mustaches?" + +"Oh, no, no, not at all. He is quite heavy and bearded--one-eyed, if +I recollect. But there _is_ a man with a blond mustache who appears +to do the directing--" + +"And you mean they are searching?" said Ryder abruptly. "You've let +them in--?" + +"They have warrants," Thatcher protested. "And there are proper +policemen conducting the search--" + +"My good God! Where are they now? Not coming _here_? I don't have +any policemen trampling here and meddling with my finds--tell them +to clear out, Thatcher, you know there's no sheik's daughter here!" + +Ryder gave a quick laugh but the impression of his laughter was not +as sharp as the impression of his alarm. + +"I did tell them it was preposterous," Thatcher began, "but, you +see, after finding the horse--" + +"Oh, the horse! I got him for a song--of course the beggar is +stolen. Give him back, if they claim him. But as for any sheik's +daughter--keep the crowd out, Thatcher, I won't have them here, not +in these tombs--" + +"I tell you they are policemen--they are armed--you can't resist--" + +"How many are they? A lot? But they'll take your word, won't they? +Look here, McLean, can't you settle this for me and keep them out?" + +"The natives have been talking," murmured Thatcher, reddening still +deeper, "and they have said enough about your riding in at night +and--and keeping to this tomb all day to make the men very +suspicious. They are watching this one now--" + +"Then keep them back--long as you can. For God's sake," entreated +Ryder with that strange passionate violence. "Andy--you do +something--hold them back. Give me time. I--I've got to get some +things together--I won't have them at my things--hold them back--out +here--till I come." + +He was gone. Gone tearing back into the gloom and silence of his +tomb. And McLean and Thatcher, astounded witnesses of his outburst, +turned speedily to the entrance, avoiding each other's eyes. + +Agitatedly Thatcher was murmuring that Ryder's finds were valuable, +immensely valuable, and it was disturbing to contemplate any +invasion, and with equal agitation but more mechanical calm McLean +was murmuring back that he understood--he quite understood-- + +As for understanding he was stunned and dazed. A sheik's daughter! +And the father himself claiming her--under the direction of a +blond-mustached man.... And a stolen horse.... Jack conceding the +horse.... Jack utterly upset at the search party.... + +But he himself had seen that new-placed shaft with its inscription +to Aimée Marie Dejane.... What then in the name of wonders did this +mean? There couldn't be _another_ girl? McLean's imagination +faltered then dashed on at a gallop. Some--some hand-maiden, +perhaps, whom Jack had rescued in mistaken chivalry? Perhaps the +French girl has sent a maid on ahead? + +McLean's head was whirling now. One thing appeared quite as possible +as another. Pasha's daughters and sheik's daughters, stolen horses +and Djinns and Afrits and palaces and masquerades at wedding +receptions appeared upon the same plane of feasibility. + +Outwardly he was extremely calm. Calm and cold and crisp. + +At the mouth of the tomb he detained the party of native policemen +with their hangers-on of curious natives and examined, with great +show of circumspection and authority, the perfectly regular search +warrants which had been issued for them at the instigation of an +apparently bereft parent. + +He conversed with the alleged parent, a stolid, taciturn native +dignitary whose accusations were confirmed by eagerly assenting +followers. He lived in a small village, not far north of the camp. +He had a young daughter, very beautiful. Three nights ago he had +surprised her with this young American and they had fled upon his +noblest horse. + +It was a simple and direct story. And Jack--by his own report--had +been out upon the desert that night, had appeared, upon the next +night, with this unknown and beautiful horse, and had since kept to +the tomb, claiming illness, in a most persistent way. + +The camp boys had testified that he had been vividly critical of the +food sent in to him, and that he had required extraordinary amounts +of heated water. + +"All of which," McLean said sternly, in the vernacular, "amounts to +nothing--unless you can discover the girl." + +"And that, monsieur," said a Turk in the uniform of the Sultan's +guards, appearing beside the desert sheik, "that is exactly what we +are here to do." + +McLean found himself looking into a thin, menacing face, capped +with a red fez, a face deeply lined, marked by light, arrogant eyes +and embellished with a huge, blond mustache. + +"And your interest in this, monsieur?" he questioned. + +"I am a friend of Sheik Hassan's," said the Turk loftily. "I shall +see that my friend obtains his rights." + +And in McLean's other ear a distraught Thatcher was murmuring "That +officer chap is Hamdi Bey--a General of the Guards. You know, Mr. +McLean, this really is--you know, it is--" + +Hamdi Bey ... Hamdi Bey, two days after his distressing loss, +befriending this sheik and trying to involve Jack Ryder in disgrace. + +Mystifying. Mystifying and disquieting--yes, disquieting, in the +face of Jack's alarm. But for that alarm McLean could have believed +the whole thing a farcical attempt of Hamdi's to revenge himself +upon Ryder--supposing that Hamdi had discovered Ryder in his +masquerade or else as the prowler by night--but Jack's furious +anxiety to keep the party out, and his dashing back, ostensibly to +preserve his things-- + +Was it actually possible that he _had_ that sheik's daughter +concealed in some nook or cranny of the place? + +McLean told himself that it was preposterous. It _was_ +preposterous--but Ryder had been doing preposterous things.... And +glancing at Thatcher he perceived that that perturbed and +transparent gentleman was also telling himself that _his_ +suspicions were preposterous. + +The search party, tiring of parley, was moving about the hall in +businesslike inspection. + +And then Ryder reappeared, a distinctly alert but self-contained +Ryder, who met the interrogations of the police with scoffing and +absolute denial. + +But McLean was conscious that there was something tense and nervous +in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and +his own nerves began to tighten apprehensively. + +It did not add to his composure to see Ryder salute Hamdi Bey with +an ironic and overdone politeness. + +"Ah, monsieur le general! We meet as we parted--in the depths!" + +The general appeared to smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but +McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip, and felt the currents of +animosity. + +So those two had met! Ryder had been discovered then.... McLean +tried, in futile bewilderment, to recall just what amazing thing +Ryder had been saying when this party had appeared. + +He kept very close at that young man's side as the strange party +moved on into the inner chamber. The searchers were scrupulously +careful of the excavator's finds; they did not finger a frieze nor +disturb a single small box of the tenderly packed potteries and +beads and miniature boats, but they scraped every heap of dust to +see if it concealed an entrance, they exhausted the resources of +each corner, they circled every pillar, shook out every rug of +Jack's blankets and required the opening of the large chest in which +the wax reproductions of the friezes were placed, awaiting +transportation. + +"You will perceive, messieurs," declared Ryder in mocking irony, +"that no human being is within this last fold of wax--especially a +being," he added thoughtfully with a glance at the stolid sheik, "of +the proportions of her papa.... This daughter, was she a large young +lady?" he inquired politely of the Arab. + +The sheik vouchsafed no reply, but from across his ample person the +general leaned forward. + +"She was small, Monsieur Ryder," he said in silken tones, "but she +can raise a man as high as the gallows--or as low as the grave." + +"A marvel!" returned young Ryder smoothly. "And was she also of +charm--a charm that could kindle fires--?" + +It appeared to McLean that he caught the flaunting implications of +the taunt. + +He wished to heaven that Ryder would hold his reckless tongue. + +Ryder was turning now to the official in charge of the police. + +"If you have satisfied yourselves that this place is empty--" + +The man, a rather apologetic, pleasant fellow, shrugged and smiled. +"We have examined all--" + +There was a moment in which the searchers regarded one another +through the gloom in the inquiring embarrassment of the +discountenanced and considered departure. But Hamdi Bey had more +insistent eyes. + +He was circling the place again like a wolf for the scent, flashing +his search light over the carved walls, the dancing gleam picking +out now a relief of Osiris, now a fishing boat upon the Nile, now +the judgment hall of Maat. Suddenly he stopped and began examining a +limestone slab. + +"These stones--these have been merely piled here," he cried +excitedly. "This is a hole--an entrance. Dig them out, men. There is +a door there, I tell you." + +Hastily Ryder addressed the police. "It is simply the burial vault," +he told them. "The sarcophagi are there, ready for transportation. +Mr. Thatcher will tell you--" + +"I assure you it is merely the actual tomb," said Thatcher +nervously. "I have myself assisted my colleague with the +preparation." + +The slabs had been displaced now, disclosing the small door, with +its fine wrought stele. Hamdi flashed a look of triumph upon the man +who had obviously tried to conceal that door from them, a look which +Ryder ignored as he turned to McLean. + +"That is the door which is sealed forever upon the dead, and upon +the Ka, the spiritual double," he said in a low conversational +tone. "It has some remarkable representations of the jackal +Anubis--" + +It seemed to McLean a most extraordinary time for a disquisition +upon Anubis. If Ryder was attempting to prove himself at his ease he +had certainly misjudged his manner. + +"Damn Anubis," McLean gave back under his breath. "He's not the only +jackal--What the devil's the meaning of this?" + +Ryder made no reply. The stone had been pushed back and the +searchers were stooping beneath the narrow entrance. Then as +McLean's head bent at the door he heard his friend whispering, "I +say--you haven't a gun you could slip me--?" + +Mutely he shook his head. And that agitated whisper died away with +the last vestige of belief in Ryder's innocence. Apprehensively +McLean glanced about that inner chamber he was entering, dreading to +encounter instant and damning evidence of a girl. + +He found himself in the presence of the dead. The chamber was a +small, square, walled-up affair, and at one side stood the three +sarcophagi. The other halls had been in total darkness, but the +blackness of this place appeared something palpable and weighty. And +the air had the dry, acrid tang of dust which has lain waiting for +centuries. + +It was hot, whereas the other chambers had been cool--or else +McLean's disturbed blood was pumping too furiously through his +pulses. Instinctively he drew close to Jack, as the party stood +flashing their lights over the bare walls and empty corners, and +then concentrated the pale illumination upon those caskets of the +dead. + +"I told you that the place was empty," Ryder said with distinct +impatience in his voice. "And now, if you have satisfied +yourselves--" + +"You are in haste, monsieur," said Hamdi Bey's smooth voice. "If you +will permit us to see what is within--" + +He approached the first sarcophagus. + +The sheik, who appeared to have committed the restoration of his +daughter into the other's hands, remained imperturbably beside the +entrance while the head of the police came forward to assist Hamdi +in raising the painted lid. + +"I protest," said Ryder very sharply. He stood upon the other side +of the case, eying them combatively. "It is useless to disturb this +lid--I tell you that the Persians have been considerably before +you." + +And indeed the case was empty. Hamdi moved to the next and again +Ryder took up his post opposite. + +"Again I protest," he insisted. "The least jar or injury--" + +But the men raised the lid, and after the briefest look, moved on. + +"And now," Ryder spoke very clearly and authoritatively, addressing +the head of the police, "I must ask you to stop. Even the dust that +you are disturbing is precious. This thing has gone beyond all +reason." + +The police official looked as if he agreed with him, but Hamdi Bey +had moved determinedly to the third sarcophagus. The official +hesitated, evidenced discomfort, but moved finally after the bey. + +"If there is nothing here," he murmured, "surely you cannot +object--" + +"There is precious dust here," Ryder repeated. "You must +understand--" + +"We see for ourselves," said Hamdi Bey, and now his voice had a ring +of triumphant steel through its soft smoothness. "Stand aside. This +is in the name of the law." + +It seemed to McLean that for one mad moment Ryder was tempted to +resist. In the flickering light of the torches he stood defiantly +above the painted mummy case, his eyes steadily upon the bey, his +hands pressing down upon the vivid bloom of the dead woman's +pictured face. + +Then with a beaten but ironic smile he stood aside. + +Slowly the men lifted the lid.... In that moment McLean became aware +that his heart was pumping thickly somewhere in his throat and that +the rest of him was a hollow, horrible void of suspense. + +Hamdi Bey turned his arrogant stare from young Ryder and looked +down.... Drawing closer, fearfully McLean's eyes followed him. + +He could not believe their evidence. His heart could not stop its +idiotic pumping. + +But there he saw no terror-stricken girl, no pallid runaway of the +harems, but a still, dark-shrouded form, swathed in the tight +bandages of the ancient embalmer, a dry, dusty little mummy creature +blankly and inscrutably confronting this unforeseen resurrection. + +Over their dumbfounded heads he heard young Ryder's mocking laugh. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +IN CAIRO + + +"It's good news!" said Miss Jeffries with bright positives. + +It was her response to Andrew McLean's greeting that evening. He +had made rather a tardy appearance at the hotel, for there had +been an important dinner with an important bank official passing +through Cairo to escape from, but he arrived at last, looking +extraordinarily well in his very best dinner clothes. + +And Miss Jeffries, for all her harassment of suspense, was no woeful +object in a vivacious blue evening frock with silvery gleams. + +"He's safe--absolutely safe," McLean confirmed. + +He expected radiance. Miss Jeffries' expression was arrested +judgment. + +"Safe--_where_?" + +"At his camp ... I just returned--just in time to dine. I motored +out this morning." + +"Oh!... It took your whole day. I am so sorry!" For a moment the +girl appeared to concentrate her sympathetic interest upon McLean. + +"You must simply hate me," she told him repentantly, dropping into +one of the chairs in the drawing-room corner she had long been +guarding. "Do sit down and tell me all the horrid details....--Uncle +and Aunt are in the Lounge, and I should like you to meet them, but +they'll be there forever and I do want to hear first.... Was it +fearfully hot?" + +"Oh, rather," murmured the young man, confused by this change of +interest. "I mean, that's quite the usual thing, isn't it, for +deserts? I got up a good breeze going, for I was a bit wrought up, +you know--not a soul in Cairo had seen Jack since that day." + +"And he was out at his camp," said Jinny thoughtfully. "How--how +long had he been there?" + +"He says he started that night," said McLean non-committally. + +"Oh!... That night.... That was rather sudden, wasn't it?" + +"Jack's sudden, you know," mentioned his friend uncomfortably. "And +he had a lot of finds to pack up for transport--they are taking +their stuff to the museum and Jack had been away so long, here in +the city--" + +"No wonder I didn't hear then!" said the girl with a laugh in which +it would have taken an acuter ear than McLean's to detect the secret +clamor of chagrin and humiliation. + +Of course she had _wanted_ Jack to be safe.... But he might have +been ill--or away on some official summons-- + +Just back at his diggings. Gone off on an impulse, with no thought +to let her know.... + +And she had rushed to McLean with her silly worries and her anxious +concern which he had probably taken for a tender interest.... + +Heaven knows what disillusionizing thing Jack had said to him that +day!... Men were too hateful. + +And now McLean had come dutifully to report that the man she was so +worried about was quite well and busy, thank you, only he had +overlooked any friendship for her, and so had sent no word-- + +In Jinny's ears was the rush of the furies' wings. But on Jinny's +lips was a proud little smile, and her bright look was a shining +shield for the wounds of the spirit. + +"That _is_ a comfort," she said with pleasant, friendly warmth. "You +don't know how horridly responsible I felt! Really, Jack ought to +have let me know--but that's Jack all over. He's never grown up." + +"He's not had much time," returned McLean from the height of his +twenty-nine years. + +"He never will," said Jinny sagely, "not until--well, not until +he meets some girl, you know, who will make him feel really +responsible." + +It occurred unhappily to McLean that the girl Jack had been meeting +so assiduously of late had certainly not added to his claims to +responsibility! + +Steadily he guarded silence. There are ice fields, on Mont Blanc, +where a whisper precipitates an avalanche, and McLean had no +intention of starting anything in his friend's slippery field of +affairs. + +"I have spent more time," Miss Jeffries was confiding brightly, for +those imperative reasons of her own so obscure to the bewildered +young man, "introducing Jack to nice girls--but it never takes! Not +seriously. He's a perfectly dear friend, but he doesn't care +anything really about girls--and he does need somebody to get him +out of his antiquities and his dusty old diggings ... But of course +you think I am a sentimental thing!" + +McLean did not tell her what he thought. He was still fascinatedly +engrossed with her revelation of the impeccable Platonic basis of +her friendship. His mood of complicated emotion lightened and +brightened and at the same time an amazed wonder unfolded its +astonishment. + +He marveled at his friend. To turn to something fantastic, something +bizarre--for so he thought of that veiled girl of the harem--when he +had this Miss Jeffries for a friend--but probably the young lady +herself had never given him the least encouragement. Women are not +easily moved to romance for men they have always regarded as +brothers and he could see that her feeling for Jack was the warm, +honest, sisterly affection of utter frankness. + +The worse for Jack. For now there seemed no ministering angel to +mend his troubled future. + +It was not only Ryder's troubled future that troubled McLean--it +was also Ryder's troubled present. He was very far from easy in his +mind about him. After that mystifying performance in the tomb he had +not wanted to leave without a frank explanation, but there had been +no moment for revelation; Thatcher had hung about them and Hamdi +Bey, of all men, had requested a place in McLean's motor for the +return to Cairo. + +And that dinner engagement had pressed. He could have abandoned it +for any real reason, but Jack had assured him that there was none. + +"Get the old devil out of here," had been Jack's furious appeal, +referring to Hamdi. "Deny everything to him. Only get him out." + +And McLean had got him out. + +The sheik and his followers after a murmurous conference with the +bey had galloped off; the police had turned towards their post and +Hamdi had accompanied McLean to the nearest village and his waiting +motor. + +Clearly he had wanted to talk to McLean and McLean was not sorry for +the opportunity to exchange implications. The bey had unfolded his +sympathetic friendship for the sheik; McLean had unfolded a cold +surprise that anything so disgraceful should be attributed to such a +prominent archaeologist. The bey had produced the evidence and +McLean had produced a skeptical wonder, and then a thoughtful wonder +if the British government had not better take the matter up and sift +it, for the benefit of all concerned. + +Clearly the thing could not go on. Ryder could not accept such a +rumor against his reputation. Yes, he thought he would advise Ryder +to take the matter up. + +And there he perceived that even the suave and politic Hamdi +squirmed. Doubtless to the Turk, McLean represented British prestige +and political power and all sorts of unknown influence.... And +native testimony, while voluable and unscrupulous, had a way of +offering confused discrepancies to the coldly questioning +investigators of the law. + +And with no real evidence against Ryder-- + +The matter of the sheik's daughter, McLean perceived, would be +dropped. Unless the girl--whatever girl they sought--could be +discovered. + +If Hamdi wished to pay off some score against the American he would +choose other weapons. McLean reflected upon the bey's capacity for +assassination or poisoning while he bade him farewell before the +dark wall of his palace entrance. + +Between them had passed no reference to the bey's recent loss. Since +it would not have been etiquette for him to mention the bey's wife, +he judged it equally inadvisable to refer to her ashes. + +The whole affair was so wrapped in darkness that he could not decide +upon any creditable explanation. It would have to wait until he saw +Ryder in the next day or two--for Ryder had told him he would try to +get in with his finds as soon as possible. + +But no matter how he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind he +had found himself asking, through the courses of that important +dinner and now in the pauses of his conversation with Miss +Jeffries--Was there really some girl? Had he only dreamed that tense +anxiety of Jack's--had Jack led them on for his own young amusement? + +But it was not long possible to maintain an inner communion with +Jinny Jeffries for a vis-à -vis. + +A divided mind could not companion her swift flights and sudden +tangents. Deriding now her silly anxieties and deploring McLean's +unnecessary trip, she had branched into the consideration of how +busy McLean must be--and McLean found himself somehow embarked in +sketchy descriptions of the institution of which Miss Jeffries +seemed to think he was the backbone and of its very interesting work +throughout the country. + +And as he had talked he found himself noticing things that he had +never noticed before about girls, the wave of bright hair against a +flushed cheek, the dimples in a rounded arm, the slim grace of +crossed ankles and silver-slippered feet. + +"And you live all alone in that big house?" Jinny was murmuring. + +"Not exactly alone." McLean smiled. "There's Mohammed and Hassan and +Abdullah and Alewa and Saord-el-Tawahi--" + +"What _do_ you call him when you are in a hurry?" laughed the girl. + +It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint +and secret embarrassment and he had discovered this delightful +interest and bright vivacity. + +And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever +stilled and chilled in Miss Jeffries' breast--like a poor hidden +corpse beneath bright roses--why at two and twenty expectancies +flourish so gayly that one lone bud is not long missed. And chagrin +is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all +the more delicate for a dimming cloud. + +Moreover McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing. + +When in startled realization of time and place he rose at last and +she murmured laughing, "And after all you never met Aunt and Uncle!" +he felt a queer blush tingle his cheek bones and a daring impulse +shape the thought aloud that in that case he must come again. + +"We're here five days more," said Jinny, the explicit. + +Thoughtfully he repeated, "Five days," and said farewell. + +"Now if he decorously waits to the next to the last day--!" murmured +Jinny to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the +balance. + +He didn't. But it was not the initiative of the Scots race which +brought him to her, late that very next afternoon, but a soiled +looking note which he held crumpled in his hand. + +He found her at tea upon the veranda with her aunt and uncle and +while he made conversation with the Pendletons he gave Miss Jeffries +the note. + +"From our friend Ryder," he said with forced lightness. "It explains +itself." + +But it certainly did not. It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying +that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds and sending this +ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo +Museum to meet him at five and would he please stop on the way and +call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffries and borrow a woman's cloak +and hat and veil, or if she wasn't in, get them elsewhere. + +"What is it--another masquerade?" said Jinny blankly. + +McLean looked mutely at her and shook his head, but within him +horrific suspicion was raging like a forest fire. + +He continued his converse with the Pendletons while Jinny went for +the things; she returned with a small bag containing coat and hat +and veil, and the announcement that she would go right over with +him. + +"If the things aren't right I'll know what he wants," she declared, +and then, smiling, "What _do_ you suppose he is up to now?" + +McLean felt that he didn't want to know. And most positively he +didn't want her to know. But having lacked the instant inspiration +to deny her, he could only acquiesce and wonder why he hadn't +thought up some brilliant excuse. + +He looked helplessly at the Pendletons, but they merely murmured +their adieux and their independent niece accompanied McLean to his +waiting carriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world. + + * * * * * + +The caravan was before them. A long line of camels was just turning +in the gates and before the steps of a back entrance other camels, +kneeling with that profound and squealing resentment with which even +the camel's most exhausted moments oppose commands, were being +relieved of their huge loads by natives under the very minute and +exact direction of Thatcher. + +And within the entrance a young man with rumpled dark hair and a +thin, bronzed face flushed with impatience was imperiously conveying +the Arabs who were bearing the precious sarcophagi. + +Over his shoulder he caught sight of the two arrivals. + +"I asked for motors--and they furnished these!" he cried +disgustedly, gesturing at the enduring camels. "It took us all day +though we half killed the brutes.... Hello, Jinny, did you bring the +things?" + +With light casualness he accepted her appearance on the scene. That +glitter in his bright hazel eyes was not for that. "Come in, both +of you," he called, plunging after his men. + +At the foot of the stairs McLean waited with Miss Jeffries until the +men had reached the top and deposited their burdens in the room and +in the manner which Ryder was specifying so crisply, and then they +came mechanically up. + +McLean had the automatic feeling of a mere super in a well rehearsed +scene. He had no idea of plot or appearance but his rôle of dumb +subservience was clearly defined. + +"You understand," Ryder was calling to the men, "nothing more goes +in this room. All else down stairs.... Come in," he said hurriedly +to his waiting friends, and shutting the door swiftly behind them, +"of course--this doesn't lock!" he muttered. "Jinny, you stand here, +do, and if any one tries to come in tell them they can't." + +"Tell them you say they can't?" questioned Jinny a little +helplessly. + +"No--no--not that. Tell them you are using the room; tell them," +said Ryder with very brisk and serious inspiration, "tell them your +petticoat is coming off!" + +"Why Jack Ryder!" said Jinny indignantly. + +"Nonsense," said he to her indignation. "Don't you remember when +your aunt's petticoat came off on the way to church? It happens." + +"But it doesn't run in families!" + +Her protest fell apparently upon the back of his head. He had +turned to the last sarcophagus and was slipping his fingers beneath +the lid. "Here, Andy," he said quickly. "I had it wedged so it +wasn't tight shut, but it's been so infernally hot and dusty--" + +He was tremendously troubled. It was not the heat which had brought +those fine beads of moisture to his brow, white above the line of +brown, and drawn such a pale ring about his mouth. McLean saw that +the slim, wiry wrists which supported the case's top were shaking. + +"Gently now," he murmured and the lid was lifted and laid aside. + +The same dark, unstirring form of the tomb scene. The same dry, +dusty little mummy.... But with hands strangely reckless for an +archaeologist dealing with the priceless stuff of time Ryder tore at +those bandages; he unwrapped, he unwound, and in a lightning's +flash-- + +To McLean's tense, expectant nerves it was like a scene at the +pantomime. He had divined it; he had foreseen and yet there was the +shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the +supernatural in the revelation. + +In a wave of an enchanter's wand the mummy was gone. And in its +place lay a Sleeping Beauty, the dark hair in sculptured closeness +to the head, the long, black lashes sweeping the still cheeks. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +THE PAINTED CASE + + +"She's fainted," said Ryder in a voice that shook. From his pocket +he drew swiftly a thermos bottle but before the top was off those +long lashes fluttered, and from under their shadow the soft, dark +eyes looked up at him with a smile of very gallant reassurance. + +"Not--faint," said the girl, in a breath of a voice. "But it was so +long--so hot--" + +"Drink this." Ryder slipped an arm about her, offering the filled +top of the thermos. "It's over, all over," he murmured as she drank. +"You're safe now, safe.... You're at the museum.... Then we'll get +you to the hotel--" + +"Hotel--?" the girl echoed with a faint implication of humor in that +silver bell of a voice. + +She put her hands to her hair and to her face in which the hues of +life mingled with the pallor of exhaustion; on her small fingers +sparkled the gleam of diamonds and from her slender arms fell back +the gold and jade tissues of her chiffon robe. + +To McLean she had increasingly the appearance of a creature of +enchantments. And to see that young loveliness in its strange gleam +of color lying against his friend's supporting tan linen arm-- + +Sardonically his eyes sought Ryder. + +"So that was your mummy!" + +"There was nothing else to do." Ryder had withdrawn his arm; the two +men faced each other across the girl. "I was in a blue funk--you +see, I was hiding her in the inner chamber until I could smuggle her +away. And when those wolves came on the scent, and not an instant to +lose--I got the bandages off the real mummy and about Aimée.... +Lord, it was a close call!" + +He drew a long breath. "I hadn't a gun. I hadn't a thing--and I had +to grin and play it through ... And I was deathly afraid of +Thatcher." + +"Thatcher?" + +"Yes, Thatcher. You see I'd popped the mummy into a case without its +bandages and if Thatcher had glimpsed that he'd have said +something--Oh, innocently--that would have given the show away. He +knew there was only one mummy and it was wrapped. But the Lord was +with me. The men opened the empty case first and at the second they +said nothing to show it wasn't empty and Thatcher didn't look in. +Then they went on to the third." + +"And me--when I heard those voices--I stopped breathing," said the +girl. "But I shook so--I thought they would think that mummy was +coming to life! And the dust--Oh, it was almost beyond my force not +to sneeze--" + +"You'd have sneezed us to Kingdom Come," said Ryder, gayly now. + +"But I did not," she protested. "I lay there and thought of Hamdi +looking down upon me, and my flesh crept.... Oh, it was terrible! +And yet it was funny." + +Funny.... McLean gazed in sardonic astonishment upon the two young +creatures with such misguided humor that they found something funny +in this appalling business. Flying from palaces ... hiding in tombs +... taking a mummy's place beneath the dusty bandages of the dead +... Funny.... + +And yet there was laughter in their young eyes when they looked at +each other and a curve of astounding amusement in their lips. + +It touched McLean to wonder. It touched him--queerly--to an odd and +aching pain. For he saw suddenly that he was looking upon something +deathless and imperishable, yet fragile and fleeting as the breath +of time.... + +They were so young, so absorbed, so oblivious.... + +He had forgotten Jinny Jeffries. So too,--not for the first time, +alas!--had Ryder. Now her clear voice from the doorway made them +start. + +"You might present me, Jack." + +Ryder turned, so did the girl in the painted case, and her eyes +widened with a startled surprise. The doorway had not been within +her vision. + +Jinny was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the +knob she was to guard, her figure still rigid with astonishment. + +"I didn't know you--you dug them up--alive," she said with a quiver +of uncertain humor. + +"My dear Jinny, I had for--Miss Jeffries, let me present you to +Mademoiselle Delcassé," said Jack gravely. "I know that you met her +the day of her reception--" + +Only in that moment did Jinny place the haunting recollection. + +"But she was burned--she was killed," she protested, shaken now with +excitement. + +"She was not burned--although there was a fire. The man who called +himself her husband pretended she was killed in order to save his +pride. For she escaped from him. And he tried to get her back, +setting another man, a false father, after her with lying +witnesses--Oh, it's a long story!--so I had to hide her in this +case." + +"But Jack, you--why were _you_ hiding her--? Did you get her out?" +stammered Jinny. + +"The night of that reception. You see, I knew she was truly a French +girl who had been stolen by Tewfick Pasha and brought up as his +daughter--Oh, that's a long story, too! But at McLean's I had +happened on the agents who were searching for her from her aunt in +France, and so I knew.... And at the reception when I found she +hated that marriage I stayed behind and--and managed to get her +away,"--thus lightly did Ryder indicate the dangers of that +night!--"so she could escape to France." + +"Oh--France!" said Jinny. + +She could be forgiven for the tone. She had been kept shamefully in +the dark, misled, ignored.... She had been a catspaw, a bystander. + +Not that she cared. Not that she would let them think for a minute +that she cared.... + +But as for this talk of France-- + +Her eyes met the eyes of the girl in the mummy case. And Jinny found +herself looking, not at the interloper, the enchantress, but at a +very young, frightened girl, lost in a strange world, but resolved +upon courage. She saw more than the men could see. She saw the +loveliness, the helplessness, and she saw too the sensitive dignity, +the delicate, defensive spirit.... + +Really, she was a child. + +And to have gone through so much, dared such danger.... She +remembered that dark, forbidding palace, the guarded doors, the +hideous blacks--and that bright, smiling figure in its misty +veil.... And now that little figure sat in its strange hiding place, +confronting her with a lost child's eyes.... + +Into Jinny's bright gray eyes came a mist of tears. She was queerly +moved. It was a mingled emotion, but if some drops for her own +disconcertment were mingled with the warm prompting of pity, her +compassion was none the less true. + +"I'll be so glad to do anything I can to help," she said +impulsively. "If you have no friends to trust in Cairo--" + +"I have no friends to trust--beyond this room," said the girl. + +"Then I'll take you to the hotel with me. You can register as one of +our party and keep your room till we leave--we are going in four +days now. And, oh, I know! You can cross on the same steamer with us +to Europe, for there's a woman at the hotel who wants to give up her +transportation and go on to the Holy Land--she was moaning about it +only this noon. It would all fit in beautifully." + +It seemed to McLean that an angel from Heaven was revealing her +blessed goodness. + +Ryder took the revelation delightedly for granted. + +"Bully for you, Jinny," he said warmly. "I knew I could count on +you." + +If for one moment a twinge of wry reminder recalled that she had +never been able exactly to count upon him it did not dim his mood. +He was alight with triumph. + +"I'll see to the transportation," he said quickly, doing mental +arithmetic about present sums in the bank. "And we won't wire your +aunt until you're safely out of Egypt--better send a wireless from +the ship. I think your aunt is near Paris--" + +"We are going to hurry to Paris," said Jinny, "That was our regular +plan--" + +"And London?" said McLean. + +"London, later, of course. Cathedrals, lakes and universities--then +London." + +"I shall be in London," said McLean thoughtfully, "in June.... If +you are not too occupied--" + +"With cathedrals?" said Miss Jeffries. + +"Where are the things?" demanded Ryder ruthlessly, and thus +recalled, Jinny produced the bag. + +McLean moved toward the door. "We might go and mount guard in the +corridor," he suggested, and he and Jinny stepped outside, back into +the everyday world of Egypt where nothing at all had been happening +but the arrival of a caravan from the excavations. + +Within the room Ryder stooped and lifted the girl from the case and +set her lightly on the floor. Ruefully she shook out the torn +chiffons of that French audacity of a robe, and with a whimsical +smile surveyed the soiled little slippers that she had discarded in +her disguise when she had ridden behind the turbaned Ryder upon the +Arab horse. + +So little time ago, and yet so long away-- + +Under her long lashes she looked up at the young man, who had set +the old life crumbling about her at a touch. Wistfulness edged the +brave smile with which she murmured, "And so it is all arranged--so +quick. I am safe--I go to the hotel with that nice girl--" + +"And I won't be able to see you," he said suddenly. + +"But you have seen me, monsieur, these many days--" + +"Seen you? I haven't seen you. I've sat outside a tomb on guard, +I've marched beside a mummy case--and--and we've said so little--" + +It was true. They had said little. The hours had been absorbed in +action. Their words had always been of explanation, of reassurance, +of anxious planning. Of the future, the future after safety had been +achieved, they had said nothing. It had all been uncertain, +nebulous, vague.... + +And now it was upon them. + +"And I have never said Thank you," she murmured. "I--I think I began +by saying Thank you, monsieur. I remember saying that my education +had proceeded to the Ts!" + +"If--if only you never want to unsay it," he muttered. "You don't +know what's ahead--life's so uncertain--" + +"No, I do not know what is ahead," she told him, "but I am +free--free for whatever will come." + +The brightness of that freedom shone suddenly from her upturned +face. + +"Anything is better than that man," she vowed. "Even if my aunt, +that Madame Delcassé, should not like me--you see, I have thought of +everything, and I am not afraid." + +"Like you--? She'll love you," said Ryder bitterly. "She'll go mad +over you and give you all she has--she'll marry you to a count--" + +"Another marriage?" Aimée raised brows of mockery. "But I am through +with the marriages of convenience--" + +"You're so lovely, darling, that you'll have the world at your +feet," said the young man huskily. + +He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain. "Oh, +I--you--it's not fair--" he muttered incoherently. + +He had meant--ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the +desert--to be very fair. He would not bind her with a word, a touch. +Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he +touched her in caress. With the reverence of his deep tenderness he +had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its +revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth.... + +Nobly he had resolved.... But now parting was upon him. + +"It's not fair to you," he said desperately--and drew closer. + +For at his blurted words her look had magically changed. The +defensive lightness was fled. A breathless wonder shone out at him +... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the +gleam of a butterfly's wing. + +No glamorous moonlight was about them now. No scented shadowy +garden.... But the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty +room, with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very +flame of youth. + +"Sweet, I'll be on the ship--I'll wait till you are ready," he vowed +and at her low murmur, "Ready--?" he gave back, "Ready--for love," +with a boy's stammer over the first sound of that word between them. + +"But what is this now," she said wondering, yet with a little elfish +gleam of laughter, "but--love?" + +His last resolve went to the winds. + +And as his arms closed about her, as he held to his heart all that +young loveliness that had been his despair and his delight, there +was more than joy in the confused tumult of his youth, there was +the supreme exultation of triumphant daring. + +For he had opened the forbidden door; he had challenged the +adventure and overcome the risk. + +He had won. And he would hold his winnings. + +"Aimée," he whispered. "Aimée--Beloved." + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13498 *** diff --git a/13498-h/13498-h.htm b/13498-h/13498-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3dda109 --- /dev/null +++ b/13498-h/13498-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,12081 @@ +<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Fortieth Door, by Mary Hastings Bradley</title> +<style type="text/css"> + <!-- + body {font-size: 100%; } + p { margin-left: 15%; + margin-right: 15%; + text-indent: 1.5em; + margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { text-align: center; } + hr { width: 50%; } + hr.short {width: 20%; } + hr.full { width: 100%; + height: 5px; } + p.poem {text-indent: 0em; margin-left: 25%; } + p.note {text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; } + p.toc { text-indent: 0em; text-align: center; font-size: 90%; + margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: 0em; } + center { padding: 0.5em;} + a:link {color:#0000ff; + text-decoration:none} + link {color:#0000ff; + text-decoration:none} + a:visited {color:#0000ff; + text-decoration:none} + a:hover {color:#ff0000} + pre {font-size: 9pt; + margin-left: 15%; } + // --> +</style> +</head> +<body> +<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13498 ***</div> +<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fortieth Door, by Mary Hastings Bradley</h1> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr class="full" noshade> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<h1>THE</h1> +<h1> FORTIETH DOOR +</h1> +<br> +<h3> + By MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY +</h3> +<br> +<p class="note"> + A<small>UTHOR OF</small><br> + <i>The Wine of Astonishment</i>, etc. +</p> +<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a> +<center> +<img src="images/decoration.jpg" width="104" height="100" +alt="Title Page Decoration"> +</center> +<!--IMAGE END--> +<br> +<h5>1920</h5> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<p class="note"> + <small>TO</small><br><br> + ARTHUR MILLS CORWIN +</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr class="short"> +<a name="2H_TOC"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + + <h3>CONTENTS</h3> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001"> +I. A RASH PROMISE</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002"> +II. MASKS AND MASKERS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003"> +III. IN THE PASHA'S PALACE</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004"> +IV. EXPLANATIONS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005"> +V. AT THE GARDEN GATE</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0006"> +VI. A SECRET OF THE SANDS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0007"> +VII. TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0008"> +VIII. TEWFICK RECEIVES</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0009"> +IX. A WEDDING PRESENT</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0010"> +X. THE RECEPTION</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0011"> +XI. THE FORTY DOORS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0012"> +XII. THE UNINVITED GUEST</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0013"> +XIII. THE BEY RETURNS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0014"> +XIV. WITHIN THE WALLS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0015"> +XV. UNDERGROUND</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0016"> +XVI. OUT OF THE DARKNESS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0017"> +XVII. AZIZA</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0018"> +XVIII. AZIZA IS OFFENDED</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0019"> +XIX. AN INTERRUPTION</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0020"> +XX. BEYOND THE DOOR</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0021"> +XXI. MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0022"> +XXII. FROM THE BAZAARS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0023"> +XXIII. IN THE DESERT</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0024"> +XXIV. THE TOMB OF A KING</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0025"> +XXV. IN CAIRO</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0026"> +XXVI. THE PAINTED CASE</a></p> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<a name="2HCH0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER I +</h2> +<h3> + A RASH PROMISE +</h3> +<p> + He didn't want to go. He loathed the very thought of it. Every + flinching nerve in him protested. +</p> +<p> + A masked ball—a masked ball at a Cairo hotel! Grimacing through + peep-holes, self-conscious advances, flirtations ending in giggles! + Tourists as nuns, tourists as Turks, tourists as God-knows-what, all + preening and peacocking! +</p> +<p> + Unhappily he gazed upon the girl who was proposing this horror as a + bright delight. She was a very engaging girl—that was the mischief + of it. She stood smiling there in the bright, Egyptian sunshine, gay + confidence in her gray eyes. He hated to shatter that confidence. +</p> +<p> + And he had done little enough for her during her stay in Cairo. One + tea at the Gezireh Palace Hotel, one trip to the Sultan al Hassan + Mosque, one excursion through the bazaars—not exactly an orgy of + entertainment for a girl from home! +</p> +<p> + He had evaded climbing the Pyramids and fled from the ostrich farm. + He had withheld from inviting her to the camp on the edge of the + Libyan desert where he was excavating, although her party had shown + unmistakable signs of a willingness to be diverted from the beaten + path of its travel. +</p> +<p> + And he was not calling on her now. He had come to Cairo for supplies + and she had encountered him by chance upon a corner of the crowded + Mograby, and there promptly she had invited him to to-night's ball. +</p> +<p> + "But it's not my line, you know, Jinny," he was protesting. "I'm so + fearfully out of dancing—" +</p> +<p> + "More reason to come, Jack. You need a change from digging up ruins + all the time—it must be frightfully lonely out there on the desert. + I can't think how you stand it." +</p> +<p> + Jack Ryder smiled. There was no mortal use in explaining to Jinny + Jeffries that his life on the desert was the only life in the world, + that his ruins held more thrills than all the fevers of her tourist + crowds, and that he would rather gaze upon the mummied effigy of any + lady of the dynasty of Amenhotep than upon the freshest and fairest + of the damsels of the present day. +</p> +<p> + It would only tax Jinny's credulity and hurt her feelings. And he + liked Jinny—though not as he liked Queen Hatasu or the little + nameless creature he had dug out of a king's ante-room. +</p> +<p> + Jinny was an interfering modern. She was the incarnation of + impossible demands. +</p> +<p> + But of course there was no real reason why he should not stop over + and go to the dance. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + Ten minutes later, when she had extracted his promise and abandoned + him to the costumers, he was scourging his weakness. +</p> +<p> + He had known better! Very well, then, let him take his medicine. Let + him go as—here he disgustedly eyed the garment that the Greek was + presenting—as Little Lord Fauntleroy! He deserved it. +</p> +<p> + Shudderingly he looked away from the pretty velvet suit; he scorned + the monk's robes that were too redolent of former wearers; he + rejected the hot livery of a Russian mujik; he flouted the banality + of the Pierrot pantaloons. +</p> +<p> + Thankfully he remembered McLean. Kilts, that was the thing. Tartans, + the real Scotch plaids. Some use, now, McLean's precious + sporrans.... He'd look him up at once. +</p> +<p> + Out of the crowded Mograby he made his way on foot to the Esbekeyih + quarters where the streets were wider and emptier of Cairene + traffickers and shrill itinerates and laden camels and jostling + donkeys. +</p> +<p> + It was a glorious day, a day of Egypt's blue and gold. The sky was a + wash of water color; the streets a flood of molten amber. A little + wind from the north rustled the acacias and blew in his bronzed face + cool reminders of the widening Nile and dancing waves. +</p> +<p> + He remembered a chap he knew, who had a sailing canoe—but no, he + was going to get a costume for a fool ball! +</p> +<p> + Disgustedly he turned into the very modern and official-looking + residence that was the home of his friend, Andrew McLean, and the + offices of that far-reaching institution, the Agricultural Bank. +</p> +<p> + A white-robed, red-sashed and red-fezed houseboy led him across the + tiled entrance into the long room where McLean was concluding a + conference with two men. +</p> +<p> + "Not the least trace," McLean was saying. "We've questioned all our + native agents—" +</p> +<p> + Afterwards Ryder remembered that indefinite little pause. If the two + men had not lingered—if McLean had not remembered that he was an + excavator—if chance had not brushed the scales with lightning + wings—! +</p> +<p> + "Ever hear of a chap called Delcassé, Paul Delcassé, a French + excavator?" McLean suddenly asked of him. "Disappeared in the desert + about fifteen years ago." +</p> +<p> + "He was reported, monsieur, to have died of the fever," one of the + men explained. +</p> +<p> + McLean introduced him as a special agent from France. His companion + was one of the secretaries of the French legation. They were trying + every quarter for traces of this Delcassé. +</p> +<p> + Ryder's memory darted back to old library shelves. He saw a thin, + brown volume, almost uncut.... +</p> +<p> + "He wrote a book on the Tomb of Thi," he said suddenly. "Paul + Delcassé—I remember it very well." +</p> +<p> + Now that he thought of it, the memory was clear. It was one of those + books that had whetted his passion for the past, when his student + mind was first kindling to buried cities and forgotten tombs and all + the strange store and loot of time. +</p> +<p> + Paul Delcassé. He didn't remember a word of the book, but he + remembered that he had read it with absorption. And now the special + agent, delighted at the recognition, was talking eagerly of the + writer. +</p> +<p> + "He was a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance + to his generation—and he becomes so now through the whim of a + capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time + she has decided to make active inquiries." +</p> +<p> + "But you said that Delcassé had died—" +</p> +<p> + "He left a wife and child. Her letters of her husband's death + reached his relatives in France, then nothing more. They feared that + the same fever—but nothing, positively, was known.... A sad story, + monsieur.... This Delcassé was young and adventurous and an ardent + explorer. An ardent lover, too, for he brought a beautiful French + wife to share the hazards of his expedition—" +</p> +<p> + "An ardent idiot," thrust in McLean unfeelingly. "Knocking a woman + about the desert.... Not much chance of a clue after all these + years," he concluded with a very British air of dismissal. +</p> +<p> + But the French agent was not to be sundered from the American who + remembered the book of Delcassé. +</p> +<p> + From his pocket he brought a leather case and from the case a large + and ornate gold locket. +</p> +<p> + "His picture, monsieur." He pressed the spring and offered Ryder the + miniature. "It was done in France before he returned on that last + trip, and was left with the aunt. It is said to be a good likeness." +</p> +<p> + Ryder looked down upon the young face presented to his gaze with a + feeling of sympathy for this unlucky searcher of the past who had + left his own secret in the sands he had come to conquer—sympathy + mingled with blank wonder at the insanity which had brought a woman + with it.... +</p> +<p> + McLean couldn't understand a man's doing it. +</p> +<p> + Jack Ryder couldn't understand a man's <i>wanting</i> to do it. Love to + Ryder was incomprehensible idiocy. Woman, as far as he was + concerned, had never been created. She was still a spectacle, an + historical record, an uncomprehended motive. +</p> +<p> + "Nice looking chap," he commented briefly, fingering the curious old + case as he handed it back. +</p> +<p> + "I'll keep up the inquiries," McLean assured them, "but, as I said, + nothing will come of it.... It's been fifteen years. One more grain + lost in the desert of sand.... By luck, you know, you might just + stumble on something, some native who knew the story, but if fever + carried them off and the Arabs rifled their camp, as I fancy, + they'll jolly well keep their mouths shut. No white man will + know.... I don't advise your people to spend much money on the + search." +</p> +<p> + "Odd, the inquiries we get," he commented to Ryder when the + Frenchmen had completed their courteous farewells. "You'd think the + Bank was a Bureau of Information! Yesterday there was a stir about + two crazy lads who are supposed to have joined the Mecca pilgrims in + disguise.... Of course our clerks are Copts and <i>do</i> pick up a bit + and the Copts will talk.... I say, Jack, what are you doing?" he + broke off to demand in astonishment, for Jack Ryder had seated + himself upon a divan and was absorbedly rolling up his trouser leg. +</p> +<p> + "The dear Egyptian flea?" he added. +</p> +<p> + "Not at all. I am looking at my knees," said Ryder glumly. "I just + remembered that I have to show them to-night.... A ball—in + masquerade. At a hotel. Tourist crowd.... How do you think they'll + look with one of your Scotch plaidies atop?" he inquired feelingly. +</p> +<p> + "Fascinating, Jack, fascinating," said the promptly sardonic McLean. + "You—at a masquerade!... So that's what brought you to town." +</p> +<p> + He cocked a taunting eye at him. "Well, well, she must be a most + engaging young person—you'll be taking her out on the desert with + you now, like our friend Delcassé—a pleasant, retired spot for a + body to have his honeymoon ... no distractions of society ... + undiluted companionship, you might say.... Now what made you think + she'd like your knees?" he murmured contemplatively. "Aren't you + just a bit—previous? Apt to startle and frighten the lady?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, go on, go on," Ryder exhorted bitterly. "I like it. It's better + than I can do myself. Go on.... But while you are talking trot out + your tartans. Something clannish now—one of those ancestral rigs + that you are always cherishing ... Rich and red, to set off my dark, + handsome type." +</p> +<p> + "Set off you'll be, Jack dear," promised McLean, dragging out a huge + chest. "Set off you'll be." +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + Set off he was. +</p> +<p> + And a fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his + brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid + plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his + shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay + with big buckles. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the west," warbled McLean + merrily, as he straightened the shoulder pin of silver and Scotch + topaz. +</p> +<p> + "Out of Hades," said Ryder, rather pointlessly, for he felt it was + Hades he was going into. +</p> +<p> + Chiefly he was concerned with his knees and the striking contrast + between their sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his + face.... Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass.... Bony + hard, they flaunted their angles at every move.... He was grateful + that he was not a centipede. +</p> +<p class="poem"> + "Oh, 'twas all for my rightful king,<br> + That I gaed o'er the border;<br> + Twas all for— +</p> +<p> + "You didn't tell me her name, now, Jack." +</p> +<p> + "Where's my mask?" Ryder was muttering. "I say, aren't there any + pockets in these confounded petticoats?" +</p> +<p> + "In the sporran, man.... There!" McLean at last withheld his hand + from its handiwork. "Jock, you're a grand sight," he pronounced with + a special Scottish burr. "If ye dinna win her now—'Bonny Charley's + now awa,'" he sung as Ryder, with a last darkling look at his vivid + image, strode towards the door. +</p> +<p> + "He's awa' all right—and he'll be back again as soon as he can make + it." +</p> +<p> + With this cheerless anticipation of the evening's promise, the + departing one stalked, like an exiled Stuart, to his waiting + carriage. +</p> +<p> + For a moment more McLean kept the ironic smile alive upon his lips, + as he listened to the rattle of the wheels and the harsh gutturals + of the driver, then the smile died as he turned back into the room. +</p> +<p> + "Eh, but wouldn't you like it, though, Andy," he said to himself, + "if some girl now liked you enough to get you to go to one of those + damned things.... The lucky dog!" +</p> +<a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER II +</h2> +<h3> + MASKS AND MASKERS +</h3> +<p> + Moors and Juliets and Circassian slaves and Knights at Arms were + fast emerging from lift or cloak room, and confronting each other + through their masks in sheepish defiance and curiosity. Adventurous + spirits were circulating. Voices, lowered and guarded, began to + engage in nervous, tittering banter.... Laughter, belatedly + smothered, flared to betrayals.... +</p> +<p> + The orchestra was playing a Viennese waltz and couple after couple + slipped out upon the floor. +</p> +<p> + Lounging against the wall, Ryder glowered mockingly through his mask + holes at the motley. It was so exactly as he had foreseen. He was + bored—and he was going to be more bored. He was jostled—and he was + going to be more jostled. He was hot—and he was going to be hotter. +</p> +<p> + Where in the world was Jinny Jeffries? He deserved, he felt, + exhilaratingly kind treatment to compensate him for this insanity. + He gazed about, and encountering a plump shepherdess ogling him he + stepped hastily behind a palm. +</p> +<p> + He fairly stepped upon a very small person in black. A phantom-like + small person, with the black silk hubarah of the Mohammedan + high-caste woman drawn down to her very brows, and over the entire + face the black street veil. Not a feature visible. Not an eyebrow. + Not an eyelash, not a hint of the small person herself, except a + very small white, ringed hand, lifted as if in defense of his + clumsiness. +</p> +<p> + "Sorry," said Ryder quickly, and driven by the instinct of + reparation. "Won't you dance?" +</p> +<p> + A mute shake of the head. +</p> +<p> + Well, his duty was done. But something, the very lack of all + invitation in the black phantom, made him linger. He repeated his + request in French. +</p> +<p> + From behind the veil came a liquidly soft voice with a note of + mirth. "I understand the English, monsieur," it informed him. +</p> +<p> + "Enough, then, to say yes in it?" +</p> +<p> + The black phantom shook its head. "My education, alas! has only + proceeded to the N." Her speech was quaint, unhesitating, but oddly + inflected. "I regret—but I am not acquainted with the yes." +</p> +<p> + A gay character for a masked ball! Indifference and pique swung + Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and + he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. +</p> +<p> + He'd tell McLean just how darned captivating his outfit was, he + promised himself. +</p> +<p> + And then he caught sight of a familiar pair of gray eyes smiling + over the white veil of an odalisque. Jinny Jeffries was wearing one + of the many costumes there that passed for Oriental, a glittering + assemblage of Turkish trousers and Circassian veils, silver shawls + and necklaces and wide bracelets banding bare arms. +</p> +<p> + As an effect it was distinctly successful. +</p> +<p> + "Ten thousand dinars could not pay for the chicken she has eaten," + uttered Ryder appreciatively in the language of the old slave + market, and stepped promptly ahead of a stout Pantalon. +</p> +<p> + "Jack! You did come!" There was a note in the girl's voice as if she + had disbelieved in her good fortune. "Oh, and beautiful as Roderick + Dhu! Didn't I tell you that you could find something in that shop?" + she declared in triumph. +</p> +<p> + "Do you imagine that this came out of a costumer's?" Ryder swung her + swiftly out in the fox trot before the crowd invaded the floor. "If + Andy McLean could hear you! Why this, this is the real thing, the + Scots-wha-hae-wi'-Wallace-bled stuff." +</p> +<p> + "Who is Andy McLean?" +</p> +<p> + "Andrew is Scotch, Single, and Skeptical. He is a great pal of mine + and also an official of the Agricultural Bank which is by way of + being a Government institution. These are the togs of his Hieland + Grandsire—" +</p> +<p> + "Why didn't you bring him?" +</p> +<p> + "Too dead, unfortunately—grandsires often are—" +</p> +<p> + "I mean Andrew McLean." +</p> +<p> + "It would take you, my dear Jinny, to do that. You brought me—and + I can believe in anything after the surprise of finding myself + here." +</p> +<p> + Jinny Jeffries laughed. "If I could only believe what you say!" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, you can believe anything I say," Jack obligingly assured her. + "I'm very careful what I <i>say</i>—" +</p> +<p> + "I wish I were." +</p> +<p> + "You'd have to be careful how you look, Jinny—and you can't help + that. The Lord who gave you red hair must provide the way to elude + its consequences.... I suppose the Orient isn't exactly a manless + Sahara for you?" +</p> +<p> + She countered, her bright eyes intent, "Is it a girl-less Sahara for + you, Jack?" +</p> +<p> + "The only woman I have laid a hand on, in kindness or unkindness, + died before Ptolemy rebuilt Denderah." +</p> +<p> + "That's not right—" +</p> +<p> + "No? And I thought it such a virtuous record!" +</p> +<p> + "I mean," Jinny laughed, "that you really ought to be seeing more of + life—like to-night—" +</p> +<p> + "To-night? Do you imagine this is a place for seeing life?" +</p> +<p> + "Why not?" she retorted to the irony in his voice. "It's real + people—not just dead and gone things in cases with their lives all + lived. I don't care if you are going to be a very famous person, + Jack, you ought to see more of the world. You have just been buried + out here for two years, ever since you left college—" +</p> +<p> + Beneath his mask the young man was smiling. A quaint feminine + notion, that life was to be encountered at a masquerade! This motley + of hot, over-dressed, wrought up idiots a human contact! +</p> +<p> + Life? Living?... Thank you, he preferred the sane young English + officials ... the comradeship of his chief ... the glamor of his + desert tombs. +</p> +<p> + Of course there was a loneliness in the desert. That was part of the + big feeling of it, the still, stealing sense of immensity reaching + out its shadowy hands for you.... Loneliness and restlessness.... + These tropic nights, when the stars burned low and bright, and the + hot sands seemed breathing.... Loneliness and restlessness—but they + gave a man dreams.... And were those dreams to be realized here? +</p> +<p> + The music stopped and the ever-watchful Pantalon bore down upon + them. Abandoning Jinny to her fate, Ryder sought refuge and a + cigarette. +</p> +<p> + The hall was crowded now; the ball was a flash of color, a whirl of + satins and spangles and tulle and gauze, gold and green and rose and + sapphire, gyrating madly in vivid projection against the black and + white stripes of the Moorish walls. The color and the music had sent + their quickening reactions among the throng. Masks were lending + audacity to mischief and high spirits. +</p> +<p> + Three little Pierrettes scampered through the crowd, pelting right + and left with confetti and balloons, and two stalwart monks and a + thin Hamlet pursued them, keeping up the bombardment amid a great + combustion of balloons. A spangled Harlequin snatched his hands + full of confetti and darted behind a palm. +</p> +<p> + It was the palm of the black phantom, the palm of Ryder's rebuff. + Perhaps the Harlequin had met repulse here, too, and cherished + resentment, not a very malicious resentment but a mocking feint of + it, for when Ryder turned sharply after him—oddly, he himself was + strolling toward that nook—he found Harlequin circling with mock + entreaties about the stubbornly refusing black domino. +</p> +<p> + "Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the + dance?" chanted Harlequin, with a shower of confetti flung at the + girl's averted face. +</p> +<p> + There was such a shrinking of genuine fright in her withdrawal that + Ryder had a fine thrill of rescue. +</p> +<p> + "My dance," he declared, laying an intervening hand on her muffled + arm. +</p> +<p> + His tartan-draped shoulder crowded the Harlequin from sight. +</p> +<p> + She raised her head. The black street veil was flung back, but a + black yashmak was hiding all but her eyes. Great dark eyes they + were, deep as night and soft as shadows, arched with exquisitely + curved brows like the sweep of wild birds' wings.... The most lovely + eyes that dreams could bring. +</p> +<p> + A flash of relief shone through their childish fright. With sudden + confidence she turned to Ryder. +</p> +<p> + "Thank you.... My education, monsieur, has proceeded to the Ts," she + told him with a nervous little laugh over her chagrin, drowned in a + burst of louder laughter from the discomfited Harlequin, who turned + on his heel and then bounded after fresh prey. +</p> +<p> + "Shall we dance or promenade?" asked Ryder. +</p> +<p> + Hesitatingly her gaze met his. Red and gold and green and blue + flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black + wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her + eye-lashes. +</p> +<p> + "It is—if I have not forgotten how to dance," she murmured. "If it + is a waltz, perhaps—" +</p> +<p> + It was a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution + before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within + the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her + young form. She was no more than a child.... No child, either, at a + masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight.... She was a leaf + blowing in the breeze.... She was the very breeze and the moonlight. +</p> +<p> + And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over. Those moments had + seemed no more than one. +</p> +<p> + "We must have the next," he said quickly. "What made you think you + had forgotten?" +</p> +<p> + "It is nearly four years, monsieur, since I danced with a man." +</p> +<p> + "With a man? You have been dancing with girls, then?" +</p> +<p> + She nodded. +</p> +<p> + "At a school?" +</p> +<p> + "At a—a sort of school." The black domino laughed with ruefulness. + "At a very dull sort of school." +</p> +<p> + "To which, I hope, you are not to return?" +</p> +<p> + She made no answer to that—unless it was a sigh that slipped out. +</p> +<p> + "At any rate," he said cheerily, "you are dancing to-night." +</p> +<p> + "To-night—yes, to-night I am dancing!" There was triumph in her + young voice, triumph and faint defiance, and gayety again in her + changing eyes. +</p> +<p> + Extraordinary, those eyes. Innocent, audacious, bewildering.... To + look down into them produced the oddest of excitement. +</p> +<p> + He took off his mask. Masks were hindering things—he could see so + much better without. +</p> +<p> + She, too, could see better—could see him better. Shyly, yet + intently, her gaze took note of him, of the clean, clear-cut young + face, bronzed and rather thin, of the dark hair that looked darker + against the scarlet cap, of the deep-set eyes, hazel-brown, that met + hers so often and were so full of contradictory things ... life ... + and humor ... and frank simplicity ... and subtle eagerness. +</p> +<p> + He looked so young and confident and handsome.... +</p> +<p> + "You are—a Scotchman?" slipped out from her black yashmak. +</p> +<p> + "Only in costume. I am an American." +</p> +<p> + She repeated it a little musingly. "I do not think I ever met an + American young man." She added, "I have met old ones—yes, and + middle-aged ones and the women—but a young one, no." +</p> +<p> + "A retired spot, that school of yours," said Ryder appreciatively. + "You are French?" +</p> +<p> + "That is for your imagination!" Teasingly, she laughed. "I am, + monsieur, only a black domino!" +</p> +<p> + It was the loveliest laugh, Ryder was instantly aware, and the + loveliest voice in the world. Yes, and the loveliest eyes. +</p> +<p> + He forgot the crowd. He forgot the heat. He forgot—alas!—Jinny + Jeffries. He was aware of an intense exhilaration, a radiant sense + of well-being, and—at the music's beginning—of a small palm + pressed again to his, a light form within his arm ... of shy, + enchanting eyes out from the shrouding black. +</p> +<p> + "Do put that veil away," he youthfully entreated. "It's quite time. + The others are almost all unmasked." +</p> +<p> + Her glance about the room returned to him with mock plaintiveness. + She shook her head as they spun lightly about a corner. +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps, monsieur, I have an unfortunate nose." +</p> +<p> + "My nerves are strong." +</p> +<p> + "But why afflict them?" Prankishly her eyes sparkled up at him over + the black veil that made her a mystery. "Enjoy the present, + monsieur!" +</p> +<p> + "Are you enjoying it?" +</p> +<p> + Her lashes dropped, like black butterflies. She was a changeling of + a girl, veering from gayety to shyness.... Her gaze was now on her + wrist watch, a slender blaze of platinum and diamonds. +</p> +<p> + "The present—yes," she said in a muffled little voice. +</p> +<p> + He bent his head to hear her through the veil. +</p> +<p> + A tormenting curiosity was assailing him. It had become not enough + to know that she was young and slender, with enchanting eyes and a + teasing spirit of wit.... Vaguely he had thought her to be French, + one of the quaint <i>jeunes filles</i> so rarely taken traveling. +</p> +<p> + But who was she? A child at her first ball? But what in the world + was she doing, back in the palms, away from her chaperon? +</p> +<p> + He realized, even in the cloud of his fascination, that French + <i>jeunes filles</i> are not wonted to lurk about palms at a ball. +</p> +<p> + Was she a little Cinderella, then, slipping among the guests? Some + poor companion, stealing in for fun?... She was too young. And there + was that watch, that glitter of diamonds upon her wrist. +</p> +<p> + "Have you just come to Cairo?" +</p> +<p> + She shook her head. "For some time—I have been here." +</p> +<p> + "Up the Nile yet?" +</p> +<p> + "The Nile—no, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "But you are going?" +</p> +<p> + "That—that I do not know. Sometime, perhaps." +</p> +<p> + She sounded guarded.... He hurried into revelations. +</p> +<p> + "I am staying not far from Cairo, myself. I am an excavator—on an + expedition from an American museum." +</p> +<p> + "Ah, you dig?" +</p> +<p> + "Well, not personally.... But the expedition digs.... We've had some + bully finds." +</p> +<p> + "And you came from America—to dig in the sands?" The black domino + laughed softly. "For how long, monsieur?" +</p> +<p> + "This is my second year." +</p> +<p> + Still laughing, she shook her shrouded little head at him. "But I + cannot understand! What wonderful thing do you hope to find—what + buried secret—?" +</p> +<p> + "Nothing half as wonderful as to know who you are," he said boldly. +</p> +<p> + "That, too, is—is buried, monsieur!" +</p> +<p> + "But not beyond discovery," he told her very gayly and confidently, + and danced the music out. +</p> +<p> + As the last strains died, they paused for an instant as if the spell + still bound them, then his arms fell slowly away, and he heard the + girl draw a quick, startled breath. Her eyes sped to that tiny, + blazing watch; when she lifted them he thought he surprised a gleam + of panic. +</p> +<p> + "How fast is an hour!" she said with an excited little laugh. "Time + is a—a very sudden thing!" +</p> +<p> + Sudden, indeed! How long since he had been a badly bored, impatient + young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he + had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as + life? How long since he had looked into a pair of dark disquieting + eyes ... listened to a gay little voice.... +</p> +<p> + Many important things in life happen suddenly. Juliet happened very + suddenly to Romeo. Romeo happened as suddenly to Juliet. +</p> +<p> + But Jack Ryder was not remembering anything about Romeo and Juliet. + He was watching that glance steal to the wrist watch again. +</p> +<p> + Then, as if with a determination of the spirit, they smiled up at + him. +</p> +<p> + "Monsieur the American," said the black domino, "you have been most + kind to an—an incognita—of a masque. I hope that you dig out of + your sands all the secrets that you most desire." +</p> +<p> + "You sound as if you were saying good-bye," said Jack Ryder with + quick denial in his blood. +</p> +<p> + The smile in her eyes flickered. +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps I have kept you too long from the other guests." +</p> +<p> + He shook his head. "They don't exist." +</p> +<p> + "Ah! I will give you the chance to say such nice things to them." +</p> +<p> + "But I never say nice things—unless I mean them!" +</p> +<p> + "Never—monsieur?" +</p> +<p> + "Never. I am very careful what I say," he assured her, even as he + had assured another girl, in what different meaning, hours or + centuries before. "You can believe anything that I say." +</p> +<p> + "A young man of character! Perhaps that goes with the Scotch + costume. I have read the Scots are a noble people." +</p> +<p> + "They haven't a thing on the Americans. You must know me better and + discover—" +</p> +<p> + But again her eyes had gone, almost guiltily, to that watch. And + when she raised them again they were not smiling but very strangely + resolved. +</p> +<p> + "Monsieur, it is so hot—if you would get me a glass of sherbet?" +</p> +<p> + "Certainly." Convention brought out the assent; convention turned + him about and marched him dutifully toward the crowded table she + indicated. +</p> +<p> + But something deeper than convention, some warning born of that + too-often consulted watch and that strange look in her eyes, that + uneasy fear and swift resolve, turned him quickly about again. +</p> +<p> + Other couples had strolled between them. He hurried through and + stepped back among the palms. +</p> +<p> + The place was empty. The black domino was gone. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + He wasted one minute in assuring himself that she was not hidden in + some corner, not mingled with the crowd. But the niche was deserted + as a rifled nest. Then his eyes spied the door that the green + decorations had conspired to hide and he wrenched it open. +</p> +<p> + He found himself on a little balcony overlooking the hotel garden. + He knew the place in daytime—palms and shrubs and a graveled walk + and painted chairs where he had drunk tea with Jinny and watched a + Russian tourist beautifully smoking cigarettes. +</p> +<p> + Now the place was strange. Night and a crescent moon had wrought + their magic, and the garden was a mystery of velvet dusks and ivory + pallors. The graveled path ran glimmering beneath the magnolias. + Over the wall's blankness the eucalyptus defined its crooked lines + against the blue Egyptian sky. +</p> +<p> + No living thing was there ... nothing ... or did that shadow stir? + There, just at the path's end. +</p> +<p> + Ryder's lithe strength was swift. There was one breathless moment of + pursuit, then his hand fell with gripping fierceness upon the + huddled dark figure that had sped so frantically to the tiny door in + the garden's end.... A moment more and she would have been through. +</p> +<p> + His hand on her shoulder turned her towards him. Her eyes met his + with a dash of desperation.... He was unconscious how his own were + blazing ... how queerly white his face had gone under its desert + brown. +</p> +<p> + She was actually running away. She had meant never to see him again. + He had frustrated her, but the blow she had meant to deal him was + still felt. +</p> +<p> + His voice, when it came, sounded shaken. +</p> +<p> + "You were going to leave me?" +</p> +<p> + Strangely her eyes changed. The defiance, the panic fear, faded. A + cloud of slow despair welled up in them. +</p> +<p> + "What else?" she said very softly. +</p> +<p> + He did not lose his hold on her. He drew her back into the shadows + with involuntary caution, and he felt her slender body trembling in + his grasp. The tremors seemed to pass into his own. +</p> +<p> + A sense of urgency was pressing upon him. He was not himself, not + any self that he had known. He stood there, in the Egyptian night, + in the motley of a Scotch chieftain, grasping this mysterious + creature of the masquerade, and he heard a voice that he did not + know ask of her again and again, "But why? Why? Why were you going?" +</p> +<p> + It was not, he was telling himself, and her eyes were telling him, + as if she wanted to go. He knew what he knew.... Those had been + enchanted hours.... Yet she had deceived and fled from him. +</p> +<p> + Her eyes looked darkly back at him through the dusk. +</p> +<p> + "Because I must return to my own life." Her voice was a whisper. + "And I did not want you to know—" +</p> +<p> + "To know what? Who are you? Where were you going?" A confusion of + conjecture, fantastic, horrible, impossible, was surging in him. + Dim, vague, terrible things.... +</p> +<p> + "Who are you, anyway?" +</p> +<p> + She looked away from him, to the door which she had tried to gain. +</p> +<p> + "No masker, monsieur.... For me, there is no unveiling." +</p> +<p> + Ryder's hand stiffened. He felt his blood stop a moment, as if his + heart stood still. +</p> +<p> + And then it beat on again in a furious turmoil of contradiction of + this impossible thing that she was telling him. +</p> +<p> + "That door, monsieur, is to the lane, and in the lane another door + leads to another garden—the garden of a girl you can never know." +</p> +<p> + He was no novice to Egypt. Even while his credulity was still + battling with belief, his mind had realized this thing that had + happened ... the astounding, unbelievable thing.... He had heard + something of those Turkish girls, daughters of rich officials, whose + lives were such strange opposition of modernity and tradition. +</p> +<p> + Indulgence and luxury. French governesses and French frocks ... + freedom, travel, often,—Paris, London, perhaps—and then, as the + girl eclipses the child—the veil. Still indulgence and luxury, + still books and governesses and frocks and motors and society—but a + feminine society. +</p> +<p> + Not a man in it. Not a caller. Not a friend. Not a lover.... Not an + interview, even, with the man who is to be the husband—until the + bride is safe in the husband's home. Hidden women. Secret, secluded + lives.... Extinguished by tradition—a tradition against which their + earlier years only had won modern emancipation. +</p> +<p> + And she—this slim creature in the black domino—one of those + invisibles? +</p> +<p> + Stark amazement looked out of his eyes into hers. +</p> +<p> + "You—a Turk?" he blurted. +</p> +<p> + "I—a Turk!" Her head went suddenly high; she stiffened with + defensive pride. "I am ashamed—but for the thing I have done. That + is a shameful thing. To steal out at night—to a hotel—to a + ball—And to dance with a man! To tell him who I am—Oh, yes, I am + much ashamed. I am as bold as a Christian!" she tossed at him + suddenly, between mockery and malice. +</p> +<p> + Still his wonder and his trouble found no words and the shadow on + his face was reflected swiftly in her own. +</p> +<p> + "I beg you to believe, monsieur, that never before—never have I + done such a thing. My greatest fault was to be out in the garden + after sunset—when all Moslem women should be within. But my nurse + was indulgent." +</p> +<p> + Almost pleadingly she looked up at the young man. "Believe this of + me, monsieur. I would not have you think of me lightly. But to-night + something possessed me. I had heard of the masque, and I remembered + the balls of the Embassy where I danced when I was so young and so I + slipped away—there was a garden key that I had stolen, long ago, + and kept for another thing.... I did not mean to dance. Only to look + on at the world again." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, my good Lord," said Jack Ryder. +</p> +<p> + And then suddenly he asked, "Are you—do you—whom do you live + with?" +</p> +<p> + And when she answered in surprise, "But with whom but my father—he + is Tewfick Pasha," he drew a long breath. +</p> +<p> + "I thought you'd tell me next you were married," he said limply. +</p> +<p> + The next moment they were laughing the sudden, incredibly absorbed + laughter of youth. +</p> +<p> + "No husband. I am one of the young revoltées—the moderns—and I am + the only daughter of a most indulgent father." +</p> +<p> + "Well, that's something to the good," was Ryder's comment upon that. + He added, "But if that most indulgent father caught you—" +</p> +<p> + He looked down at her. The secret trouble of her answering look told + him more than its assumption of courage. +</p> +<p> + This was no boarding school girl lingering beyond hours.... This was + a high-born Moslem, risking more than he could well know. +</p> +<p> + The escapade was suddenly serious, tremendously menacing. +</p> +<p> + She answered faintly, "I have no idea—the thing is so impossible! + But of course," she rallied her spirit to protest, "I do not think + they would sew me in a sack with a stone and drop me in the river, + like the odalisques of yesterday!" +</p> +<p> + She added, her voice uncertain in spite of her, "I meant only to + stay a moment." +</p> +<p> + "Which is the way?" said Jack briefly. +</p> +<p> + With caution he opened the gate into the black canyon of the lane. + Silence and darkness. Not a loiterer, only one of the furtive + starved dogs, slinking back from some rubbish.... +</p> +<p> + The girl moved forward and keeping closely at her side he followed; + they crossed to the other wall, and turned towards the right, + stopping before the deeper shadow of a small, pointed door set into + the heavy brick of the high wall. From her draperies the girl drew + out a huge key. +</p> +<p> + She fitted it into the ancient lock and turned it; carefully she + pressed open the gate and stared anxiously into the gloom of the + shadowy garden that it disclosed. +</p> +<p> + Relief colored her voice as she turned to him. +</p> +<p> + "All is quiet.... I am safe, now.... And so—good-bye, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "And this is where you live?" Ryder whispered. +</p> +<p> + "There—in that wing," she murmured, slipping within the gate, and + he stole after her, and looked across the garden, through a fringe + of date palms, to the outlines of the buildings. +</p> +<p> + Dim and dark showed the high walls, black as a prison, only here and + there the pale orange oblong of a lighted window. +</p> +<p> + "Did you climb out the window?" he murmured. +</p> +<p> + From beneath the veil came a little sound of soft derision. +</p> +<p> + "But there are always bars, even in the garden windows of the + haremlik!... No, I stole down by an old stair.... That wing, there, + on the right." +</p> +<p> + Barred on the garden, and on the street the impregnable wooden + screens of the mashrubiyeh, those were the rooms where this girl + beside him was to spend her life—until that most indulgent father + wearied of her modernity and transferred her to other rooms, as + barred and screened, in the palace of some husband!... That thought + was brushing Ryder ... with other thoughts of her present risk ... + of her lovely eyes, visible again, above the veil, thoughts of the + strangeness and unreality of it all ... there in the shrubbery of a + pasha's garden, the pasha's daughter whispering at his side. +</p> +<p> + "What about your mother—?" he asked her. "Is she—?" +</p> +<p> + "She is dead," the girl told him, with a drop in her voice. +</p> +<p> + And after a long moment of silence, "When I was so little—but I + remember her, oh, indeed I do ... She was French, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "Oh! And so you—" +</p> +<p> + "I am French-Turk," she whispered back. "That is very often so—in + the harems of Cairo.... She was so lovely," said the girl wistfully. + "My father must have loved her very much ... he never brought + another wife here. Always I lived alone with my old nurse and the + governesses—" +</p> +<p> + "You had—lessons?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, nothing but lessons—all of that world which was shut away so + soon.... French and English and music and the philosophy—Oh, we + Turks are what you call blue stockings, monsieur, shut away with our + books and our dreams ... and our memories ... We are so young and + already the real world is a memory.... Sometimes," she said, with a + tremor of suppressed passion in her still little tones, "I could + wish that I had died when I was very young and so happy when my + father took me traveling in Europe.... I played games on the decks + of the ships ... I had my tea with the English children.... I went + down into the hold to play with their dogs..." +</p> +<p> + She broke off, between a laugh and a sigh, "Dogs are forbidden to + Moslems—but of course you know, if you have been here two years.... + And emancipated as we may be, there is no changing the customs. We + must live as our grandmothers lived ... though we are not as our + grandmothers are..." +</p> +<p> + "With a French mother, you must be very far from what some of your + grandmothers were!" +</p> +<p> + "My poor French mother!" Whimsically the girl sighed. "Must I blame + it on her—the spirit that took me to the ball?... To-morrow + this will be a dream to me.... I shall not believe in my + shamelessness.... And you, too, must forget—" +</p> +<p> + "Forget?" said Ryder under his breath. +</p> +<p> + "Forget—and go. Positively you must go now, monsieur. It is very + dangerous here—" +</p> +<p> + "It is." There was a light dancing in his hazel eyes. "It is more + dangerous every moment—" +</p> +<p> + "But I mean—" Her confusion betrayed itself. +</p> +<p> + "But I mean—that you are magic—black magic," he murmured bending + over the black domino. +</p> +<p> + The crescent moon had found its way through a filigree of boughs. + Faintly its exploring ray lighted the contour of that shrouded head, + touched the lovely curves of her arched brows and the tender pallor + of the skin about those great wells of dark eyes.... From his own + eyes a flame seemed to pass into hers.... Breathlessly they gazed at + each other ... like dim shadows in a garden of still enchantment. +</p> +<p> + And then, as from a palpable clasp, she tried to slip away. "Truly, + I must go! It is so late—" +</p> +<p> + Ryder's heart was pounding within him. He did not recognize this + state of affairs; it was utterly unrelated to anything that had gone + before in his merry, humorous, rather clear-sighted and wary young + life.... He felt dazed and wondering at himself ... and + irresponsible ... and appalled ... but deeper than all else, he felt + eager and exultant and strangely, furtively determined about + something that he was not owning to himself ... something that + leaped off his lips in the low murmur to her, "But to-morrow + night—I shall see you again—" +</p> +<p> + She caught her breath. "Oh, never again! To-night has no + to-morrow—" +</p> +<p> + "Outside this gate," he persisted. "I shall wait—and other nights + after that. For I must know—if you are safe—" +</p> +<p> + "See, I am very safe now. For if I were missed there would be + running and confusion—" +</p> +<p> + He only drew a little closer to her. "To-morrow night—or another—I + shall come to this door—" +</p> +<p> + "It must not open to you.... It is a forbidden door—forbidden as + that fortieth door in the old story.... There are thirty and nine + doors in your life, monsieur, that you may open, but this is the + forbidden—" +</p> +<p> + "I shall be waiting," he insisted. "To-morrow night—or another—" +</p> +<p> + She moved her head in denial. +</p> +<p> + "Neither to-morrow nor another night—" +</p> +<p> + Again their eyes met. He bent over her. He knew a gleam of sharpest + wonder at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding + drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in + the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft, + human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and + through the sheer gauze of her veil his lips pressed her lips.... +</p> +<p> + Some one was coming down the walk: Footsteps crunched the gravel. +</p> +<p> + Like a wraith the girl was out of his arms ... in anger or alarm + his whirling senses could not know, although it was their passionate + concern. But his last gleam of prudence got him through the gate he + heard her locking after. +</p> +<p> + And then, for her sake, he fled. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER III +</h2> +<h3> + IN THE PASHA'S PALACE +</h3> +<p> + Nearer sounded the footsteps on the graveled walk and in frightened + haste the girl drew out the key from the gate and slipped away into + the shrubbery, grateful for the blotting shadows. +</p> +<p> + At the foot of a rose bush she crouched to thrust the key into a + hole in the loose earth, covering the top and drawing the low + branches over it. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée," came a guarded call. "Aimée!" +</p> +<p> + Still stooping, she tried to steal through the bushes, but the + thorns held her and she stood up, pulling at her robes. +</p> +<p> + "Yes? Miriam?" she said faintly, and desperately freeing herself, + she hurried forward towards the dark, bulky figure of her old nurse, + emerging now into the moonlight. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Alhamdolillah</i>—Glory to God!" ejaculated the old woman, but + cautiously under her breath. "Come quickly—he is here—thy father! + And thou in the garden, at this hour.... But come," and urgently she + gripped the girl's wrist as if afraid that she would vanish again + into the shadows of the shrubbery. +</p> +<p> + Aimée felt her knees quake under her. "My father!" she murmured, + and her voice died in her throat. +</p> +<p> + Had he discovered? Had some one seen her slip out? Or recognized her + at the ball? +</p> +<p> + The panic-stricken conjectures surged through her in dismaying + confusion. She tried to beat down her fear, to think quickly, to + rally her force, but her swimming senses were still invaded with the + surprise of those last moments at the gate, her heart still beating + with the touch of Ryder's arms about her ... of that long, deep look + ... that kiss, beyond all else, that kiss.... +</p> +<p> + Little rivers of fire were running through her veins. Shame and + proud anger set up their swift reactions. Oh, what wings of wild, + incredible folly had brought her to this! To be kissed like—like a + dancing girl—by a man, an unknown, an American! +</p> +<p> + How could he, how could he! After all his kindness—to hold her so + lightly.... And yet there had been no lightness in his eyes, those + eager, shining young eyes, so gravely concerned.... +</p> +<p> + But she could not stop to think of this thing. Her father was + waiting. +</p> +<p> + "He came in like a fury," the old nurse was panting, as they + scurried up the walk together, "and asked for you ... and your room + empty, your bed not touched!... Oh, Allah's ruth upon me, I went + trotting through the house, mad with fear.... Up to the roofs then + down to the garden ... sending him word that you were dressing that + he should not know the only child of his house was a shameless one, + devoid of sense." +</p> +<p> + "But there is no harm in a garden," breathed the girl, her face hot + with shame. "To-night was so hot—" +</p> +<p> + "Is there no coolth upon the roof?" +</p> +<p> + "But the roses—" +</p> +<p> + "Can roses not be brought you? Have you no maids to attend you?" +</p> +<p> + "I am tired of being attended! Can I never be alone—" +</p> +<p> + "Alone in the garden!... A pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father, + I will have a stop put to this—<i>hush</i>, would you have him hear?" + she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door + at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps. +</p> +<p> + Like conspirators they fled up the staircase, and then with fumbling + haste the old nurse dragged off the girl's mantle and veil, + muttering at the pins that secured it. She shook out the + pale-flowered chiffon of her rumpled frock and gathered back a + strand of her dark, disordered hair. +</p> +<p> + "Say that you were on the roofs," she besought her. +</p> +<p> + For a moment the girl put the warm rose of her cheek against the old + woman's dark, wrinkled one. +</p> +<p> + "But you are good, Dadi," she said softly, using the Turkish word + for familiar old servants. +</p> +<p> + With a sound of mingled vexation and affection Miriam pushed her + ahead of her into the drawing-room. +</p> +<p> + It was a long, dark room, on whose soft, buff carpet the little gilt + chairs and sofas were set about with the empty expectancy of a stage + scene in a French salon. French were the shirred, silk shades upon + the electric lamps, French the music upon the chic rosewood piano. +</p> +<p> + And then, as if some careless property man had overlooked them in + changing the act, two window balconies of closely carved old wood, + of solidly screening mashrubiyeh wood, jutted out from one + cream-tinted wall, and above a gilded sofa, upholstered in the + delicate fabric of the Rue de la Paix, hung a green satin banner + embroidered in silver with a phrase from the Koran. +</p> +<p> + Tewfick Pasha was at one side of the room, filling his match case. + He was in evening dress, a ribbon of some order across a rather + swelling shirt bosom, a red fez upon his dark head. +</p> +<p> + At his daughter's entrance he turned quickly, with so sharp a gleam + from his full, somewhat protuberant black eyes that her guilty heart + fairly turned over in her. +</p> +<p> + It made matters no more comforting to have Miriam packed from the + room. +</p> +<p> + She would deny it all, she thought desperately ... No, she would + admit it, and implore his indulgence.... She would admit nothing but + the garden.... She would admit the ball.... She would <i>never</i> admit + the young man.... +</p> +<p> + With conscious eyes and flushing cheeks, woefully aware of + dew-drenched satin slippers and an upsettingly hammering heart, + Aimée presented the young image of irresolute confusion. +</p> +<p> + To her surprise there was no outburst. Her father was suddenly gay + and smiling, with a flow of pleasant phrases that invited her + affection. In his good humor—and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be + kept in good humor—he had touches of that boyish charm that had + made him the <i>enfant gâté</i> of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and + Constantinople. An <i>enfant</i> no more, in the robustly rotund forties, + his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that + smiling acquiescence that kept life soft and comfortable. +</p> +<p> + And now it suddenly struck Aimée, through her tense alarm, that his + smile was not a spontaneous smile, but was silently, uneasily asking + his daughter not to make something too unpleasant for him ... that + something that had brought him here, at an unprecedented midnight + ... that had kept him waiting until she, supposedly, should rise and + dress.... +</p> +<p> + If it were not then a knowledge of her escapade—? +</p> +<p> + The relief from that fear made everything else bearable. She was + even able to entertain, with a certain welcome, the alternative + alarm that he had decided to marry again—that nightmare from whose + realization the unknown gods (or more truly, the unknown goddesses + of the Cairene demi-monde!) had assisted to save her. +</p> +<p> + There was a furtive excitement about him that fanned the + supposition. +</p> +<p> + Then, quite suddenly, the illuminating lightning cut the clouds. +</p> +<p> + "My dear child, I have news, really important news for you. If I + have not been discussing your future," said Tewfick Pasha, staring + with stern nonchalance ahead and determinedly unaware of her instant + stiffening of attention, "I have by no means been neglectful of + it.... To-day—indeed to-night—there has been a consummation of my + plans.... It is not to every daughter that a father may hurry with + such an announcement." +</p> +<p> + Her first feeling was a merciful relief. He knew nothing then of the + ball! She could breathe again.... It was her marriage that had + brought him. +</p> +<p> + No new danger, that, but the eternal menace that she had always to + dread.... But how many times had he promised that she should have no + unknown husband, imposed by tradition! How many times had she + indulged dreams of Europe, of bright, free romance! +</p> +<p> + And now he was off on some tangent from which it would need all her + coaxing wit to divert him. With wide eyes painfully intent, her + little, jeweled fingers very still in their locked grip in her lap, + the color draining from her cheeks, she sat waiting for the + revelation. +</p> +<p> + What was it all? Had he really decided upon something? Upon some + one? +</p> +<p> + Tewfick Pasha appeared in no hurry to inform her. He wandered + rather confusedly into a rambling speech about her age and her + position and the responsibilities of life and his inabilities to + prevent their reaching her, and about his very tender affection for + her and his understanding of all those girlish reticences and + reluctances which made innocent youth so exquisite, while silently + his daughter hung her head and wondered what he would be saying if + he knew that she had broken every canon of seclusion and convention, + had talked and danced with a man.... +</p> +<p> + His astonishment would be so horrific that she flinched even from + the thought. +</p> +<p> + And if he knew, moreover, that this man had caught her and kissed + her—! +</p> +<p> + She told herself that she was disgraced for life. She had a dreamy + desire to close her eyes and lean back and dream on about that + disgrace.... +</p> +<p> + But she must listen to her father. He was talking now about the + powers of wealth, not merely the nominal riches of his somewhat + precarious political affiliations, but solid, sustaining, invested + and invulnerable wealth. +</p> +<p> + Unexpectedly Aimée laughed. "He must be very plain," she declared, + her face brightening with mockery, "if you take so long to tell me + his name!" +</p> +<p> + Not, she added to herself under her breath, that any name would + weigh a feather's difference! +</p> +<p> + "On the contrary," and the pasha's eyes met hers frankly for the + first time and he seemed delighted to indulge a laugh, "he has the + reputation of good looks. He is much <i>à la mode</i>." +</p> +<p> + "Beautiful and golden—did you meet him just to-night, my father?" + Aimée went on, in that light audacity which he had loved to indulge. +</p> +<p> + Now he smiled, but his glance went uneasily away from her. +</p> +<p> + "Not at all. This is a serious affair, you understand—the devil of + a serious affair!" and for the first time she felt she heard the + accents of his candor. +</p> +<p> + But again he was back to voluble protestation. This man was really + an old friend. He boggled over the word, then got it out resonantly. + A man he knew well. Not a young man, perhaps—certainly he was not + going to hand his only daughter to any boy, a mere novice in + life!—but a man who could give her the position she deserved. Not + only a rich man, but an influential one. +</p> +<p> + His name, he brought out at last, was Hamdi Bey. He was a general in + the armies of the sultan. +</p> +<p> + It was a long moment before she could piece any shreds of + recollection together. +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey ... A general.... Why, that was a man her father had + disliked ... more than once he had dropped resentful phrases of his + airs, his arrogance ... had recounted certain clashes with malicious + joy. +</p> +<p> + And now he was planning—no, seriously announcing— +</p> +<p> + A general ... He must be terribly old.... +</p> +<p> + Not that it made any difference. Old or young, black or white, + general or ghikar, would mean nothing in her life. She would have + none of him ... none of him.... Never would she endure the + humiliation of being handed over like a toy, an odalisque, a + slave.... +</p> +<p> + What had happened? She could only suppose that her father had been + overcome by that wealth of the general's on which he had made her + such a speech. Or perhaps his dislike of Hamdi had been founded on + nothing but resentment of Hamdi's airs of superiority, and now that + the bey was condescending to ask for her hand her father's flattered + appeasement was rushing into genial acceptance. +</p> +<p> + Anything might be possible to Tewfick Pasha's eternally youthful + enthusiasms. +</p> +<p> + She told her frightened heart that she was not afraid.... Her father + would never really fail her.... And she would never surrender to + this degradation; for all her fright and all her flinching from + defiance she divined in herself some hidden stuff of resistance, + tenacious to endure ... some strain of daring which had made her + brave that wild escapade to-night. +</p> +<p> + Was it still the same night? Were the violins still playing, the + people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?... Was that + young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back + there dancing with some other girl? +</p> +<p> + What was it he had said? To-morrow night, and another night, he + would be there in the lane.... If she would come! As if she would + demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate, + like a gardener's daughter—! +</p> +<p> + Her thoughts were so full of him. And now she had this new horror to + face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey. Did her father dream that she + would not resist? It was against such a danger that she had long ago + stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had + neither a friend nor a piaster to save her.... +</p> +<p> + "My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that + you really mean—that you really think you would like to—that you + would consider—this man—" +</p> +<p> + He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée, I have <i>arranged</i> this matter." +</p> +<p> + He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you." +</p> +<p> + In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort + to ignore her shocked dismay. He abandoned his airy pretense that + the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm. He sucked at his + cigarette like a rather sullen little boy. +</p> +<p> + "I have always indulged you, Aimée," he said at last, without + looking round at her. "I hope you are not going to make me + infernally sorry." +</p> +<p> + "I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry," said an unsteady + little voice. +</p> +<p> + He looked about. His daughter was sitting very still upon the + gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two + great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks. +</p> +<p> + With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace + up and down the room. +</p> +<p> + This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who + indulged his daughter. This is what came of French and English + governesses and modern ideas.... After all he had done—more than + any other father! To sit and weep! Weep—at such a marriage! What + did she expect of life? Was she not as other women? Did she never + look ahead? Had she no pride, no ambition—no hopes? Did she wish + never to marry, then, to become an <i>old mees</i> like her English + companion? +</p> +<p> + "I am but eighteen," she said quiveringly. "Oh, my father, do not + give me to this unknown—" +</p> +<p> + "Unknown—unknown! Do I not know him?" +</p> +<p> + "But you promised—" +</p> +<p> + Angrily he gestured with his cigarette. "Do I know what is good for + you or do I not? Have I your interest at heart—tell me! Am I a + savage, a dolt—" +</p> +<p> + "But you do not know what it is to be unhappy. I beg of you, my + father,—I should die with such a life before me, with such a man + for my husband. I am too French, too like my mother—" +</p> +<p> + "Ah, your mother!... Too French, are you?... But what would you have + in France?" he demanded with the bursting appearance of a man + making every effort to restrain himself within unreasonable bounds. + "Would not your parents there arrange your marriage? You might see + the fiancé," he caught the words out of her mouth, "but only for a + time or two—after the arrangements—and what is that? What more + would you know than what your father knows? Are you a thing to be + exhibited—given to a man to gaze at and appraise? I tell you, + no.... You are my daughter. You bear my name. And when you marry you + marry in the sanctity of the custom of your father—and you go to + your husband's house as his mother went to his father." +</p> +<p> + Timidly she protested, "But my mother—and you—" +</p> +<p> + "Do not speak of your mother! If she were here she would counsel + gratitude and obedience." He turned his back on her. "This is what + comes," he muttered, "of this modernity, this education...." +</p> +<p> + He pitched away his stub as if he were casting all that he hated + away with it. +</p> +<p> + She had never seen him so angry. Helplessly she felt that his vanity + and his word were engaged with the general more than she had + dreamed. She felt a surge of panic at the immensity of the trouble + before her. +</p> +<p> + "But, my father, if you love me—" +</p> +<p> + "No, my little one, if <i>you</i> love <i>me</i>!" +</p> +<p> + With a sudden assumption of good humor over the angry red mottling + his olive cheeks, he came and sat beside her, putting his arm about + her silently shrinking figure. +</p> +<p> + "I am a weak fool to stay and drink a woman's tears, as the saying + goes," he told her, "but this is what a man gets for being good + natured.... But, tears or not, I know what is best.... Come, Aimée, + have I not ever been fond of you—?" +</p> +<p> + He patted her hand with his own plump one where bright rings were + sparkling deep in the encroaching flesh. Aimée looked down with a + sudden wild dislike.... That soft, ingratiating hand, with its + dimples and polished nails, which thought it could pat her so easily + into submission.... +</p> +<p> + It was nothing to him, she thought, chokingly, whether she was happy + or unhappy. He had decided on the match—perhaps he had foreseen her + protests and plunged into it, so as to be committed against her + entreaties!—and he was not stopped by any thought of her feelings. +</p> +<p> + After all her hopes! After all he had promised! +</p> +<p> + But she told herself that she had never been secure. Beneath all her + trust there had always been the silent fear, slipping through the + shadows like a serpent.... Some instinct for character, more + precocious than her years, had whispered through her fond blindness, + and initiated her into foreboding. +</p> +<p> + "Come now, my dear," he said heartily, "this is a surprise, of + course, but after all you will find it is for the best—much for the + best—" +</p> +<p> + His voice died away. After a long pause, "You may make the + arrangements," she told him in a still, tenacious little voice, "but + you cannot make me marry him.... I will never put on the marriage + dress.... Never wear the diadem.... Never stir one step within his + house." +</p> +<p> + A complete silence succeeded this declaration. He got up violently + from beside her. She did not dare look at him. He was going away, + she thought. +</p> +<p> + It would be the beginning of war. She did not know what he would do + but she knew that she would endure it. +</p> +<p> + And the gossip of the harems would be her protection. Her + opposition, bruited through those feminine channels, would not be + long in reaching Hamdi Bey.... And no man could to-day be so callous + of his pride or the world's opinion that he would be willing to + receive such a revolting bride. +</p> +<p> + Did her father think of that, that poor, pale power of hers? He + stood irresolute, as if meditating a last exhortation, and then + suddenly turned on her the haggard face of a violent despair. +</p> +<p> + "Would you see me ruined?" he said passionately. +</p> +<p> + Sharply he glanced about the room, at the far, closed doors where it + was not inconceivable that old Miriam was lurking, and strode over + to her and began talking very jerkily and huskily, over her bent + head. +</p> +<p> + "I tell you that Hamdi is making this a condition—it is the price + of silence, of those papers back.... He came to me to-night. I knew + that hound of Satan had been smelling about, but I could not + imagine—as if, between gentlemen—" +</p> +<p> + At that, she lifted her stupefied head.... Her father, with the face + of a cornered fox!... She caught her breath with the shock of it. + Her lips parted, but only her mute eyes asked their startled + questions. +</p> +<p> + Hurriedly, shamefacedly, with angry resentments and + self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at + her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the + imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And + then the word <i>hasheesh</i>. +</p> +<p> + Sharply then the truth took its outlines. Her father had been + smuggling in hasheesh. Hamdi Bey had discovered this, and Hamdi Bey, + unless silenced, had threatened betrayal. +</p> +<p> + The danger was real. English laws were stringent. Vaguely the + horrors loomed—arrest, trial.... Even if he escaped the scandal was + ruin.... +</p> +<p> + Small wonder that her father had come flying upon the wings of his + danger and its deliverance, small wonder that his brow was wet and + his lips dry and his eyes hard with terror. +</p> +<p> + Thrown to the winds now his pretense of affection for Hamdi Bey! He + hated and feared him. The old fox had done this, he declared, to get + a hold upon him, for always there had been bad blood. +</p> +<p> + And the bey had heard, of course, of the beauty of the pasha's + daughter. Some cousin had babbled.... And undoubtedly the rumor of + that beauty—Tewfick Pasha received his inspiration upon the moment, + but that was not gainsaying its truth—had determined the bey to + find some vulnerable hold. +</p> +<p> + He was like that, a soft-voiced, sardonic devil! And this accursed + business of the hasheesh had served his ends. To-night, he had come + with his proofs.... +</p> +<p> + "So you see," muttered Tewfick Pasha, "what the devil of a serious + business this is. And how any talk of—of unreadiness—if you were + not amiable, for example, to his cousin when she calls upon + you—might serve to anger him.... And so—" +</p> +<p> + Significantly his glance met hers. Her eyes fell, stricken. The + color flooded her trembling face. She quivered with confused pain, + with shame for his shame, with terror and fright ... with a hot, + protective compassion that tore at her pride.... +</p> +<p> + She struggled against her dismay, trying for reassuring little words + that would not come. Her heart seemed beating thickly in her throat. +</p> +<p> + She never knew just what she said, what little broken words of pity, + of understanding, of promise, she achieved. But her father suddenly + dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the <i>enfant gâté</i> + of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their + soft, quiescent palms.... She drew one away and placed it upon his + dark head from which the fez had tumbled. +</p> +<p> + For the moment she was sorry, as one is sorry for a hurt child. And + her sorriness held her heart warm, in the glow of giving comfort. +</p> +<p> + She had need of that warmth. For a cold tide was rising in her, a + tide of chill, irresistible foreboding.... +</p> +<p> + For all the years of her life.... For all the years.... +</p> +<a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER IV +</h2> +<h3> + EXPLANATIONS +</h3> +<p> + The remaining hours of Jack Ryder's night might be divided into + three periods. There was an interval of astounding exhilaration + coupled with complete mental vacancy, during which a figure in a + Scots costume might have been observed by the astonished Egyptian + moon striding obliviously along the silent road to the Nile, past + sleeping camels and snoring <i>dhurra</i> merchants—a period during + which his sole distinguishable sensation was the memory of + enchanting eyes, of a voice, low and lovely ... of a slender figure + in a muffling tcharchaf ... of the touch of soft lips beneath a + gauzy veil.... +</p> +<p> + This period was succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he + lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean's domicile and stared + into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned high heaven and + himself. +</p> +<p> + Had he really done this? Had he actually caught and kissed this + girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never + seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a + Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and + self-preservation? +</p> +<p> + In the name of wonder, what had possessed him? The night? The moon? + The mystery of the unknown?... If he had never really kissed her he + might have convinced himself that he had never really wanted to. But + having kissed her—! +</p> +<p> + He looked upon himself as a stranger. A stranger of whom he would be + remarkably wary, in the days and nights to come ... but a stranger + for whom he entertained a sort of secret, amazed respect. There had + been an undeniable dash and daring to that stranger.... +</p> +<p> + During the third period he slept. +</p> +<p> + When he awoke, late in the morning, and descended from a cold tub to + a breakfast room from which McLean had long since departed, he + brought yet another mood with him, a mood of dark, deep disgust and + a shamed inclination to dismiss these events very speedily from + memory. For that shadowy and rather shady affair he had abandoned + the merry and delightful Jinny Jeffries and got himself involved now + in the duty of explanations and peacemaking. +</p> +<p> + What in the world was he going to say? +</p> +<p> + He meditated a note—but he hated a lie on paper. It looked so + thunderingly black and white. Besides, he could not think of any. + "Dear Jinny—Awfully sorry I was called away." +</p> +<p> + No, that wouldn't do. He could take refuge in no such vagueness. + Unfortunately, he and Jinny were on such terms of old intimacy that + a certain explicitness of detail was expected. +</p> +<p> + "Dear Jinny—I had to leave last night and take a girl home—" +</p> +<p> + No, she would ask about the girl. Jinny had a propensity for + locating people. It wouldn't do. +</p> +<p> + His masculine instinct for saying the least possible in a matter + with a woman, and his ripening experience which taught him to leave + no mystery to awaken suspicion, wrestled with the affair for some + time and then retired from the field. +</p> +<p> + He compromised by telephoning Jinny briefly—and Jinny was equally + as brief and twice as cool and cryptic—and promising to take her + out to tea. +</p> +<p> + He reflected that if he took her to tea he would really have to stay + over another night, for it would be too late to regain his desert + camp. But the circumstances seemed to call for some social amend.... + And no matter how many nights he stayed he certainly was not going + to lurk about that lane, outside garden doors! +</p> +<p> + He must have been mad, stark, staring, March-hatter mad! +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + That morning, during its remainder, he concluded his buying of + supplies and saw to their shipment upon the boat that left upon the + following morning. That noon he lunched with an assistant curator of + the Cairo museum who found him a good listener. +</p> +<p> + That afternoon he escorted Jinny Jeffries and her uncle and aunt, + the Josiah Pendletons, to tea upon the little island in the Cairo + park, where white-robed Arabs brought them tea over the tiny bridge + and violins played behind the shrubbery and white swans glided upon + the blue lake, and then he carried them off in a victoria to view + the sunset from the Citadel heights. +</p> +<p> + Not a word about the dance—except a general affirmative to Mrs. + Pendleton's question if he had enjoyed himself. The Pendletons had + not stayed to look on for long, and Jinny had apparently not worn + her bleeding heart upon her sleeve. +</p> +<p> + But this immunity could not last. He could not hug the protecting + Pendletons to him forever. +</p> +<p> + Nor did he want to. They waned upon him. Mrs. Pendleton's + conversation was a perpetual, "Do look at—!" or dissertations from + the guide books—already she had imparted a great deal of Flinders + Petrie to him about his tombs. Mr. Pendleton was neither + enthusiastic nor voluble, but he was attacking the objects of their + travels in the same thorough-going spirit that he had attacked and + surmounted the industrial obstacles of his career, and he went to a + great deal of persistent trouble to ascertain the exact dates of + passing mosques and the conformations of their arches. +</p> +<p> + The travelers had already "done" the Citadel. They had climbed its + rocky hill, they had viewed the Mahomet Ali mosque and its columns + and its carpets and had taken their guide's and their guidebook's + word that it was an inferior structure although so amazingly + effective from below; they had looked studiously down upon the city + and tried to distinguish its minarets and towers and ancient gates, + they had viewed with proper quizzicalness the imprint in the stone + parapet of the hoof of that blindfolded horse which the last of the + Mamelukes, cornered and betrayed, had spurred from the heights. +</p> +<p> + So now, no duty upon them, Ryder led them past the Citadel, up the + Mokattam hills behind it, to that hilltop on which stood the little + ancient mosque of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy, where the sunset spaces + flowed round them like a sea of light and the world dropped into + miniature at their feet. +</p> +<p> + Below them, in a golden haze, Cairo's domes and minarets were + shining like a city of dreams. To the north, toy fields, vivid + green, of rice and cotton lands, and the silver thread of the + winding Nile, and all beyond, west and southwest, the vast, + illimitable stretch of desert, shimmering in the opalescent air, + sweeping on to the farthest edge of blue horizon. +</p> +<p> + "A nice resting place," said Jack Ryder appreciatively of the tomb + of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy. +</p> +<p> + "I presume the date is given," Mr. Pendleton was murmuring, as he + began to ferret with his Baedecker. +</p> +<p> + Mrs. Pendleton sighed sentimentally. "He must have been very fond of + nature." +</p> +<p> + "He was very distrustful of his wives," said Ryder, grinning. "He + had three of them, all young and beautiful." +</p> +<p> + "I thought you said he was a saint?" murmured Jinny, to which + interpolation he responded, "Wouldn't three wives make any man a + saint?" and resumed his narrative. +</p> +<p> + "And so he had his tomb made where he could overlook the whole city + and observe the conduct of his widows." +</p> +<p> + "They could move," objected Miss Jeffries. +</p> +<p> + "The female of the Mohammedan species is not the free agent that you + imagine," Ryder retorted, beginning with a smile and ending with a + queer, reminiscent pang. He had a moment's rather complicated twinge + of amusement at her reactions if she should know that to an + encounter with a female of the Mohammedan species was to be + attributed his departure from her party last night. +</p> +<p> + And then he remembered that he hadn't decided yet what to tell her + and the time was undoubtedly at hand. +</p> +<p> + The time <i>was</i> at hand. The Pendletons were too thorough-going + Americans not to abdicate before the young. They did not saunter + self-consciously away and make any opportunity for Jack and Jinny, + as sympathetic European chaperons might have done; they sat + matter-of-factedly upon the rocks while their competent young people + betook themselves to higher heights. +</p> +<p> + Conscientiously Ryder was pointing out the pyramid fields. +</p> +<p> + "Gizeh, Abusir, Sakkara, Dahsur—and now here, if you look—that's + the Medun pyramid—that tiny, sharp prick. If we had glasses...." +</p> +<p> + "Yes; but why didn't you like the ball?" murmured Jinny the direct. +</p> +<p> + "I did like the ball. Very much." +</p> +<p> + "Then why didn't you stay?" +</p> +<p> + "I—I wasn't feeling top-hole," he murmured lamely, wondering why + girls always wanted to go back and stir up dogs that had gone + comfortably to sleep. +</p> +<p> + "Did it come on suddenly?" said Jinny, unsympathetically, her eyes + still upon the pyramids. +</p> +<p> + Something whimsical twitched at Jack Ryder's lips. "Very suddenly. + Like thunder, out of China crost the bay." +</p> +<p> + "I suppose that dancing with the same girl in succession brings on + the seizures?" +</p> +<p> + So she had noticed that!... Not for nothing were those bright, gray + eyes of hers! Not for nothing the red hair. +</p> +<p> + "Well, I rather think it did," he said deliberately. "That girl was + a child who hadn't danced in four years—so she said, and I believe + her." +</p> +<p> + And Jinny received what he intended to convey. "Stepped on your + buckled shoon and you felt a martyr?... But why bolt? There were + other girls who <i>had</i> danced within four years—" +</p> +<p> + "I went into the garden," he murmured. "The fact is, I was feeling + awfully—queer," he brought out in an odd tone. +</p> +<p> + Queer was a good word for it. He let it go at that. He couldn't do + better. +</p> +<p> + Jinny looked suddenly uncertain. Her pique was streaked with + compunction. She had been horribly angry with him for running away, + and she remembered his opposition to the idea enough to be + suspicious of any disappearance—but there was certainly an accent + of embarrassed sincerity about him. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps he <i>had</i> been ill. Sudden seizures were not unknown in + Egypt. And for all his desert brown he didn't look very rugged. +</p> +<p> + She murmured, "I hope you hadn't taken anything that disagreed with + you." +</p> +<p> + "H'm—it rather agreed with me at the time," said Jack, and then + brought himself up short. "I expect I haven't looked very sharp + after myself—" +</p> +<p> + But Jinny did not wholly renounce her idea. "Does it always take you + at dances you don't want to go to?" +</p> +<p> + "That's unfair. I came, you know." +</p> +<p> + "You came—and went." +</p> +<p> + "I'd have been all right if I hadn't come," he murmured, and Jinny + felt suddenly ashamed of herself. +</p> +<p> + "Do you suppose that you would stay all right if you came to + dinner?" she offered pacificably. "It's our last night, you know, + till we come back from the Nile." +</p> +<p> + "I wish I could." Ryder stopped short. Now, why didn't he? Certainly + he didn't intend— +</p> +<p> + But his tongue took matters promptly out of his hesitation's hands. + "Fact is, I've an engagement." He added, appeasingly, "That's why I + was so keen on getting you for tea." And Jinny told him + appreciatively that it was a lovely tea and a lovely view. +</p> +<p> + "We're going to be at the hotel, I expect," she threw out, + carelessly, "and if you get through in time—" +</p> +<p> + Rather hastily he assured her that indeed, if he got through in + time— +</p> +<p> + She was a nice girl, was Jinny. A pretty girl, with just the right + amount of red in her hair. Sanity would have sent him to the hotel + to dine with her. +</p> +<p> + Sanity would also have sent him to the Jockey Club with McLean. +</p> +<p> + Certainly sanity had nothing to do with the way that he kept himself + to himself, after his farewells at the hotel with the Pendletons, + and took him to an out-of-the-way Greek café where he dined very + badly upon stringy lamb and sodden baklava. +</p> +<p> + Later he wandered restlessly about dark, medieval streets where + squat groups were clustered about some coffee house door, intent + upon a game of checkers or some patriarchal story teller, + recounting, very probably, a bandied narration of the Thousand and + One Nights. Through other open doors drifted the exasperating nasal + twang of Cairene music, and idly pausing, Ryder could see above the + red fezes and turbans that topped the cross-legged audiences the + dark, sleek, slowly-revolving body of some desert dancing girl. +</p> +<p> + Irresolutely he drifted on to the Esbekeyih quarters, to the streets + where the withdrawn camels and donkeys had left pre-eminent the + carriages and motors of that stream of Continental night life which + sets towards Cairo in the season, Russian dukes and German + millionaires, Viennese actresses and French singers and ladies of no + avowed profession, gamblers, idlers, diplomats, drifters, vivid + flashes of color in the bizarre, kaleidoscopic spectacle. +</p> +<p> + It was quite dark now. The last pale gleam of the afterglow had + faded, and the blue of the sky, deepening and darkening, was pierced + with the thronging stars. It was very warm; no breeze, but a fitful + stirring in the tops of the feathery palms. +</p> +<p> + The streets were growing still. Only from some of the hotels came + the sound of music from lighted, open windows. +</p> +<p> + Jinny would be rather expectant at her hotel. He could, of course, + drop in for a few minutes since he was so near.... He walked past + the hotel.... Jinny would be packing—or ought to be. A pity to + disturb her.... And his dusty tweeds and traveling cap was no + calling costume.... +</p> +<p> + He walked past again. And this time he paused, on the brink of a + dark canyon of a lane, running back between walls hung with + bougainvillea. +</p> +<p> + Quite suddenly he remembered that he had told that girl, whose name + he did not know, that he would come. It was a definite promise. It + was an obligation. +</p> +<p> + He could do nothing less. It might be unwelcome, absurd, a nuisance, + but really it was an obligation. +</p> +<p> + He sauntered down the lane, keeping carefully in the shadow. He + loitered within that deep-set door—and felt a queer throb of + emotion at the sight of it—and so, sauntering and loitering, he + waited in the darkening night, promising himself disgustedly through + the dragging moments to clear out and be done with this, but still + interminably lingering, his pulses throbbing with that disowned + expectancy. +</p> +<p> + Very cautiously, the gate began to open. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER V +</h2> +<h3> + AT THE GARDEN GATE +</h3> +<p> + Inch by inch the gate edged open. Warily he presented himself. The + furtive crack gave him an instant's glimpse of a dark form within + the shadows, then, in his face, it closed. +</p> +<p> + Ryder waited. In a moment it was opened wider, and he saw the + dark-shrouded head and the veiled face of the Turkish girl, and out + from the blackness the sparkle of young eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Is it—but who is it?" whispered a doubtful voice, and at his, "Why + it is I—the American," quickly drawing off his cap, a little hand + darted out of the darkness to pluck him swiftly within and the door + was closed to within an inch of its opening. +</p> +<p> + Then the black phantom, drawing him back among the shrubbery, + against the wall, turned with a muffled note of laughter. +</p> +<p> + "But the costume! Imagine that I—I was looking again for a Scottish + chieftain with red kilts and a feather in his cap!" +</p> +<p> + "And instead—" Ryder glanced down at his tweeds with humorous + recognition of his change of figure. Then his eyes returned to her. +</p> +<p> + "But you are the same," he murmured. +</p> +<p> + She was indeed the same. The same black street mantle, down to her + very brows. The same black veil, up to her very eyes. And the + eyes—! Their soft mysterious loveliness—the little winged tilt of + the brows! +</p> +<p> + Apparently their effect was disconcertingly the same. He was + conscious of a feeling that was far from a normal calm. +</p> +<p> + "So you were all right?" he half whispered. "Those steps, last + night, you know, made me horribly afraid for you—" +</p> +<p> + "But, yes, I am all right." +</p> +<p> + As excitement gained upon him, a constraint was falling upon her. + They were both remembering that moment, overlooked in the rush of + recognition, when they had parted in this place, when he had had the + temerity to clasp and kiss her. +</p> +<p> + Aimée was standing rigid and wary, ready for flight at the first + fear. She told herself that she had only come through pride, the + pride that insisted upon humbling his presumption. She would let him + see how bitterly he had offended.... She had only come for this, she + told herself—and to see if he had come. +</p> +<p> + If he had <i>not</i> come! That would have dealt a sorrily humiliating + blow. +</p> +<p> + But he was here. And reassured and haughty, repeating that she was + mortally offended, her spirit alternating between pride and shame + and a delicious fear, she stood there in the shrubbery, fascinated, + like a wild, shy thing of another age. +</p> +<p> + "That was old Miriam," she explained constrainedly. "My father had + come in—with unexpectedness." +</p> +<p> + "Lord, it was lucky you were back!" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, it was—lucky," she assented. "If it had been half an hour + before—" +</p> +<p> + She broke off. There came to the young man a sobering perception of + the risk she ran, of the supreme folly of this escapade to which + they were entrusting themselves. +</p> +<p> + It was a realization that deserved some consideration. But, + obstinately, with young carelessness, he shook it off. After all, + this was comparatively safe for her. She was not out of bounds. At + an alarm he could slip away and no one could ever know. What risk + there might be was chiefly his own. +</p> +<p> + "When you asked who it was," he murmured, "it occurred to me that + you did not know my name—nor I yours. My own," he added, as she + stood unresponsive, "is Ryder—Jack Ryder. You can always get a + letter to me at the Agricultural Bank. That is the quickest way. My + friend, McLean there, always knows where my diggings are. When in + Cairo I stop with him; or at the Rossmore House." +</p> +<p> + "I shall not need to get a letter to you, monsieur," she told him + stiffly. +</p> +<p> + "But, if you did, how would you sign it?" +</p> +<p> + "Aimée.... That is French—after my mother." +</p> +<p> + "Aimée. That means Beloved, doesn't it?" +</p> +<p> + She was silent. +</p> +<p> + Surely, she thought with a swelling heart, if he were sorry he would + tell her now. It was the moment for contrition, for appeasement, for + whatever explanation his American ways might have. +</p> +<p> + She had thought about him all night. She had given his declaration a + hundred forms—but always it had been a declaration. +</p> +<p> + Now she waited, flagellating her sensitive pride. +</p> +<p> + Ryder was conscious of the constraint tightening about them and in + the dragging pause an uncomfortable common sense had time to put its + disconcerting questions. +</p> +<p> + What did it matter what her name meant? What in the world was he + doing here?.... And what did she think she was doing here?... Not + that he wanted her to go.... +</p> +<p> + And suddenly it didn't matter—whatever they thought. It was enough + that they were together in that still, soft, jasmine-scented dark. + He was breathing quickly; his pulses were beating; he had a feeling + of strange, heady delight. +</p> +<p> + The crescent moon was up at last, sailing clear of the house tops, + sending its bright rays through the filigree of tall shrubs. A + finger of light edged the contour of her shrouded head. +</p> +<p> + He bent a little closer. +</p> +<p> + "Won't you," he said softly, "take off your veil for me?" +</p> +<p> + Appalled, she clasped it to her. He had no idea in the world of the + shock of that request. It would be only a faint parallel of its + impropriety to suggest to Jinny Jeffries that she discard her frock. + Even Ryder's acquaintance with Egypt could not tell him how that + swift, confident eagerness of his could startle and affront. +</p> +<p> + "I want to see you so very much," he was murmuring, and met the + chill disdain of her retort, "But it is not for you to see my face, + monsieur!" +</p> +<p> + "Who is to see it?" he demanded. +</p> +<p> + "Who but the man I am to marry," she gave distinctly back. +</p> +<p> + The word hit him like stone. +</p> +<p> + He was conscious of a shock. Did she intend to rebuke—or to + imply—to question his intention? The steadiness of her low voice + suggested a certain steadiness of design.... He had heard of girls + who knew their own minds ... girls with unexpectedly far-sighted + vision.... Perhaps, poor child, she looked upon him as romantic + escape from all that was restrictive in her life. Secluded women go + fast—when they start. +</p> +<p> + The devil take him for that kiss! +</p> +<p> + A somewhat set look upon his thin face guarded the fluctuations of + his soul, but the blood rose strongly under his dark skin. +</p> +<p> + For a moment he did not venture upon a reply, and in that moment he + was suddenly aware that she had caught his meaning from him—and + that it was a horrible mistake. It was one of those instants of + highly-charged exchanges of meanings whose revelation was as useless + to be denied as powerless to be explained. +</p> +<p> + Then her words came in tumultuous, passionate refutation of his + thought. "That is what my father had come to tell me—that he had + arranged my marriage. It is a very splendid thing. To a general—a + rich general!" +</p> +<p> + She had not meant to tell him like that! But for the moment she was + savagely glad to hurl it at him. +</p> +<p> + He made no answer. His eyes were inscrutably intent. A variety of + things were rearranging themselves in his head. +</p> +<p> + "You're—you're going to marry him?" he said slowly. +</p> +<p> + "What else?" But she felt the phrase unfortunate and plunged past + it. "It is not for me to say no, monsieur. It is for my father to + arrange." +</p> +<p> + "But his indulgence—? You were telling me, you know, that he was so + fond of you. And that you were one of the moderns—the revolting + moderns—" +</p> +<p> + Jack Ryder's tone was questioningly cynical and its raillery cut + through her brief sham of pride. +</p> +<p> + "So I thought, too, last night." A tinge of infinite disillusionment + was in her young voice. "But it is not so." +</p> +<p> + "Then you accept—?" +</p> +<p> + The shrouded head nodded. +</p> +<p> + "But you can't want to," he broke out with sudden heat. "You don't + know him at all, do you—this general?" +</p> +<p> + "Know him? I have never seen his face nor heard his voice—and I + would die first," she added with bitter, helpless fierceness under + her breath. +</p> +<p> + The veil muffled that from him. "But why—why?" he repeated in an + angrily puzzled way. +</p> +<p> + She made a little gesture of weary impotence. Out of the dark + draperies her hands were like white fluttering butterflies. +</p> +<p> + "What can I do?" +</p> +<p> + "I should think you could do the Old Harry of a lot." +</p> +<p> + "Weep?" said the girl with a pale irony not lost upon him. +</p> +<p> + "Weep—or row. Or run," he added, almost reluctantly. +</p> +<p> + She turned away her head. "I know, I thought once that I could run. + For that I stole the key to this gate. But where would I run, + monsieur? I have neither friends, nor—nor the resources.... There + have been girls—two sisters—who ran away last year—but they were + already married and they had cousins in France. For me, my cousins + do not exist. I do not know my mother's family. They disowned her + for her marriage, my father says. And so—but it is not possible to + evade this.... It is not possible. This marriage is required." +</p> +<p> + "Required—rot! Can't you—don't you—" he paused, looking down upon + her in tremendous and serious uncertainty. The impulse was strong + upon him to tell her that he would help her. The accents of her + voice had seemed to tear at his very heart. +</p> +<p> + It was utter madness. Where, in the map of Africa, would he hide + her? And how would he take care of her? What would he do to her? + Make love to her? Marry her? Take home a wife from an Egyptian + harem—a surprising acquisition with which to startle and enchant + his decorous family in East Middleton! +</p> +<p> + And a pretty end to his work here, his reputation, his + responsibilities— +</p> +<p> + It was madness. And the fact that the thought had presented itself, + even for his flouting mockery, indicated that he was mad. He told + himself to be careful. Better men than he had everlastingly done for + themselves because upon a night of stars and moonshine some + dark-eyed girl had played the very devil with their common sense. +</p> +<p> + He reminded himself that he had never set eyes on her until last + night, that she might be the consummate perfection of a minx, that + there might not be a word of truth in all of this. +</p> +<p> + This general, now! Sudden. Not a word about it last night. And now— +</p> +<p> + He had an inkling that even Mohammedan fathers do not rush matters + at such a pace. +</p> +<p> + For all he knew the girl might be inventing this general—for some + artless reasons of her own. For all he knew she might be married to + him and desirous of escape. +</p> +<p> + But he didn't believe it. She was too young and shy and virginal. + The accents of her candor rebuked his skepticism. He merely told + himself these things because the last vestige of his expiring common + sense was prompting him. +</p> +<p> + And after all these creditable and excellent exhortations, to the + utter extinction of the last vestige of that common sense he heard + himself saying abruptly, "But isn't there anything in the world that + I can do—?" +</p> +<p> + "Nothing, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "But for you to submit—like this—" +</p> +<p> + "It is not to be helped." +</p> +<p> + "But it <i>is</i> to be helped—if you really dislike it," he added + jealously. +</p> +<p> + "I cannot help it, because—because my father—" She hesitated. The + honor of her father and her family pride and affection were all + involved, yet suddenly the sacrifice of these became more tolerable + than to consent to that image of herself which she saw swiftly + defining itself in his mind, that slight, weak creature, whose + acquiescent passivity submitted to this marriage. +</p> +<p> + The thought was unbearable. She was burning beneath her veil. She + would tell him.... And perhaps she was not averse, in her childish + pride, to the pitiful glory of having him see her in the beauty of + her filial sacrifice. +</p> +<p> + "My father has—has done something against the English laws," she + faltered, "and Hamdi Bey, this general, knows of it, and will inform + unless—unless my father makes this marriage. A cousin of his has + seen me," she added, her young vanity forlornly rearing its head, + "and told Hamdi that I am not—not too ill-looking a girl—" +</p> +<p> + Her essay of a laugh died. +</p> +<p> + Ryder's look deepened its sharp, defensive concentration. +</p> +<p> + "This is true—I mean your father is not just putting something + over—telling you to get your consent?" +</p> +<p> + Her thoughts flew back to her father's haggard face. "Oh, it is + true! I know." +</p> +<p> + "And he's going to hand you over—What sort is this Hamdi?" +</p> +<p> + "A general. Old. Evil enough to lay traps to obtain me." +</p> +<p> + "It's abomination." The anger in the young man surged beyond his + control. "You must not do it.... If your father is clever enough to + break a law let him be clever enough to mend it—by himself. Such a + sacrifice is not required.... You must realize what this means to + you. You must realize—Look here, I'll help you. I'll plan some + escape. There must be ways. I have friends—" +</p> +<p> + She stifled the leap of her heart. She held her head high and made + what she thought was a very noble little speech. "It is for my + father, monsieur. You do not understand. It is to save my father." +</p> +<p> + He looked at her in silence. He was afraid to answer for a moment; + he could feel the unruly blood beating even in the lips he pressed + together. +</p> +<p> + "But don't you understand—" he blurted at last and broke off. +</p> +<p> + After all, he did not know this girl. If he swayed her judgment now, + and dragged her away, what life, what compensation could he offer + her? How did he know that she would not regret it? Would she be + happier in a world unknown?.... +</p> +<p> + She had been brought up to this sort of thing. It was bred in + her.... Marriage was her inevitable game. This very charm she + exercised, this subtle, haunting invasion of his senses, what was + that but another proof of the harem existence where all influences + were forced to serve the ends of sex ... +</p> +<p> + And she was so maddeningly resigned to taking this general! +</p> +<p> + A queer hot rage was gaining possession of him. "Oh, well, if you + prefer this," he said brutally, with a youthful desire to wreak pain + in return for that strange pain which something was inflicting upon + him. +</p> +<p> + A girl who would let him kiss her one night—and on the next inform + him that she was giving herself to an unknown—an old Turk.... If + she could go like that, to some other's arms and lips ... +</p> +<p> + He wanted to take her fiercely in his arms and crush her lips + against his and then fling her away and say, "Oh, go to him now—if + you can!" +</p> +<p> + And at the same time he wanted to gather her to him as tenderly as + if she were a flower he was guarding and tell her that he would + protect her against all the world. +</p> +<p> + He was divided and confused and blindly angry. He felt baffled and + frustrated. He was both aching and raging. And yet he was capable of + reminding himself, in some corner of his uninvaded mind, that this + was undoubtedly the best thing for them both. +</p> +<p> + What else? For him? For her? +</p> +<p> + And yet his tongue went on stabbing her. +</p> +<p> + "If this is what you are determined to do—" he heard himself saying + hardly, yet with a hint of deferred finality. +</p> +<p> + It was as if he had said, "If this, then, is what you are like! If + you are the soft, submissive harem creature, the toy, the + odalisque—If you will endure undesired love rather than face the + world—" +</p> +<p> + And she knew that was what he was saying to her. The injustice + brought a lump of self-pity to her throbbing throat.... That he + should not realize and honor the courage of her sacrifice.... That + he should reproach, despise.... She had expected other entreaties + ... protestations.... +</p> +<p> + Her heart ached with a throb of steady dreariness. +</p> +<p> + But she did not stir. Not a line of her drooping draperies wavered + towards him. And swallowing that lump in her throat, she achieved a + toneless, "That is what I am going to do." +</p> +<p> + At the other end of the garden a sound came from the house. +</p> +<p> + Ryder seemed to rouse himself. "Good-bye, then," he said, + uncertainly. +</p> +<p> + "Good-bye, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + He looked oddly at her. "Good-bye," he muttered again, and turned, + and stumbled out of the gate. +</p> +<p> + A pool of moonlight lay without its arches, and he stepped into it + as if coming out of the shadows of an enchanted garden. He stood and + straightened himself as if throwing off that garden's spell. He put + back his shoulders and took a quick step down the lane. +</p> +<p> + A slight sound drew his eyes back. +</p> +<p> + She had followed him to the gate; she stood there, in the moonlight, + against the inky wells of shadow into which her black robe flowed, + and in the moonlight her face, gazing after him, was an exquisite, + ethereal apparition, like a spirit of the garden. +</p> +<p> + She had cast off her veil. He had a vision of her dark eyes shining + over rose-flushed cheeks, of deeper-rose-red lips in curves of + haunting sweetness, of the tender contour of her young face, fixed + unforgettingly in the radiant moonlight—only an instant's vision, + for while the blood stopped in his veins the darkness engulfed her, + like a magician's curtain. +</p> +<p> + But he waited while he heard the gate closed. Still he waited while + he heard her locking it. And then for all his hot young pride, he + turned back and knocked upon it. He called softly. He whispered + entreaties. +</p> +<p> + Not a sound. Not an answer. +</p> +<p> + In a revulsion of feeling he turned and made his way blindly from + the lane. +</p> +<p> + She had heard his voice. Like a creature utterly spent, she had been + leaning against the great gate from which she had withdrawn the key. + But she uttered not a breath in answer, and after she had heard his + footsteps die away she turned slowly back and groped among the rose + roots for the key's hiding place. +</p> +<p> + Mechanically she smoothed it over and moved on towards the house. + All was quiet there. That sound had been no alarm. Unobserved she + slipped within the little door, and up the spiral steps. +</p> +<p> + She had not seen the dark eyes that were watching her, from the + other side of the rose thicket. After the girl had gained the house, + the old woman came forward and stooped before the marked bush, + muttering under her breath at the thorns. After a few moments she + gave a little grunt of satisfaction and her exploring hand drew out + the key. +</p> +<p> + Smoothing again the rifled hiding place among the roses, she made + her careful way into the house. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VI +</h2> +<h3> + A SECRET OF THE SANDS +</h3> +<p> + The siesta was past. The sun was tilting towards the west and + shadows were beginning to jut out across the blazing sands. +</p> +<p> + Over the mounds of rubbish the bearers had resumed their slow + procession, a picturesque frieze of tattered, indigo-robed, ebony + figures, baskets on heads, against a cloudless cobalt sky, and again + the hot air was invaded with the monotonous rise and fall of their + labor chant. +</p> +<p> + A man with a short, pointed red beard and an academic face beneath a + pith helmet was stooping over the siftings from those baskets, + intent upon the stream of sand through the wire screens. Patiently + he discarded the unending pebbles, discovering at rare intervals + some lost bead, some splinter of old sycamore wood, some fragment of + pottery in which a Ptolemy had sipped his wine—or a kitchen wench + had soaked her lentils. +</p> +<p> + Beyond the man were traces of the native camp, a burnt-out fire, a + roll of rags, a tattered shelter cloth stuck on two tottering + sticks, and distributed indiscriminatingly were a tethered goat, a + white donkey with motionless, drooping ears, and a few supercilious + camels. +</p> +<p> + The camp was in the center of a broken line of foothills on the + desert's edge. North and south and west the wide sands swept out to + meet the sky, and to the east, shutting out the Nile valley, the + hills reared their red rock from the yellow drift. +</p> +<p> + Among the jutting rock in the foreground yawned dark mouths that + were the entrances of the discovered tombs, and within one of these + tombs was another white man. He was conducting his own siftings in + high solitude, a lean, bronzed young man, with dark hair and eyes + and, at the present moment, an unexhilarated expression. +</p> +<p> + It had been two weeks since Jack Ryder had returned to camp. Two + interminable weeks. They were the longest, the dullest, the + dreariest, the most irritatingly undelighting weeks that he had ever + lived through. +</p> +<p> + But bitterly he resented any aspersion from the long-suffering + Thatcher upon his disposition. He wanted it distinctly understood + that he was <i>not</i> low-spirited. Not in the least. A man wasn't in + the dumps just because he wasn't—well, garrulous. Just because he + didn't go about whistling like a steam siren or exult like a cheer + leader when some one dug up the effigy of a Hathor-cow.... Just + because he objected when the natives twanged their fool strings all + night and wailed at the moon. +</p> +<p> + The moon was full now. Round and white it went sailing blandly over + the eternal monotony of desert.... Round and white, it lighted up + the eternal sameness of life.... He had never noticed it before, but + a moon was a poignantly depressing phenomenon. +</p> +<p> + He couldn't help it. A man couldn't make himself be a comedian. It + wasn't as if he wanted to be a grump. He would have been glad to be + glad. He wanted Thatcher to make him glad. He defied him to. +</p> +<p> + He didn't enjoy this flat, insipid taste of things, this dull grind, + this feeling of sameness and dullness that made nothing seem worth + while.... A feeling that he had been marooned on a desert island, + far from all stir and throb of life. +</p> +<p> + Suppose he did dig up a Hathor-cow? Suppose he dug up Hathor + herself, or Cleopatra, or ten little Ptolemies? What was the good of + it? +</p> +<p> + Not Jinny Jeffries herself could have cast more aspersions upon the + personal value of excavations. +</p> +<p> + When he was tired of denying to himself that there was anything + unusual the matter with him, he shifted the inner argument and took + up the denial that anything which had happened in Cairo those two + weeks before had anything to do with it. As if that rash encounter + <i>mattered</i>! As if he were the silly, senseless sentimental sort of + idiot to go mooning about his work because of a girl—and a girl + from a harem with a taste for secret masquerades and Turkish + marriages! +</p> +<p> + As if he cared—! +</p> +<p> + Of course—he admitted this logically and coldly now to himself, as + he sat there in the ray of his excavator's lantern, on the sanded + floor at the end of the Hall of Offerings—of course, he was sorry + for the girl. It was no life for any young girl—especially a + spirited one, with her veins bubbling with French blood. +</p> +<p> + The system was wrong. If they were going to shut up those girls, + they had no business to bring them up on modern ideas. If they kept + the mashrubiyeh on the windows and the yashmak on their faces they + ought to keep the kohl on their eyes and the henna on their fingers + and education out of their hidden heads. +</p> +<p> + It was too bad.... But, of course, they were brought up to it. Look + how quickly that girl had given in. She was Turkish, through and + through. Submissive. Docile.... And a darned good thing she was, + too! Suppose she had taken him at his fool word. Suppose she had + really wanted to get away! +</p> +<p> + Lucky, that's what he'd been. And it would be a lesson to him. Never + again. No more masked young things with their stolen keys and their + harem entrances. No more whispered tales of woe in a shady garden. + No more— +</p> +<p> + Violently he wrenched himself from his No Mores. Recollection had a + way of stirring an unpleasant tumult. +</p> +<p> + But it was all over. He had forgotten it—he <i>would</i> forget it. He + would forget <i>her</i>. Work, that was the thing. Normal, sensible, + every day work. +</p> +<p> + But there was no joy in this tonic work. Somewhere, between a night + and a morning, he had lost that glow of accomplishment which had + buoyed him, which had made him fairly ecstatic over the discovery of + this very tomb. +</p> +<p> + For this tomb was his own find. It had been found long before by the + plundering Persians, and it had been found by Arabs who had + plundered the Persian remains—but between and after those findings + the oblivious sands had swept over it, blotting it from the world, + choking the entrance hall and the shafts, seeping through + half-sealed entrances and packing its dry drift over the rifled + sarcophagus of the king and over the withered mummy of the young + girl in the ante-room. The tombs had been cleared now, down almost + to the stone floors, and Ryder was busy with the drifts that had + lodged in the crevices about the entrance to the shaft. +</p> +<p> + It was really an important find. Although much plundered, the walls + were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls + were exceptional examples. And there were some very interesting + things to decipher. A scholar and an explorer could well be + enthusiastic. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder continued to look far from enthusiastic. Even when his + groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard + substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance. + Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it + off. A gleam of gold shone in his hand. But it was no ancient amulet + or necklace or breast guard—nor was it any bit of the harness of + the plundering Persians. It was a locket, very heavily and ornately + carved. +</p> +<p> + He stood a moment staring down at the thing with a curious feeling + of having stood staring down at exactly the same thing before—that + subconscious feeling of the repetition of events which supports the + theories of reincarnationists—and then, quite suddenly, memory came + to his aid. +</p> +<p> + In McLean's office. That day of the masquerade. Those visiting + Frenchmen and that locket they had shown him. Of course the thing + reminded him— +</p> +<p> + And it was remarkably alike. The same thick oval, the same ponderous + effect of the coat of arms—if it should prove the same coat of arms + that would be a clue! +</p> +<p> + With his mind still piecing the recollection and surmise together + his fingers pressed the spring. There was a miniature within, but it + was not the picture of Monsieur Delcassé. Ryder was looking down + upon the face of a girl, a beautiful, spirited face, with merry eyes + and wistful lips—dark eyes, with a lovely arch of brow, and + rose-red lips with haunting curves. +</p> +<p> + And eyes and brows and lips and curves, it was the face of the girl + who had gazed after him in the moonlight against the shadows of the + pasha's garden. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VII +</h2> +<h3> + TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT +</h3> +<p> + "It is no end of good of you, Jack, to take this trouble," Andrew + McLean remarked appreciatively, looking up from his scrutiny of the + packet which his unexpected luncheon guest had pushed over to his + plate. +</p> +<p> + "Uncommon thoughtful. It's undoubtedly a twin to that locket, the + portrait of the man's wife—whatever his name was." +</p> +<p> + "Delcassé," said Jack Ryder promptly. +</p> +<p> + Gratefully he drained the second lemon squash which the + silent-footed Mohammed had placed at his elbow. It had been a hard + morning's trip, this coming in from camp in high haste, and he was + hot and dusty. +</p> +<p> + "You might have sent the thing," McLean mentioned. "I daresay that + special agent chap has left the country, for I recollect he said he + was at the end of his search.... And, of course, this isn't much of + a clue—eh, what?" +</p> +<p> + "It's everything of a clue," insisted Ryder. "It shows where this + Frenchman was working, for the first thing—" +</p> +<p> + "Unless it had been stolen by some native who lost it in that + tomb." +</p> +<p> + "Natives don't lose gold lockets. Of course it might have been + stolen and hidden—but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely + that this was the very tomb where Delcassé was working at the time + of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous + excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern + got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of + the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcassé wrote his + book about—looks very much as if it might be by the same artist. + There's a flock of hippopotami in a marsh scene with the identical + drawing, and there's the same lovely boat in full sail—but there, + you bounder, you don't know the Tomb of Thi from a thyroid gland. + You're here to administer financial justice, the middle, the high, + and the low; your soul is with piasters, not the past. But take my + word for it, it's exactly the spot where an enthusiast of the Thi + Tomb would be grubbing away.... Lord, they could choose their find + in those days!" +</p> +<p> + "It's uncommonly likely," McLean conceded, abandoning his demolished + cherry tart and pulling out his briar. "And if the locket proves the + duplicate of the other it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame + Delcassé, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame + Delcassé.... Though in a general way," McLean deduced with Scotch + judicialness, "it supports the theory of foul play. The woman would + hardly have lost her miniature, or have sold it, except under + pressing conditions. In fact—" +</p> +<p> + Ryder was brusque with his facts. +</p> +<p> + "That doesn't matter—Madame Delcassé doesn't matter. The thing that + matters is—" +</p> +<p> + As brusquely he broke off. His tongue balked before the revelation + but he goaded it on. +</p> +<p> + "That there is a girl—the living image of that picture." +</p> +<p> + "I say!" McLean looked up at that, distinctly intrigued. "That's + getting on.... You mean you've seen her?" +</p> +<p> + Ryder nodded, suddenly busy with his cigarette. +</p> +<p> + "Where is she, now? In Cairo? That's luck, man!... And you say she's + like?" +</p> +<p> + "You'd think it her picture." +</p> +<p> + "It's an uncommon face." McLean bent over it again. "I fancied the + artist had just been making a bit of beauty, but if there's a girl + like that—! Fancy stumbling on that!... But where is she? And what + name does she go by?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, her name—she doesn't know her own, of course." Ryder paused + uncertainly. "She's in Cairo," he began again vaguely. "She'd be + just about the right age—eighteen or so. She—she's had awf'ly + hard luck." Distressfully he hesitated. +</p> +<p> + The shrewd eyes of McLean dwelt upon him in sorrowful silence. "Eh, + Jock," he said at last, with mock scandal scarcely veiling rebuke. + "I did not know that you knew any of that sort—the poor, wee lost + thing.... Tell me, now—" +</p> +<p> + "Tell you you're off your chump," said Jack rudely. "She's no lost + lamb. Fact is, she's never spoken to a man—except myself." He + rather enjoyed the start this gave McLean after his insinuations. It + helped him on with his story. +</p> +<p> + "The girl doesn't know her own name at all, I gather. She thinks + she's the daughter of Tewfick Pasha. Her mother married the Turk and + died very soon afterwards and he brought up this girl as his own. + She says she's his only child." +</p> +<p> + He paused, ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually + to enjoy McLean's astonishment. As astonishment, it was distinctly + vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into + his friend's mind. +</p> +<p> + McLean knew—slightly—Tewfick Pasha. He knew—supremely—the + inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the + utter impossibility of any man's speech with her. +</p> +<p> + Yet here was Ryder telling him— +</p> +<p> + Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the + girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He + touched lightly upon her attempted flight and his pursuit. Even more + lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate + and the exchange of confidences. +</p> +<p> + "She said that her dead mother had been French. And that her name + was her mother's—Aimée. So there is—" +</p> +<p> + "But the likeness, man—her face? She never unveiled to you?" +</p> +<p> + "Well, the next night—" +</p> +<p> + "The <i>next</i> night?" +</p> +<p> + It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of McLean's + astonishment. +</p> +<p> + "Yes, the next night," he repeated with careful carelessness.... "I + told the girl I would come and see if she got in all right—there + had been some footsteps the night before—" +</p> +<p> + "And you went? And she came?" +</p> +<p> + "Do you suppose she sent her father?" +</p> +<p> + "You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch," McLean retorted + grimly. "Well, get on with your damning story. The girl took off her + veil—" +</p> +<p> + "Nothing of the kind," said Jack a trifle testily—so soon does + conventional masculinity champion the conservatism of the other sex! + "That was just as I was going—gone, in fact. I looked back and she + had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face—I saw her + as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a + picture of her. She is Delcassé's daughter and she doesn't know it. + Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old Turk—" +</p> +<p> + "Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago Tewfick could hardly have been + thirty and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love + affair or it may have been plunder.... The girl remembers her?" +</p> +<p> + "Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that + the father was so in love that he never married again." +</p> +<p> + "H'm ... It seems to me that I've heard tales of our Tewfick and of + pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and + tattlers. However—as to this Delcassé inheritance, I'll just notify + the French legation—" +</p> +<p> + "We'll have to look sharp," said Ryder quickly. "There's no time to + lose. The girl is to be married." +</p> +<p> + "Married?... But she'll inherit the money just the same." +</p> +<p> + "But she doesn't want to be married," Ryder insisted anxiously. "Her + father—her alleged father—has just sprung this on her. Says there + are political or financial reasons. He's been caught in some dirty + work by this Hamdi Bey and he's stopping Hamdi's mouth with the + girl.... And we've got to stop that." +</p> +<p> + "I wonder if we can," said McLean thoughtfully. +</p> +<p> + "If we can? When the girl is French? When she's been lied to and + deceived?" +</p> +<p> + "She seems to have been taken jolly well care of. Brought up as his + own and all that. Keep your shirt on, Jack," McLean advised dryly + with a shrewd glance from his gray eyes at the other's unguarded + heat. +</p> +<p> + Then his eyes dropped to the miniature again. A lovely face. A + lovely unfortunate creature.... And if the daughter looked like + that, small wonder that Jack was touched.... Beauty in distress. +</p> +<p> + Some men had all the luck, McLean reflected. He had never taken Jack + for the gallivanting kind, either, yet here he was going to + masquerades with one girl and coming home with another.... +</p> +<p> + Jack was too good looking, that was the trouble with the youngster. + Good looking and gay humored. The kind that attracted women.... + Women and romance were never fluttering about lank, light-eyed, + uninteresting old Scotchmen of twenty-nine! +</p> +<p> + A mild and wistful pang, which McLean refused to name, made itself + known. +</p> +<p> + "I'll see the legation," he began. +</p> +<p> + "At once. I'll wait," urged Ryder. +</p> +<p> + And at once McLean went. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + The result was what he had foreseen. The legation was appreciative + of his interest. That special agent had returned to France but his + address was left, and undoubtedly the family of Delcassé would be + grateful for any information which Monsieur McLean could send. +</p> +<p> + "Send!" repudiated Ryder hotly. "Write to France and back—wait for + somebody to come over! Can't the legation do something now?" +</p> +<p> + "The legation has no authority. They can't take the girl away from + the man who is, at any rate, her step-father." +</p> +<p> + "They can put the fear of God into him about this marriage. They + can deny his right to hand her over to one of his pals. They can + threaten him with an inquiry into the circumstances of her mother's + marriage." +</p> +<p> + "And why should they? They may regard it as a very natural marriage. + And remember, my dear Jack, that the legation has no desire to + alienate the affections of influential Turks, or criticize + fifteen-years-ago romances. You have a totally wrong impression of + the responsibilities of foreign representatives." +</p> +<p> + "But to let him dispose of a French girl—" +</p> +<p> + "He is disposing of her, as his daughter, in honorable marriage to a + wealthy and aristocratic general. There can be no question of his + motives—" +</p> +<p> + "Of course, if you think that sort of thing is all right—" +</p> +<p> + Carefully McLean ignored the other's wrath. +</p> +<p> + Patiently he explained. "It's not what I think, my dear fellow, it's + what the legation thinks. There's not a chance in the world of + getting the marriage stopped." +</p> +<p> + "Then I'll do it myself," declared Ryder. "I'll see this Tewfick + Pasha and talk to him. Tell him the money is to come to the girl + only when she is single. Tell him the French law gives the father's + representatives full charge. Tell him that he kidnapped the mother + and the government will prosecute unless the girl is given her + liberty. Tell him anything. A man with a guilty conscience can + always be bluffed." +</p> +<p> + In silence McLean gazed upon him, perplexed and clouded, his + quizzical twinkle gone. Jack was taking this thing infernally to + heart.... And it was a bad business. +</p> +<p> + "You will let me do the telling," he stated at last, grimly. "What + can be said, I'll say. Like a fool, I will meddle." +</p> +<p> + And so it happened that within another hour two very stiff and + constrained young men were ringing the bell at the entrance door of + Tewfick Pasha. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VIII +</h2> +<h3> + TEWFICK RECEIVES +</h3> +<p> + A huge Soudanese admitted them. They found themselves in a tiled + vestibule, looking through open arches into the green of a + garden—that garden, Ryder hardly needed to remind himself, with + whose back door he had made such unconventional acquaintance. +</p> +<p> + Now he had a glimpse of a sunny fountain and fluttering pigeons, + and, on either side of the garden, of the two wings of the building, + gay white walls with green shutters more suggestive of a French + villa than an Egyptian palace, before the Soudanese marshaled them + toward the stairs upon the right. +</p> +<p> + The left, then, was the way to the haremlik. And somewhere in those + secluded rooms, to which no man but the owner of the palace ever + gained admission, was Aimée. +</p> +<p> + The Soudanese mounted the stairs before them and held open a door + into a long drawing-room from which the pasha's modernity had + stripped every charm except the color of some worn old rugs; the + windows were draped in European style, the walls exhibited paper + instead of paneling; in one corner was a Victrola and in another, + beside a lounge chair, stood a table littered with cigarette trays + and French novels with explicit titles. +</p> +<p> + The only Egyptian touch to the place was four enormous oil portraits + of pompous turbaned gentlemen, in one of whom Ryder recognized the + familiar rotundity of Mahomet Ali in his grand robes. +</p> +<p> + As a pasha's palace it was a blow, and Ryder's vague, romantic + notions of high halls and gilded arches, suffered a collapse. +</p> +<p> + Tewfick Pasha came in with haste. He had been going out when these + callers were announced and he was dressed for parade, in a very + light, very tight suit, gardenia in his button-hole, cane in his + gloved hands, fez upon his head. For all their smiling welcome, his + full, dark eyes were uneasy. +</p> +<p> + He had grown distrustful of surprises. +</p> +<p> + It was McLean's affair to reassure him. Far from fulminating any + accusations the canny Scot announced himself as the bearer of glad + tidings. A fortune, he announced, was coming to the pasha—or to the + pasha's family. A very rich old woman in France had decided to + change her will. +</p> +<p> + There he paused and the pasha continued to smile non-committally, + but the word fortune was operating. In the back of his mind he was + hastily trying to think of rich old women in France who might change + their wills. +</p> +<p> + "I am afraid that it is my stupidity which has kept you from the + knowledge of this for some weeks," McLean went on. "I had so many + other matters to look up that I did not at once consult my records. + And it has been so many years since you married Madame Delcassé that + the name had slipped general recollection.... It was twelve years + ago, I believe, that she died?" +</p> +<p> + Casually he waited and Jack Ryder held his breath. He felt the full + suspense of a pause long enough for the pasha's thoughts to dart + down several avenues and back. If the man should deny it! But why + should he? What harm in the admission, after all these years, with + Madame Delcassé dead and buried? And with a fortune involved in the + admission. +</p> +<p> + The Turk bowed and Ryder breathed again. +</p> +<p> + "Ten years," said Tewfick softly. +</p> +<p> + "Ah—ten. But there has been no communication with France for twelve + years or even longer?" +</p> +<p> + "Possibly not, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "This old aunt," pursued McLean, "was a person of prejudice as well + as fortune—hence it has taken a little time for her to adjust + herself." He paused and looked understandingly at the Turk, who + nodded amiably as one whose comprehension met him more than half + way. +</p> +<p> + "My own aunt was of a similar obstinacy," he murmured. He added, + "This fortune you speak of—it comes through my wife?" +</p> +<p> + "For her inheritors. Madame Delcassé—the former Madame Delcassé I + should say—left but one daughter?" +</p> +<p> + Again the pasha bowed and again Ryder felt the throb of triumph. He + looked upon his friend with admiration. How marvelously McLean had + worked the miracle. No accusations, no threats, no obstacles, no + blank walls of denial! Not a ruffle of discord in the establishment + of these salient facts—the marriage of Madame Delcassé to the pasha + and the existence of the daughter. +</p> +<p> + Wonderful man—McLean. He had never half appreciated him. +</p> +<p> + But the pasha was not wholly the simple assenter. +</p> +<p> + "Do I understand," he inquired, "that there is a fortune coming from + France for my daughter?" And at McLean's confirmation, "And when you + say fortune," he continued, "you intend to say—?" and his glance + now took in the silent American, considering that some cue must be + his. +</p> +<p> + But McLean responded. "The figures are not to be divulged—not until + the aunt is in communication with her niece. But they will be large, + monsieur, for this aunt is a person of great wealth." +</p> +<p> + "And yet alive to enjoy it," said Tewfick with smiling eyes. +</p> +<p> + "An aged and dying woman," thrust in Ryder in haste. "Her only care + now is to see her niece before she dies." +</p> +<p> + "Ah!... But that could be arranged," said Tewfick amiably. +</p> +<p> + "We have at once communicated with France," McLean told him, "but we + came instantly to you, to, inform you—" +</p> +<p> + "A thousand thanks and a thousand! The bearers of good tidings," + smiled their host. +</p> +<p> + "Because we understand that there is a question of the young lady's + marriage," pursued McLean, "and you would, of course, wish to defer + this until these new circumstances are complied with." +</p> +<p> + The pasha stared. "Not at all. A fortune is as pleasant to a wife as + to a maid." +</p> +<p> + "There are so many questions of law," offered McLean with purposeful + vagueness. "French wardship and trusteeship and all that. It would + be advisable, I think, to wait." +</p> +<p> + "Absurd," said the pasha easily. +</p> +<p> + "You would want no doubts cast upon the legality of the marriage," + McLean persisted thoughtfully, "and since mademoiselle is under age + and the French law has certain restrictions—" +</p> +<p> + "Pff! We are not under the French law—at least I have not heard + that England has relinquished her power," retorted Tewfick not + without malice. +</p> +<p> + "But Mademoiselle Delcassé is French," thrust in Ryder. He knew that + McLean had ventured as far as he, an official and responsible + person, could go, and that the burden of intimation must rest upon + himself. "And under her father's will his family there is + considered in trusteeship. So there would be certain technicalities + that must be considered before any marriage can be arranged, the + signature of the French guardian, the settlement of the dot—this + inheritance, for instance—all mere formalities but involving a + little delay." +</p> +<p> + Tewfick Pasha turned in his chair and cocked his eyes at this + strange young man who had dropped from the blue with this extensive + advice. He looked puzzled. This American fitted into no type of his + acquaintance. He was so very young and slim and boyish ... with not + at all the air of a legal representative.... But McLean's position + vouched for him. +</p> +<p> + "You speak for the French family, monsieur?" +</p> +<p> + Unhesitatingly Ryder declared that he did. +</p> +<p> + "Then you may inform the family," announced Tewfick, bristling, + "that my daughter has been very well cared for all these years + without advice from France." +</p> +<p> + "I haven't a doubt of it," said Ryder quickly, "but the French law + might begin to entertain doubts of it, if mademoiselle were married + off now without consultation with the authorities.... Already," he + added a little meaningly, as the other shrugged the suggestion away, + "there have been questions raised concerning the mother's marriage + and the separation of the little Mademoiselle Delcassé from her + relatives in France, and now if she were to be married without any + legal settlement of her estate—" +</p> +<p> + Steadily he sustained the other's gaze, while his unfinished thought + seemed to float significantly in the air about them. +</p> +<p> + "Have a cigarette," said the pasha hospitably, extending a gold case + monogrammed with diamonds and emeralds. "Ah, coffee!" he announced, + welcomingly, as a little black boy entered with a brass tray of + steaming cups. +</p> +<p> + "I hope, gentlemen, that you like my coffee. It is not the usual + Turkish brew. No, this comes from Aden, the finest coffee in the + world. A ship captain brings it to me, especially." +</p> +<p> + Beamingly he sipped the scalding stuff, then darted back to that + suspended sentence. "But you were saying—something of a + trusteeship?... Do I understand that it is an aunt of Madame + Delcassé—the former Madame Delcassé—who is leaving this money?" +</p> +<p> + "Not of Madame but of Monsieur Delcassé," McLean informed him. +</p> +<p> + "Ah!... That accounts ... But in that case, then, there need be no + concern in France over my daughter's marriage...." He turned his + round eyes from one to the other a moment. +</p> +<p> + "There is no Mademoiselle Delcassé." +</p> +<p> + "Sir?" said Ryder sharply. +</p> +<p> + "There is no Mademoiselle Delcassé," repeated the pasha, his eyes + frankly enlivened. +</p> +<p> + "But—we have just been speaking—you cannot mean to say—" +</p> +<p> + "We have been speaking of my daughter—the daughter of the former + Madame Delcassé." +</p> +<p> + Smilingly he looked upon them. "A pity that we did not understand + each other. But you appear to know so much—and I supposed that you + knew that, too, that the daughter of Monsieur Delcassé was dead." +</p> +<p> + Neither of the young men spoke. McLean looked politely attentive; + Ryder's face maintained that look of concentration which guarded the + fluctuations of his feelings. +</p> +<p> + "It was many years ago," the pasha murmured, putting down his coffee + cup and selecting another cigarette. "Not long after her mother's + marriage to me.... A very charming little girl—I was positively + attached to her," Tewfick added reminiscently. +</p> +<p> + "Well, well, well, what a pity now," said McLean very slowly. + "This will be a great disappointment.... And so the present + mademoiselle—" +</p> +<p> + "Is my daughter." +</p> +<p> + McLean was silent. Ryder could hardly trust himself to speak. +</p> +<p> + "What did she die of?" he asked at last, in a voice whose edged + quality brought the pasha's glance to him with a flash of hostility + behind its veil. +</p> +<p> + But he answered calmly enough. "Of the fever, monsieur.... She was + never strong." +</p> +<p> + "And her grave... I should like to make a report." +</p> +<p> + "It was in the south ... desert burial, I am afraid. You must know + that the little one was hardly a true believer for our cemetery." +</p> +<p> + "And you would say that she was only five or six years old?" Ryder + persisted. +</p> +<p> + The pasha nodded. +</p> +<p> + "I should like to get as near as possible to the date if it is not + too much trouble.... The father died about fifteen years ago and the + mother was married to you soon after?" +</p> +<p> + "Really, monsieur, you—" +</p> +<p> + Tewfick was frankly restive. +</p> +<p> + "I know nothing of the father," he said sullenly. "And as to the + child's death—how can one recall after these years? In one, two + years after she came to me—one does not grave these things upon the + eyeballs." +</p> +<p> + "But you do remember that it was long ago—when your own daughter + was very little?" +</p> +<p> + "Exactly. That is my recollection, monsieur.... And I recall," said + the pasha, suddenly obliging and sentimental, "that even my little + one cried for the child. It was afflicting.... Assure the family in + France of my sympathy in their disappointment." +</p> +<p> + "I am sorry that my news is after all of no interest to you," + observed McLean, setting the example for rising. "You will pardon my + error of information—and accept my appreciation of your courtesy." +</p> +<p> + "It is I who am indebted for your trouble," their host assured + them, all smiles again. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder was not to be led away without a parting shot. +</p> +<p> + "The name of the Delcassé child—was Aimée?" +</p> +<p> + Imperceptibly Tewfick hesitated. Then bowed in assent. +</p> +<p> + "Odd," said young Ryder thoughtfully. "And your own daughter's name, + also, is Aimée.... Two little ones with the same name." +</p> +<p> + With a slight, vexed laugh, as one despairing of understanding, the + pasha turned to McLean. "Your young friend, monsieur, is uninformed + that Turkish children have many names.... After the loss of the + elder we called the little one by the same name.... I trust I have + made everything perfectly clear to you?" +</p> +<p> + "As crystal," said McLean politely. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + "As lightning," said Jack Ryder hotly, striding down the street. "It + was a flash of invention, that yarn. When I spoke about the + questions raised by his marriage the old fox sniffed the wind and + was afraid of trouble—he decided on the instant that no future + fortune was worth interference with his plans, and he cut the ground + from under our feet.... Lord, what a lie!" +</p> +<p> + "Masterly, you must admit." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I admired the beggar, even while I choked on it. But + fever—desert burial—two Aimées! And the sentimental face he + pulled—he ought to have had a spot-light and wailing woodwinds." +</p> +<p> + McLean chuckled. +</p> +<p> + "I'll believe anything of him now," Ryder rushed on. "I'll bet he + murdered Delcassé and kidnapped the mother—and now he is selling + their daughter—" +</p> +<p> + "I fancy murder's a bit beyond our Tewfick. That's too thick. He's + probably telling the truth there—he may never have known Delcassé. + And as for the widow—she must have been in no end of trouble with a + dead man and a wrecked expedition and a baby on her hands, and + Tewfick may have offered himself as a grateful solution to her. + You'd be surprised at the things I've heard. And if she looked like + her picture Tewfick probably laid himself out to be lovely to + her.... I rather like the chap, myself." +</p> +<p> + "I love him," Ryder snorted. "The infernal liar—" +</p> +<p> + "Steady now—suppose it's all the truth? Nothing impossible to it. + Fact is, I rather believe it," said McLean imperturbably. "It hangs + together. If this girl you met thinks she's his daughter, that's + conclusive. She'd have some idea—servants' gossip or family + whisperings.... And why should he have brought her up as his own?" +</p> +<p> + "No other children. And he'd grown fond of her, of course. If you + could see her!" retorted Ryder. +</p> +<p> + "Just as well, I can't.... And I think he could hardly have kept her + in the dark.... We'd better call it a wild goose chase and say the + man's telling the truth." +</p> +<p> + "If this girl were his daughter she couldn't be more than fourteen + years old. And I've seen the girl and she's eighteen if she's a + day—you might take her for twenty. <i>Fourteen</i>!" said Ryder in + repudiating scorn. +</p> +<p> + Hesitating McLean murmured something about the early maturity of the + natives. +</p> +<p> + "Natives?" Ryder flung angrily back. "This girl's French!" +</p> +<p> + "As far as we are concerned, Jack, this girl is Turkish—and + fourteen.... We can't get around that, and you had better not forget + it," his friend quietly advised. "We've done everything that we can + and there is no use working yourself up.... If anybody's to blame in + this business, I don't think it's Tewfick—he's done the handsome + thing by her—but the fool Frenchman who took his baby and his wife + into the desert, and it's too late to rag him. Cheer up, old top, + and forget it. There's nothing more to be done." +</p> +<p> + It was sound advice, Jack Ryder knew it. They had done all that they + could. McLean had been a brick. There remained nothing now but to + notify the Delcassé aunt that Tewfick Pasha claimed the child. +</p> +<p> + "And I've a notion, Jack," said McLean thoughtfully, "that he might + not have done that if you hadn't rushed him so, trying to break off + the marriage. That was what frightened him." +</p> +<p> + "I thought you said she was his own daughter," Ryder responded + indignantly, and to that McLean merely murmured, "She will be now, + to all time." +</p> +<p> + It was a haunting thought. It left Ryder with the bitter taste of + blame in his mouth, the gall and wormwood of blame and a baffled + defeat. +</p> +<p> + But for that sense of blame he might have taken McLean's advice. He + might—but for that—have gone the way of wisdom, and accepted the + inevitable. +</p> +<p> + As it was, he did none of these things. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + He said to himself that all that he could do now—and the least that + he could do—was to let the girl know as much of the story as he + knew and draw her own conclusions. Then, if she wanted to go on and + sacrifice herself for Tewfick, very well. That was none of his + affair. +</p> +<p> + But she had a right to the truth and to the chance of choice. +</p> +<p> + He did not know what he could do, but secretly and defiantly he + promised himself that he would do something, and in the back of his + mind an idea was already taking shape. It was manifest in the + tenacity with which he refused to send the locket to the Delcassés. + He had the case and the miniature photographed very carefully by the + man who did the reproductions for museum illustrations, and he sent + that, conscious of McLean's silent thought that he was cherishing + the portrait for a sentimental memory. +</p> +<p> + But he had other plans for it. +</p> +<p> + He did not return to his diggings. He sent a message to the deserted + Thatcher, faking errands in Cairo, and he took a room at the hotel + where Jinny Jeffries—now up the Nile—had stayed. He spent a great + deal of time evenings in the hotel garden, staring over the brick + walls to the tops of distant palms beyond, and not infrequently he + slipped out the garden's back door and wandered up and down the dark + canyon of a lane. +</p> +<p> + He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepheard's + Hotel. +</p> +<p> + And yet the girl had her key. She could get away if she wanted to + and she might want to if she knew the truth. +</p> +<p> + But how to get that truth to her? That was his problem. A dozen + plans he considered and rejected. There were the mails—simple and + obvious channel—but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan + seclusion do not receive their letters directly. And now, + especially, Tewfick would be on his guard. +</p> +<p> + Then there was the chance of a message through some native's hands. + The house servants—? There were hours, one day, when Ryder + sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy-trousered + <i>sais</i> who stood holding a horse in the sun or the tattered baker's + boy, approaching the entrance with his long loaves upon his head, + but Ryder's Arabic was not of a power or subtlety to corrupt any + creature, and he stayed his tongue. +</p> +<p> + Bitterly he regretted his wasted years. If he had not misspent them + in godly living he would now be upon such terms of intimacy with + some official's pretty wife who had the entrée to a pasha's daughter + that she could be induced to make use of it for him. +</p> +<p> + Desperately he thought of remedying this defect. There were several + charming young matrons not averse to devoted young men, but the time + was short for establishing those confidential relations which were + what he required now. +</p> +<p> + Jinny Jeffries would do it for him if she could, but Jinny would not + return for another week. And if she changed her mind and took the + boat back—as he, alack! had advised—instead of the express, then + she would be longer. +</p> +<p> + And meanwhile the days were passing, four of them now since he and + McLean had heard the Soudanese locking the door behind them. +</p> +<p> + There seemed nothing for it but to trust to that idea which had been + slowly shaping in his mind. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER IX +</h2> +<h3> + A WEDDING PRESENT +</h3> +<p> + In a room high in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. + Before a tall pier glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging to + the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly + from the image in the glass. +</p> +<p> + Through the open window, banded with three bars, she looked into the + rustling tops of palms, from which the yellow date fruit hung, and + beyond the palms the hot, bright, blue sky and the far towers of a + minaret. +</p> +<p> + "A bit more to the left, h'if you please, miss," the woman entreated + through a mouthful of pins, and apathetically the young figure + moved. +</p> +<p> + "A bit of h'all right, now, that drape," the woman chirped, sitting + back on her heels to survey her work. +</p> +<p> + She was an odd gnome-like figure, with a sharp nose on one side of + her head and an outstanding knob of hair on the other. Into that + knob the thin locks were so tightly strained that her pointed + features had an effect of popping out of bondage. +</p> +<p> + She was London born, brought out by an English official's wife as + dressmaker to the children, remaining in Cairo as wife of a British + corporal. Since no children had resulted to require her care and + the corporal maintained his distaste for thrift, Mrs. Hendricks had + resumed her old trade, and had become a familiar figure to many + fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening, + sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have + graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the + family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a + vis-à -vis when the men in the family dropped in for luncheon. +</p> +<p> + As the girl did not turn her head she looked for approbation to the + third person in the room, a tall, severely handsome Frenchwoman in + black, whose face had the beauty of chiseled marble and the same + quality of cold perfection. This was Madame de Coulevain, teacher of + French and literature to the <i>jeunes filles</i> of Cairo, former + governess of Aimée, returned now to her old room in the palace for + the wedding preparations. +</p> +<p> + There was history behind madame's sculptured face. In an incredibly + impulsive youth she had fled from France with a handsome captain of + Algerian dragoons; after a certain matter at cards he had ceased to + be a captain and became petty official in a Cairo importing house; + later yet, he became an invalid. +</p> +<p> + Life, for the Frenchwoman, was a matter of paying for her husband's + illness, then for his funeral expenses, and then of continuing to + pay for the little one which the climate had required them to send + to a convent in France. +</p> +<p> + There was, at first, the hope of reunion, extinguished by each + added year. What could madame, unknown, unfriended, unaccredited, + accomplish in France? The mere getting there was impossible—the + little one required so much. Her daughter was no dependent upon + charity. And in Cairo madame had a clientèle, she commanded a price. + And so for the child's sake she taught and saved, concentrating now + upon a dot, and feeding her heart with the dutifully phrased letters + arriving each week of the years, and the occasional photographs of + an ever-growing, unknown young creature. +</p> +<p> + It was to madame's care that Aimée had been given when the + motherless girl had grown beyond old Miriam's ministrations, and for + nearly nine years in the palace madame had maintained her courteous + and tactful supervision. Indeed, it was only this last year that + madame had undertaken new relations with the world outside, + perceiving that Aimée would not longer require her. +</p> +<p> + "Excellent," she said now in her careful, unfamiliar English to Mrs. + Hendricks, and in French to Aimée she added, with a hint of + asperity, "Do give her a word. She is trying to please you." +</p> +<p> + "It is very nice, Mrs. Hendricks," said the girl dutifully, bringing + her glance back from that far sky. +</p> +<p> + The little seamstress was instantly all vivacity. "H'and now for the + sash—shall we 'ave it so—or so?" she demanded, attaching the wisp + of tulle experimentally. +</p> +<p> + "As you wish it.... It is very nice," Aimée repeated vaguely. She + picked up a bit of the shimmering stuff and spread it curiously + across her fingers. A dinner gown.... When she wore this she would + be a wife.... The wife of Hamdi Bey.... A shiver went through her + and she dropped the tulle swiftly. +</p> +<p> + In ten days more.... +</p> +<p> + Gone was her first rush of sustaining compassion. Gone was her + fear for her father and her tenderness to him. Only this numb + coldness, this dumb, helpless certainty of a destiny about to be + accomplished.... Only this hopeless, useless brooding upon that + strange brief past. +</p> +<p> + There was a stir at the door and on her shuffling, slippered feet + old Miriam entered, handing some packages to Madame de Coulevain. + Then she turned to revolve about the bright figure of her young + mistress, her eyes glistening fondly, her dark fingers touching a + soft fold of silver ribbon, while under her breath she chanted in a + croon like a lullaby, "Beautiful as the dawn ... she will walk upon + the heart of her husband with foot of rose petals ... she will + dazzle him with the beams of her eyes and with the locks of her + hair, she will bind him to her ... beautiful as the dawn...." +</p> +<p> + It was the marriage chant of Miriam's native village, an old love + song that had come down the wind of centuries. +</p> +<p> + Mrs. Hendricks, thrusting in the final pins, paid not the slightest + attention and Madame de Coulevain displayed interest only in the + packages. If she saw the stiffening of the girl's face and the rigid + aversion of her eyes from the old nurse's adulation she gave no + sign. +</p> +<p> + Towards Aimée's moods madame preserved a calm and sensible + detachment. Never had she invited confidence, and for all the young + girl's charm she had never taken her to her heart in the place of + that absent daughter. As if jealously she had held herself aloof + from such devotion. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps in Aimée's indulged and petted childhood, with a fond pasha + extolling her small triumphs, her dances, her score at tennis at the + legation, madame found a bitter contrast to the lot of that lonely + child in France. Certainly there was nothing in Aimée's life then to + invite compassion, and later, during those hard, mutinous months of + the girl's first veiling and seclusion, she had not tried to soften + the inevitable for her with a useless compassion. +</p> +<p> + So now, perceiving this marriage as one more step in the + irresistible march of destiny for her charge, she overlooked the + youthful fretting and offered the example of her own unmoved + acceptance. +</p> +<p> + "What diamonds!" she said now admiringly, holding up a pin, and, + examining the card. "From Seniha Hanum—the cousin of Hamdi Bey." +</p> +<p> + A moment more she held up the pin but the girl would not give it a + look. +</p> +<p> + "And this, from the same jeweler's," continued madame, while the + dressmaker was unfastening the frock, aided by Miriam, anxious that + no scratch should mar that milk-white skin. +</p> +<p> + "How droll—the box is wrapped in cloth, a cloth of plaid." +</p> +<p> + Aimée spun about. The dress fell, a glistening circle at her feet, + and with regardless haste she tripped over it to madame. +</p> +<p> + "How—strange!" she said breathlessly. +</p> +<p> + A plaid ... A Scotch plaid. Memories of an erect, tartan-draped + young figure, of a thin, bronzed face and dark hair where a tilted + cap sat rakishly ... memories of smiling, boyish eyes, darkening + with sudden emotion ... memories of eager lips.... +</p> +<p> + She took the box from madame. Within the cloth lay a jeweler's case + and within the case a locket of heavily ornamented gold. +</p> +<p> + Her heart beating, she opened it. For a moment she did not + understand. Her own face—her own face smiling back. Yet unfamiliar, + that oddly piled hair, that black velvet ribbon about the throat.... +</p> +<p> + Murmuring, madame shared her wonder. +</p> +<p> + It was Miriam's cry of recognition that told them. +</p> +<p> + "Thy mother—the grace of Allah upon her!—It is thy mother! Eh, + those bright eyes, that long, dark hair that I brushed the many hot + nights upon the roof!" +</p> +<p> + "But you are her image, Aimée," murmured the Frenchwoman, but half + understanding the nurse's rapid gutturals, and then, "Your father's + gift?" +</p> +<p> + With the box in her hands the girl turned from them, fearful of the + tell-tale color in her cheeks. "But whose else—his thought, of + course," she stammered. +</p> +<p> + That plaid was warning her of mystery. +</p> +<p> + The dressmaker was creating a diversion. Leaving, she wished to + consult about the purchases for to-morrow's work, and madame moved + towards the hall with her, talking in her careful English, while + Miriam bent towards the dropped finery. +</p> +<p> + Aimée slipped through another door, into the twilight of her + bedroom, whose windows upon the street were darkened by those + fine-wrought screens of wood. Swiftly she thrust the box from sight, + into the hollow in the mashrubiyeh made in old days to hold a water + bottle where it could be cooled by breezes from the street. +</p> +<p> + Leaning against the woodwork, her fingers curving through the tiny + openings, she stared toward the west. The sky was flushing. Broken + by the circles, the squares, the minute interstices of the + mashrubiyeh, she saw the city taking on the hues of sunset. +</p> +<p> + Suddenly the cry of a muezzin from a nearby minaret came rising and + falling through the streets. +</p> +<p> + "<i>La illahé illallah Mohammedun Ressoulallah</i>—" +</p> +<p> + The call swelled and died away and rose again ... There is no God + but <i>the</i> God and Mahomet is the Prophet of God ... From farther + towers it sounded, echoing and re-echoing, vibrant, insistent, + falling upon crowded streets, penetrating muffling walls. +</p> +<p> + "<i>La illahé illallah</i>—" +</p> +<p> + In the avenue beneath her two Arabs, leading their camels to market, + were removing their shoes and going through the gestures of + ceremonial washing with the dust of the street. +</p> +<p> + "<i>La illahé</i>—" +</p> +<p> + The city was ringing with it. +</p> +<p> + The seamstress and the Frenchwoman, still talking, had passed down + the hall. In the next room Miriam's lips were moving in pious + testimony. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Ech hedu en la illahé</i>—! I testify that there is no God but <i>the</i> + God." +</p> +<p> + In the street the Arabs were bowing towards the east, their heads + touching the earth. +</p> +<p> + And in the window above them a girl was reading a note. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + The last call of the muezzin, falling from the tardy towers of Kait + Bey drifted faintly through the colored air. With resounding whacks + the Arabs were urging on their beast; Miriam, her prayers concluded, + was shaking out silks and tulle with a sidelong glance for that + still figure in the next room, pressing so close against the + guarding screens. +</p> +<p> + She could not see the pallor in the young face. She could not see + the tumult in the dark eyes. She could not see the note, crushed + convulsively against the beating breast, in the fingers which so few + moments ago had drawn it from the hiding place in the box. +</p> +<p> + Ryder had not dared a personal letter. But clearly, and distinctly, + he stated the story of the Delcassés. He gave the facts which the + pasha admitted and the ingenious explanation of the two Aimées. And + for reference he gave the address of the Delcassé aunt and agent in + France and of Ryder and McLean at the Agricultural Bank. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + The pasha did not dine with his daughter that night. He had been + avoiding her of late, a natural reaction from the strain of + too-excessive gratitude. A man cannot be continually humble before + the young! And it was no pleasure to be reminded by her candid eyes + of his late misfortunes and of her absurd reluctance towards + matrimony. +</p> +<p> + As if this marriage were not the best thing for her! As if it were a + hardship! To make sad eyes and draw a mouth because one is to be the + wife of a rich general.... Irrational ... The little sweetmeat was + irritating. +</p> +<p> + To this point Tewfick's buoyancy had brought him, and all the more + hastily because of his eagerness to escape the pangs of that + uncomfortable self-reproach. To Aimée, in her new clear-sightedness + of misery, it was bitterly apparent that he was reconciled with her + lot and careless of it. +</p> +<p> + So blinded had been her young affection that it was a hard + awakening, and she was too young, too cruelly involved, to feel for + his easy humors that amused tolerance of larger acquaintance with + human nature. She had grown swiftly bitter and resentful, and deeply + cold. +</p> +<p> + And now this letter. It dazed her, like a flame of lightning before + her eyes, and then, like lightning, it lit up the world with + terrifying luridity. Fiery colored, unfamiliar, her life trembled + about her. +</p> +<p> + Truth or lies? Custom and habit stirred incredulously to reject the + supposition. The romance, the adventure of youth, dared its swift + acceptance. How could she know? Intuitively she shrank from any + question to the pasha, realizing the folly and futility of exposing + her suspicion. If he needed to lie, lie he would—and in her + understanding of that, she read her own acceptance of the + possibility of his needing to lie. +</p> +<p> + Madame de Coulevain? Madame had never known her mother. Only old + Miriam had known her mother and Miriam was the pasha's slave. But + the old woman was unsuspecting now, and full of disarming comfort in + this marriage of her wild darling. +</p> +<p> + Through dinner she planned the careless-seeming questions. And then + in her negligée, as the old nurse brushed out her hair for the + night, "Dadi," said the girl, in a faint voice, "am I truly like my + mother?" and when Miriam had finished her fond protestation that + they were as like as two roses, as two white roses, bloom and bud, + she launched that little cunning phrase on which she had spent such + eager hoping. +</p> +<p> + "And was I like her when I was little—when first she came to my + father?" +</p> +<p> + "Eh—yes. Always thou wast the tiny image which Allah—Glory to his + Name!—had made of her," came the nurse's assurance. +</p> +<p> + "I am glad," said Aimée, in a trembling voice. +</p> +<p> + She dared not press that more. Confronted with her unconscious + admission the old woman would destroy it, feigning some evasion. But + there it was, for as much as it was worth.... +</p> +<p> + Presently then, she found another question to slip into the old + woman's narrative of the pasha's grief. +</p> +<p> + "Eh, to hear a man weep," Miriam was murmuring. "Her beauty had set + its spell upon him, and—" +</p> +<p> + "And he lost her so soon. Three or four years only, was it not," + ventured Aimée, "that they had of life together?" +</p> +<p> + It seemed that Miriam's brush missed a stroke. +</p> +<p> + "Years I forget," the nurse muttered, "but tears I remember," and + she began to talk of other things. +</p> +<p> + But it seemed to Aimée that she had answered. As for that other + matter, of the dead Delcassé child, she dared not refer to it, lest + Miriam tell the pasha. But how many times, she remembered, had she + been told that she was her mother's only one! +</p> +<p> + Yet, oh, to know, to hear all the story, to learn Ryder's discovery + of it! It was all as strange and startling as a tale of Djinns. And + the life that it held out to her, the enchanted hope of freedom, of + aid—Oh, not again would she refuse his aid! +</p> +<p> + She had no plans, no purposes. But that night over her + hastily-donned frock she slipped the black street mantle and when at + last, after endless waiting, the murmuring old palace was safely + still and dark, she stole down the spiral stair and gained the + garden. And then, a phantom among its shadows, she fled to the rose + bushes by the gate. +</p> +<p> + Breathlessly she knelt and dug into the hiding place of that gate's + key. To the furthest corner her fingers explored the hole, pushing + furiously against the earth. And then she drew back her hand and + crushed it against her face to check the nervous sobs. +</p> +<p> + The hole was empty. The key was gone. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER X +</h2> +<h3> + THE RECEPTION +</h3> +<p> + In Tewfick Pasha's harem everything was astir. +</p> +<p> + It was the morning of the marriage, almost the very hour when the + wedding cortège would bear the bride from her father's home to the + house of her husband. +</p> +<p> + The invited guests were already arrived and streaming through the + reception rooms, a bright, feminine tide in evening toilettes, + surrounding the exhibited gifts or pausing about tables of cool + syrups, and their soft, low voices, the delicious musical tones of + highbred Turkish women, rose like a murmuring of somnolent bees to + the tenser regions about, tightening the excitement of haste. +</p> +<p> + The bride was not yet ready. Still and white, she was the only image + of calm in that fluttering, confusing room. Her nearer friends were + hovering about her, and her maids of honor, two charming little + Turks in rose robes, were draping her veil while old Miriam, + resplendent in green and silver, endeavored jealously to outmaneuver + them. +</p> +<p> + On her knees, the gnome-like Mrs. Hendricks was adding an orange + blossom to the laces on the train. Then she sat back on her heels, + her head a-tilt like a curious bird's, her eyes beaming + sentimentally upon the bride. +</p> +<p> + "The prettiest h'I h'ever did see," she pronounced with + satisfaction, "H'as pretty as a wax figger now—h'only a thought + <i>too</i> waxy." +</p> +<p> + And like a wax figure indeed, immobile, rigid, the bride was + standing before them, arrayed at last in the shimmering white of the + sweeping satin, overrich of lace and orange flowers, and shrouded in + the clouding waves of her veil. White as her robes, pale as death + and as still, the girl looked out at them, and only that sick pallor + of her face and the glitter of her dark eyes betrayed the tumult + within. +</p> +<p> + "Your diadem, my dear—you are keeping us attending," came Madame de + Coulevain's voice from the door. +</p> +<p> + The diadem, that heavy circlet of brilliants which crowned the + Eastern bride in place of the orange wreath of Western convention, + must not be touched by the bride's fingers but placed by one of her + friends, married and married but once, and exceptionally happy in + that marriage. +</p> +<p> + Ghul-al-Din, Aimée's selection from her friends, stepped hastily + forward now, a soft, dimpled, slow-smiling girl, her eyes drowsy + with domesticity. No question of Ghul-al-Din's happiness! She + extolled her husband, a young captain of cavalry, and she adored her + infant son, a prodigy among children. Life for her was a rosy, + unquestioning absorption. +</p> +<p> + A shaft of irony sped through Aimée, as she bent her head for its + crowning at this young wife's hands, and received the ceremonial + wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once + in her lifetime. Irony was the only salvation for the hour; without + that outlet for her tortured spirit she felt she would grow suddenly + mad, hysterical and babbling or passionate and wild. +</p> +<p> + So many moods had stormed through her since that night when she had + found all hope of rescue gone with her lost key! So many impulses + seethed frantically now beneath her quiet, as she faced for the last + time that white-misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing + to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy robe, to scatter the + ornaments and drive out all those maddening spectators, all those + interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of her + humiliation. +</p> +<p> + Arranging her veil, draping her satins, as if gauze and silk were + all that mattered to this hour! Wishing her happiness—as if + happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing! Smiling, + fluttering, complimenting, lending to the ghastly sacrifice the + familiar acceptances of every day.... +</p> +<p> + If only she could wake from this nightmare and find that it was all + a dream. If only she could brush this confusion from her senses and + from her heart its dumb terrors.... If only she had the courage for + some desperate revolt, some outburst of strength— +</p> +<p> + "I am ready," she said faintly, turning from the glass, and moved + towards the door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that + train of three yards length, which stretched so regally behind her + in her slow descent of the stairs. +</p> +<p> + In the French drawing-room below her father was waiting for the + ceremonial farewell, in which the father received the daughter's + thanks for all his care of her. +</p> +<p> + Mechanically Aimée advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her + eyes—and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless, + questioning intensity that it was like something palpable.... She + had not foreseen this, sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant + passion of her spirit.... +</p> +<p> + Her father? Was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so, + careless, callous—or was it only a father's semblance, and did + there lie in the background of those petted, childish years some + darker shadow, of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and + broken her heart—? +</p> +<p> + Like flashing light that look passed between them. It penetrated + Tewfick's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his + olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's + pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his + power,—but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in + that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul. +</p> +<p> + It was a moment in which the last cord of their relationship was + severed forever. +</p> +<p> + She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom + dictated, but to sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a + maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but + with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered. +</p> +<p> + And yet there was wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear + and supplication. +</p> +<p> + Useless to beg now. She knew it, and yet the eyes implored. +</p> +<p> + And then she smiled. And before that smile Tewfick faltered in his + paternal benediction and hastened the phrases. +</p> +<p> + Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a + hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs + for the journey to the bridegroom's house. +</p> +<p> + That day Aimée did not put on her veil. On either side of her, as + she went out her father's gate, huge negroes held up silken walls of + damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that + awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulevain and the two little + maids of honor. +</p> +<p> + It was when the carriage began to move that the panic inside of her + grew to whirlwind. The horse' hoofs, trotting, trotting, the motion + of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If + she could only stop it! If she could only cry out, tear open the + windows, scream to the passers by. She knew these were only the + impotent visions of hysteria, but she indulged them pitifully. +</p> +<p> + She saw herself, in those moments, helpless, and hopeless, passing + on into the slavery of this marriage—Aimée, no longer the daughter + of Tewfick Pasha, but Aimée Delcassé, child of a dead Frenchman, + inheritor of freedom, sold like any dancing girl.... +</p> +<p> + And her own lips had assented. In the supreme, silly uselessness of + sacrifice she had given herself for the safety of that man who had + spent such careless indulgence upon her ... that man whom perhaps + her mother had loved and perhaps had hated.... +</p> +<p> + Faster and faster the horses were trotting, leading the long file of + carriages and impatient motors that bore the relatives and guests + and trousseau, rolling on under the lebbeks and sycamores of the + wide Shubra Avenue, once the delight of fashionables before the + Gezireh Drive had drained it of its throngs and its prestige. +</p> +<p> + Now some bright-eyed urchins ran out from their games in the dust to + curious attention, and through a half open gate Aimée caught once a + glimpse of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled + greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Farther on came + glimpses of farm lands, the wheat rising in bright spears, and of + well-wooded heights and in the distance the white houses of + Demerdache against the Gibel Achmar beyond. +</p> +<p> + But where were they bearing her? Aimée had a despairing sense of + distance and desolation as the carriage turned again—Abdullah, the + coachman, having traversed unnecessary miles to gratify his pride + before the house of his parents—and made a zigzag way towards the + river, where old palaces rose from the backwaters, their faces + hidden by high walls or covered with heavy vines and moss. +</p> +<p> + Deeper and deeper grew the girl's dismay. It was a different world + from that bright, modern Cairo that she knew; this was as remote + from her daily life as the old streets of Al Raschid. Her thoughts + flew forward to that unknown lord, that Hamdi Bey, whose image she + had refused to assemble to her consciousness. Now she comforted her + terror with a sudden assumption of age and dignity and kindness, of + a courtesy that would protect her and a deference that would assuage + the horror of a life together, when unknown, fearful familiarities + would alone vibrate in the empty monotonies. +</p> +<p> + Before a high wall the carriage had stopped. A huge, repellent + Ethiopian was standing before an opened doorway, through which a + rich carpet was spread. +</p> +<p> + "Ah, but he looks like an ogre, that new eunuch of yours, Aimée," + murmured one of the little Turks. The other, more touched with + thought, gave her a disturbed glance, and laughed in nervousness. +</p> +<p> + Madame, alone serene, ignored the dismaying impression. +</p> +<p> + "The palace is of a fine, ancient beauty, I am told," she mentioned + cheerfully. +</p> +<p> + For one wild instant Aimée thought to plead with her, to implore her + to tell Abdullah to drive on, to give her the freedom of flight, if + only flight down those deserted streets. And then a mad vision of + herself in her bridal robes in flight, brought the hysterical + laughter to her throat. The time for flight had gone by ... And as + for madame's pity on her—this was not the first time that Aimée had + thought of invoking her aid, but she had always known, too well, + that thought's supreme futility. +</p> +<p> + Sympathetic as Madame de Coulevain might be in her inmost heart—and + Aimée divined in her an understanding pity for the necessities of + existence—never would that sympathy betray her to rashness. She + never would believe that in serving Aimée she would not be ruining + her; and even if assured of Aimée's safety, she could never be + brought to betray her own reputation for truthworthiness among the + harems of Cairo.... As well appeal to the rocks of the Mokattam + hills. +</p> +<p> + The carriage stopped. The negroes extended the damask walls, and one + sprang to open the carriage door and bear the bride's train. In one + moment's parting of the silken walls the girl saw a sun-flooded + cluster of staring faces, thronging for her arrival, and then the + damask intervened and through its lane, followed by her duenna and + her maids of honor, she entered the arched doorway. +</p> +<p> + She was in a garden, a great gloomy place, over-spread with ancient, + moss-encrusted trees. A broken, marble fountain flung up waters into + which no sunlight flashed, and the heavy stepping stones, leading to + it, were buried in untrodden grass. A garden in which no one + lingered. +</p> +<p> + The Ethiopian was marshaling them to the left, to an entrance in the + dark palace walls before them. Behind them the oncoming guests were + streaming out in veiled procession. +</p> +<p> + He opened a door. Ancient, beautiful arches framed a long vestibule + and against a background of profuse cut flowers a man's figure + stepped forward in the glittering uniform of the Sultan's guard. + Aimée had a confused impression of a thin, meager, dandified figure + with a waspish waist ... of a blond mustache with upstanding ends + ... of sallow cheek-bones and small, light eyes smiling at her in a + strained, eager curiosity.... +</p> +<p> + Through all her sinking dismay she had a flash of clear, + enlightening irony at that look's suspense. If she were not as + represented! If his cousin's fervor had misled his hope—! +</p> +<p> + But in that instant's encounter his eyes cleared to triumph and + gayety, and he smiled—a smile curiously feline, ironic, for all its + intended ingratiation—a conqueror's smile, winged to reassure and + melt. +</p> +<p> + He stepped forward. There were formal words of welcome to which she + returned a speechless bow, and then he offered his arm and conducted + her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its scabbard, to the + apartment which was to be her home, and the prison for the spirit + and the body. +</p> +<p> + She knew in a moment that she hated this man and that he inspired + her with fear and horror. +</p> +<p> + Across a long expanse of drawing-room he conducted her to the + ancient marriage throne upon its platform, surmounted by a pompous + crown from which old, embroidered silks hung heavily. +</p> +<p> + Then with an unheard phrase, and another bow, he left her to the + day-long ordeal of the reception while he withdrew to his own + entertainment at her father's house. She would not see him again + until night, when he would pay her a call of ceremony. +</p> +<p> + She saw his figure hesitating a moment, as he faced the oncoming + guests, such a flood of femininity, unmantled now and unveiled, + sparkling in rainbow hues of silks and tulle and gauze that he had + never before faced and never would again. Like a bright wave the + throng closed about him and then surged on towards the bride upon + the throne. +</p> +<p> + How often, in the last years, Aimée had pitied that poor puppet of a + bride, stuck there like some impaled, winged creature, helpless for + flight, to the exhibition of the long stream of passersby! How often + she had promised herself that never would this be her fate, never + would she be given to an unknown! And now— +</p> +<p> + She was smiling as she faced them, that light, fixed smile she had + seen so often on others' lips, the smile of pride trying desperately + to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious. + Satiric, cynical, or sympathetic, that light smile defied them all, + but beneath its guard she felt she was slowly bleeding to death of + some mortal hurt. +</p> +<p> + The sympathy unconsciously betrayed, was hardest. The whispers of + her young maids of honor, "Really, Aimée, he looks so young! One + would never surmise," were more galling in their intended + consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends' own + shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man than the barbed dart + of the uncaring, inquisitive, "How do you find him, my dear? He has + the reputation for conquest!" +</p> +<p> + They were all there, her friends, young, slim, modish Turkish girls + whose time had not yet come, glancing quizzically about the ancient + drawing room, with its solid side of mashrubiyeh, its old wall + panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their + glances back at her, as if to ask, "And is this our revoltée? Is + this her end, in this dim, old palace among the ghosts of the past?" +</p> +<p> + Some, the frankest, murmured, "But why did you not refuse?" and + others attempted consolation with a light, "As well the first as the + last—since we must all come to it." +</p> +<p> + Of the married women there were those who raised blank, bitter eyes + to her, and others, more mild, romantic, affectionate, tried to + infuse encouragement into their smiles as if they said, + "Come—courage—it's not so bad. And what would you? We are women, + after all; we do not need so much for happiness. +</p> +<p> + "Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your + spirit in place of a master delighting in your beauty alone, what + are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies? For other + races, perhaps—but for you, take hold of life. There are realities + yet in it to bring you joy." +</p> +<p> + It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their + pressure of her hands. +</p> +<p> + And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile + demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening + unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in + vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes + saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of + terror rose higher and higher in her soul. +</p> +<p> + Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night + when she found the key was gone. +</p> +<p> + Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen + back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the + breaking sobs of rebellion and despair—and of a longing so deep and + so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a + pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar. +</p> +<p> + Never again would she see him now.... Never would she know—never + would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe + her still aloof, incredulous.... It was finished—forever and ever. +</p> +<p> + She had told herself that before. But always there had been the key. + And now there was no key and no escape and her heart broke itself + against the iron of necessity. +</p> +<p> + She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion, + not peace but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison + gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never + again the sight of that too-remembered face and the sound of that + voice—why, then, as well one fate as another. And it was too late + now to recede. +</p> +<p> + So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its + part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half-contemptuous + pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she + would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she + would keep its own, in its unsullied dreams ... and in its + memories.... Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly borne. +</p> +<p> + But now she had seen the man. Now this wild dislike, this sickening + terror. +</p> +<p> + To be alone with him, to have only the few days grace of courtship + which the Mohammadan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be + forever at his mercy in this solitary palace, with its echoing + corridors, its blackened walla, its damp breath of age.... +</p> +<p> + She thought wildly of death. +</p> +<p> + And all the time she was smiling, bending her cheek to the kiss of a + friend, feeling the fingers of some well-wisher press upon her, + listening to praises of her beauty.... +</p> +<p> + For she was beautiful. No image of wax now. The scarlet of her + frightened blood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as + the jewels in her diadem, and beneath the thrown-back veil her dark + hair revealed its lovely wealth. +</p> +<p> + "Is she not a rose—will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard + that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared + on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal + youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated + master. +</p> +<p> + And still the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the + flickering light and shadow of the mashrubiyeh, slender young Turks + or blonde Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or + malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some + rotund matron grave and serene, her head encircled with an old + fashioned turban of gauze, her stout flesh encased in heavy silks, + bought at Damask so as not to enrich the Unbelievers at Lyons. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + And then the spectacle changed, the black street mantles appeared, + yashmaks and tcharchafs, for now the doors were opened to all the + feminine world, and there came strange, unknown women, slipping out + from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace, old-timers often, + draped and turbaned in the fashion of some far province of their + youth; women, incredibly fat, in rich stuffs of Asia, their bright, + deep-sunken eyes spying delightedly upon the scene, or furtive, poor + women, keeping courage in twos and threes. +</p> +<p> + Now, too, at four, came the women from the Embassies, a Russian girl + with whom Aimée had played tennis in ages past, rosy now with + yesterday's sun and sleepy with last night's dance, who touched the + bride's hand as if it were the hand of one half-dead, already + consigned to the tomb; other girls she did not know, who stared at + her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities; older women, + experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and smoking cigarettes + and gossiping of their own affairs, and occasionally among them a + tourist agog with wonder and exultation, storing away details for a + lifetime of talk, asking amiably the most incredible questions.... +</p> +<p> + "And is it true you have never met your husband? Listen, Jane—she + says she has never met him—" +</p> +<p> + A girl in a creamy white silk came forward a little uncertainly. She + was a pretty girl, with a curve of ruddy hair visible under her + smart straw, and very bright eyes, where shyness was at variance + with a friendly smile. +</p> +<p> + Indeed Jinny Jeffries was extraordinarily intimidated by the + occasion. She had a distinct sense of intrusion mingling with her + delight at having intruded, and she murmured her good wishes in an + almost inaudible tone. +</p> +<p> + "It is very good of you to let us come ... I wish you every + happiness," she said. +</p> +<p> + Beside her a tall slender figure, in black tcharchaf and yashmak, + made its appearance. +</p> +<p> + Aimée's eyes slipped past the pretty American; the mechanical smile + was frozen on her lips. Over the black veil she saw the hazel eyes, + bright with excitement, vivid as speech; the eyes of the masquerader + in the Scotch costume, the eyes of the man at the garden gate—Jack + Ryder's eyes ... the eyes of her dreams. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XI +</h2> +<h3> + THE FORTY DOORS +</h3> +<p> + When Ryder had despatched from the jeweler's who had polished the + locket for him, that package with its secret note, and its warning + plaid, he had no real assurance that the message would fall into + Aimée's hands. But he could think of nothing better, and he argued + very favorably for his stratagem. +</p> +<p> + That miniature should have some effect, and given the miniature, and + the bit of plaid cloth, Aimée's quick wit ought to divine a message. +</p> +<p> + She had always the key, he remembered, and the power of egress from + her prison. And surely it ought not to be difficult for her to + devise some way of getting a letter into the post. +</p> +<p> + So his hope fluctuated between the garden gate and the daily mail at + the Bank, and he rather surprised McLean by the frequency and + brevity of his visits, and by the duration of his stay in Cairo. +</p> +<p> + For that he had an excuse, both to McLean and to the deserted + Thatcher, at the excavation camp, two excuses in fact—some belated + identification work to be done at the Museum and a cracked wisdom + tooth. +</p> +<p> + Chiefly he spoke of the necessity for dentistry and accounted for + his moods with his molar. +</p> +<p> + Of moods he had many. Moods when he contemplated his behavior + lightly and brightly or darkly, in unrelieved disgust, moods when he + refused to contemplate it at all. But he stayed. That was the + conspicuous and enduring thing. He stayed. +</p> +<p> + Jinny Jeffries returned from the Nile by express to find him + ensconced at her hotel, and her bright confidence suffered no + diminution of its self respect. And it was through Jinny that chance + set another straw of circumstance dancing his way. +</p> +<p> + Jinny had a frock she wished repaired. Mrs. Heath-Brown, whom she + had met upon the Nile, recommended to her a Mrs. Hendricks, wife of + a British soldier and a most clever little needle woman. Jinny + looked up Mrs. Hendricks and found it impossible to secure her for + some days as she was busy refitting for a fashionable wedding in the + Mohammedan world. +</p> +<p> + A night later, and two nights before the wedding, Jinny made a + narrative of the circumstances for Jack Ryder's benefit. +</p> +<p> + "Such frocks h'as h'I 'ave to do—and the young lady no more + caring!" had been a saying of the Hendricks that Jinny passed + interestedly on to Jack. She had no memory of the young lady's name, + but distinctly she recalled that she was young and beautiful and to + marry a general. +</p> +<p> + It was enough to launch Jinny's eager interest in Mohammedan + marriages and foster the wish that she might attend one. She + regretted Mrs. Heath-Brown's absence and her lack of acquaintance, + and suggested that Jack ought to know some one— +</p> +<p> + "Better than that, <i>I'll</i> take you," said Jack with a promptness + that brought a light to Miss Jeffries' eyes. +</p> +<p> + There was also a light in Jack Ryder's eyes, a swift burning of + excitement and adventure. +</p> +<p> + Why not? The thing was possible. Muffled in a tcharchaf and veiled + with a heavy yashmak, armed with enough Arabic for the briefest of + encounters, he might dare the danger. Who in the world would + discover him? Who would ever know? +</p> +<p> + The thing was unthinkable. It was a desperate desecration, + comparable only, in his vague analogies, to the Mecca pilgrimage and + profanation of a Holy Tomb. But its very improbability would prevent + detection. +</p> +<p> + Only Jinny had to keep her mouth extremely shut—before and + afterwards. +</p> +<p> + He impressed this upon her so thoroughly, as they did their shopping + for the costume together the next morning, that she had compunctious + moments of solicitude when she said he really ought not to.... She + would feel responsible.... +</p> +<p> + Thereupon he laughed, and dared her to be game, and she grew all + mirthful confidence again. +</p> +<p> + But that night, sitting alone in a native café over his Turkish + coffee, Ryder was grimly serious. +</p> +<p> + He knew that it was a mad thing to do. He felt, not so much the + danger he ran from discovery, but the danger to his already + shattered peace of mind from another glimpse of that strange girl + ... that young unknown, on whom he had spent such time and thought, + of late, that she seemed a very part of his existence. +</p> +<p> + What was the good of going to her wedding reception? Feebly he told + himself that it was his only chance to inform her upon the history + of the Delcassés. There might have been reasons for her + non-appearance at the gate, for her not writing.... He could have no + glimmering of what went on behind those barred windows. This was his + only chance—he meant to say, to tell her—but his eager senses + murmured, to see her again. +</p> +<p> + That was it—to see her again. He owned the lure, at last, with a + bitter ruefulness. But—he brightened up at that—it was partly his + duty to himself. Now he had all sorts of fool imaginings about this + girl. He was remembering her as something lovelier than a Houri, + more enchanting than fairy magic, more sweet than spring. He owed it + to himself to rout these imbecile prepossessions and prove clearly + and dispassionately that the girl was just a very nice little girl, + a pretty bride, marrying into a very distinct life from his own—and + a girl with whom he would not have an idea in common. A girl, in + fact, far inferior to any American. A girl not to be compared to + Jinny Jeffries. +</p> +<p> + Besides, there was fun in the thing. It tempted him tremendously. + It was adventurous, romantic forbidden. +</p> +<p> + He heard the word echoed in Turkish behind him. +</p> +<p> + So engrossed in his thoughts had he been that he had been + inattentive to the rhythm of old Khazib, the tale teller's voice, as + he held forth, from the divan, beside his long-stemmed pipe, to his + nightly audience, of men and boys, camel drivers, small merchants, + desert men from the long caravans who were the frequenters of this + café. +</p> +<p> + To-night there were few about the old man, and Ryder had small + difficulty in drawing nearer the circle. A green-turbaned Arab, with + the profile of a Washington and the naïve eyes of youth, whispered + to him courteously that it was the tale of the Third Kaland, and the + Prince Azib was in the palace of the forty damsels who were + farewelling him, as they were to depart, according to custom, for + forty days. +</p> +<p> + Khazib, with a faint salutation of his turban towards the newcomer, + went slowly, sonorously on with his tale. +</p> +<p> + "We fear," said the damsel unto Azib, "lest thou contraire our + charge and disobey our injunctions. Here now we commit to thee the + keys of the palace which containeth forty chambers and thou mayest + open of these thirty and nine, but beware (and we conjure thee by + Allah and by the lives of us!) lest thou open the fortieth door, for + therein is that which shall separate us forever." +</p> +<p> + For a moment the café faded from Ryder's eyes. He was in the gloom + of a garden, a shadowy darkness just touched by a crescent moon, and + beside him in the shrubbery a dark-shrouded form, shaking its + shawled head at him in denial, and whispering, lightly but + tremblingly. "It is a forbidden door ... forbidden as that + fortieth.... There are thirty and nine doors in your life, monsieur, + that you may open, but this is the forbidden...." +</p> +<p> + He had meant to look up that tale. And now chance was reminding him + of it again. A superstitious man—Ryder's great grandfather, + perhaps, would have felt it an omen of warning, and a devout + man—Ryder's grandfather, perhaps—would have taken it for a sign + from Heaven to divert his steps. Ryder reflected upon coincidence. +</p> +<p> + "When I saw her weeping," Khazib was intoning, and now Ryder + attended, his scanty knowledge of the vernacular straining and + overleaping the blanks, "Prince Azib said to himself, 'By Allah, I + will never open that fortieth door, never, and in no wise!'" +</p> +<p> + "A wise bird," thought Ryder to himself, drawing on his cigarette. +</p> +<p> + "And I bade her farewell," continued the voice slipping into the + first person. "Thereupon all departed, flying like birds, leaving me + alone in the palace. When evening drew near, I opened the door of + the first chamber and found myself in a place like one of the + pleasances of Paradise. It was a garden with trees of freshest + green and ripe fruits of yellow sheen. And I walked among the trees + and I smelt the breath of the flowers and heard the birds sing their + praise to Allah, the One, the Almighty." +</p> +<p> + "<i>Allhamdollillah</i>," murmured Ryder's neighbors reverently. +</p> +<p> + "And I looked upon the apple, whose hue is parcel red and parcel + yellow ... and I looked upon the quince whose fragrance putteth to + shame musk and ambergris ... and upon the pear whose taste + surpasseth sherbet and sugar, and the apricot, whose beauty striketh + the eye as she were a polished ruby.... +</p> +<p> + "On the morrow I opened the second door and found myself in a + spacious plain set with tall date palms and watered by a running + stream whose banks were shrubbed with rose and jasmine, while privet + and eglantine, oxe-eye, violet and lily, narcissus, origane and the + winter gilliflower carpeted the borders; and the breath of the + breeze swept over those sweet-smelling growths...." +</p> +<p> + How inadequate, Ryder realized, had been the description given by + the Book of Genesis to the Garden of Eden. +</p> +<p> + "And the third door," droned on the rhythmic voice, "into an open + hall, hung with cages of sandal-wood and eagle-wood; full of birds + which made sweet music, such as the mocking bird, and the cusha, the + merle, the turtle dove—and the Nubian ring-dove." +</p> +<p> + A trifle restively Ryder stirred. He liked birds but he wanted to + be getting on to that fortieth door and this was slow progress. Not + a sign of impatience marred the bright, absorbed content of the + other listeners, intent now upon the wonders behind that the fourth + chamber revealed, stores of "pearls and jacinths and beryls, and + emeralds and corals and carbuncles and all manner of precious gems + and jewels such as the tongue of man could not describe." +</p> +<p> + The story teller proceeded, "Then, quoth Prince Azib, now verily am + I the monarch of the age, since by Allah's grace this enormous + wealth is mine; and I have forty damsels under my hand nor is there + any to claim them save myself." +</p> +<p> + The handsome Arab beside Ryder inhaled his pipe luxuriously. "By the + grace of Allah!" he said reverently. +</p> +<p> + "Then I gave not over opening place after place until nine and + thirty days were passed and in that time I had entered every chamber + except that one whose door I was charged not to open. But my + thoughts ever ran upon that forbidden fortieth and Satan urged me to + open it for my own undoing...." +</p> +<p> + "I see his finish," said Ryder interestedly to himself—and he + thought of the analogy. +</p> +<p> + "So I stood before the chamber, and after a few moments' hesitation, + opened the door which was plated with red gold and entered. I was + met by a perfume whose like I had never before smelt; and so sharp + and subtle was the odor that it made my senses drunken as with + strong wine, and I fell to the ground in a fainting fit which lasted + a full hour. When I came to myself I strengthened my heart, and + entering found myself in a chamber bespread with saffron and blazing + with light.... Presently, I spied a noble steed, black as the murks + of night when murkiest, standing ready saddled and bridled (and his + saddle was of red gold) before two mangers one of clear crystal + wherein was husked sesame, and the other, also of crystal containing + water of the rose scented with musk. When I saw this I marveled and + said to myself, 'Doubtless in this animal must be some wondrous + mystery, and Satan—'" +</p> +<p> + "Satan the Stoned!" murmured Ryder's neighbor religiously. +</p> +<p> + "Satan cozened me, so I led him without and mounted him ... and + struck him withal. When he felt the blow he neighed a neigh with a + sound like deafening thunder and opening a pair of wings flew up + with me in the firmament of heaven far beyond the eyesight of man. + After a full hour of flight he descended and shaking me off his back + lashed me on the face with his tail, and gouged out my left eye, + causing it to roll along my cheek. Then he flew away." +</p> +<p> + On rolled the voice, narrating the prince's descent to the table of + the other one-eyed youths, but Ryder was unheeding. And at the close + he inclined his head with the other listeners, murmuring "May Allah + increase thy prosperity," as he felt in his pockets for the silver + which the others were drawing from turban and sleeves and sash to + lay in the patriarch's lap, and then raised his head to question + diffidently, "Would you interpret, O Khazib, the meaning of that + door? For I hear that it hath now become a saying of a forbidden + thing." +</p> +<p> + The sage hesitated, sucking at his pipe. Then he said slowly, "To + every man, O Youth, is there a forbidden door, beyond which waits + the steed of high adventure ... with wings beyond man's riding. And + so the rider is lost and his vision is gone." +</p> +<p> + "But for him who could ride?" Ryder suggested. +</p> +<p> + "Inshallah! Who can say till he has tried his destiny—and better + are the nine and thirty chambers of safe pleasance than the lonely + sightlessness of the outcast one.... It is a tale which if it were + written upon the eye-corners with needle-gravers, were a warning to + those who would be warned." +</p> +<p> + For a moment their eyes held each other, smiling but grave. Ryder's + thoughts were of the morrow, of that forbidden entry he was planning + to make, of the risks, the wild uncertainties.... +</p> +<p> + Wisdom and counsel looked significantly out at him out of those + patriarchal eyes. Prudence and sanity clamored within him for a + hearing. +</p> +<p> + And then he smiled, the whimsical, boyish smile of young + adventuring. +</p> +<p> + "But whoever, O, my father, had opened that forbidden door + the veriest crack, and breathed its scent and glimpsed its + dazzlement—then for him there is no turning back," he confided. +</p> +<p> + He rose and Khazib's eyes followed him. +</p> +<p> + "Luck go with you, my son," he said clearly, "in Allah's name," and + smiling in faint ruefulness, "May Allah heed thee!" Ryder murmured + piously. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XII +</h2> +<h3> + THE UNINVITED GUEST +</h3> +<p> + Now as he stood before Aimée, and saw her eyes widen with + recognition, he knew that he would have need of all his luck and all + his wit. He stepped hastily forward. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Alhamdolillah</i>—Glory to God that he has permitted me to behold + you this day," he murmured, in the studiously sing-song Arabic that + might be expected from a humble Turkish woman in plain mantle and + yashmak. "May Allah continue to spread before thee the carpet of + enjoyment—" and then lower, almost muffled by the thick veil, "Can + you give me a moment—?" +</p> +<p> + Eagerly, significantly, his eyes met hers. +</p> +<p> + Half fearfully, Aimée flashed an excited look around her. The space + before the marriage throne had thinned, for there were no more + arrivals waiting to offer their congratulations and the guests were + clustering now about the tables for refreshment or drifting into the + next salon where behind firmly stretched silken walls a stringed + orchestra was playing. +</p> +<p> + Miss Jeffries alone was lingering near, but she moved off now—at a + secret look from Ryder—with an appearance of unconcern. +</p> +<p> + "I am going to try my vernacular on the bride," Ryder had told her. + "Don't linger or look alarmed. I won't give the show away." +</p> +<p> + So there was no one to overhear a low-toned colloquy between the + bride and the veiled woman, no one to note or wonder that the veiled + woman was speaking, strangely enough, in rapid English. +</p> +<p> + "When I didn't hear from you I had to come, to know if you received + the package and letter I sent—" +</p> +<p> + With a swift gesture of her little ringed hand Aimée drew from the + laces on her bosom that heavy gold locket. +</p> +<p> + "Indeed I have it—and the note, too, I found. But I could not write + you. There was no way—no one to trust to mail it. And they had + stolen my key," she whispered, and the confessing words with their + quiver of forlornness told Ryder something of the story of those + helpless days and nights. +</p> +<p> + He murmured, "I didn't dare write you more personally for fear they + would find the note." +</p> +<p> + "I understood. That plaid about the box—that was so clever a + warning. I kept the box and hunted in it." +</p> +<p> + "I wanted to tell you more about that locket. I dug it up myself + from the tomb I was excavating—do you remember how you wished that + I would dig from the sands whatever secret I most desired? And I + found that.... And it happened that at McLean's I had met the French + agent who was searching for any trace of the Delcassés, of the wife + and child of the explorer who had disappeared fifteen years before. + That miniature was your image, and I guessed at once. McLean and I + went to the pasha—Oh, I didn't tell him I'd met you!" he flung in, + his eyes twinkling, "and we pretended we knew all about his marriage + to Madame Delcassé and he owned up without a quiver. But when we + tried to claim you for the French family, he doubled like a hare. He + said the Delcassé child was dead, died when his own child was a + baby, and that you were his own. But I was sure that you were more + than fourteen, and that he was simply putting it over on us so as to + have this marriage go on without interference—and so I tried to get + the story to you. Even now I thought you ought to know," he added, + as if in palliation of his invasion here. +</p> +<p> + For he realized now how tremendous an invasion it was. +</p> +<p> + All the guests about him had not given him that feeling, all that + sea of femininity, those grave matrons whose serenely unveiled faces + would burn with shame to be beheld by this stranger, those bright, + slim girls in their extravagant frocks, their tulle, their lace, + their pearls, their diamonds, all the hidden charms that no man had + yet seen stirred in him no more than an excited and adventurous + curiosity. +</p> +<p> + But the vision of Aimée—that delicate beauty in its tragic irony + of throne and diadem! It touched him to tenderness and to an actual + sense of sacrilege at the freedom of his gaze. No moonlight vision + this, ethereal and dream-like, but a vivid, disquieting radiance of + dark, shining eyes and rose-flushed cheeks. He had never seen her + hair before, midnight hair, escaping little curls from the veil and + the diadem. And he had never really seen her mouth—wistful and gay, + like the mouth of the miniature ... nor her chin, so tender and + willful ... nor her skin, satin-soft, in its veiling from the + daylight.... +</p> +<p> + She was more than young and sweet and fair. She was beauty, beauty + with its elusive, ineluctable spell, entangled with the appeal of + her helplessness. +</p> +<p> + A bright blush flooded her now and her eyes fell in confusion, + before the prolonging of his look. +</p> +<p> + "But it is dangerous—your being here," she murmured. +</p> +<p> + "The fortieth door," he reminded her. +</p> +<p> + Under her breath, "Ah, you remember?" +</p> +<p> + "I remember. And but last night I heard Khazib, the story teller, + tell the tale, and I thought of you and your warning—of the door + that hid you, that it was forbidden for me to open." +</p> +<p> + "And so you opened it, monsieur." Faintly she smiled, with downcast + lashes. +</p> +<p> + "And I came as you first came to me—in mantle and veil." +</p> +<p> + For a moment their thoughts fled back to that masquerade, which + seemed so long ago. +</p> +<p> + "But it is too late," she said tremulously. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Is</i> it too late—for me to help you?" +</p> +<p> + At that her eyes rose to his again in a swift flash of hunted fear. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, take me away from him!" she breathed suddenly, unpremeditately. + "Somehow—somewhere—" +</p> +<p> + Another figure came towards them. Madame De Coulevain in all her + severe elegance of black. +</p> +<p> + "Come and join your friends at the supper, my dear; there is no need + for you to be pilloried here any longer," she observed with an + indifferent scrutiny of the persistent veiled woman, and Ryder moved + slowly away while Aimée came dutifully down from the throne, a huge + black bending to hold her train. +</p> +<p> + "I thought you were <i>never</i> coming! What <i>were</i> you talking about?" + demanded a voice in Ryder's ear, and he found Jinny Jeffries at his + side, her bright gray eyes pouncing upon him with curiosity. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I wished her joy—native phrases—that sort of thing," he + answered mechanically as they drew back into an embrasure of the + mashrubiyeh that formed one side of the great room. +</p> +<p> + "But you were talking forever. I saw you holding forth at a + tremendous rate. Why wouldn't you let me stay and listen—?" +</p> +<p> + "You'd have put me off my shot, I had to feel unobserved to play + up." +</p> +<p> + "You must be fearfully good at Arabic," said Jinny guilelessly. + "And what did she say?" +</p> +<p> + "Why—she didn't say anything in particular—" +</p> +<p> + "But what was that she was showing you? I saw her bend forward with + a locket or something—?" +</p> +<p> + A plague upon Jinny's bright eyes! "Oh, yes, the locket," said Ryder + with an effort. "She—ah—she showed it to me." +</p> +<p> + "But <i>why</i>? Wasn't that awfully funny—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I believe it's a custom, courtesy stunt you know, to show a + poor guest some of the presents," he explained, manufacturing under + pressure. +</p> +<p> + "I wish she'd show <i>me</i> her rings. Did you ever see so many? It was + the only thing about her you'd call really Eastern—all those + glittering diamonds on her fingers. And did you notice her hands?" + Jinny went on enthusiastically. "Jack, I never knew there was + anything so lovely as that girl in the world. She's simply + <i>exquisite</i>.... I suppose it's her whole life," Miss Jeffries + reflected, "keeping herself beautiful." Her eyes rested curiously on + the feminine groups before them. "They haven't anything else to do + or think about, have they?" +</p> +<p> + "I understand some of them are remarkably educated young women." +</p> +<p> + "What's the use of it?" said the practical daughter of an American + college. "They can't ever meet any men, but just a husband—" +</p> +<p> + "They can read for themselves, can't they? And talk to each other. + And—well, what do you girls do with your education anyway? You + don't lug anything very heavy about the golf course and the ball + room." +</p> +<p> + "Who wants us to? But we do bring something to committees and clubs + and—and welfare work," Miss Jeffries maintained stoutly. "And we + are always into arguments at dinners. While these girls, they can't + dine out, they haven't anybody but themselves to argue with, and it + doesn't matter a straw politically what they think—they can't even + change the customs that their great, great, great grandfathers + imposed. +</p> +<p> + "If I were one of these girls," she declared positively, "I wouldn't + bother about Kant and chemistry and history—I'd stuff myself full + of sweetmeats and loll around on a divan and not care what happened + outside. Or else I'd be miserable." +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps they are miserable." +</p> +<p> + "They ought to fight. Think, <i>think</i>," said Jinny dramatically, "of + marrying some man you've never seen—the way that lovely girl is + doing. Suppose she doesn't like him? Suppose he's dull and cranky + and mean and greedy? Suppose he bores her? Suppose she actually + hates him? Why, Jack, it's horrible! And yet she submits—she + <i>submits</i> to it—" +</p> +<p> + "Suppose she has to submit, that she hasn't a soul on earth to help + her? How would you fight, I wonder—" +</p> +<p> + "Well, you don't need to shout about it! That woman's looking + now—that one with the green turban and the stuffed-date eyes." +</p> +<p> + Nervously Jinny glanced around. +</p> +<p> + "It's a fearful lark," she murmured, "but I don't believe I'd ever + have had the nerve if I'd realized.... What do you suppose they + would <i>do</i>, Jack, if they found you out?... Those big blacks look + so—so uncivilized." +</p> +<p> + Her eyes rested upon the huge eunuch at the far entrance of the + salon, a huge hideous fellow, with red fez, baggy blouse and + trousers, and a knife handle sticking piratically from a sash. +</p> +<p> + "He has on English oxfords," said Ryder lightly. "That's a saving + something. But they aren't going to find out..... I have an idea we + ought to make our getaway now, and that we had better not go + together. You go first and then I'll stroll along, and whisk off + these duds in some quiet corner.... I have to meet a man to-night, + but I'll probably see you to-morrow. And <i>don't</i>," he entreated, + "don't as you love your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, + breathe a word of my being here like this to any one—any + time—anywhere. I was an unmitigated ass to link you up with it. So + be wary." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I shall!" Jinny Jeffries promised vividly and with a last look + about the old palace, the empty marriage throne and the dissolving + knots of guests, she gave a little nod to her veiled companion, + sauntered without visible trepidation past the staring eunuch at + the door, went down the long stairs where other departing guests + were drawing on mantles and veils, and so made her way across a + shadowy garden and out the gate that another black opened. +</p> +<p> + And then she drew a sudden breath of relief and glanced up at a sky + of sunset fires and felt the free airs play with her hair and face + and so shook off, lightly and gratefully, that darkening impression + of shuttered rooms and guarding blacks. +</p> +<p> + Little rivers of wine and fire were bubbling in Aimée's veins. She + was gay at supper, as a bride should be gay. It was enough, for + those first few moments, that she had seen him again, that he had + dared to come and try to help her—that he cared enough to come! +</p> +<p> + Her heart sang little pæans of joy and triumph. She sketched + impossible scenes of escape—she saw herself, in a shrouding mantle, + slipping with him past the guests at the door, she saw them speeding + away in a motor, she saw France, the unknown Delcassés—a bright, + gay world of freedom and romance. +</p> +<p> + Or, perhaps, if not to-night, then to-morrow.... They would plan ... + she would obtain permission to take a drive and there would be a + signal, a waiting car.... +</p> +<p> + But, better now. She could not endure even the call of ceremony from + that man who called himself her husband. The very memory of his eyes + on her.... +</p> +<p> + Decidedly, it must be to-night. And Ryder would think of a way. She + must get back to him ... he would be lingering. She must get away + from this hateful table, these guests and companions.... +</p> +<p> + A wild impatience tore at her. She grew uneasy, anxious, fretted at + the frightening way that time was slipping past.... +</p> +<p> + Her radiance vanished, her smile was nervous, forced, as she sat at + her table of honor, amid the circle of her friends, with a linked + wreath of candelabra sending its sparkle of lights over the young + faces and jewel-clasped throats, over the glittering silver on the + white satin cloth among the drift of pink and white rose petals. +</p> +<p> + She began to bite her lips nervously... she did not hear what her + bridesmaids were chattering about ... her eyes went often, with that + stealth that invites regard, to the tiny platinum and diamond watch + upon her wrist. +</p> +<p> + Would they never finish? Would they never be free? She wondered if + she dared feign an illness to rise and leave them; but no, that + would mean solicitude, companions.... +</p> +<p> + And now the slaves were bringing still another round of trays.... +</p> +<p> + Oh, hurry, hurry, her tightening nerves besought. +</p> +<p> + At last! The older women were going. Not even for a wedding would + they deeply infringe upon that rule which keeps the Moslem women + indoors after the sun has set. Ceremoniously each made to the bride + her adieux and good wishes, and ceremoniously a frantically + impatient Aimée returned the formal thanks due for "assistance at + the humble fête." +</p> +<p> + She did not see that black mantle anywhere. +</p> +<p> + Her heart sank. Stupid, she told herself with quivering lips, to + dream that he could dare to linger, that he had any way to get her + out. By help he meant no more than getting letters to France for + her.... And yet his eyes when they had met hers.... Surely he had + meant—but when she had disappeared from the reception room to + attend the supper, when there seemed no way of speaking again to + her, and all the outsiders, all but the invited guests were + departed, he had been, obliged to go, too. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps some one had begun to notice him.... She wondered if he had + been careful about his shoes, his hands.... How had he managed about + the dress anyway? +</p> +<p> + And then she remembered that girl, that pretty American with the + ruddy hair to whom she had seen him talking, and she conjectured + that there was feminine aid and confidence.... +</p> +<p> + A wave of bitterness swept over her. He had told that girl about + her—he knew that girl well enough to tell her! And perhaps he was + only sorry for the poor little French girl in the Turkish harem, + perhaps they were <i>both</i> sorry.... +</p> +<p> + Had he told that girl, she thought with bitter mutiny, that he had + kissed her? +</p> +<p> + That girl must have been very sure of him not to be jealous of his + interest in herself! +</p> +<p> + And now they could be somewhere together, perhaps talking her over, + while she was here ... here forever.... +</p> +<p> + She was so white now, so silent, so distrait, that all the chatter + of the younger girls who were lingering around her could not dispel + the feeling of depression. They cast covert glances of discomfort at + each other, begged for more music from the orchestra, tallied with + an effort of the size and spaciousness of the palace and the + magnificence of the feast. +</p> +<p> + She had told herself that she had ceased to hope. She did not know + how false it was until the eunuch brought his message. Then hope + really died. +</p> +<p> + The general was below and begged to be announced to madame. +</p> +<p> + "We fly!" whispered a lingerer with nervous laughter, and hastily + the young people hurried into their tcharchafs and veils, murmuring + among themselves, with sidelong glances at that white figure whose + cold hand and cheek they had just touched, hastily they sped, like + light-footed nymphs in some witches' robes, down the long room, + while Madame de Coulevain drew back a strand of the girl's dark hair + and murmured, "But smile, my dear," to the still figure and escaped + with the guests. +</p> +<p> + And then Aimée was alone in the great room, deserted of its throngs, + a darkening room, full of burned-down candles and fallen flower + petals, with here and there the traces of the revelers, a scented + handkerchief ... a fan ... a buckle from some French slipper ... or + a feather from some ancient turban clasp.... +</p> +<p> + Like the ghost of some deserted queen, with her regal satins and + glittering circlet, she waited. There was a moment of grace in which + she tried, to turn a gallant face toward the next moment. +</p> +<p> + Then he came, advancing.... It may have been her distorted fancy, + but down the long perspective, that figure looked more mincing, more + waspish, more unreal than ever. And she was conscious of that swift + rising of dislike, of antagonism touched with reasonless fear. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIII +</h2> +<h3> + THE BEY RETURNS +</h3> +<p> + He kissed her hands. She caught the murmur of compliments and the + mingled scent of musk and wine. He had been dining at his reception + for the men, but he called now for a table and more refreshment. +</p> +<p> + A small table was brought to the end of the room near the marriage + throne where all the day she had paraded; a richly embroidered cloth + of satin was flung over it, and from crowding candelabra fresh + lights shed down a little circle of brilliance. +</p> +<p> + Faintly Aimée protested that eat she could not, and then she made a + feint of eating, lingering over her sherbets, because eating was, + after all, so safe and uncomplicated a thing. +</p> +<p> + The black brought champagne in its jacket of ice and filled their + glasses. +</p> +<p> + The general rose. "<i>À notre bonheur</i>—to our happiness," he + declared, holding out his glass, and she clinked her own to it and + brought her lips to touch the brim, but not to that toast could she + swallow a single one of the bubbles that went winking up and down + the hollow stem. +</p> +<p> + The glass trembled suddenly in her hand as she set it down. An + overpowering sense of fatigue was upon her. With the death of her + poor hope, with the collapse of all those flighty, childish dreams, + the leaden weight of realities seemed to descend crushingly upon + her. She felt stricken, inert, apathetic. +</p> +<p> + It was all so unreal, so bizarre. This could not possibly be taking + place in her life, this fantastic scene, this table set with lights + and food at the end of a dark, deserted old room opposite this + grimacing, foppish stranger.... +</p> +<p> + She could barely master strength for her replies. How had it all + gone? Excellently? She was satisfied with her new home? With the + service? The appointments? +</p> +<p> + He plied her with questions and she tried to summon her spirit: she + achieved a few perfunctory phrases, the words of a frightened child + struggling for its manners. She tried to smile, unconscious of the + betrayal of her eyes. +</p> +<p> + He told her, sketchily, of his day. A bore, those affairs, those + speeches, he told her, gazing at her, his wine glass in his hand, a + flush of wine and excitement in his face. She found it unpleasant to + look at him. Her glance evaded his. +</p> +<p> + She stammered a word of praise for the palace. It must be very + ancient, she told him. Very—interesting. +</p> +<p> + He waved a hand on which an enormous ruby glittered. He could tell + her stories of it, he promised. It had been built by one of the + Mamelukes, his ancestor. Its old banqueting hall was still + untouched—the collectors would give much to rifle that, but they + would never get their sharks' noses in. Nothing had been changed, + but something added. Once the Mad Khedive had borrowed it for some + years and begun his eternal additions. +</p> +<p> + "Forty girls, they say, he kept here," smiled Hamdi Bey. "They + gulped their pleasure, in those days. It is better to sip, is it + not?" +</p> +<p> + He smiled. "But these are no stories for a bride! I only trust that + you will not find your palace dull. It is very quiet now, very much + of the old school. You may miss your pianos, your electricity, all + your pretty Parisian modernity." +</p> +<p> + She glanced at the glittering table. +</p> +<p> + "But I do not find this so—so much of the old school. Here one does + not eat rice with the fingers!" +</p> +<p> + "And I?" said the bey, leaning suddenly towards her on his outspread + arm. "Do you find me too much of the old school? Eh? eh?" +</p> +<p> + "But you, monsieur," she stammered, still looking down, "you—I do + not know you—not yet." +</p> +<p> + "Not—yet. Excellent! There will be time." +</p> +<p> + "I confess that now I am weary—" +</p> +<p> + "Ah,—and that diadem is heavy. Your head must ache with it," he + said solicitously. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps it was the diadem that gave her that leaden, constricted + sense of a band tightening about her forehead. She put up her hands + to it. +</p> +<p> + "Permit me," he said quickly, springing to his feet. "Permit me to + aid you." +</p> +<p> + He stepped behind her and bent over her. She held her head very + still, stiff with distaste, and felt the weight lifted. He surveyed + the circlet a moment then placed it upon the marriage throne behind + her. She had an ironic memory of the false omen of her crowning, of + soft, satisfied little Ghul-al-Din's bestowal of her own + happiness.... Happiness, indeed.... +</p> +<p> + "And that veil—surely that is incommoding?" suggested the suave + voice, and she felt the touch of his hands on her hair where the + misty veil was secured. +</p> +<p> + She stammered that it was quite light—she would not trouble him— +</p> +<p> + Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil + aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled + sanctities, for a Moslem, the back of her neck. +</p> +<p> + She did not stir. She sat fixed and tense. Then slowly the blood + came back to her heart, for he was moving away from her again to his + place at the table. +</p> +<p> + Laughing a little, pulling at his blond mustache in a gesture of + conquest, his kindling eyes glinting down at her, "You must forgive + the precipitateness—of a lover," he murmured. "You do not know your + own beauty. You are like a crystal in which the world has thrown no + reflections. All is pure and transparent—" +</p> +<p> + If she did not find words to answer him, to divert his admiration, + she felt that she was lost. +</p> +<p> + "You are not complimentary—a bit of glass, monsieur, instead of a + diamond! But I am too weary to be exacting.... If now, you will + permit me to bid you good evening and withdraw—" +</p> +<p> + "Little trembler," said the general facetiously, and reached out a + hand to touch her cheek, the light, reassuring caress that one might + give a petted child, but it almost brought a cry of nervous terror + from her lips. +</p> +<p> + She thought that if he touched her again she would scream. He + inspired her with a horrible fear. There was something so false, so + smiling in him... he was like an ogre sitting down to a delicate + dish of her young innocence, her childish terrors, her frank + fears.... +</p> +<p> + She could not have told why she found him so horrible, but + everything in her shrank convulsively from him. +</p> +<p> + And the need of courtesy to him, of propititation—! +</p> +<p> + The cup was bitterer than her darkest dreams.... She wondered how + many other women had drained such deadly brews... had sat in such + ghastly despair, before some other bridegroom, affable, confident, + masterful.... +</p> +<p> + She told herself that she was overwrought, hysterical. The man was + courteous. He was trying to be agreeable, to make a little expected + love. He had drank a little too much—another time she might find + him different. He was probably no worse than any other man of her + world. +</p> +<p> + It was not in her world, each young Turkish girl said in those days, + that one could find love. +</p> +<p> + But it was <i>not</i> her world! It was an alien world, enforced, + imprisoning.... That was the bitterest gall of all the deadly cup. +</p> +<p> + "There is no need for haste," he was assuring her. "In a moment I + will call your woman. Fatima, her name is, an old slave of our + house." +</p> +<p> + "I could wish," said Aimée, "that I had been permitted to bring my + old nurse, Miriam, without whom I feel strange—" +</p> +<p> + "No old nurses—I know their wiles," laughed the bey, setting down + his drained cup with a wavering hand. "They are never for the + husbands, those old nurses—we will have no old trot's tricks here!" +</p> +<p> + He laughed again. "This Fatima is a watch dog, I warn you, my little + one ... but if she does not please you, we can find another. And as + for the rooms—I have assigned this suite to you, the suite of + honor. This is the salon, and there," he pointed to a curtained door + behind them, opening into a small room that Aimée had already seen, + "there is your boudoir and beyond that, your sleeping apartment. I + have had them done over for you, but you shall choose your own + furnishings—everything shall be to your taste, I promise you. You + are too sweet to deny. You have but to ask—" +</p> +<p> + Certainly, she thought, he was drunk. He moved his head so jerkily + and his whole body swayed so queerly. Desperately she fought against + her horror. Perhaps it was better for him to be drunk. +</p> +<p> + Drunken men grow sleepy. Perhaps he would fall down and sleep. + Perhaps she ought to urge him to drink. Long ago the black had left + the bottle at his elbow and gone out of his room. +</p> +<p> + But she did not move. She sat back in her chair, withdrawn and + shrinking, watching him out of those dark, terrified eyes. +</p> +<p> + "You are beautiful as dreams," he told her, leaning towards her with + such abruptness that his sword struck clankingly against the table. + "Beyond even the words of my babbling cousin—eh, Allah reward + her!—but she did me a good turn with her talk of you!" +</p> +<p> + Fixedly he stared at her, out of those intent, inflamed eyes. +</p> +<p> + "I did not know that there was anything like you in the harems of + Cairo. You are like a vision of the old poets—but I suppose that + you do not know the ancient poetry. You little moderns are brought + up upon French and English and music and know little of the Arabic + and the Persian.... I daresay that you have never heard of the poet + Utayyah." +</p> +<p> + Still leaning towards her he began to intone the stanzas in a very + fair tenor voice, and if his movements were at all unsteady, his + speech was most precise and accurate. +</p> +<p class="poem"> + + "From her radiance the sun taketh increase when<br> + She unveileth and shameth the moonlight bright." +</p> +<p> + He chuckled.... "Ah, I shall put the triple veil upon you, my little + moon.... How Is this one? +</p> +<p class="poem"> + "'On Sun and Moon of Palace cast thy sight,<br> + Enjoy her flower-like face, her fragrant light,<br> + Thine eyes shall never see in hair so black<br> + Beauty encase a brow so purely white.'" +</p> +<p> + He got up and drew his chair closer to her. "That is the song for + you, little white rose of beauty." +</p> +<p> + Back went her own chair, and she rose to her feet. +</p> +<p> + "I thank you for the compliment, monsieur. But now have I your + permission to retire? For it has been a long day and I am indeed + fatigued—" +</p> +<p> + To her vexation her voice was trembling, but she steadied it + proudly. +</p> +<p> + "I bid you good evening." +</p> +<p> + "Nonsense, my little white rose. This is not so fatiguing—a few + words more. But you are like the flower that flies before the + wind.... But your room, yes, to be sure. Shall I show you the way?" +</p> +<p> + "I can discover it, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "Monsieur—fie on you, my little dove.... Hamdi, I tell you, your + lover Hamdi." +</p> +<p> + He laughed unsteadily, and put a hand on her arm. "You are running + away, I know that. And I have so much to tell you ... Oh, it was + tedious in that villa of your father's! 'Yes,' I thought to myself, + 'that is a fine story, a funny story, but I have heard them all + before. And you are in no haste, you revelers—you have no little + bride waiting for you at home.'... That one glance at you—I tell you + it was the glance of which the poet sings—the glance that cost him + a thousand sighs. I was on fire with impatience.... For I am + beauty's slave, little dove.... You may have heard—but no matter. A + wife must be a pearl unspotted.... I am not as the English who take + their wives from the highways, where all men's glances have rested + upon them. Have I not been at their balls? Their women dance in + other men's arms. They marry wives whose hands other men have + pressed. Sometimes—who knows?—their lips have been kissed.... And + then a husband takes her.... Oh, many thanks!" +</p> +<p> + He laughed sardonically and waved his hands a little wildly. "Oh, I + know English—all the Europeans. I have seen their women. I have + seen them selling their wares—stripping themselves half bare in the + evenings, the shameless—For me, never! My wife is a hidden + treasure. You know what the poet says: +</p> +<p class="poem"> + "'An' there be one who shares with me her love<br> + I'd strangle Love tho' Life by Love were slain,<br> + Saying, O Soul, Death were the nobler choice,<br> + For ill is Love when shared twixt partners twain.'" +</p> +<p> + "You are fond of your poets," said Aimée with stiff lips. +</p> +<p> + "You—you kindle poetic fires, my little one. You—I—" He stammered + a moment, then forgot his fierce speech against foreign ways. "You + have the raven hair—" +</p> +<p> + His hand went out to it. He smoothed it back out of her eyes, then + tried to draw her to him. +</p> +<p> + Desperately she resisted. "Monsieur, one does not expect a + gentleman—" +</p> +<p> + "Expect! Ho—what should one expect when a man has such a little + sweetmeat, such a little syrup drop, such a rose petal—Come, come, + you would not struggle—" +</p> +<p> + But it was not the struggling hand of the frightened girl that sent + the general back. +</p> +<p> + It was a brown, sinewy hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from + a well tailored gray sleeve and lilac striped cuff, that caught + Hamdi Bey by the epauleted shoulder and sent him spinning about. +</p> +<p> + Another hand was holding a revolver very directly at him. +</p> +<p> + "Silence!" said Jack Ryder in his best Turkish and repeated it, with + amplification, in English. "Not a sound—or I'll blow your head + off." +</p> +<p> + Aimée gave a strangled gasp. +</p> +<p> + He had not gone, then! He had hidden there, in some nook of that + boudoir behind those shadowy curtains, waiting to protect her, to + rescue.... +</p> +<p> + Over one arm he had the black mantle and veil, "Better put these + on," he suggested, without taking his eyes from the rigid bey, "and + then run for it." +</p> +<p> + "But you—you—?" +</p> +<p> + "I'll take care of myself. After you are out of the way. Dare you + try that? Or what do you suggest?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, not alone. Together—" +</p> +<p> + "So—so—" said Hamdi Bey inarticulately, his head nodded, he + staggered, his knees gave way and he crumpled very completely upon + the floor, and lay like a felled log. +</p> +<p> + After a quick look down at him Ryder turned to Aimée. "Quick, then. + We'll make a run for it—" +</p> +<p> + He did not finish. Hamdi Bey, upon the floor, fallen half under the + folds of the white cloth, made a swift and very expert roll and + darted to his feet beside Aimée, whirling her about, with pinioned + elbows, for his shield. +</p> +<p> + And so screened, he gave a shrill whistle. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIV +</h2> +<h3> + WITHIN THE WALLS +</h3> +<p> + Ryder sprang forward, trying to reach the bey, but he dodged + skillfully; his holding Aimée blocked Ryder in his attack. +</p> +<p> + He knew that high, peculiar whistle had been a signal, a call for + aid, and he flung a lightning glance down that long room, tightening + his hold on the revolver—but he did not see the small door that + opened in the shadowy paneling behind him, nor the shadow that grew + into the gorilla-like shape of the black as it launched itself + through the air upon his back. +</p> +<p> + He only heard Aimée's scream, and then before the crashing weight + upon his shoulders he staggered and went down. +</p> +<p> + The bey flung Aimée aside and rushed upon the prostrate figure, + kicking the revolver from the outspread hand. The black knelt + swiftly down, unfastening his silken sash. +</p> +<p> + Giddily the room whirled about Aimée.... In the candle light, + leaping in the rush of conflict, she saw the bey and the black, and + their distorted shadows in a goblin blur.... And beneath them she + saw Ryder, helpless, his hands and feet pinioned.... With the + madness of despair she rushed forward, but the general intercepted + her. +</p> +<p> + "He is quite helpless.... You need not be alarmed for my safety, + madame!" +</p> +<p> + The cold, biting fury of his voice steadied her. She saw his face + was distorted, livid with anger. His breathing was stertorous. +</p> +<p> + She stood helplessly by the table; the general turned and looked + down upon the face of the man who had dared to violate the sanctity + of his harem and attempt to steal his bride; beyond the man's head + Yussuf, the black, was squatting with a grinning, dog-like + watchfulness. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder did not require watching. That sash had been tied strongly + about his hands and feet. He was as helpless as a baby. +</p> +<p> + But the peculiar flavor of his helplessness was not so much fear + before the fanatic fury of this man he had outraged, although he had + a clear notion that his position was not enviably secure, but a + bitter, black chagrin. +</p> +<p> + To have had the game in his hands and have bungled it! To have been + surprised by that simple strategy, taken off his guard by a feigned + collapse! The wily old Turk for all his champagne had the clearer, + quicker brain.... +</p> +<p> + To have let him get to Aimée and call in his black! To have been + thrown, disarmed.... It was crass stupidity. It was outrageous + mismanagement, abominable, maddening.... +</p> +<p> + And Aimée must pay for it. He tried to think very quickly what could + best clear her. +</p> +<p> + He fixed his eyes on those glittering eyes, staring down upon him. +</p> +<p> + "I realize I owe you an explanation," he said grimly. "If you will + let me tell you—" +</p> +<p> + The bey turned to Aimée with a smile that was the lifting of a lip + and the distention of his nostrils. +</p> +<p> + "This fool thinks he has the time to talk—his English." +</p> +<p> + Desperately Ryder grasped for his vernacular. "I want to tell + you—why I came. This—this young lady doesn't know me." +</p> +<p> + Past the general he shot a look of warning at the girl. +</p> +<p> + "I was trying to get hold of her for her family in France—She is + really a French girl. Tewfick Pasha is not her father but her—" + he could not find the word and dropped into English. "Her + step-father—do you understand? And he had no business to marry her + off, so I tried to steal her for the French family. It was a mad + attempt which has failed—but for which the young lady should not be + blamed. She had never seen me before. She had no idea I was here." +</p> +<p> + After a pause, "A remarkable story," said the general distinctly. He + turned about to the table and drank off the last of a glass of + champagne, then wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that + trembled. +</p> +<p> + He turned back to stand over his prostrate invader. "Now, you—you + dog of Satan," he snarled in a sudden snapping of restraint, "how + did you get here? Who admitted you?" +</p> +<p> + And at that, for all his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder + grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird of yours here." +</p> +<p> + "Yussuf—never!" +</p> +<p> + "The very one. But he didn't know it—I was in that black + mantle—and veil." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, the mantle, I had forgot. So you stole in, disguised, to + violate my hospitality, to outrage my harem, to gaze upon the + forbidden faces of women and to steal the bride—" +</p> +<p> + "I tell you I was trying to rescue the girl for her French family. + She <i>is</i> French and Tewfick Pasha is only—" +</p> +<p> + "And what is that to me? Do I—" the bey broke off and then turned + to the silent girl who stood leaning towards them, a trembling ghost + in white. +</p> +<p> + "And you, my little one," he murmured sardonically with a savage + irony of restraint, "you, the little dove secluded from the world, + who trembled at a kiss, the crystal vase who had never reflected the + blush of love, whose virginal praises I was chanting when I was so + oddly assaulted, do you support this idiot's story?" +</p> +<p> + Mechanically her head moved in assent, her eyes, dilated with fear, + were like the dark, fascinated eyes of some helpless bird. +</p> +<p> + "You never saw this young man?" the bey pursued. "And yet you were + ready to run off with him—a pretty character you give yourself, my + snowdrop!—and you liked his eyes and hastened to obey?" +</p> +<p> + Aimée was silent. From his ignominy upon the floor Ryder hastened to + interpose. +</p> +<p> + "It is true she had never seen me, but I had already written to her + and acquainted her with the story. I tried to reach her first + through her father but that was useless so I resorted to these + desperate means." +</p> +<p> + "Oh you wrote! And you told her you would be here, and murder her + husband—" +</p> +<p> + "I told her nothing of the kind. She didn't know that I was coming + until I spoke to her here, and then she had no idea that I was going + to wait and carry her off—" +</p> +<p> + "In the name of Allah! Do you take me for a dolt, an ass? You, with + your writing and your masquerade and your secrets! Do any families + try to recover their relatives with such means? Daughter or + step-daughter, it is nothing to me—" +</p> +<p> + "But it is true," Aimée insisted, in a trembling voice. "My father + was Paul Delcassé—" +</p> +<p> + "<i>Yahrak Kiddisak man rabbabk</i>—curse the man who brought thee up! + Delcassé or devil, it is Tewfick Pasha who is your step-father, your + guardian, who gave you to me for wife—what has your genealogy to + do with this affront upon my honor?" +</p> +<p> + "But he did not intend to affront your honor—only to aid the family + in France—" +</p> +<p> + "I ask you again, do I resemble an ass that you should put such a + burden of lies upon me? As if I did not know why young men risked + their lives, in the dead of night, in other men's rooms! If I did + not know what turns their brains to mush and their hearts to leading + strings! And you—you—you little white rose of seclusion—!" +</p> +<p> + His venom leaped out at her in his voice. It was a terrible voice, + the cold, grating menace of a madman. +</p> +<p> + "You, who had never seen this man but who fluttered to him like a + white moth to a fire, you who cowered from your husband's hand but + who turned to follow this strange dog into the streets—there will + be care taken of you later. But now—you complained of fatigue. + Surely this scene is overtaxing for your delicacy. If you will come + to your rooms—" +</p> +<p> + She drew back from the hand he laid upon her. "Do not injure him! + By Allah's truth! He is rash, mad, but a stranger. He did not + know—" +</p> +<p> + "He needs enlightenment. He needs to learn that a nobleman's harem + is not a café of dancing girls, where all may enter and stare and + fondle. <i>Bismallah</i>—he shall learn!... And now come—" +</p> +<p> + "I shall not go," she said breathlessly. +</p> +<p> + "What—struggle? But your father has been strangely remiss with his + discipline.... Permit me." +</p> +<p> + His hand tightened in a grasp of iron. +</p> +<p> + "My train is caught," she said in a tone of sudden pettishness; she + stooped to lift it with her hand that was free. +</p> +<p> + "My train—!" he mimicked her in a quivering falsetto. "Have a care + of my frock—do not crush my chiffons.... And these are the women + for whom men break their heads and hearts!" +</p> +<p> + "I tell you, sir," came urgently from Ryder, "that the girl is + innocent of all—" +</p> +<p> + "Keep your tongue from her name—and your eyes from her face!... + Come, madame." +</p> +<p> + With his iron grasp on her elbow he thrust her towards the boudoir + at the end of the drawing-room, behind whose curtains Ryder had so + long been hiding. +</p> +<p> + The chamber was in darkness, lighted only by a pale gleam from the + other room. Aimée stumbled across the rug and found herself upon a + huge divan against a window screen. +</p> +<p> + "Fatima is in the next room to come at a call. But perhaps you would + prefer to wait for me alone? I shall not be long." +</p> +<p> + Desperately she caught at his arm, imploring, "I beg you, monsieur. + He has done no real harm. Let him go. He is a stranger—he + did not know. And he will never trouble you again. I will do + anything—everything you desire—if only you will not injure him—" +</p> +<p> + "You trouble yourself strangely for a stranger." +</p> +<p> + "He is a stranger in danger for my sake. For it was in his duty to + my—my family—" her trembling lips stumbled over the ridiculous + lies, "that he has blundered into this. He has no idea how shocking + a thing he has—" +</p> +<p> + "And you had no idea, either, I suppose. You had never heard of + honor or treachery or—" +</p> +<p> + "I was wrong, oh, I was wrong! I did want to go to France—I own it. + And I was not ready for marriage. And I had heard that you—I was + afraid. But now—if you will let him go for my sake, if you will not + visit my sins upon him, oh, I should be so grateful—so grateful + that anything I can ever do—" +</p> +<p> + "But you will be grateful, anyway, my little blossom. I promise you + that you will learn to be very grateful—" +</p> +<p> + "It is easier to die than to learn to love a hated one," she + reminded him softly, leaning towards him. "I can die very willingly, + monsieur.... And you would not want a wife before whom there was + always an object of terror—" +</p> +<p> + Through the dusk her great eyes sought his. +</p> +<p> + "Be generous—and harm him not," she breathed. "I beg of you, I + implore—" +</p> +<p> + "And if I am—lenient—you will always be grateful?" +</p> +<p> + Mutely she nodded, her eyes trying pitifully to read that shadowy + mask of mockery he turned towards her. +</p> +<p> + "And how grateful could you be, little dove?" +</p> +<p> + Pitifully she smiled. +</p> +<p> + "Could you," he murmured, "could you learn to kiss?" +</p> +<p> + He leaned nearer and involuntarily she shrank back. Faintly, "At + this moment—I beg of you, monsieur—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, if it is to be an affair of moments! We shall never find the + right one. But you were so full of promises—" +</p> +<p> + "I will do anything," said Aimée, convulsively, "if you will promise + me—" +</p> +<p> + "Come, then a kiss. A peck from my little dove." +</p> +<p> + She looked at him out of wretched eyes. +</p> +<p> + "And you promise to free him, not to hurt him—" +</p> +<p> + "I promise not to hurt a hair of his head. Come, that is generous, + isn't it? As to freeing him—h'm—that is for later. Perhaps, if you + are very good. A kiss then... and later...." +</p> +<p> + He bent over her. She shut her eyes and heard the taunt of his + laugh. She kissed him, and he laughed again. +</p> +<p> + "What is it the Afghan poets say? 'Kissed lips lose no sweetness, + but renew their freshness with the moon.' Certainly if you have ever + been kissed, little bud, you have lost no dew.... Delicious.... I + shall hurry back." +</p> +<p> + He cast a hard look down at her as she sat there, her arms drooping + at her sides. He looked about the room as if consideringly, then + nodded at an unseen door at the right. +</p> +<p> + "Fatima is there if you want lights or assistance.... And Alsamit, + Yussuf's brother, is at the other door beyond. Do not stir, little + bird. I shall be back very soon." +</p> +<p> + "And he—you promised—" +</p> +<p> + "I shall not hurt a hair of his head." +</p> +<p> + But he was smiling evilly in the darkness as he drew shut the door + and returned to the bound figure by the guarding black. +</p> +<p> + For a moment he stood silent, considering, while Yussuf looked up + with glistening-eyed intentness like an eager dog ready for the word + of attack. +</p> +<p> + Then in hasty Turkish the general gave his directions and the black + nodded and strode to a portière, jerking it down, which he wrapped + about Ryder's helpless form. +</p> +<p> + Then he hoisted his burden over his huge shoulder and bore it on + after the general. +</p> +<p> + Across the great room they went and down the long stairs up which + that day a most complacent Hamdi Bey had escorted his just-glimpsed + bride. +</p> +<p> + Now at the bottom of the stairs a shadowy figure of a sleeping + eunuch was stretched. +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey spoke sharply, giving a quick order. The black scrambled + to his feet, yawned, nodded, and strode away into the main vestibule + and out into the garden to investigate a shadow which the general + had just reported, and when he was out of sight the general and + Yussuf, with his unwieldy burden, came quietly down the stairs and + turned back into a long, dark hall. +</p> +<p> + For a moment they paused outside a wide, many-columned banqueting + room, and there Hamdi Bey stood listening, straining attentive ears + for the faint sounds from the service quarters on the other side of + the room. He caught the guttural of a half inaudible voice, and the + wash of water and clink of a dish, showing that the belated work of + the reception was going draggingly on, but it was all far away and + invisible. +</p> +<p> + Satisfied he went on a few steps to a pointed door set in the heavy + stone. From a nail he took down a lantern of heavy, fretted brass + and lighted it, not without some difficulty, for his hands were + still trembling. Then he took from the black a cumbersome key which + he fitted into the lock and turned heavily. +</p> +<p> + Drawing back the door he motioned Yussuf ahead, and followed, + drawing the door shut. Down a steep, stone spiral stair they went, + and at the bottom, at the general's order, the black set Ryder down + from his shoulder and flung aside the portière. +</p> +<p> + From its muffling folds Ryder looked out bewilderedly into the + darkness about him, illumined only by the yellow flare of the + ancient lantern. The general cautioned him to silence while Yussuf + knelt and untied the strip that bound his feet, then, his arms still + bound, he was ordered to march on before them. +</p> +<p> + This, he said to himself, as he silently obeyed that order, this + really was the time to pinch himself and wake up! Of all the dark, + eerie nightmares! This slow procession through these underground + halls, the giant black on his heels, the general's lantern throwing + its flickering rays over the huge, seamed blocks of granite + foundations. +</p> +<p> + It made him think of the Catacombs. It made him think of the + Serapeum. It made him think of those damp, tortuous underground ways + of the Villa Bordoni.... +</p> +<p> + They seemed to be in the wine cellars. He saw bins and barrels and + barred vaults that would have done credit to an English squire, and + he reflected fleetly that wine bibbing was forbidden to Mohammedans + and that Hamdi Bey was a fanatic Moslem.... Then he saw open spaces + of ancient stuffs, broken tables and dismantled caiques and a broken + oar. His earlier observation of the palace had told him that it had + a water gate and he thought now that they might be near some + opening. +</p> +<p> + He wondered if they were going to throw him, pinioned, into the + river. He wouldn't put it past this livid, silent, shaking man—and + yet the thing appeared so impossible, so theatric, so utterly + unrelated to any of the ways that he, Jack Ryder, might be expected + to end his days, that it couldn't possibly send more than a shiver + of speculation down his spine. +</p> +<p> + And yet men <i>had</i> been thrown into rivers—this very river. And men + had disappeared from just such palaces as this. There was the story + about young Monkton. He knew it perfectly; he had reminded himself + of it the last evening while he reflected upon this escapade, but he + had never actually appreciated the peculiar poignancy of the thing + until now. +</p> +<p> + Monkton had met—so rumor reported—a Turkish lady of position, + flirted with her, it was said, while on horseback outside her motor + when caught in the crush at Kasr-el-Nil bridge. There had been a + meeting or two in the back of shops, and then he had boasted, + lightheartedly, of a design to take tea in her harem. +</p> +<p> + He had never boasted about the tea. No one had ever seen Monkton + again and he was generally reported, after a stifled inquiry, to + have been thrown from his horse in the desert, or spilled out of his + sailing canoe. +</p> +<p> + The government, English or Egyptian, assumed no interest in the + matter of gentlemen found in other gentlemen's harems. +</p> +<p> + There were other stories, too. There was one of a little Viennese + actress who after a dramatic escape reported a whole winter of + captivity in one of these old palaces, and there was a vaguer rumor + of a rash young American girl, detained for days.... +</p> +<p> + Ryder had always known these stories. They were part of the gossip + and thrill of Cairo. But he had never till now realized how + exquisitely possible was their occurrence. +</p> +<p> + Anything, everything might happen in these hidden, secret chambers. + These Turks were as much masters here as their old predecessors who + had reared these stones. This black upon his heels might have been + the grinning, faithful executioner of some Khedive or Caliph—he + might have been the very Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance of Al + Raschid. +</p> +<p> + He told himself that it was no time to think of the past. His + business—acutely—was the present. If only he could get his hands + untied! If only he could get those untied hands upon that demoniac + Turk! +</p> +<p> + But, strain as he could upon the knots, they held. +</p> +<p> + It seemed to him that they had been walking for an interminable + distance, in odd, roundabout ways. Once they had stopped and he had + involuntarily glanced back over his shoulder, but at a word from the + general he had kept his head forward again, while he heard the black + behind him gathering something that clinked. Later, a stolen glance + had revealed the eunuch with some tools in one hand and bag slung + over his shoulder. +</p> +<p> + The bag disquieted him. Bags filled a foreboding place in the + Eastern literature of vengeance. He wondered if he were to go into + the river in that bag, with the tools for weight. +</p> +<p> + He decided, feeling now a very odd and definite disturbance in the + region of his stomach, that he would tell that general that he was a + cousin of the late Lord Cromer and a nephew of Lord Kitchener. + Something insistent would have to be done about this. +</p> +<p> + They were passing now through a strange, open space, between old + arches that for an instant arrested his excavator's interest. He saw + in the shadows about them, a crumpled, crumbling dome and broken + shafts, with half a wall of masonry pierced with Arabesques. Traces + of old ruins, fragments of some old, forgotten mosque over which the + palace had spread its foundations in bygone days.... Buried + treasure, looted, some of it, for the palace overhead, but still + rare and lovely.... That was a gleam of lapis lazuli that winked at + him from the crumbling mortar under his feet. +</p> +<p> + Then they were between other walls, not crumbling ones, but the + solid, pillared blocks of the palace masonry with here and there + broad arches of old brick. +</p> +<p> + They stopped. Between two arches the general held his lantern high, + flashing it over the surface while Yussuf swung down his sack and + knocked with the handle of his tool. +</p> +<p> + Suddenly he stopped and looked at his master, nodding cheerfully. + The general lowered his light and stepped back and Yussuf reared the + pickaxe in his powerful arms and sent it dexterously at the wall, + between two broken bits of brick. +</p> +<p> + It caught, and sent the mortar spraying; another blow and another + loosened a hole in which the black inserted a short iron and began + nervously grinding and prying. +</p> +<p> + Ryder, watching with oppressed and helpless fury, saw the bricks at + last break and tumble faster and faster in a cloud of dust, and saw + a pocket in the wall become revealed, a long, upright niche, the + size, perhaps, of a man's coffin, on end. +</p> +<p> + He tried, very suddenly, to talk. His tongue felt thick and swollen + and there seemed no words in all the world to fit his need of + overcoming this fanatic madman,—and after all, he had no chance for + them, for Yussuf, with a huge palm upon his mouth, urged him + suddenly backwards towards that horrible niche. +</p> +<p> + "Gently, Yussuf, gently," said the general, suavely and with a slow + distinctness that was for Ryder's ears. "I gave my word that I would + not hurt a hair of his head—" +</p> +<p> + Grinning, the black lifted him over the remaining wall, and set him + down into the niche, leaving him standing in there like a helpless + statue, tasting to the full fury of his heart the bitterness of his + helplessness and the ludicrous impotence of all struggle. +</p> +<p> + "Good God, sir, you must be mad," he said in a strained sharp + voice that his ears would not have known as his own. "Do you + realize—there will be an inquiry—there is such a thing as law—" +</p> +<p> + It seemed to him that he talked, in English and stammering Arabic, + for a long time. The black was kneeling, out of sight, stooping over + a basin of water and his abominable sack, and Ryder was facing that + silent, sardonic face, with its fantastic mustache, its evil, + gloating eyes.... +</p> +<p> + He stopped for very shame. The man was mad. Mad and drunk—and there + was no appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.... Mad or drunk, he + had devised his vengeance shrewdly. +</p> +<p> + Upon Ryder's helpless body a cold sweat of incredulous horror broke + softly out. +</p> +<p> + At his feet he heard the black beginning to fit his bricks and + smooth his mortar. +</p> +<p> + "You do well to save your breath," said Hamdi Bey at last, as Ryder + still stood silent. "You will need it in this chamber I am + providing.... But it may be," he said thoughtfully, "that your + breath will last your need. Thirst may be the more impatient for her + victim; they tell me thirst is an obtrusive visitor. As you were, + this evening.... Still, why do you not cry out a little? It will + amuse my black." +</p> +<p> + Yes, this was real, Ryder reminded himself. And these things could + happen—had happened. He remembered suddenly the hideous scene, + outside the dungeons, in "Francesca da Rimini," when that bestial + brother goes in to the helpless prisoners. He remembered the sick + horror of those groans.... +</p> +<p> + He remembered also various excursions of his in the Tower of London + and the Seigniory of Florence, and the sight of old rings and stakes + and racks and the feeling of their total unrelatedness to every + actuality. +</p> +<p> + And yet they had happened. And this thing, for all its fantastic + medieval horror, was happening. Brick by brick the imprisoning wall + was rising. Brick by brick it intervened between him and sane, + sensible, happy, normal life. +</p> +<p> + Eye for eye he gave the general back his look. He had always + wondered about the poor devils in underground torture chambers. Had + wondered how they had the stuff to hold out, against such odds, for + some belief, some information.... Now he knew the stiffening stuff + of a personal hate, upholding to the very grave.... +</p> +<p> + That sardonic, devil's face.... That face which was going back + upstairs to Aimée.... But he must not think of that or he should + give way and begin to babble, to plead.... He must simply stand and + meet that glance.... +</p> +<p> + And there came the incredible, insane moment when Ryder looked out + on that face through one last breathing space, and then saw the + fitted brick, settled into place, blot the world to darkness before + his eyes. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XV +</h2> +<h3> + UNDERGROUND +</h3> +<p> + Alone in the gloom of that strange room, Aimée sat rigid. Listening. + Not a sound, beyond the closed door, from the long drawing room. Not + a sound, beyond the other door, from the room where the slave, + Fatima, waited to assist in her disrobing. +</p> +<p> + Silence everywhere—save for a low lapping of water against the + masonry beneath her windows. +</p> +<p> + The palace was on the river, then, or on some old backwater. She + remembered glimpses of dark canals on her drive that morning—had it + only been that morning? The sound of that soft, hidden water added + to her feeling of isolation and remoteness from everything that had + been her life before—she thought fleetingly, almost indifferently + of her friends, Azima, who to-day had crowned her for happiness, and + fond, foolish old Miriam and Madame de Coulevain and Tewfick Pasha, + weakly cruel, but amiable; she thought of them all, as unreal + figures from whom she had long taken leave. +</p> +<p> + The old life was over. It had died for her when she passed through + the dark doorway and met that arrogant, sardonic, fatuous man, the + master of this palace.... +</p> +<p> + Or more truly that old life had died for her when she had flung a + black mantle about her chiffon frock and a street veil across her + sparkling face and had stolen, daring and breathless, into the + lights and revelry of that hotel masquerade. There, when she had + shrunk back from the Harlequin and had looked up to meet the + kindling glance of that mask in tartans—yes, there, the old life + had died for her forever if only she had known it. +</p> +<p> + And now—she would only like to die, too, she thought miserably, + after she had been assured of Ryder's safety. She was tense with + fear for him, distrusting in every fiber the assurance of that + fanatic, outraged Turk. +</p> +<p> + She was not utterly resourceless. When Ryder's revolver had dropped + to the floor she had maneuvered, unseen by Hamdi Bey, to get her + train over it, and when she had stooped for her train her one free + hand had closed over the revolver handle beneath the satin and lace. +</p> +<p> + Now the revolver lay on the divan, and very eagerly she drew it out, + feeling it in the darkness, curling her finger about the trigger. + Never in her life had she fired a shot, for her most formidable + weapon had been the bows and arrows of the Children's Archery + Contest of the English Club, but she felt in herself now that + highstrung tensity which at all cost would carry her on. +</p> +<p> + Carefully she bestowed the small, steel thing in the bosom of her + dress, then she stared questioningly at the dress itself, hastily + unpinning the veil, and tying the long train up to her girdle. Then, + with a wary glance for the closed door behind which waited that + Fatima she dreaded, she stole to the door the general had shut and + pressed it softly ajar, peering out into the deserted throne room. +</p> +<p> + Like a great cave of darkness the room stretched before her, peopled + with goblin shadows from the dying candles upon the disordered, + abandoned table; she saw the chair pushed back where she had risen + to struggle with the bey, the long folds of white cloth, sweeping + the floor, behind which Hamdi had rolled so agilely; a stain was + still spreading about an upset glass, and from the overturned cooler + the ice water was dripping, dripping with a steady, sinister + implication. +</p> +<p> + She thought of flight.... There was another black, the general had + warned her, beyond the door, and there would be bars and bolts on + any egress from the harem, but with the revolver in her possession + some desperate escape might be achieved. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder.... No, the gun was for another purpose.... She would not + squander it yet upon herself.... +</p> +<p> + From the boudoir she moved slowly, carrying one of the gilt + candelabra from the table to light the room. She would need light + for her plan.... +</p> +<p> + For ages, long, unending ages, she sat there, waiting.... A hundred + times it seemed to her that she could stand no more, that she must + make her way out at all costs, must discover what fate they were + dealing to Ryder, but still she forced herself to sit there, her + pulses racing, her heart sick with suspense, but desperately + waiting.... +</p> +<p> + She felt a sudden wave of weakness go through her at an advancing + step from the next room. But her chin was up, her eyes fixed and + desperate as the figure of the general appeared in her opening door. +</p> +<p> + "Ah, light! This is more cheerful, little one." +</p> +<p> + She had risen, half moved towards him. "Is he safe?" +</p> +<p> + "The stranger? Safe as treasure—buried treasure, little one." +</p> +<p> + The bey laughed, and that laughter and the glittering satisfaction + of his eyes, filled her with foreboding although his next words came + with smiling reassurance. +</p> +<p> + "Not a hair of his head is hurt, I give you my word." +</p> +<p> + "But where is he—what have you done?" +</p> +<p> + "Shut him up, to be sure. Kept him as hostage for your sweet + humility—a novel way to win a bride, oh, essence of shyness!" +</p> +<p> + Malevolently he smiled down at her and in the back of her frightened + mind she realized that this man did well to be angry, that the + affront to him had been immeasurable, and that many a Turk would + have simply driven his dagger through the intruder's heart—and her + own, too. +</p> +<p> + But though she tried to tell herself that there was forbearance in + him, she felt, instinctively, that there was deeper kindness in + direct, thrusting fury than in this man's sinister mockery. +</p> +<p> + She had sunk back upon the divan on the bey's approach; now as he + stood before her with that mask of a smile upon his face, drawing a + silk handkerchief across a forehead she saw glistening in the + candlelight, she leaned towards him again, her hands involuntarily + clasping. +</p> +<p> + "Monsieur, I seem to have done you a great wrong," she said + tremblingly, "but it is not so great as you suppose. Will you listen + to me? I—" +</p> +<p> + "Useless, useless." He waved the handkerchief negligently at her. "I + have had words enough. You are not the daughter of Tewfick + Pasha—you are his step-daughter—your French family desires to + capture you—I know the rigmarole by heart, you observe. And of + course when a French family desires to obtain possession of a + charming step-daughter, on the eve of her marriage, that family + always employs a handsome young man to break into the bride's + chamber—and point a gun at the husband—" +</p> +<p> + His mustache lifted in a grimacing sneer. +</p> +<p> + "But it <i>is</i> true, and I <i>am</i> French," she interposed swiftly. +</p> +<p> + "Excellent—I do not object in the least." He shot his handkerchief + up his cuff, and turned to her with eyes that lightly mocked + the agonized appeal of the young face. "French blood is + delightful—quicksilver and champagne. You will enliven me, I + promise you." +</p> +<p> + "But the marriage—it is not legal, monsieur," she said desperately, + summoning all her courage. "Tewfick Pasha has no right to give me to + you—" +</p> +<p> + Indulgently he smiled down at her, then his narrowed eyes traveled + slowly about the room. +</p> +<p> + "But this is a strange time—and place!—to talk of legalities. Do + not distress yourself—your step-father is your guardian and your + marriage will be as binding as the oaths of the prophet. Have no + qualms.... And now, if your French blood will smile a little—" +</p> +<p> + He started to seat himself beside her, but in that instant she was + on her feet. With all the courage in her beating heart she whipped + out that revolver and pointed it at him. +</p> +<p> + "If you call—I shoot," she said breathlessly. +</p> +<p> + The round mouth of the gun shook ever so slightly in the excited + hand gripping it, but in the blazing look she turned on him was the + unshaken, imperious passion of a woman swept absolutely beyond all + fear. +</p> +<p> + Meeting that look Hamdi Bey stood extremely still and made no sound. +</p> +<p> + "There are plenty of shots—for you, at the first noise, and for + the servants, if they come," she went on in that fierce undertone, + and then, passionately, "What did you do to him? Take me to him—at + once!" +</p> +<p> + Irresolutely the man stood and looked up at her under his + half-lowered lids. He was near enough for a spring—and yet if that + excited finger should press.... The girl was capable of anything. + She was possessed.... And men had died of such accidents before + that.... +</p> +<p> + "May I speak?" he murmured, in a tone scarcely audible, yet + preserving somehow its flavor of sardonic amusement. +</p> +<p> + "Under your breath. One sound, remember—and I am a very good shot." +</p> +<p> + "But what a wife," he sighed. "All the talents—" +</p> +<p> + "I tell you that I will see him for myself. Take me to him, this + moment—" +</p> +<p> + "Shall I give orders and have him brought here? He is quite safe, I + assure you." +</p> +<p> + "Orders? If you summon a servant I will shoot. No, lead the way, and + I will follow you. And if you make one sound—one false move—" +</p> +<p> + Decidedly the girl was possessed. She stood there like a white image + of war, her hand on that infernal automatic.... He hesitated, gnawed + his mustache, then swung sullenly upon his heel. +</p> +<p> + Like some fantastic sculpture from an Amazonian triumph, they + crossed the long drawing-room, the erect, gilt-braided general + preceding, very slowly, the white-clad feminine creature, who held + one hand extended, with something boring almost into his shoulder + blades. +</p> +<p> + He did not lead her down the long stairs, past the guarding eunuch. + He took, instead, an inner way through the late supper room which + led down into the pillared hall of banquets. That way was safe of + servants now; crossing the pillared hall there were no more sounds + of late work from the service quarters beyond. Oblivious of the wild + developments of that wedding reception, the tired servants, stuffed + with the last pasty, warmed with the last surreptitious drop of + wine, were asleep at last. +</p> +<p> + Outside the door in the stone wall the bey took down the lantern + which so short a time before he had replaced upon its nail and + lighted its still smoking wick. He had not restored the key to + Yussuf, and he drew it now from his pocket and fitted it into the + lock, drawing back the door. +</p> +<p> + "These stairs are steep," he murmured. "I hardly like you to descend + them unaided, but if you insist—" +</p> +<p> + "Go on," she said imperiously. +</p> +<p> + Down he went, and after him she came, following the way he led her + down the long stone underground ways. +</p> +<p> + "We have, of course, very pleasant stairs down to our water gate," + he murmured apologetically, "but since you prefer this way—really + not the way that I would have chosen to have you first explore your + palace, madame! These, you perceive, are the cellars and old + storerooms—" +</p> +<p> + "I do not want you to talk," she said urgently. +</p> +<p> + "But you would not shoot me for it? Only for raising an alarm? And + surely you cannot be unreasonable about a few words—you must be + very careful, here, this doorway is low—" +</p> +<p> + It was not past the old ruined mosque, included in the palace's + underground world, that he was leading her, but down a narrow + branching way, between walls so low that the general's head was + bowed in caution. +</p> +<p> + "This part of the palace is very old," he murmured, over his + shoulder. "An ancestor of mine, Sharyar the Wazir, raised these + walls during the wars—for the dispensing of that sacred duty of + hospitality which Allah enjoins upon the faithful. It is reported + that he was host here to fifty of the enemy during their remaining + lifetime—although they had the delicacy not to cumber him with + overlong living. It is not, as I said, a pleasant place, but the + walls are strong and so I selected a spot here—" +</p> +<p> + Here, somewhere, then, in these grim ruins, Ryder was penned, + helpless and questioning the to-morrow. The girl trembled with + excitement when she thought of his joy, his deliverance—and at her + hands. For their escape she had no plans, only the decision to + thrust the gun into his hands and follow him unquestioningly ... + Perhaps they could leave the general in his place and he could wear + the general's uniform for disguise.... +</p> +<p> + Everything was possible now that she was nearing him and his safety + was at hand. She thrilled with a reanimating excitement that flew + its scarlet banners in her cheeks ... Only a few steps now.... +</p> +<p> + "Go on," she said breathlessly. +</p> +<p> + The bey had stopped and now flashed his lantern over a low, timbered + door, studded with ancient nail heads in a design whose artistry did + not arrest her. From a peg beside it he took down a key of brass, + fitted it to the lock and turned it with a deliberation maddening to + her tense nerves. +</p> +<p> + Her heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds. Only a moment + or two— +</p> +<p> + He had trouble with that door. It took his shoulder; at last he set + it swinging inward slowly on its creaking hinges. Then he stepped + back and with a wave of his hand invited her to enter. +</p> +<p> + "Not a chamber of luxury, you understand, but substantial, as you + will see—" +</p> +<p> + "Go first," she ordered. +</p> +<p> + He laughed. "Ever distrustful, little thorn-of-the-rose! Follow, + then," and he stepped within, into the darkness, which his failing + lantern but little illumined, calling out in a louder tone in his + halting English, "A visitor, my friend. A tourist of the + subterranean." +</p> +<p> + She had followed him to the threshold, seeing nothing in the + blackness but the seamed blocks of stone within the lantern's rays, + afraid always to turn her eyes from him or her hand from its + outstretched pointing. +</p> +<p> + He said very quickly to her in Turkish, "If you will wait by the + door. The floor is bad and there is another lantern, here on the + wall—" +</p> +<p> + At her left he fumbled along the stone wall. She heard him mutter + ... and then reach.... And then—she did not know what was + happening. For the very ground on which she stood, the solid block + of stone began to slip swiftly beneath her feet—she staggered—and + felt herself falling, falling, into some precipitately opened + abyss.... +</p> +<p> + She gave a wild scream, flinging out her arms in terror, and then + cold waters closed above her, and the scream ended in a gurgling + cry. +</p> +<p> + It was no great distance that she fell. What the dropped stone had + revealed, answering the signal of the old lever in the wall that the + general had pressed, was a stone well, narrow, deep, implanted there + by some ingenious lord of the palace in by-gone days, for the subtle + elimination of friend or foe or rival. +</p> +<p> + But it was not part of Hamdi's plan to leave the young girl there + and close the obliterating stone. Scarcely had the waters met above + her head than he was flinging down a rope ladder whose upper ends + were fastened to rings in the floor and descending this with swift + agility until the waters reached his waist. +</p> +<p> + Then he leaned out and clutched the floating satin bubbling and + ballooning yet unsubmerged above the stagnant depths and drew it + towards him. As the struggling girl came gasping within his reach, + he carried her panting up the ladder again, and laid her down in the + darkness, while he drew up the ladder and closed the stone by + pressing that hidden lever. +</p> +<p> + But the stone which had dropped so swiftly, was slow and heavy in + slipping back in place, and when he turned again to Aimée, she had + ceased her choking cough and was sitting up, thrusting back the + dripping hair from her black eyes, staring bewilderedly about the + gloom as murky as any genie's cave. +</p> +<p> + The lantern light was almost out. In its expiring gleams she saw no + more inky water, but only the damp, moss-grown stones, on which a + pool was widening from her wet garments, and the half-defined figure + of the general stooping over to squeeze the streams from his own wet + clothes. +</p> +<p> + The nightmarish horror of it overwhelmed her. For a moment she could + have screamed with horror, and then she felt a cold and terrible + despair lay its paralyzing hand upon her heart. +</p> +<p> + Somewhere, she felt, beneath those secret stones lay Ryder, drowned + ... And she was living, in her helplessness ... No revolver now. + That was gone ... in the water, perhaps.... +</p> +<p> + There was no resource, now, no refuge.... Strength went out of her, + and passive in a dream of evil darkness she felt herself being + hurried, stumblingly, back through the secret corridors and the dark + halls. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVI +</h2> +<h3> + OUT OF THE DARKNESS +</h3> +<p> + There was no measure of time for Ryder in that walled coffin of + death. The seconds seemed hours, the minutes ages. +</p> +<p> + He drew quick, short breaths as if economizing the air that was so + soon to fail him; he tugged at his bonds till the veins rose on his + forehead, but the silk held and the confines of the prison permitted + him no room for struggle; then he leaned forward, to press with all + his might upon the bricks before him; he grunted, he sweated with + the agony of his exertions, but not a brick was stirred, not a crack + was made in the mortar that gripped them tighter every instant. +</p> +<p> + He died a thousand deaths in the horror that invaded him then. + Already he felt strangling, and the painful pumping of his heart + seemed the beginning of the end. +</p> +<p> + Cold sweat stood out all over him; it ran down his face in trickling + streams and his body was drenched with that clammy dew of fear. +</p> +<p> + He tried to count the minutes, the hours, to estimate how long he + would hold out.... +</p> +<p> + And then he heard his own voice saying very distinctly and clearly + and dispassionately, "This thing is absurd." +</p> +<p> + It was absurd. It was idiotic. It was utterly irrational. It was an + impossible end for an able-bodied young American, an excavator of no + mean attainments, a young scholar and explorer of twentieth century + science, a sane, modern, harmless young man, to die immured in the + ancient walls of a Turkish palace—because he had invaded a marriage + reception and intervened between man and wife. +</p> +<p> + Violent death in any form must always appear absurd to the young and + energetic. And the fantastic horror of his death removed it + definitely from any realm of possibility. The thing simply could not + happen.... He thought of the amazement and the incredulity of his + friends.... +</p> +<p> + Dangers in plenty they had warned him against, to his youthful + amusement—sand storms and chills and raw fruit and unboiled waters, + but they had not warned him against veiled women and the resentments + of outraged lords and masters. +</p> +<p> + He thought of his mother's consternation and dismay. He thought of + his father's stern amazement.... What an awful jolt it would give + them, he reflected, with an irrational tickling of young humor. +</p> +<p> + But no, it would not. They would never know. Not a word of this fate + would percolate into the world without. Not a comment upon his true + end would enliven the daily columns of the East Middleton + <i>Monitor</i>. Never would it regret the tragic and romantic interment + of a young native son of talent, buried alive by a revengeful + general of the Sultan.... +</p> +<p> + He amused himself by writing the paragraph that would never be + written. Then he told himself that he was lightheaded and hysterical + and that he had better wonder what would actually be written. What + explanation would be found? +</p> +<p> + A desert storm perhaps, or some accident. McLean would poke + about—but for all McLean knew he might be on his way back to camp + that very moment. And sometimes he went by sailing canoe, and a + rented horse, and sometimes by the accredited steamer and a camel, + and sometimes by tram or train to the nearest station. Even McLean's + mind and McLean's Copts wouldn't make much of all the alternatives + that his unsettled habits had afforded. +</p> +<p> + Was there any possibility of his being traced, of any rescue + reaching him? He thought hard and long upon his last free moments. + Jinny Jeffries knew that he was in the palace, and Jinny had been + reiteratedly warned about the danger of betraying that knowledge. It + would take some little time for alarm before Jinny said anything. + And it would take a little time for Jinny to begin to worry. +</p> +<p> + He had not been so instant in attendance upon Jinny of late, for all + their residence in the same hotel, that she would suspect that his + absence of twenty-four hours was due to actual incarceration. +</p> +<p> + His cursed passion for freedom in which to ramble up and down that + deserted lane without Tewfick Pasha's garden! His inane love of + solitary mooning.... +</p> +<p> + No, Jinny would not soon wonder about him. She had not expected to + see him that evening, anyway—he had muttered something to her about + a man and an engagement. +</p> +<p> + She <i>would</i> rather look to see him the next day and talk about their + adventure.... But still she would feel no more than pique at his + absence; positive worry would not develop until later. +</p> +<p> + Besides, all the revelations that Jinny could make would do no good. + Jinny could only report that he had maintained a disguise at a + wedding reception, and talked a few moments, apparently undetected, + to a bride. Hamdi Bey, and Hamdi's eunuchs, would be blandly + ignorant of such a scandal. What his disappearance would indicate + would be some further frolic on his part, some tempting of a later + Providence before he had abandoned his disguise.... If he were + discovered, for instance, in some of those native quarters, behind a + woman's veil.... +</p> +<p> + Decidedly the only effect of Jinny's revelations would be an + unsavory cloud upon his character. +</p> +<p> + There was no hope to be looked for. +</p> +<p> + And yet he could not believe it. There were moments when the black + terror mastered him, but involuntarily his young strength shook it + off. He could not believe in its reality. He could not believe that + he was actually here, bricked and bound, in this infernal coffin.... +</p> +<p> + But, indisputably, the evidence was in favor of belief.... Only to + believe was to feel again that horror.... +</p> +<p> + He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter. One had to die some + time. Everybody did. One might as well go out young and strong and + still interested in life. +</p> +<p> + But that was remarkably cold comfort. He didn't want to go out at + all. He didn't want to die, not for fifty or sixty years yet, and of + all the ways of dying, he wanted least to smother and choke and + stifle like a rat walled in its hole in the wall. +</p> +<p> + He recalled, with peculiar pain, a woodchuck that he had penned up + as a boy, and he hoped with extraordinary passion that the poor + beast had made another hole. Never again, he resolved, would he pen + up a living creature, never again, if only again he could see the + light of day and breathe the free air.... +</p> +<p> + He thought of Aimée. And when he thought of her his heart seemed to + turn to water. Useless to repeat to himself now those old reminders + that he had seen her so little, known her so slightly. Useless to + measure that strange feeling that drew him by any artifice of time + and acquaintance. +</p> +<p> + She was Aimée. She was enchantment and delight. She was appeal and + tenderness. She was blind longing and mystery. She was beauty and + desire.... +</p> +<p> + Even to think of her now, in the infernal horror of this cramping + grave, was to feel his heart quicken and his blood grow hot in a + helpless passion of dread and fear. She was alone, there, helpless, + with that madman. +</p> +<p> + He tried to tell himself that she was not wholly helpless, that she + had wit and spirit and courage, and that somehow she would manage to + quell the storm; she might persuade Hamdi to their story, make him + remember that this was the twentieth century wherein one does not go + about immuring inconvenient trespassers as in the earlier years of + the Mad Khedive—years which had probably formed the general's + impulses—but in telling himself this there was no comfort for the + thought of the price that Aimée would have to pay. +</p> +<p> + It was pleasanter to pretend that Hamdi was really only joking, in a + shockingly exaggerated, practical way, and that presently, when the + suitable time had elapsed, he would present himself, smiling, to end + the ghastly, antiquated jest. +</p> +<p> + For some time he continued to tell himself that. +</p> +<p> + And then suddenly he told himself that the time for intervention had + surely come. It was very hard to breathe. +</p> +<p> + The next minute he was assuring himself that this was merely some + devil's trick of his apprehensive imagination. There must be a + great deal of air left.... But he was distressingly ignorant of the + contents of air, and his calculations were lamentably unsupported by + any sound basis of fact. +</p> +<p> + Mistake, not to have gone in for chemistry and physics. A chap who'd + done time in those subjects wouldn't now be rocking with suspense; + he'd comfortably and satisfactorily know just how many hours, + minutes and seconds were allotted before his finish and he could + think his thoughts accordingly. +</p> +<p> + Undoubtedly, so he insisted to himself, there was air enough here to + last him till morning. This gasping stuff was all imagination. He + wanted to keep cool and quiet. But for all his reassurance there + <i>was</i> something a little queer with his lungs, and his heart was + lurching sickeningly in his side, like a runaway ship's engine. +</p> +<p> + And then he heard his own voice repeating very tonelessly, "O God, O + God," and the horror of it all came blackly over him and a feeling + of profound and awful sickness.... +</p> +<p> + It <i>was</i> a sound. The faintest scraping and knocking without that + wall. It went through him like an electric current.... And then a + roar burst from him that fairly split his ears, the reaction of his + quivered nerves and racking fears of his uncertainties, his + tightening terrors. +</p> +<p> + But now—nothing. He could not hear a thing. A delusion? A torture + of his final hours?... No, it came again. More definitely now, a + little grinding and scraping. +</p> +<p> + Faster and faster, a muffled, driving thud. +</p> +<p> + A jubilant reassurance sang gayly through him. He had expected + this—this was what he had predicted. Hamdi was no foul friend. He + was a devilish uncomfortable customer with antiquated notions of + revenge, but now he had shot his wad and was going to undo his + tricks. +</p> +<p> + Ryder braced himself to present a carefree jauntiness—an air + somewhat difficult to assume when one is trussed like a spitted + bird, in a hot coffin space, with hair falling dankly over a + steaming brow, with a collar like a string, and an indescribable + pallor beneath the bronze of one's face. +</p> +<p> + Something stirred. One end of a brick was driven in against his + chest. Then he felt the blind working of some tool that caught it + and worried it free. +</p> +<p> + It seemed to him that through that dark aperture a current of cold, + delicious air came rushing in about him. The blows sounded against + the adjoining bricks and he thought of the glorious joy of seeing + out again, feeling that he would welcome even the sight of Hamdi's + blond mustache and the eunuch's hideous grin. +</p> +<p> + Now the aperture admitted a pale gleam upon his chest. Staring + steadily down he caught a glimpse of the fingers curving about a + brick, and his heart that had steadied, began to race again wildly. + For they were not the fingers of the black nor yet the wiry joints + of the general. +</p> +<p> + They were soft, white fingers, with a gleam of rings. +</p> +<p> + Aimée! Somehow, somewhere, she had managed to come to him, to + achieve this rescue.... +</p> +<p> + "Aimée!" He breathed the name. +</p> +<p> + "S-sh!" came a warning little whisper, and impatiently he waited + until that opening should be greater and permit of sight and speech. +</p> +<p> + His helplessness was maddening. If only he could raise his hands, + could get those bonds off! He twisted, he writhed, he tried to lift + his elbows and get his wrists in reach of the opening, but the + coffin was too diabolically cramped for movement until the hole was + very much larger. Then with a convulsive pressure he swung his + wrists within reach and after a moment's wait he felt a thin blade + drawn across the silk. +</p> +<p> + The relief was glorious. He swung his hands free, rubbing the chafed + wrists, then thrust an opened hand out into the opening, and with + instant comprehension a short, pointed bit of iron was put within + it. +</p> +<p> + Now he could do something! With furious strength he attacked the + bricks edging the hole and as he pried free each brick he could + again get a glimpse of those white delicate fingers lifting it + carefully away. +</p> +<p> + And now the hole was large enough. He twisted about and thrust out a + leg, and then, with a feeling of ecstasy which made the official + literary raptures of saints and conquerors but pale, dim moods, he + wormed his way out of that jagged hole and turned, erect and free, + to the shrouded figure of his rescuer. +</p> +<p> + She had drawn back a little against the wall, a gauzy veil across + her face. Beside her, upon the stone floor, a solitary candle sent + its flickering rays into the shadows, edging with light her slender + outlines. +</p> +<p> + Ryder took one quick step to her, his heart in his throat, and put + out eager arms. But in the very moment that he was gathering her to + him, even when he felt her pliant body, at first resistant, then + softly yielding, swept against his own, he felt, too, a little palm + suddenly upon his mouth. +</p> +<p> + "Hsh!" said the soft, whispering voice, cutting into his low murmur + of "Aimée!" and then, in slow emphatic caution, "Be—careful!" +</p> +<p> + He had need of that caution. For under the saffron veil was not the + face of Aimée. He was clasping a young creature that he had never + seen before, a girl with flaming henna hair and kohl darkened brows, + a vivid blazoning face that smiled enigmatically with a certain + mockery of delight at the amazement he reflected so unguardedly. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVII +</h2> +<h3> + AZIZA +</h3> +<p> + From the slackening grip of his astounded arms she stepped backward, + still smiling faintly and holding up in admonishment the palm she + had pressed against his mouth. +</p> +<p> + "But what—what the dev—" muttered Ryder. +</p> +<p> + She nodded mysteriously, and beckoned. +</p> +<p> + "Come," she whispered, catching up her candle, and after holding it + high for a moment, staring at him, she extinguished it suddenly, and + turned to lead the cautious way across the stone spaces while Ryder + closely followed. +</p> +<p> + Not Aimée, then. But some messenger, he could only suppose. Some + confidante, at need. A handmaid? The whisper of her silks, the + remembered gleam of jewels in the henna hair flouted that thought, + and not troubling his ingenuity with alternatives he was content to + follow her swift steps. +</p> +<p> + They were now in those open rubbishy spaces where he remembered the + crumbling masonry and broken arches of old, disregarded mosques; now + they were again enclosed in narrow stone walls, winding past cellars + and store rooms. +</p> +<p> + The girl's advance grew more cautious. Often she stopped and + listened, peering ahead into the darkness, and now, as she took + another turning, her care redoubled and Ryder needed no exhortation + to imitate it. Obeying a gesture of her arm, he followed at a + greater distance, prepared, at the warning of a sound, to flatten + himself against the wall or dart into some cranny of retreat. +</p> +<p> + They were now in the cellars. The corridor was widening out before + them with a pallid showing of light, crossed with many bars, at some + far end.... They stole towards it. It was a window, or barred gate, + he saw, and he heard again that lapping of restless water against + stone. +</p> +<p> + He could see, too, in the dimness the curve of a stair near the + gate. +</p> +<p> + Abruptly his guide checked him. Wary and noiseless he waited while + she stole forward to those stairs, peering up into the gloom, + attentive for any sound from above.... Apparently satisfied, she + went on towards the barred gate, and bent down over a spot of + darkness which Ryder had taken for a shadow. +</p> +<p> + He saw now that it had some semblance to a human outline. +</p> +<p> + Closely the girl bent and he caught the pallor of her hands, + searching swiftly, and then a muffled clink.... Next moment, a + wraith with soundless steps, she was back at his side again, urging + him on with her. They passed the stairs; he felt the soft yield of + carpet beneath his feet; they passed that recumbent figure and now + he heard the rhythm of a sleeper's heavy breath, escaping muffledly + from the folds of a thick mantle which the sleeper's habits had + wrapped about his head. For all the mantle he was aware of the fumes + of wine. +</p> +<p> + "I saw that Ja'afar had his drink," said the girl suddenly in softly + whispered Turkish, her head close to his. "He is my friend. I do not + neglect him," and under her breath she laughed, as she exhibited the + great bunch of keys she had taken from the imbiber. +</p> +<p> + Stooping now before the gate she fitted the key into the lock. Then + over her shoulder she looked up at the young man, and asked him a + quick question. +</p> +<p> + He did not understand. That was the trouble with his vernacular. It + would go on very well for a time, when he had a clue to the sense, + or when it was a question of every day expression, but a sudden + divergence, an unexpected word, was apt to prove a hopeless + obstacle. +</p> +<p> + Now she repeated her question again, more slowly, and again he shook + his head. +</p> +<p> + Now she stood up, frowning a little and began again in English, + "You—no, I not know—This way? You do it?" A sudden smile broke + over her face as she made a swift pushing gesture with her hands, + that, with her pointing to the water outside, sent Ryder a sudden + enlightenment. +</p> +<p> + "Swim? You mean—do I swim?" +</p> +<p> + She nodded. "Not go—" She made a swift downward movement of her + hands and then pointed again to that water just outside the gate. +</p> +<p> + "Not go down—not sink?" interpreted Ryder. "No, indeed, I can + swim," he assured her, and revisited with smiling satisfaction she + knelt again before the barred gate. +</p> +<p> + Open it swung with so sharp a crack that both glanced at the figure + behind them, and then at the shadowy gloom of the stairs. But no + alarm sounded. Outside the gate Ryder saw the darkness of fairly + wide rippling waters, visited with floating stars, and beyond a + low-lying, dun bank. +</p> +<p> + Escape was there. Freedom. Safety. He felt an exultant longing to + plunge in and strike out, but he turned, questioningly, to the + mysterious rescuer. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée?" he asked, under his breath. "Where is she?" He repeated it + in the vernacular, distrusting her English, and in the vernacular + she answered, "You want her? You want to take her away with you?" +</p> +<p> + She laughed softly at the quick flash in his eyes and hardly waited + for his speech. +</p> +<p> + "Good—what a lover! You are not afraid?" +</p> +<p> + Mendaciously he assured her that he was not. +</p> +<p> + "Good!" she said again, with a showing of white teeth between her + carmined lips. "You take her—you take her away from him. That is + what I want. You understand?" +</p> +<p> + Very suddenly he understood. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVIII +</h2> +<h3> + AZIZA IS OFFENDED +</h3> +<p> + This was no emissary from Aimée. This was no philanthropic + bystander. It was some girl of the palace, jealous and daring, + conspiring shrewdly for the removal of her rival. +</p> +<p> + "Take her away," she was saying urgently. "Out of this palace. We + want no brides here." Lowering and sullen, she turned bitter on the + word. +</p> +<p> + "To-night, I was watching," she went on swiftly. "I heard—the + noise—and then the whispering.... The darkness has ears and + eyes—and a tongue. And so I waited out there...." +</p> +<p> + He could not distinguish all the quick flow of her speech, but he + caught enough to understand how she had lurked in the halls, + jealously spying, defying the eunuchs' authority, and how she had + caught with passionate delight that stifled alarm of scandal. Later, + hanging over some banister, she had seen the Ethiopian pass with his + burden and had stolen down afterwards, stalking like a cat, and had + discovered the lantern gone, the door unlocked.... And then she had + watched until the pair emerged without the burden. +</p> +<p> + She had not been able to get hold of the key to the door. But she + had resolved to explore and so she had furnished the waterman with + his wine, drugged, Ryder gathered, and so stolen past him on the + other route to those underground foundations to which her suspicions + had been directed by the mortar and dust upon Yussuf. +</p> +<p> + Evidently she knew the possibilities of the place and the mind of + its master. And when she found the old niche freshly bricked and the + mortar at hand she had not needed more to assure her that here was + the burial place of her rival's lover. +</p> +<p> + Now, for the boon of his life, he was to relieve her of that rival. + Or try to. +</p> +<p> + "For once—he might not kill her," she whispered, "but if again—" + Her eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark. "Take her away. Make her + name a spitting and a disgrace.... Her memory a shame and a + sting.... Is she beautiful?" she broke off to demand. "They say—but + slaves lie—" +</p> +<p> + "Can you believe a lover?" he said whimsically for all his + impatience. "She is a pearl—a rose—a crescent moon—" +</p> +<p> + "They say she is very pale and thin—" +</p> +<p> + "She is an Houri from Paradise," he said distinctly. "And now, in + the name of Allah, let me get to her. Tell me the way—" +</p> +<p> + "Will she go gladly with you?" the low, insistent voice went on, and + at his quick nod, "Holy Prophet, what a bride!" +</p> +<p> + She clapped her two ringed hands to smother the impish joy of her + laugh. "A warning to those who can be warned—he will not be so + eager for another stripe from that same stick!—It was his cousin, + Seniha Hanum—Satan devour her!—who made this marriage. Always she + hated me.... But now I will tell you how to get to her. Look out, + with me." +</p> +<p> + Kneeling at the gate, over the dark flow of the water, she drew him + down beside her, and thrusting out her veiled head, she pointed + upward and to the right to a jutting balcony of mashrubiyeh, where a + pale light showed through the fretwork. +</p> +<p> + "There—you see? That is my room. And if you climb up, I can let you + in.... There... Up," she repeated in English, resolved to make + certain. +</p> +<p> + "I see. I can get there," he assured her, measuring with his eye the + dim distance. +</p> +<p> + "At once," she said. "I will be there. I cannot take you with me + through the upper hall—it is dangerous even for me to be caught. + But no eunuch wants my displeasure." +</p> +<p> + He could believe it, watching the subtle, malicious daring of her + face. Even in the gloom he caught the steady-lidded arrogance of her + kohl-darkened eyes and the bold insolence of a high cheek bone. She + had a hint of gypsy.... +</p> +<p> + "And you can get me in? You're a wonder!" he whispered. "I can't + thank you enough—" +</p> +<p> + "Rid me of her," said the girl swiftly. "But not—not him. You must + swear—what is it that Christians swear by?" she broke off to + demand. "By the grave of your father? Yes? You will swear not to + hurt him, to hurt Hamdi, by the grave of your father? Yes?" +</p> +<p> + Ryder nodded quickly. His father, to be sure, was in no grave at + all. He was, allowing hastily for the difference in time, in his + treasurer's cage at the bank in East Middleton, but he did not wait + to explain this to the girl. +</p> +<p> + "I swear it," he repeated. "I won't hurt your Hamdi, since that's + your condition. But we're wasting time—" +</p> +<p> + "Up, then. And if you fall down—do like this." +</p> +<p> + Smiling mischievously, she made the gesture of swimming. "Allah go + with thee—and with me also," he heard her murmur, as he stepped out + to the ledge of the entrance, twisted himself agilely about and + climbing up the opened gate swung himself up to the stone carving + overhead. +</p> +<p> + Below him, he heard the gate swing shut. He did not hear her lock + it. Fervently he hoped she had not, since it was a possible exit for + any one in a hurry, but at any rate, he need not worry about a way + out of the place until he had got into it again. +</p> +<p> + And the getting in was not any too simple. It was work for a + mountain goat, he reflected, after a short interval devoted to + tentative reaches and balancing and digging in of hands and feet. + The distances were far greater than the first-glimpsed, + foreshortened perspective had allowed him to guess, and there was + only the starlight to illumine the gray face of the palace. +</p> +<p> + He had no idea of the time. Somewhere about the middle of the night + or early morning, he judged vaguely by the stars, although it seemed + impossible that so few hours had passed. +</p> +<p> + The river was all silence and darkness. No nuggars with their + sleeping crews were moored below. He seemed the only living, + breathing thing clambering across the face of time and space. +</p> +<p> + Gingerly he kicked off the nondescript black shoes he had worn with + his disguise that afternoon and essayed a perilous toehold while he + reached for the interstices of a mashrubiyeh window just overhead. +</p> +<p> + Once gripping the rounds he pulled himself up, reflecting that it + was well it was night and that no lady was sitting within her + shelter to be affrighted at this intrusion of fingers and toes. +</p> +<p> + From the jutting top of this projection he surveyed his further + field of operation. The window with a light was two stories higher + yet and to the right. There were two other windows with lights on + the second story, very much farther along, and he wondered painfully + if these were the rooms of Aimée. +</p> +<p> + That boudoir in which he had hidden through the end of the long + reception had been upon the water. And there had been a door into an + adjoining room, for he had seen a sallow-faced attendant passing in + and out. +</p> +<p> + A wild longing seized him to crawl on and over into those windows. + But it was a difficult, almost an impossible distance, and even when + there he would be like a fly on the outside of a pane with no way of + getting in. +</p> +<p> + The unknown girl had promised him a way through her window and he + had confidence in her ingenuity and daring. +</p> +<p> + So he went on, worming cautiously along old gutters and ledges and + jutting balconies until at last he was clasping the lower grill of + that mashrubiyeh from which her light gleamed. +</p> +<p> + Instantly the light went out. +</p> +<p> + "Wait!" he heard her voice say sharply over his head. She was + standing by the window fumbling with the woodwork, and in a moment + he heard the click of a knob and then, just opposite his head, the + screening grill slipped aside and an aperture appeared. +</p> +<p> + "Quick!" admonished the voice, and quickly indeed he drew himself up + and in, reflecting whimsically as he did so that this girl had first + helped him out of a hole and then into one. +</p> +<p> + The next moment she had moved the grill into place and lifted the + cover she had placed over her triplet of candles on a stand. +</p> +<p> + Triumphant, her eyes dancing, her teeth a gleam of light between + those scarlet lips of hers, she looked at him for the admiration + she saw twinkling back at her in his eyes. +</p> +<p> + "But not me—no!" she protested, her supple hands gesturing towards + the magic casement. "I found it here. It is very old—you + understand? Some other, long ago, found time dull and so—" +</p> +<p> + Delightedly she shared the flavor of that secret of the vagabond + lady of long ago who had devised this cunning entrance for her + lover. +</p> +<p> + On some dark night like this, with the gatekeeper drowsy with old + wine, some other stripling had climbed that worn façade before him + and slipped through the secret space and stood triumphantly before + some daring, laughing girl who had cast aside for him her veil and + her fear of death. +</p> +<p> + What ingenuity, Ryder wondered fleetly, had smuggled in the + carpenter for the contrivance, what jewels had gone to the bribing, + what lies had been told!... And what had been the end of it all? +</p> +<p> + Evidently not the discovery of the opening.... +</p> +<p> + He hoped, with singular intensity, for the safety of the daring + young lovers, that unknown youth whose feet had foreworn the path + for his feet and that dead and gone young girl, who had dared + anything rather than endure the mortal ennui of those hours behind + the veil.... +</p> +<p> + These thoughts all went through him like one thought as he stood + there, his eyes roving about the dim, shadowy room of old divans and + Eastern hangings, and then turning back to the glimmering figure of + its mistress. +</p> +<p> + She was staring frankly at him, her eyes boldly curious and + examining. They were not dark eyes, he saw now; that had been the + impression given by the kohl about them and the black line of the + brows penciled into one line; they were yellow eyes, golden and + glowing, scornful and lazy-lidded. +</p> +<p> + As she looked at him, these eyes smiled slowly. She was seeing in + this lover of her rival a singularly delightful looking young man, + for all his dust and disarray, a slender, bronzed, hardy-looking + young man, with dark, disordered hair straying across a white brow, + and audacious, eager eyes in which the fear of death, so lately + glimpsed, had left no daunting reflection. +</p> +<p> + Slowly she lifted her hand and with deliberate softness put back + that straying hair of his. +</p> +<p> + "Poor boy," she said slowly in English, and then, smiling ruefully, + she held out her hands for his inspection. The grime of the bricks + had discolored their scented delicacy and he saw bruised finger tips + and a torn nail. +</p> +<p> + "I'm infernally sorry," he said quickly. +</p> +<p> + Her smile deepened at his look of concern, as he held, a little + helplessly, the witnesses of her work of rescue which seemed somehow + to stray into his keeping. +</p> +<p> + "It is nothing—but you—poor boy," she said again, in that English + of which she seemed naïvely proud. +</p> +<p> + "If you could give me some water," he suggested, and drank deep + with delight the last drop she brought him from an earthen jar. It + seemed to wash from his throat the taste of that dust and fear. +</p> +<p> + "I can't begin to thank you," he murmured. "I only wish that I could + do something for you—" +</p> +<p> + She looked up at him. They were standing close together, their + voices cautiously low. +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps, yes, you can—" +</p> +<p> + "It's not doing anything for you to save Aimée," he told her. + "That's what you are doing for her and for me.... But if ever you + want me for anything after this—my name is Ryder, Jack Ryder, and + you can reach me at the Agricultural Bank." +</p> +<p> + He had a vague vision of some day repaying his enormous debt by + assisting this girl, grown tired of her Hamdi, out of this aperture + and into a waiting boat. He would do it like a shot, he told himself + gladly; he would do anything on God's green earth if only she helped + him get Aimée away from that infernal villain. +</p> +<p> + "Jack," she repeated, under her breath, and then in her slow + English, "I like—Jack." +</p> +<p> + "Don't forget it. I'll always come and do anything for you. And if + you'll tell me your name—" +</p> +<p> + "Aziza." +</p> +<p> + "Aziza. I'll never forget that. And now, if you'll tell me how I can + get to her and then the best way out—" +</p> +<p> + "Why you so hurry—" +</p> +<p> + "Why?" he looked a little blank. "I can't lose a minute—he may be + with her—" +</p> +<p> + She came a little nearer to him, her head tilting back with a slow, + indolent challenge. +</p> +<p> + Gone was the silken mantle that had been about her below stairs and + he saw now that she was a vivid, exotic shimmer of gauzy green + against the saffron veil that fell from her henna hair. There was + barbaric beauty in her, in the bold, painted face, the bare, + gold-banded arms, the slender, sinuous lines, and there was barbaric + splendor in the heavy jewels that winked and flashed.... +</p> +<p> + It struck Ryder that she was gotten up regardless.... In pride, + perhaps, on her rival's wedding night?... Or had there been some + defiant, desperate design upon Hamdi—? +</p> +<p> + She did not miss that sudden prolonging of his look upon her. +</p> +<p> + "You like me—yes?" she murmured, and then slipping back into + the vernacular, "I—I am not the stupid veiled girl of the + seclusion—not forever. I come from the west, the deserts. I have + seen the world: Men—men, I know ... I danced before them, not the + dances of the Cairene cafés," she uttered with swift scorn, "but the + dance of the two swords, the dance of the serpents.... Men threw the + gold from their turbans about my feet when I had danced to them ... + And others, English, French—" +</p> +<p> + She broke off, but her eyes told many things. "Then—Hamdi," she + said slowly. "Him I ruled—and his palace.... But I have known other + things." +</p> +<p> + Closer yet she came to him. Her eyes, golden fires of eyes, were + smiling up into his, her scarlet lips gathered in soft, sensual + curves ... her whole silken scented body seemed to slip into his + embrace. A bare arm touched his neck, resting heavily. +</p> +<p> + "Sweet—heart," she said slowly, in her difficult English. +</p> +<p> + It was the deuce of a position. +</p> +<p> + No man can rudely snatch from his neck the arm of the lady who has + just saved him from a harrowing death. And a lady who was risking + more than her life in sheltering him—decidedly the situation was + delicate. +</p> +<p> + It was not the lady's fault that her impetuosity, the impetuosity + which had been his salvation, now plunged her into amorous caprice. + There were obvious handicaps, moral, social and ethical, in her + upbringing. She was a child of nature, a nature undisciplined, + unruly, tempestuous. +</p> +<p> + And even queening over Hamdi and his palace must have offered little + diversion to a wild dancing girl familiar with the excitement of + more varied conquest. +</p> +<p> + Ryder was horribly embarrassed. He was visited with a fearful + constraint, a chivalrous wish not to hurt her feelings, and a sharp + prevision of the danger of offending her. +</p> +<p> + He took the first turn of least resistance. +</p> +<p> + He did not need to bend his head; their eyes were on a level. He + simply kissed her. And she kissed him back. +</p> +<p> + He hated himself for the leap of his blood... and for the + Puritanical discomfort of his nature.... +</p> +<p> + Her arm about his neck was pressing closer. It was the moment for + action and Ryder acted. Very firmly he put his hand upon her hand, + withdrew it from its clasp about him, and raised it to his lips. +</p> +<p> + His kiss was respectful gratitude and an abdication of the delights + of dalliance. +</p> +<p> + "Good-bye, my dear," he murmured. "Now, if you will show me the way + out—" +</p> +<p> + Her eyes agleam between half-closed lids, she studied him. It + occurred to Ryder that probably never before had her hands been + detached—and kissed—and put away. He must be a phenomenon, an + enigma. +</p> +<p> + Then her lips parted in a faintly scornful smile. +</p> +<p> + "You afraid—you? You want—run?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm horribly afraid," he said earnestly. "I want to get out of here + as quick as I can." +</p> +<p> + That was putting, he considered, the very wisest construction upon + it. +</p> +<p> + Negligently her gesture reminded him of the opening in the window. + "Here you are safe." she murmured in the vernacular. "And the doors + are locked—" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, but—but Aimée isn't safe, you know—and I must get her out of + here." +</p> +<p> + "Aimée?" In those yellow eyes he caught the flash of capricious + resentment at the reminder. Then, indifferently, she brushed the + distraction away. +</p> +<p> + "There is time enough for Aimée. She is not lonely now." +</p> +<p> + "Not lonely?" he shivered at the cold carelessness of her tone. "I + must get to her quickly then." +</p> +<p> + "But that is not safe.... A little—later." +</p> +<p> + Uncomfortably he tried to infuse his glance with innate innocence + and utter lack of understanding. +</p> +<p> + "I shan't hurt him—if I have the chance," he told her. "I've given + you my word—" +</p> +<p> + "And I trust you—much." Her gaze sought his in a trifle of + impatience at such simplicity. "But it is not safe for you now.... + Later ... By and by." +</p> +<p> + "You don't want him to have a chance to make love to her, do you?" + said Ryder sharply. "I thought that was the very thing you + <i>didn't</i>—" +</p> +<p> + Her smile was a subtle, confessing caress. "I shall have my + revenge," she murmured, and pressed closer to him again, every + sensuous, sumptuous line of her a challenge and an enticement. +</p> +<p> + "I give you life," she whispered, very low in her throat. "You give + me, perhaps, an hour—?" +</p> +<p> + "I <i>haven't</i> an hour," said Ryder very desperately and unhappily. + "Not when Aimée is with that devil—" +</p> +<p> + It took every thought of Aimée to get the words out. +</p> +<p> + He felt a brute about it, a low, ungrateful dog. She <i>had</i> given him + life and every fiber in him clamored to save her pride and champion + her caprice. +</p> +<p> + It seemed so dastardly to wrench away from her now, like some + self-centered Joseph, leaving that beastly stab in her vanity.... + And she was a stunning creature, lawless, elemental, hot and cold + like the seventh wind of the inferno.... +</p> +<p> + But it was Aimée who was in his blood like a fever.... Aimée, that + frail white rose of a girl, in her bonds of terror.... +</p> +<p> + He saw the flame in Aziza's eyes. He saw the stiffening of her + defiance, of half-incredulous affront. Then, her form drawn up, her + bared arms outflung, her vivid, painted, furious face challenging + him. "I am not beautiful—like Aimée?" she said in a voice of venom, + and in the English, for double measure, "You not like me—no?" +</p> +<p> + "You <i>are</i> beautiful and I <i>do</i> like you," Ryder combated, feeling a + bungling fool. And then went on to thrust into that half-second of + suspended fury, a faint breath of appeasing. "But—don't you + see—it's my duty—" +</p> +<p> + "You go—?" she said clearly. +</p> +<p> + Even in that moment he had a sharp prescience of the unwisdom of his + rejection. A cold calculator of chance and probabilities would have + reckoned that a half hour of assuagement here would have been a + wiser investment of his mortal moments than any virtuous plunge into + single-hearted duty. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder did not calculate. He could not, with Aimée under that + beast's hand. His heart and soul were possessed with her danger and + his heart and soul carried his body instinctively back from the + dancing girl's advance, and he whispered, "I must go. There is no + time—" +</p> +<p> + She flung back her fiery-hued head with a gesture of intolerable + rage. Her eyes were lightnings. +</p> +<p> + "Dog of a Christian!" she said chokingly and flew to the doors. +</p> +<p> + Back she thrust the heavy hangings, turning a quick key in the lock + and wrenching the door wide. And before Ryder could understand, + before he could bring himself to realize that she was not simply + violently expelling him from her room, she gave a shriek that rang + wildly down the long-unseen corridors. +</p> +<p> + At the top of her lungs, with one hand out to thrust him back or + cling to him if he attempted to pass, she shrieked again and again. +</p> +<p> + Instantly there came a running of feet. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIX +</h2> +<h3> + AN INTERRUPTION +</h3> +<p> + When Hamdi Bey had taken Aimée back to her apartments he pulled + sharply upon a bellcord. In a few moments the slave woman, Fatima, + made her appearance, no kindly-eyed old crone like Miriam, but a + sallow, furtive-faced creature, with an old disfiguring scar across + a cheek. +</p> +<p> + The general pointed to the wet and fainting girl huddling weakly + upon the divan. +</p> +<p> + "Your new mistress has met with an accident, out boating—a curse + upon me for gratifying forbidden caprice!" he said crisply. "Be + silent of this and array her quickly in garments of rest. I will + return." +</p> +<p> + Very hurriedly he took himself and his own wet condition away. He + was furious, through and through. What a night—what a wedding + night! Scandal and frustration... a bride with a desperate lover... + a bride who, herself, drew revolvers and threatened. +</p> +<p> + It was beyond any old tale of the palace. For less, girls had had + his father's dagger driven through their hearts—his grandfather, at + a mere whisper from a eunuch, had given his favorite to the lion. + The whisper was found incorrect at a later—too late—date, and the + eunuch had furnished the lion another meal. +</p> +<p> + His modern leniency in this case would have outraged his ancestors. +</p> +<p> + But it was not in the bey's nature to deal the finishing stroke to + anything so soft and lovely as Aimée. He had no intention of + depriving himself of her. If she were red with guilt he would feign + belief in her, to save his face until his infatuation was gratified. +</p> +<p> + But actually he did not believe in any great guilt of hers. Tewfick + Pasha, for all his indulgent modernity, would keep too strict a + harem for that. What he rather believed had happened was that the + young American—now so happily immured in his masonry—had become + aware of the girl through the story of her French father, and in + that connection had struck up the clandestine and romantic + correspondence which had led to their mutual infatuation and his + desperate venture there that afternoon. +</p> +<p> + The young man had been dealt with—and the thought of the very + summary and competent way he had been dealt with drew the fangs from + the bite of that night's invasion. +</p> +<p> + His fury felt soothingly glutted. +</p> +<p> + He had been a match for them both. He recalled his own subtlety and + agility with a genuine smile as he exchanged his dripping uniform + for more informal trousers and a house coat. He had taught that + young man a lesson—a final and ultimate lesson. And he was + beginning to teach one to that girl. Before he was done with + her ... +</p> +<p> + He felt for her a mingled passion for her beauty and a lust for + conquest of her resistant spirit that fed every base and cruel + instinct of his nature. +</p> +<p> + A find—a rare find—even with her circumvented lover! He would have + his sport with her.... But though he promised this to himself with + feline relish, apprehension and chagrin were still working. +</p> +<p> + The fond fatuity with which he had welcomed that starry-eyed little + creature had been rudely overthrown. And his pride smarted at the + idea of the whispers that might echo and re-echo through his palace. + He was too wise an old hand to flatter himself that it would + preserve its bland and silent unawareness of this night. +</p> +<p> + So far, he believed, he had been unobserved. In Yussuf's silence he + had absolute confidence.... But of course there were a hundred other + chances—some spying, back-stairs eye, some curious, straining + ear.... +</p> +<p> + And for this matter of the boating mishap—he cursed himself now, as + he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his + thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his + malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have + done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his + dramatic itch—and now had paid for it with that idiotic story of + the boating expedition. +</p> +<p> + He had reason to trust Fatima—there was history behind the old + sword scar upon her cheek, and he had a hold over her through her + ambition for a son. But Fatima was a woman. And she—or some other + who would see that drenched satin would be curious of that boating + story.... +</p> +<p> + And of course they could find out from the boatman. +</p> +<p> + It occurred to him to go and see the boatman and order him away so + that afterward the man could say he had been sent off duty, and the + story of a nocturnal river trip would not appear too incredible. It + was a small concession to stop gossip's mouth. +</p> +<p> + So drawing on a swinging military cloak, the general stole down + through the stair of the water entrance into the lower hall, where + the pale light gleamed through the cross-barred iron of the gate and + the gatekeeper slept like a log in his muffling cloak. +</p> +<p> + The soundness of that slumber—loudly attested by the fumes of + wine—afforded the general a profound pleasure. He took the man's + keys softly, and went to the gate; it afforded him less pleasure to + observe that the gate was unlocked, but he put this down to the + keeper's muddleheadedness. +</p> +<p> + Carefully he turned the lock and pocketed the keys—for a lesson to + the man's overdeep sleep in the morning and to attest his own + presence there that night; then he went back and brought out an oar, + which he placed conspicuously beside the smallest boat, drawn up + just within the gates. +</p> +<p> + He was afraid to alter the boat's position lest the noise should + prove too wakening, but he considered he had laid an artistic + foundation for his story and with a gratifying sense of triumph he + mounted the stairs. +</p> +<p> + He was not conscious of fatigue. He had always been a wiry, + indefatigable person, and the alarms and emotions of this night had + cleared his head of its wines and drowsiness. He felt the sense of + tense, highstrung power which came to him in war, in fighting, in + any element of danger. +</p> +<p> + Youth! He snapped his fingers at it. Youth was buried in + his masonry—and helpless in its shuttered room. Power was + master—power, craft, subtlety. +</p> +<p> + But his elation ebbed as he crossed again that long drawing room + with its faded flowers about the marriage throne, and its abandoned + table with its cloth askew, its crystal disarrayed, its candles + gutted and spent. +</p> +<p> + The memory of that insolent moment when a man's hand had gripped + him, had whirled him from Aimée—when a man's voice and gun had + threatened him—that memory was too overpowering for even his + triumph over the invader to lay wholly its smart of outrage. +</p> +<p> + He felt again the tightening of his nerves, like quivering wires, as + he crossed the violated reception room and entered the boudoir. It + was empty, but on the divan the flickering candle light revealed the + damp, spreading stain where Aimée's drenched satins had been. +</p> +<p> + He thrust aside a hanging and pushed open the door into the room + beyond. +</p> +<p> + It was a small bedroom evidently very recently furnished in new and + white shining lacquer of French design, elaborately inlaid with + painted porcelains and draped with a profusion of rosy taffeta. + Among this elegance, surprisingly unrelated to the ancient paneled + walls, stood the hastily opened trunk and bags of the bride, their + raised lids and disarranged trays heaped with the confusion of + unaccustomed, swiftly searching hands. +</p> +<p> + Aimée herself, in a gay little French boudoir robe of jade and + citron, sat huddled in a chair, like a mute, terrified child, in the + hand of her dresser, who was shaking out the long, damp hair and + fanning it with a peacock fan. +</p> +<p> + At the bey's entrance Fatima suspended the fanning, but with easy + familiarity exhibited the long ringlets. +</p> +<p> + Curtly the bey nodded, and gestured in dismissal; the woman laid + down her fan, and with a last slant-eyed look at that strangely + still new mistress she went noiselessly out a small service door. +</p> +<p> + With an air of negligent assurance Hamdi Bey gazed about the room + and yawned. "Truly a fatiguing evening," he remarked in his dry, + sardonic voice. "But you look so untouched! What a thing is radiant + youth." +</p> +<p> + He sauntered over to her, who drew a little closer together at his + approach, and lifted one of the long dark curls that the serving + woman had exhibited. +</p> +<p> + "The ringlets of loveliness," he murmured. "You know the old saying + of the Sadi? 'The ringlets of the lovely are a chain on the feet of + reason and a snare for the bird of wisdom.'... How long ago he said + it—and how true to-day ... Yet such a charming chain! Suppose, + then, I forgive you, little one, since sages have forgiven beauty + before?" +</p> +<p> + She was silent, her eyes fixed on him with the silent terror with + which a trapped bird sees its captor, in their bright darkness the + same mute apprehension, the same filming of helpless despair. +</p> +<p> + Ryder was dead, she thought. This cruel, incensed old madman had + killed him, for all his oaths. Somewhere beneath those ancient + stones he was lying drowned and dead, a strange, pitiable addition + to the dark secrets of those grim walls. +</p> +<p> + He had died for her sake, and all that she asked now of life, she + thought in the utter agony of her youth, was death. And very + quickly. +</p> +<p> + "I am so soft hearted," he sighed, still with that ringlet in his + lifted hand, his hand which wanted palpably to settle upon her and + yet was withheld by some strange inhibition of those fixed, helpless + eyes. "Who knows—perhaps I may forgive you yet? You might persuade + me—" +</p> +<p> + "He is dead," she said shiveringly. +</p> +<p> + "Dead? He?... Ah, the invader, the intruder, the young man who + wanted you for a family in France!" The bey laughed gratingly. "No, + I assure you he is not dead—I have not harmed a hair of his head. + He is alive—only not with quite the widest range of liberty—" +</p> +<p> + He broke off to laugh again. "Ah, you disbelieve?" he said politely. + "Shall I send, then, for some proof—an ear, perhaps, or a little + finger, still very warm and bleeding, to convince you?... In five + minutes it will be here." +</p> +<p> + Then terror stirred again in her frozen heart. If Ryder were alive + and still in this man's power— +</p> +<p> + "You are horrible," she said to him in a voice that was suddenly + clear and unshaken. "What is it you want of me—fear and hate—and + utter loathing?" +</p> +<p> + Her unexpected spirit was briefly disconcerting. The Turk looked + down upon her in arrested irony and then he smiled beneath his + mustaches and bent nearer with kindling gaze. +</p> +<p> + "Not at all—nothing at all like that, little dove with talons. I + want sweetness and repentance—and submission. And—" +</p> +<p> + "You have a strange way to win them," she said desperately. +</p> +<p> + "You have taken a strange way with me, my love! Little did I + foresee, when I escorted you up the stairs this morning—" He broke + off. "There are men," he reminded her, "who would not consider a + cold bath as a complete recompense for your bridal plans." +</p> +<p> + She was silent. +</p> +<p> + "But I," he murmured, "I am soft hearted." He dropped on one knee + before her and tried to smile into her averted face. "I can never + resist a charming penitent.... I assure you I am pliability itself + in delicate fingers—although iron and steel to a threatening + hand.... If you should woo me very sweetly, little one—" +</p> +<p> + She could not overcome and she could not hide from his mocking eyes + the sick shrinking that drew her back from his least touch. But she + did fight down the wild hysteria of her repugnance so that her voice + was not the trembling gasp it wanted to be. +</p> +<p> + "How can I know what you are?" she told him. "You mock me—you + threaten to torture that man—it would be folly not to think that + you are deceiving me. If you would only prove to me so that I could + believe—" +</p> +<p> + "If you would but prove to <i>me</i> so that <i>I</i> could believe—! Prove + that you are mine—and not that infidel's. Prove that you bring me a + wife's devotion—not a wanton's indifference." He caught her cold + hands, trying to draw her forward to him. "Prove that you only pity + him," he whispered, "but that your love will be mine—" +</p> +<p> + She felt as if a serpent clasped her. And yet, if that were the only + way to win Ryder's safety—if it were possible for her sickened + senses to allay this madman's suspicions and undermine his revenge— +</p> +<p> + Quiveringly she thought that to save Ryder she would go through + fire. +</p> +<p> + But the hideous, mocking uncertainties! Her utter helplessness—her + lost deference.... +</p> +<p> + It was not a sudden sound that broke in upon them but rather the + perception of many sounds, muffled, half heard, but gaining upon + their consciousness. Running feet—a stifled voice—something faint + and shrill— +</p> +<p> + Aimée sprang to her feet; the general rose with her and turned his + head inquiringly in the direction. Then he jerked open the door + through which Fatima had disappeared; it led to a dark service + corridor and small anteroom, from whose bed the attendant was + absent. An outer door was ajar. +</p> +<p> + No need to question the sounds now. Faint, but piercingly shrill + shrieks were sounding from above, while the footsteps were racing, + some down, some up— +</p> +<p> + The bey flung shut the door behind him and hurried towards the + confusion. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XX +</h2> +<h3> + BEYOND THE DOOR +</h3> +<p> + Ryder had stood stock still with amazement when the girl began to + scream. She had gone mad, he thought for an instant, in masculine + bewilderment, and then her madness revealed its treacherous cunning, + for she began crying wildly for help against an invader, an infidel, + a dog of a Christian who had stolen into her rooms. +</p> +<p> + She had chucked him to the lions, Ryder perceived; one furious flash + of lightning jealousy and Oriental anger had overthrown, in that + wild and lawless head, every other design for him for which she had + risked so much. +</p> +<p> + He had scorned her.... He had flouted her caprice.... He had dared + to refuse the languors of those dangerous eyes.... +</p> +<p> + The hurrying footsteps appeared to him the tread of a legion in + action, and he had no desire to rush out upon the oncomers; he had, + indeed, distinct doubts of his ruthless ability to pass that supple, + clawing, incensed creature at the door. +</p> +<p> + He whirled and made a bolt for the window, striking at the fastened + grill. He heard the snapping of wooden bolts and the splintering of + wood and out through the hole he climbed to a precipitous, head-long + flight that fairly felt the clutching hands upon his ankle. +</p> +<p> + He had meant to make a jump for it. A three-story plunge into the + Nile appeared a gentle exercise compared to the alternative within + the palace, but in the very act of releasing his hold he changed his + mind. +</p> +<p> + Quicker than he had ever moved before, in any vicissitude of his + lithe and agile youth, he clambered up, not down, and crouching back + from sight upon the jutting top of the window, he sent his coat + sailing violently through space. +</p> +<p> + He dared not look over for its descent upon the water, for other + heads were peering from below and he could hear an excited outburst + of speech, that broke sharply off. +</p> +<p> + Evidently they were hurrying down to the water gate. Swiftly he + utilized this misdirection for his own ends. +</p> +<p> + The roofs. That was the refuge to make for. Flat, long-reaching + roofs, from which one could climb off onto a wall or a palm or a + side street. +</p> +<p> + He had only a story to ascend and he made it in record time, fearful + that the searchers whom he heard now launching a boat below would + turn their eyes skywards. +</p> +<p> + But he gained the top without an outcry being raised and found + himself upon the roof where the ladies of the harem took their air + unseen of any save the blind eyes of the muezzin in the Sultan + mosque upon the hill. There were divans and a little taboret or two + and a framework where an awning could be raised against the sun. +</p> +<p> + There was also a trap door. +</p> +<p> + And here, tempestuously he changed his mind again. He abandoned the + goal of outer walls and chances of escape. He wrenched violently at + that trap door. It was bolted but the bolt was an ancient one and + gave at his furious exertions, letting him down into a narrow spiral + staircase between walls. +</p> +<p> + Down he plunged in haste, before some confused searcher should dash + up. It was no place to meet an opposing force. Nor was the corridor + in which he found himself much better. +</p> +<p> + It was black and baffling as a labyrinth, with unexpected turnings, + and he kept gingerly close to the wall with one hand clutching a bit + of iron which he had taken into his possession and his pocket when + Aziza had led him out of the underground walls—the very bit of + pointed iron, it was, with which the volatile creature had effected + his rescue. +</p> +<p> + He considered it an invaluable souvenir and twice, in his nervous + apprehension, he almost brought it down upon shadows. +</p> +<p> + Direction he judged vaguely by the screaming which was still going + on at a tremendous rate—evidently the girl had gone off into + genuine hysterics or else she had determined not to leave her + agitation at the intrusion in any manner of question. No doubt the + outcries were a relief to her mingled emotions—remorse at her + impetuosity and chagrin that her thwarted plans might conceivably be + now among those emotions—and since the vicinity of those shrieks + must be a gathering place to be avoided by him he stole on, down the + upper hall, and finding a stair, he went down for two continuous + flights. +</p> +<p> + Aimée's rooms, he knew, had been upon the water, and recalling the + general direction of those two lighted windows that he had seen so + recently from without, his excavator's instinct led him on. Once he + saw the flitting figure of a turbaned woman in time to draw back + into a heaven-sent niche and again he flattened into a soundless + shadow against the wall as two young serving girls ran by on + slippered feet, their anklets tinkling, chattering to each other in + delighted excitement. +</p> +<p> + And then the stealthy opening of a door—it was the very door by + which Yussuf had precipitated himself upon the struggle at the + supper table some age-long hours ago—gave him a glimpse into the + far glooms of the reception room, where its long side of mashrubiyeh + windows revealed now between its fretwork tiny chinks of a paling + sky. +</p> +<p> + He could make out the dark-draped marriage throne and the pallor of + the disordered cloth upon the abandoned table below, and behind the + table the dark draperies of the remaining portières before the + doorway into the boudoir where he had hidden himself and into which + he had last seen Aimée thrust. +</p> +<p> + At the other end of the great room were the entrance stairs to the + harem, and there, he imagined, a watchman was stationed, or else + stout bolts and bars were guarding the situation. There remained an + arched doorway into other formal rooms through which he had seen + Aimée and the guests disappear for the wedding supper, and that way + led, he surmised, down into the service quarters. +</p> +<p> + A sorry choice of exits! He could form no plan in advance but trust + blindly to the amazing chances of adventure. And first, before he + rushed for escape, there was Aimée to find. +</p> +<p> + Yet for all the mad hazard of the situation he was elated with life. + He felt as if he had never fully lived until now, when every breath + was informed with the sharp prescience of danger. He was at once + cool and exultant, wary yet reckless, with the joyous recklessness + of utter desperation. +</p> +<p> + With cat-like care he surveyed the drawing-room; it appeared + deserted but as he watched his tense nerves could see the shadows + forming, taking furtive, crouching shape—and then dissolving + harmlessly into a rug, a chair, or a stirring drapery. His eyes + grown used to the dimness he identified the mantle upon the floor in + which he had come and which he had extended to Aimée in that brief + moment of fatuous triumph, and beyond it, across a chair, was the + portière which the black had torn down from the doorway to wrap + about Ryder's helpless form as he had carried him down to living + death. +</p> +<p> + That mantle, he thought, might yet be useful, and he stole forward + and recovered it, but, as he straightened, another shadow darted out + from the boudoir door and silhouetted for an instant against the + lighted, room he saw a figure in a long, swinging military cloak. +</p> +<p> + Discovery was inevitable and Ryder made a swift plunge to take the + cloaked figure by surprise, but even as one hand shot out and + gripped the throat while the other held his threatening iron aloft, + his clutch relaxed, his arm fell nervelessly at his side. +</p> +<p> + For from the figure had come the broken gasp of a soft voice, and + the face upturned to his was a pale oval under dark, disordered + hair. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée!" he breathed in exultant, still half-incredulous joy. + "Aimée!... Did I hurt you—?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, no, no!" came Aimée's shaken voice. "Oh, you are safe!" +</p> +<p> + He felt her trembling in his clasp and he swept her close to him. + For one breathless instant they clung together, in a sharp, + passionate gladness which blurred every sense of dread or danger. + They were safe—they were together—and for the moment it was + enough. Every obstacle was surmounted, every terror conquered. +</p> +<p> + They clung, obliviously, like children, her pale face against his + shoulder, her hair brushing his lips, her wild heartbeats throbbing + against his own. +</p> +<p> + Then the girl, remembering, lifted her head. +</p> +<p> + "Quick—we must go," she whispered. "For there I made a fire—" +</p> +<p> + He followed her frightened, backward glance at the boudoir door and + suddenly saw its cracks and key hole strangely radiant with light. +</p> +<p> + "He left me, to go to those screams," she was saying rapidly. "I + tried to run that way—and found that woman coming back. And I told + her to wait—in her own room—and I slipped back in there—and + suddenly it came to me to thrust the candle about. I thought I would + run out and if I met any one I would call, 'Fire', and say the + general was burning and perhaps in the confusion—" +</p> +<p> + The terrible desperation of her both stirred and wrung him. She was + so little, so helpless, so trembling in his clasp ... so made for + love and tenderness.... And to think of her in such fear and horror + that she went thrusting reckless candles into her hangings, setting + a palace on fire in the blind fury for escape.... +</p> +<p> + To such work had this night brought her.... This night, and three + men—for he and the craven Tewfick and the fanatic bey were all + linked in this night's work. Yes, and another man—and he thought + swiftly, in a lightning flash of wonder, how little that Paul + Delcassé had known when he set his eager face toward the Old World, + with his wife and baby with him, that he was setting his feet into + such a web ... that his wife would die, languishing in a pasha's + harem, and his little daughter would one night be flying in mad + terror from the cruel beast the weak pasha had sold her to! +</p> +<p> + And how little, for that matter, he had known when he had set his + own face toward those same sands what secrets he would discover + there and what forbidden ways his heart would know. +</p> +<p> + These thoughts all went through him like one thought, in some clear, + remote background of his mind, while he was swiftly drawing on the + military cloak she gave him and wrapping her in the black mantle. + There was a veil on the mantle's hood that she could fling across + her face when she wished, but Ryder had no fez to complete the + deceptive outline of his masquerade. He must trust to the dark and + to the concealment of the high, military collar of the cloak. +</p> +<p> + "Do you know a way?" he whispered and at her shaken head, "The water + gate," he said, thinking swiftly. +</p> +<p> + There would be a crowd now about the gate, but if they could only + manage to gain those cellars and hide somewhere they could steal out + later upon that waterman. +</p> +<p> + It seemed the most feasible of all the desperate plans. The roofs + might be a trap. The harem entrance led into a garden and the garden + was guarded by an impassable wall. But if he could only get to the + river he knew that he was a strong enough swimmer to save Aimée, or + he might even terrorize the watchman into furnishing a boat. +</p> +<p> + She did not question but guided him swiftly through the arch that + led down into the banqueting hall. Twice that day she had gone down + those stairs. Once in her bridal state, her eyes shining, her cheeks + glowing with the wild joy of Ryder's arrival and dreams of escape, + and again, scarcely an hour gone by, she had descended them, tense + and desperate, her revolver at the general's head, seeking vainly + Ryder's rescue. +</p> +<p> + And now a third time, a guilty, reckless fugitive in the night, she + stole down those stairs into the many-columned hall where she had + been fêted in state among her guests. Here her only knowledge was of + the stone corridor and the locked door through which the bey had led + her, but Ryder knew the way that Aziza had brought him and he turned + cautiously toward those wide, curving stairs. +</p> +<p> + Keeping Aimée a few steps behind him, he went down the soft carpet + and peered out at the bottom towards the water gate. He saw no bars; + the gate was open and against the pale square of the water were the + black silhouettes of the general and the gateman, both leaning out + at some splashing in the river. +</p> +<p> + He knew a boy's reckless impulse to shove them both in. It was an + unholy thought his better judgment rejected—unless driven to + it—yet some prankish element in his roused recklessness would not + have deplored the necessity. +</p> +<p> + If they looked about—! +</p> +<p> + But they did not stir as, with Aimée's cold hand in his, he made the + tiptoed descent and slipped softly about the corner of the steps. + Then, instead of going on down the hall to some hiding place in the + ruins, he took a suddenly revealed, sharper turn into a narrow + passage just beyond the stairs. +</p> +<p> + It might lead to another gate, some service entrance, perhaps, it + ran so straight and direct between its walls. +</p> +<p> + Intuitively that excavator's sense of his defined the direction. + They were going parallel with the river, although a little way back + from the water wall, and in the direction of the men's part of the + palace, the selamlik. +</p> +<p> + He recalled the selamlik vaguely as an irregular mass of buildings, + and though the formal entrance was of course through the garden from + the avenue, there was a narrow side street or lane leading back to + the water's edge between this part of the palace and the nest + building, and very likely there was some entrance on that lane. +</p> +<p> + Bitterly he blamed himself for his lack of complete inspection that + morning. To be sure he had told himself, then, as he strolled about + the high garden walls and peered down the narrow lane on one side of + the Nile backwaters, that he didn't need a map of the place for his + arrival at an afternoon reception; he was simply going in and out, + and clothes and speech were his only real concern. +</p> +<p> + He had even said to himself that he might not reveal himself to + Aimée—if she did not discover him. He wanted merely to see her + again, and be sure that she understood her own history—he had no + notion of attempting any further relations with her, any resumption + of their forbidden and dangerous acquaintance. +</p> +<p> + And it was true that had been the defiant and protesting surface of + his thoughts, but deep within himself there had always been that + hot, hidden spark, ready to kindle to a flame at her word—and with + it the unowned, secret longing that she would speak the word. +</p> +<p> + And when she had called on him for help, when the trembling appeal + had sprung past her stricken pride, and he had seen the terror in + her soft, child's eyes, then the spark had struck its conflagration. + He had become nothing but a hot, headstrong fury of devotion. +</p> +<p> + And he said to himself now that he might have known it was going to + happen, and that if he had not been so concerned that morning about + saving his face and preserving this fiction of indifference he would + know a little more about the labyrinth they were poking about + in—the little more that tips the scale between safety and + destruction. +</p> +<p> + But he did not know and blind Chance was his only goddess. +</p> +<p> + The passage had brought him to a wall and a narrow stairs while + another passage led off to the right, apparently to the forward + regions of the place. +</p> +<p> + He took the stairs. He had had enough of underground regions when + they did not lead to water gates and the stairs promised novelty at + least. +</p> +<p> + He wished he knew more about Turkish palaces. He supposed they had a + fairly consistent ground plan, but beyond a few main features of + inner courts and halls he was culpably ignorant of their intentions. + If it were an early Egyptian tomb or temple now! But then, perhaps + the Turks were more indefinite in their building and rebuilding. +</p> +<p> + At the head of the stairs a door stood half ajar. Through the crack + he strained his eyes, but his anxious glance met only the darkness + of utter night. Not a gleam of light. And not a sound—except the + far, hollow stamping of some stabled horse. +</p> +<p> + Softly he pushed the door open and he and Aimée slipped within. The + place, whatever it was, appeared deserted, a dark, bare, backstairs + region—for he stumbled over a bucket—from which to the right he + could just discern a hall leading into the forward part of the + palace, wanly lighted some distance on, with the pale flicker of an + old ceiling lamp. +</p> +<p> + They seemed to be at the end of the hall and the darker shadows in + the walls about them appeared to be a number of doors—closed, so + his groping hands informed him. +</p> +<p> + Oh, for his excavator's steady light, or a pocket flash! Oh, for a + light of any kind, even a temporary match! But he dared not risk the + scratch, for now he caught the thud of footfalls overhead, heavy + footfalls, and there might be stairs unexpectedly close at hand. +</p> +<p> + He turned to Aimée but the girl shook her head helplessly and + hesitant and dashed, for all their young confidence, they wavered a + moment hand in hand in the dark, fearful of what a rash move might + bring upon them. And in the beating stillness Ryder became conscious + that the muffled, monotonous stamping of a horse is a gloomy, + disheartening thing in the night, and that footsteps overhead are of + all noises the most nervous and unsettling. +</p> +<p> + What was behind those doors? Not a spark of light came from them, + that was one comfort. The rooms, kitchen, service, store rooms or + whatever they were, appeared in the same blackness and oblivion.... + But any door might open on a roomful of sleeping gardeners and + grooms.... +</p> +<p> + Life and more than life hung on the blind goddess. +</p> +<p> + It was only an instant that they hesitated there, yet it appeared an + eternity of indecision, then nearer footsteps sounded, coming down + that hall. No more wavering of the scales! +</p> +<p> + Ryder turned to the door at his left, at the very end of the wall + beyond which came that far stamping, and wrenched it open, closing + it swiftly behind him. He saw a light now, a mild, yellow ray + through an opened door ahead that vaguely illumined the strange old + vehicles of the palace, and the stables were beyond. +</p> +<p> + Some one else was beyond, too, in the stables, for that very instant + he saw a black horse backed restively into sight, its tossing head + evading the hands that were trying to bridle it. +</p> +<p> + "The Fortieth Door!" said Ryder to himself with an involuntary + thrust of humor. +</p> +<p> + The door of the horse! The door of forbidden daring! He knew now the + vague associations that had stirred in him as he had stared blindly + about that place of doors.... But he had opened so many forbidden + doors of late that this last was welcome as the supreme test. +</p> +<p> + And nothing in the world could have been more welcome than a + horse—a horse with a way out behind it! +</p> +<p> + "Stay back," he said under his breath to Aimée, and clasping his bit + of iron he moved toward the door. +</p> +<p> + He could see the attendant now, who was finishing his bridling, and + it was Yussuf, the eunuch, so busy gentling and soothing the horse + that he cast only one glance in the direction of the sounds he heard + and that one glance misled him in its glimpse of the general's + cloak. +</p> +<p> + "By your favor—but an instant," he called out, "and he is ready—" +</p> +<p> + "Stand aside," said Ryder very clearly, emerging from the shadows at + the horse's heels. "Out of the way with you. The horse is for me." +</p> +<p> + A moment Yussuf gaped. Then he dropped the bridle and his hand went + swiftly to the knife hilt in his belt. +</p> +<p> + "Fool!" said Ryder contemptuously. "Would you tempt fate? Do you + think I am such that your knife could harm me? Must I prove to you + again that walls are nothings—that I but let myself be taken to + prove my powers?" +</p> +<p> + Ethiopians are superstitious. And Yussuf knew that his brick and + mortar had been strong.... Yet they have great trust in a crooked, + short-bladed knife, and Yussuf did not relax his hold upon his and + for all that Ryder could See there was no hesitation in the grinning + ferocity of his black face. +</p> +<p> + Yet his spring was an instant delayed and in that instant Ryder + spoke again. +</p> +<p> + "Look, now at the wall behind you," he said quickly. +</p> +<p> + Yussuf looked. And as he turned his bullet head Ryder jumped close + and brought his iron down upon it with a sickening force he thought + scarcely short of murder. +</p> +<p> + To his amazement the black did not fall, but staggered only, and + Ryder had need to send the knife spinning from his grasp and strike + again before the eunuch's knees sagged and his huge bulk sank at + Ryder's feet. +</p> +<p> + This time Ryder took no chance with a shammed unconsciousness. He + snatched down bits of leather from the wall and bound the man's + hands and feet in tight security and seeing that he was breathing, + although heavily, he thrust a gagging handkerchief into his mouth. +</p> +<p> + Then he dragged the heavy body towards a pile of hay he saw + in a vacant stall and concealed it effectively but not too + smotheringly—although Yussuf, he felt, would be no grievous loss + to society. +</p> +<p> + Vaguely in the back of his consciousness he had been aware of the + excited plunge of the horse and then of a low, soothing murmur of + speech, and now he turned to find Aimée holding the bridle and + stroking the quivering creature with gentle, fearless hands. +</p> +<p> + "Is he dead?" she asked quietly of the eunuch. +</p> +<p> + "Stunned," said Ryder, meaning reassurement and was startled by the + passion of her cry, "Oh, I could kill them all—all!" +</p> +<p> + "I will—if they try to stop us," he promised grimly, forgetful of + that oath to Aziza. +</p> +<p> + Hastily he glanced about the stalls. There was no other horse there, + only a pair of mild-eyed donkeys, and though there might conceivably + be other horses behind other doors there was no instant to spare in + search. +</p> +<p> + This luck was too prodigious to risk. +</p> +<p> + The door to the street had already been unbolted and now he threw + it back with a quick look into the dark emptiness of the narrow side + street, and then, with a tight hold of the reins, he swung himself + into the saddle and Aimée up into his arms, her head on his + shoulder, her arms clasping him. +</p> +<p> + It was a huge Bedouin saddle with high-arched back and curved pummel + and the slender pair no more than filled it, making apparently no + weight at all for the spirited beast which tore out of the stalls at + the charging gallop beloved of Eastern horsemen. +</p> +<p> + For a moment Ryder felt wildly that he might meet the fate of the + rash youth in his patron story. He had never ridden a horse like + this, which, like all high-mettled Arabs, resented the authority of + any but his master, and though a good horseman Ryder had all he + could do to keep his seat and Aimée in his arms. +</p> +<p> + Around the corner of the lane the horse went racing, and down the + dark, lebbek-lined avenue his flying feet struck back their sparks + of fire. Across an open square he plunged, while irate camels + screamed at him and a harsh voice shouted back loud curses. It + seemed to Ryder that other voices joined in—that there was a + pursuit, an outcry—and then they were out down an open road, wildly + galloping, like a mad highwayman under a pale morning sky. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXI +</h2> +<h3> + MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL +</h3> +<p> + That morning Miss Jeffries ate two eggs. She ate them successively, + with increasing deliberation, and afterwards she lingered + interminably over her toast and marmalade. +</p> +<p> + Still Ryder made no appearance and since the Arab waiter had + informed her that he had not yet breakfasted she concluded that he + was not at the hotel but had spent the night with some friend of + his—probably that Andrew McLean to whom he was always running off. +</p> +<p> + Nor was he in to luncheon. That was rank extravagance because he was + paying at pension rates. His extravagance, however, was no affair of + hers. Neither, she informed herself frigidly, was his appearance or + his non-appearance. It was only rather dull of Jack to lose so many, + well, opportunities. +</p> +<p> + She was not going to be in Cairo forever. Not much longer, in fact. + There were adages about gathering rosebuds while ye may and making + hay while the sun shone that Jack Ryder would do well to observe. +</p> +<p> + Other men did, reflected Jinny Jeffries with a proud lift of her + ruddy head. Only somehow, the other men— +</p> +<p> + Well, Jack <i>was</i> provokingly attractive! Only of course, if he was + going to rely upon his attraction and not upon his attentions— +</p> +<p> + Deliberately Miss Jeffries smiled upon a stalwart tourist from New + York and promised her society for a foursome at bridge in the hotel + lounge that evening. +</p> +<p> + Later, when Jack still failed to materialize and behold her + inaccessibility, the exhibition seemed hardly to have been worth + while.... And there were difficulties getting rid of the New Yorker + the next day. He had ideas about excursions. +</p> +<p> + It was during the forenoon of the next day that the first twinge of + genuine worry shot across the sustained resentment which she was + pleased to call her complete indifference. She recalled the vigor of + Ryder's warnings about mentioning his adventure and the grave + dangers of disclosure, and she began to wonder. +</p> +<p> + She wished, rather, that he had gone safely out of the house before + she went away. +</p> +<p> + Of course nothing could happen. He had done nothing to give himself + away. He was simply a veiled shadow, moving humbly as befitted a + lowly stranger among the high and hospitable surroundings. +</p> +<p> + But still, it would have been better if he had gone.... +</p> +<p> + Those turbaned women had looked queerly at them when they were + talking so long in the window. Perhaps it was not simply at the + intimacy between a young American and a veiled Oriental. Perhaps + their voices had been unguarded or Jack's tones had awakened + suspicion. Perhaps he had given himself away in his long talk with + the bride. She remembered a Frenchwoman who had come to interrupt + that talk who had looked rather sharply at Jack.... And that + dreadful eunuch was always staring.... +</p> +<p> + She thought of a great many things now, more and more things every + minute. +</p> +<p> + And still she told herself that she was absurd, that Jack would be + the first to ridicule her alarm. He was probably enjoying himself, + staying on with his friends, forgetting all about herself.... Still + his room at the hotel had not been slept in for two nights now nor + had he called at the hotel and he certainly didn't have an extensive + supply of clothes and linen upon him beneath the mantle. +</p> +<p> + Particularly she remembered that he had exhibited some funny black + tennis shoes which he had thought would go appropriately with a + woman's robes. Absurd, to think of him as spending two days in + tennis shoes, and absurd to say that he would go to the shops and + buy more when he had plenty of footgear in his hotel room. +</p> +<p> + Unless he wore McLean's. +</p> +<p> + She had always regarded the unknown McLean as a most unnecessary + absorbent of Jack Ryder's time and attention and now that view was + deeply reinforced. +</p> +<p> + By noon she decided to do something. She would telephone that + Andrew McLean and see if Jack had been there. The Agricultural Bank, + that was the place. An obliging hotel clerk—clerks were always + obliging to Miss Jeffries—gave her the number and she slipped into + the booth feeling a ridiculous amount of excitement and suspense. +</p> +<p> + She had never telephoned in Cairo—only been telephoned to—and she + was not prepared for the fact that the telephone company was French. + At the phone girl's "<i>Numero?—Quel numero, s'il vous plait?</i>" Jinny + hastily choked back the English response and clutched violently at + French numerals. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Huit cent—no, quatre vingt—un moment!</i>" she demanded desperately + and hanging up the receiver, sat down to write out her number in + French correctly. +</p> +<p> + And then she got the Bank, and, still clinging to her French, she + requested to speak to Monsieur McLean and was informed that it was + Monsieur McLean himself. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Je suis</i>—oh, how absurd! Of course you speak English," she + exclaimed. "This French telephone upset me.... I wanted to speak to + Mr. Ryder if he is there—or else leave a message for him, if you + know when he will come in." +</p> +<p> + "Ryder?" There was a faint intonation of surprise in the voice. + "I've no idea really when he'll be in," said McLean, "but you may + leave the message if you like." +</p> +<p> + "Hasn't he—haven't you seen him for some time?" stammered Jinny, + feeling that McLean must be taking her for a pursuing adventuress. +</p> +<p> + "Well—not for some time." +</p> +<p> + Her heart sank. +</p> +<p> + "Not—not for two days?" +</p> +<p> + "It might be that," said the Scotchman cautiously. +</p> +<p> + Two days. Forty-eight hours, almost, since she had left him in that + harem! And McLean had not seen him. Of course there might be other + friends who had and McLean might know of them. +</p> +<p> + "I'm afraid I'll have to see you," she said desperately. "It's + rather important about Jack Ryder—and if I could just talk with you + a minute—this afternoon—?" +</p> +<p> + "I have no appointment for three fifteen," McLean told her + concisely. +</p> +<p> + Evidently he expected her to call at the Bank.... He was used to + being called on.... "Shall I come—?" she began. +</p> +<p> + "I can see you at three fifteen," McLean reassured her, and she + repeated "Three fifteen," with an odd vibration in her voice. +</p> +<p> + "I wonder," she murmured, "if I came at three ten—or three + twenty—?" +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + But she didn't. She was humorously careful to make it exactly a + quarter past the hour when she left her cab before McLean's + official looking residence and stepped into the tiled entrance. +</p> +<p> + She had no very clear notion of Andrew McLean except that he was, as + Jack had said, Scotch, single, and skeptical, that he was Jack's + intimate friend and an official sort of banker—and the word banker + had unconsciously prepared her for stout dignity and middle age. +</p> +<p> + She was not at all prepared for the lean, sandy-haired, rather + abrupt young man who came forward from the depths of the gratefully + cool reception room, and after a nervous hand clasp waved her to a + chair. +</p> +<p> + He was still holding her card, and as he glanced covertly at it she + recalled that she had given him no name over the telephone and that + he had known her only by the time of her appointment. Decidedly she + must have made an odd impression! +</p> +<p> + Well, he could see for himself now, she thought, a trifle defiantly. + Certainly he was taking stock of her out of those shrewd swift gray + eyes of his. He could see that she was, well—certainly a nice girl! +</p> +<p> + As a matter of fact McLean could see that she was considerably more. + Rather disconcertingly more! It was not often that such white-clad + apparitions, piquant of face and coppery of hair, teased the eyes in + his receiving room. +</p> +<p> + "You wanted to see me—?" he offered mechanically. +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps you have heard Jack Ryder speak of me—of Jinny Jeffries?" + began the girl, determined to put the affair on a sound social + footing as soon as possible. +</p> +<p> + McLean considered and, in honesty, shook his head. "He very seldom + mentioned young ladies." +</p> +<p> + "Oh—!" Jinny tried not to appear dashed. "We are very old + friends—in America—and of course I've seen a good deal of him + since I've been in Cairo. In fact, he is stopping now at the same + hotel with us—with my aunt and uncle and myself." +</p> +<p> + McLean smiled. "He said it was a tooth," he mentioned dryly. +</p> +<p> + In Jinny's eyes a little flicker answered him, but her words were + ingenuous. "Oh, of course he <i>has</i> been having a time with the + dentist. That's why he couldn't return to his camp. What I meant + was, that at the hotel we have been seeing him every day until—he + has just disappeared since day before yesterday and we—that is, + I—am very much concerned about it." +</p> +<p> + "Disappeared? You mean, he—" +</p> +<p> + "Just disappeared, that's all. He hasn't been at the hotel—he + hasn't been anywhere that I know of, and I haven't heard a word from + him—so I telephoned you and then when I found he hadn't been + here—" +</p> +<p> + McLean looked off into space. "Eh, well, he'll turn up," he said + comfortingly. "Jack's erratic, you may say, in his comings and + goings. He means nothing by it.... I've known him do the same to + me.... Any time, now; you're likely to hear—" +</p> +<p> + Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter and her cheeks burned with + brighter warmth. +</p> +<p> + "It isn't just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean," she took quietly + distinct pains to explain. "It's because I am anxious—" +</p> +<p> + "Not a need, not a need in the world. Jack knows his way about.... + He may have been called back to the diggings, you know—if they dug + up a bit porcelain there or a few grains of corn the boy would + forget the sun was shining." +</p> +<p> + Perhaps his caller's burnished hair had shaped that thought. "Jack + knows his way about," he repeated encouragingly, as one who + demolishes the absurd fears of women and children. +</p> +<p> + "You don't quite understand." Jinny's tones were silken smooth. "You + see, I left him in rather unusual circumstances. It was a place + where he had no business in the world to be—" +</p> +<p> + At McLean's unguardedly startled gaze her humor overtook her wrath. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, it was quite all right for <i>me</i>" she replied mischievously to + that look. "Only not for him. You see, he was masquerading—" +</p> +<p> + "Again?" thought McLean, involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the + lassies that lad was—and he had thought him such an aloof one! +</p> +<p> + "Masquerading as a woman—so he could take me to a reception." +</p> +<p> + Jinny began to falter. Just putting that escapade into words + portrayed its less commendable features. +</p> +<p> + "It was a woman's reception," she began again, "at a Turkish house. + A marriage reception—" +</p> +<p> + She had certainly secured McLean's whole-hearted attention. +</p> +<p> + "A marriage reception—a Turkish marriage reception?" he said very + sharply and amazedly as his caller continued to pause. "Do you mean + to say that Jack Ryder went into a Turkish house dressed as a + woman—?" +</p> +<p> + There was a pronounced angularity of feature about the young + Scotchman which now took on a chiseled sternness. +</p> +<p> + Swiftly Jinny interposed. "Oh, you mustn't blame him, Mr. McLean! + You see, I wanted very much to go to a Turkish reception and I + didn't have the courage to go alone or drag some other tourist as + inexperienced as myself, and so Jack—why, there didn't seem any + harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish + mantle and a veil up to his eyes and he was sure he'd never be found + out. I ought not to have let him, I know—it was my fault—" +</p> +<p> + She looked so flushed and innocent and distressed that McLean's + chivalry rose swiftly to her need. +</p> +<p> + "Indeed you mustn't blame yourself Miss—Miss Jeffries. You don't + know Egypt—and Jack does. He knew that if he had been discovered + there would have been no help for him—and no questions asked + afterwards. And it might have been very dangerous for you. The + blame is just his now," he said decisively, yet not without a + certain weak-kneed sympathy with the culprit. +</p> +<p> + For if the girl had looked like this ... he could see that she would + be a difficult little piece to withstand ... though any man with an + ounce of sense in his head would have behaved as a responsible + protector and not as a reckless school boy. +</p> +<p> + "What happened?" he said quickly. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, nothing happened—nothing that I know of. We got along very + well, I thought, although now I remember that some people <i>did</i> + stare.... But I wasn't worried at the time. I thought it was just + because I was an American and he was apparently a Turkish woman, but + there was no reason why an American might not get a Turkish woman to + act as a guide, was there?... And then Jack told me to go home + first—he said it would be simpler that way and that he would slip + over to some friend's or to some safe place and take his disguise + off. He wore a gray suit beneath it, and the only funny thing was + some black tennis shoes.... So I left him. And he hasn't been back + since." +</p> +<p> + She added as McLean was silent, "He told me that he had some + engagement for that evening, so I did not begin to worry until the + next day." +</p> +<p> + "Now just how long ago was this?" +</p> +<p> + "Two days ago. Day before yesterday afternoon." +</p> +<p> + She looked anxiously at McLean's face and took alarm at his careful + absence of expression. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Mr. McLean, do you think—" +</p> +<p> + He brushed that aside. "And where was it—this reception?" +</p> +<p> + "At an old palace, forever away on the edge of the city. I don't + remember the street—we drove and I had the cab wait. But it + belonged to a Turkish general. Hamdi Bey," she brought out + triumphantly. "General Hamdi Bey." +</p> +<p> + McLean did not correct her idea of the title. His expression was + more carefully non-committal than ever, while behind its quiet guard + his thoughts were breaking out like a revolution. +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey.... A wedding reception.... The daughter of Tewfick + Pasha.... +</p> +<p> + In the secret depths of his soul he uttered profane and troubled + words. That French girl, again.... So Ryder had not forgotten that + affair, although he had kept silent about it of late. He had bided + his time and taken that rash means of seeing the girl again—and he + had involved this unknowing young American in a risk of scandal and + deceived her into believing herself responsible for this caprice + while all the time she had been a mere cloak and it had been his own + diabolical desire.... +</p> +<p> + Miss Jeffries was surprised to see a sudden sorry softness dawn in + the young man's look upon her. And she was surprised, too, at his + next question. +</p> +<p> + "I wonder, now, if you were the young lady who took him to a + masquerade ball—some time ago?" +</p> +<p> + Lightly she acknowledged it. "You'll think I'm always taking him to + things," she said brightly, but McLean's troubled gaze did not + quicken with a smile. +</p> +<p> + He was experiencing a vast compassion. She was so innocent, so + unconscious of the quicksands about her.... Probably she had never + heard a breath of that first adventure. +</p> +<p> + And it was this fair Christian creature whom Jack Ryder had + abandoned for a veiled girl from a Turk's harem! +</p> +<p> + McLean filled with cold, antagonistic wonder. He forgot the lovely + image of the French miniature, and remembering Tewfick's rounded + eyes and olive features he thought of the veiled girl—most + illogically, for he knew that Tewfick was not her father—as some + bold-eyed, warm-skinned image of base allure. +</p> +<p> + Sorrowfully he shook his head over his friend. He determined to + protect him and to protect this girl's innocence of his behavior. He + would help her to save him.... She could do it yet—if only she did + not learn the truth and turn from him. If ever she had been able to + make Jack go to a masquerade—that cursed masquerade!—she could + work other, more beneficent, miracles. +</p> +<p> + So now he asked, very cautiously, his mind on divided paths, "Do you + say there was nothing to draw suspicion—he did not talk to any + one, the guests or the bride—?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yes, he did talk to the bride," said Miss Jeffries with such + utter unconsciousness that McLean's heart hardened against the + renegade. +</p> +<p> + "He talked quite a while to her," she said. +</p> +<p> + "Did you notice anything—?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I couldn't hear what was said. He was the last in line and he + stayed for some time. He said afterward that it was all right. She + was very nice to him," said Jinny earnestly, producing every scrap + of incident for McLean's judgment. "She showed him some of her + presents—something about her neck." +</p> +<p> + In mid-speech McLean changed a startled "God!" to "Good!" +</p> +<p> + "She wasn't suspicious, then?" he said weakly. +</p> +<p> + "Not as far as I could see. Oh, nothing <i>seemed</i> to be wrong. But I + did feel uneasy until I got away and then, Jack hasn't come back—" +</p> +<p> + Again she looked at the young Scotchman for confirmation of her fear + and again she saw that careful expressionless calm. +</p> +<p> + "It's no need for alarm," he told her slowly, "since nothing went + wrong. I see no reason why Jack couldn't have walked out of that + reception. If we only knew where he was going later—" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, something might have happened later," Jinny took up. "I + thought of that. He might have wanted some more fun and felt more + reckless—Oh, I <i>am</i> worried," she confessed, her gray eyes very + round and childlike. +</p> +<p> + And if anything had happened she would always blame herself, thought + McLean ironically.... The unthinking deviltry of the young + scoundrel!... When he found him he'd have a few things to say! +</p> +<p> + "That's why I came to you," Jinny went on. "I hesitated, for he had + warned me so against telling any one, but no one else knows—" +</p> +<p> + "And no one must know," McLean assured her crisply. "I daresay it's + a mare's nest and Jack will be found safe and sound at his diggings + or off on a lark with some friend or other, but it's well to make + sure and you did quite right in coming to me." +</p> +<p> + Jinny thought she had done quite right, too. +</p> +<p> + There was a satisfying strength about McLean. She resented a trifle + his masculine way of trying to keep the dark side from her; she was + not greatly misled by that untroubled look of his and yet she was + unconsciously reassured by it.... And although he refused to be + stampeded by alarm he was not incredulous of it, for his manner was + frankly grave. +</p> +<p> + "I'll send out at once," he said decisively, "and see if I can pick + up any gossip of that reception. I've a very clever clerk with + brothers in the bazaars who is a perfect wireless for information. + He has told me the night before a man was to be murdered." +</p> +<p> + He paused, reflecting that was not a happy suggestion. +</p> +<p> + "Then I'll send out to Jack's diggings. That express doesn't stop + to-night, but I'll find a way. And I'll let you know as soon as I + can." +</p> +<p> + "You're very kind," said Jinny gratefully. +</p> +<p> + His competent manner brought her a light-hearted sensation of + difficulties already solved. Jack was as good as found, she felt in + swift reaction. If he was in any trouble this forceful young man + would settle it. +</p> +<p> + But probably he wasn't in any trouble. Probably he was just at his + diggings—rushing off from her in the exasperating way he seemed to + do whenever they were getting on particularly well.... She + remembered how he had bolted from that masquerade which had begun so + happily. He had said he was ill, but she had never completely slain + the suspicion that his illness sprang from ennui and disinclination. +</p> +<p> + She rose. "I mustn't take any more of your time, Mr. McLean—and you + probably have a four fifteen engagement." +</p> +<p> + But her light raillery failed of its mark. +</p> +<p> + "Eh? No, I have not," seriously he assured her. "You are quite the + last one I took on—the last before tea." +</p> +<p> + He paused confused with a strange suggestion.... Tea.... His servant + did it rather well.... And it was time— +</p> +<p> + Usually he had it in the garden. It was a charming garden, full of + roses, with a nice view of the Citadel—and his strange suggestion + expanded with a rosy vision of Jinny among the roses, beside his + wicker table.... Would she possibly care to—? +</p> +<p> + He struggled with his idea—and with his shyness. And then the sense + that it wasn't quite decent, somehow, to be offering tea to this + girl whom anxiety for Ryder's unknown lot had brought to him + overcame that unwonted impulse. +</p> +<p> + He dismissed the idea. And like all shy men he was oddly relieved at + the passing of the necessity for initiative, even while he felt his + mild hope's expiring pang. +</p> +<p> + He stepped before her to open the doors to which she was now taking + herself. +</p> +<p> + In the entrance he saw his clerk—the clever one—going out, and + excusing himself he went forward to detain the man. For a moment + there ensued a low-toned colloquy. Then the clerk, a dark-browned + keen-featured fellow in European clothes with a red fez, began to + relate something. +</p> +<p> + When McLean turned back to Jinny Jeffries she saw that his look was + sharply altered. There was a transfixed air about him and when he + spoke his voice told her that he had had a shock. +</p> +<p> + "My man tells me," he said, "that Hamdi Bey's bride is dead. He + buried her yesterday." +</p> +<a name="2HCH0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXII +</h2> +<h3> + FROM THE BAZAARS +</h3> +<p> + There was a moment's pause. +</p> +<p> + "What? That lovely girl?" said Jinny in startled pity. She added + incredulously, "Yesterday?... And only the day before—why, what + <i>could</i> have happened?" +</p> +<p> + That was what McLean was asking himself very grimly. +</p> +<p> + Aloud he told her slowly. "They say that fire happened. Some + accident—a candle overturned in her apartments. And of course the + windows were screened—" +</p> +<p> + "<i>Fire</i>—how terrible! That lovely girl," said Jinny again. She was + genuinely horrified and pitiful, yet she found a moment to wonder at + the evident depths of McLean's consternation. For of course he had + never seen the girl. +</p> +<p> + Yet he looked utterly upset. +</p> +<p> + "It's one of the most dreadful things I ever heard of," Jinny + murmured. "On her wedding night.... And she was so young, Mr. + McLean, and so exquisite. She didn't look like a real girl.... She + was a fairy creature.... I never dreamed there <i>really</i> were + rose-leaf skins before but hers was just like flower petals. Jack + and I talked about it, I remember. And her face had something so + bewitching about it, something so sweet and delicate—" +</p> +<p> + She broke off revisited with that vision of Aimée's sprite-like + beauty.... How little that poor girl had thought, as she stood there + in the bright splendor of her robes and diadem, that in a few hours + more— +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I hope that fire—that it was merciful—that she didn't + suffer," she said almost inaudibly. +</p> +<p> + But speech itself was too definitive of horrors. +</p> +<p> + "It's tragic," she finished simply. +</p> +<p> + It was tragic, with a complicated tragedy, thought Andrew McLean as + he stood there, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed, his mind + invaded with a dark swarm of conjecture, surmise, suspicion, his + vision possessed by a flitting rush of pictures. +</p> +<p> + He saw Jack talking with the girl at the reception.... The girl + showing him something about her neck—that accursed locket, he + thought acutely.... Jack sending Miss Jeffries home.... Had he + arranged that purposely? Was there some mad, improvised scheme of + escape in the air? +</p> +<p> + The pictures became mere flitting wraiths of conjecture, yet touched + with horrifying possibility.... Jack lingering, hiding.... Jack + making love to the girl, attempting flight.... Jack discovered—and + the quick saber thrust—for both. +</p> +<p> + A fire?... Very likely—to screen the darker tragedy. Hamdi was + capable of it to save his pride. And it would dispose so easily of + the—evidence. +</p> +<p> + McLean's thoughts flinched from the grim outcome of his fear. He + tried to tell himself that he was inventing horrors, that the fire + might be the simple truth, that Ryder's talk with the girl might + actually have ended in farewell—at least a temporary farewell—and + that his consequent low spirits had taken him off to mope in camp. +</p> +<p> + That was undoubtedly the thing to believe, at least until there was + actual necessity to disbelieve it, and looking at the story in that + way, McLean's Scotch sense of Providence was capable of pointing out + the stern benefits of the sad visitation. +</p> +<p> + Whatever mischief might have been afoot between his friend and that + unfortunate young girl the fire had prevented. And however hard Jack + might take this now, decidedly the poor girl's death was better for + him than her life. +</p> +<p> + No more wasting himself now on sad romance and adventure. No more + desire and danger. No more lurking about barred gates and secret + doors and forbidden palaces. No more clandestine trysts. No more + fury of mind, beating against the bars of fate. +</p> +<p> + Jack was saved. +</p> +<p> + Even if he had succeeded in rescuing the girl—what then? McLean was + skeptical of felicity from such contrasting lives. Better the + finality, the sharp pain, the utter separation. And then— +</p> +<p> + His eyes returned to the young American before him. She was the + unconscious answer to that future. She would save Ryder from regret + and retrospection.... In after years, looking back from a happy and + well-ordered domesticity, this would all become to him a fantastic, + far-off adventure, sad with the remembered but unfelt sadness of + youth, yet mercifully dim and softened with young beauty. +</p> +<p> + Jack must never tell this girl the story. McLean had read somewhere + of the mistakes of too-open revelation to women and now he was very + sure of it.... She must never receive this hurt, never know that + when she had been troubling over Jack's disappearance he had been + agonizing over another girl—that the escapade she thought so + intimate a lark had been a trick to see the other—that the young + creature whose loveliness she so innocently praised had been her + rival, drawing Jack from her.... +</p> +<p> + McLean would speak clearly to Ryder about this and seal his lips.... + But first he would have to be found. +</p> +<p> + He became conscious that he had been a long time silent, following + these thoughts, while Jinny waited. +</p> +<p> + "I'll do everything I can to find out about that fire," he told her. + "I mean, about any discovery of Jack in the palace," he quickly + amended as her face was touched with instant question. "And I'll see + if any one in Cairo knows where he is. Then if nothing turns up I'll + just pop out to his diggings in the morning and make sure he's all + right.... I'll get back that night and telephone you. And until + then, not a word about it. Much better not." +</p> +<p> + "Not a word," Jinny promised. "And if you should happen to find out + anything to-night—" +</p> +<p> + "I'll let you know at once. Well, rather. But don't count on that. + The old boy is out in his tombs, dusting off his mummies. You may + get a letter, yourself, in the morning," he threw out with + heartening inspiration, "And while you are reading it, I'll be + tearing along to the infernal desert—" +</p> +<p> + He had brought the smile to her eyes as well as lips. Bright and + reassured and comfortably dependent upon his resourceful strength, + she took her leave. +</p> +<p> + But there was no smile remaining upon Andrew McLean's visage. +</p> +<p> + Twenty-four hours. Two nights and a day.... And the girl was dead + and in her grave—Moslems wasted no time before interment—and Jack + was—where? +</p> +<a name="2HCH0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIII +</h2> +<h3> + IN THE DESERT +</h3> +<p> + Clinging to that plunging horse Ryder made little attempt at first + to guide the flight. It was enough to keep himself in the saddle and + Aimée in his arms while every galloping moment flung a farther + distance between them and that palace of horror. +</p> +<p> + His heart was beating in a wild, triumphant exultation. Glorious to + be out under the free sky, the wind in his face, the open world + ahead! He felt one with that dashing creature beneath him. +</p> +<p> + And Aimée was in his arms, untouched, unhurt, out from the power of + that sinister man and the expectation of dread things. +</p> +<p> + The moment was a supreme and glorious emotion. +</p> +<p> + They were headed south. And to Ryder's exhilaration this seemed + good. Cairo offered no hiding place for that fugitive girl. Even the + harbor that McLean could give would not be proof against the legal + forces of the Turks. Law and order, power and police were all in the + hands of the husband or father. Even now the alarm might be given, + the telephones ringing. +</p> +<p> + Aimée must be hidden until she could be smuggled to France—or + until the French authorities could get out their protective + documents. The hiding place that occurred to Ryder was a wild and + desperate expedient. +</p> +<p> + The American hospital at Siut. The isolation ward—the pretense of + contagious illness. And then later travel north, in the care of + nurses— +</p> +<p> + All this, if he could win over one of the doctors. At that moment + winning over a doctor appeared a sane and simple thing to Ryder's + mind. The only difficulty he recognized was getting Aimée into that + hospital. +</p> +<p> + But they would not be looking for him in the south. He could manage + it, he felt jubilantly. He could smuggle her into his diggings at + night and then make his arrangements. Anything, everything was + possible, now that the nightmare of a palace was left behind them. +</p> +<p> + South they went then, at a quieter pace, the Arab's rhythmic + footfalls ringing through the still, gray world of before dawn. + Across the Nile they made their way, working out on sandbars to the + narrow depths, where Ryder swam beside the swimming horse while + Aimée clung to the saddle. Then south again along the river road. +</p> +<p> + The sky was light now. And the river was light. Only the palms and + the villages and the flat dhurra fields were dark. And in the east + behind the Mokattam hills a thin band of gold began to brighten. +</p> +<p> + Life was stirring. Small black boys on huge black buffaloes + splashed in the river. Veiled girls with water jars on their + high-held heads from which the shawls trailed down to the dust filed + past from the villages like a Parthenon frieze. On the high banks + the naked fellaheen were already stooping to the incessant dipping + of the shadouf, while from the fields came the plaintive creaking of + the well sweep, as some harnessed camel or bullock began its eternal + round. +</p> +<p> + A flock of sheep came down the river road, driven by their ragged + shepherds, and a string of camels, burdened beyond all semblance to + themselves, bobbed by like rhythmic haystacks, led by a black-robed, + bare-footed child, carrying a live turkey in her arms while before + her rode her father, in shining pongee robes on a white donkey + strung with beads of blue. +</p> +<p> + And by these travelers there passed in that brightening dawn two + other travelers from the north, a pair on a powerful but tired black + horse, a man in a military cloak and a green and gold turban about + his bronzed head, and behind him, on a pillion, a black-mantled, + black-veiled girl, with bare, dangling feet. +</p> +<p> + It was Aimée who had evolved the disguise, constructing the turban + from the negligee beneath her mantle, and it was Aimée who bargained + with the villagers for their breakfast, eggs and goats' milk and + bread and rice, while her lord, as befitted his dignity, stayed + aloof upon his steed, returning a courteous response of "<i>Allah + salimak</i>—God bless you" to their greetings. +</p> +<p> + Then as the day brightened and the last soft veil of mist was + burned away before a blood-red sun, that pair of travelers left the + highroad and turned west upon a byway that led past fields of corn + and yellow water and mud villages where goats and naked babies and + ragged women squatted idly in the dust, and on through low, + red-granite hills swirled about with yellow sand drift and out into + the desert beyond. +</p> +<p> + Here fresh vigor came to the Arab horse, and tossing his mane and + stretching out his nostrils to the dry air he broke into a gallop + that sent sand and pebbles flying from his hoofs. To right and left + the startled desert hares scattered, and from the clumps of spiky + helga the black vultures rose in heavy-winged flight. +</p> +<p> + Then the breeze dropped, and the swift-coming heat rushed at them + like a furnace breath, and slower and slower they made their way, + Ryder leading the jaded horse and Aimée nodding in the saddle, mere + crawling specks across the immensity of sand. +</p> +<p> + Then, in the shade of a huge clump of gray-green <i>mit minan</i> beside + a jutting boulder they stopped at last to rest. The horse sank on + his knees; Ryder spread out his cloak and Aimée dropped down upon + its folds, lost in exhausted sleep as soon as her head touched the + sands. Ryder, his back against the rock, kept watch. +</p> +<p> + It was not the exultant Ryder of that first hour of flight. The + excitement of the night had subsided and withdrawn its wild + stimulation. It was a hot and tired and immensely sobered young man + who sat there with eyes that burned from lack of sleep and a brow + knit into a taut and anxious line. +</p> +<p> + Realization flooded him with the sun. Responsibility burned in upon + him with the heat. +</p> +<p> + Alone in the Libyan desert he sat there, and at his feet there slept + the young girl whose life he had snapped utterly off from its roots. +</p> +<p> + He was overwhelmingly responsible for her. If she had never met him, + if he had never continued to thrust himself upon her, she would have + gone on her predestined way, safe, secluded, luxurious—vaguely + unhappy and mutinous at times, perhaps, in the secret stirrings of + her blood, but still an indulged and wealthy little Moslem. +</p> +<p> + And now—she lay there, like a sleeping child, the dark tendrils of + hair clinging to her moist, sun-flushed cheeks, her long lashes + mingling their shadows with the purple underlining of the night's + terrors, homeless, exhausted, resourceless but for that anxious-eyed + young man. +</p> +<p> + Desperately he hoped that she would not wake to regret. Even a + sardonic tyrant in a palace might be preferable in the merciless + daylight to a helpless young man in the Libyan desert. +</p> +<p> + And she was so slight, so delicate, so made for rich and lovely + luxury.... Looking down at her he felt a lump in his throat ... a + lump of queer, choking tenderness.... +</p> +<p> + He wanted to protect her, to save her, to spend himself for her.... + He felt for her a reverent wonder, a stirring that was at once + protective and possessive and denying of all self. +</p> +<p> + He would die to save her. He tried to tell himself reassuringly that + he <i>had</i> saved her.... If only he could keep her safe.... +</p> +<p> + He thought of the life before her. He thought of that family in + France in whose name he had urged his interference. That unknown + Delcassé aunt who had sent out her agents for her lost heirs—would + she welcome and endow this lovely girl? +</p> +<p> + He could not doubt it.... Aimée's youth and beauty would be treasure + trove to a jaded lonely woman with money to invest in futures. Aimée + would be a belle, an heiress.... +</p> +<p> + He looked down at her with a sudden darkness in his young eyes.... + And still she slept, wrapped in the sorry mantle of his masquerade, + the torn chiffons of her negligée fluttering over her slim, bare + feet. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIV +</h2> +<h3> + THE TOMB OF A KING +</h3> +<p> + There were several approaches to the American excavations. McLean, + on that morning after his visit from Jinny Jeffries, chose to borrow + a friend's motor and man and break the speed laws of Upper Egypt, + and then shift to an agile donkey at the little village from which + the gulleys ran west through the red hills into the desert. +</p> +<p> + It was a still, hot day without cloud or wind and the sun had an air + of standing permanently high in the heavens, holding the day at + noon. Shimmering heat waves quivered about the base of the farther + hills and veiled the desert reaches. It was not conducive to comfort + and Andrew McLean was not comfortable. He was hot and sticky and + sandy and abominably harassed. +</p> +<p> + Not a creature, as far as he could discover, had seen Jack Ryder in + Cairo since the afternoon of that reception at Hamdi Bey's. He had + not been seen at the Museum nor the banks, nor at Cook's, nor the + usual restaurants, nor at the clubs with his friends. And the clever + clerk—with the two brothers in the bazaar—had unearthed quite a + bit of disquieting news about that reception—disquieting, that is, + to one with secret fears. +</p> +<p> + There had been a fire in the apartments of the bride of Hamdi Bey + and the bride had been killed instantly—that much was known to all + the world. The general had been distracted. He had sat brooding + beside his bride's coffin, allowing no one, not even her father, to + look upon the poor charred remains that he had placed within. He had + been a man out of his mind with grief, gnawing his nails, beating + his slaves,—Oh, assuredly, it had been a calamity of a very high + order! +</p> +<p> + One of the brothers in the bazaar had himself talked with an old + crone whose sister's child was employed in the general's kitchen, + and the fourth-hand story had lost nothing on the route. +</p> +<p> + The bride's youth and beauty, her jewels, her robes, the general's + infatuation, and the general's grief, the reports of these ran + through the city like wildfire. And from the particular channel of + the kitchen maid and the old aunt and the brother in the bazaars + came news of the very especial means that Allah had taken to + preserve the general from destruction. +</p> +<p> + For he had been in the bride's apartments just before the fire. But + the power of Allah, the Allseeing, had sent a thief, a prowler, by + night, upon the palace roofs, and the screams of a girl in the upper + story had called the general to that direction. +</p> +<p> + And so his preservation had been accomplished. +</p> +<p> + It was that rumor of the thief upon the roofs which sent the chill + of apprehension down McLean's spine. For though the bazaars knew + nothing of the thief's identity and it was reported he had escaped + by the river yet McLean felt the sinister finger of suspicion. If + the thief had not been a thief—unless of brides!—and if he had + <i>not</i> escaped—? +</p> +<p> + Impatiently the young Scotchman clapped his heels against the + donkey's sides, enhancing the efforts of the runner with the + gesticulating stick. +</p> +<p> + Suppose, now, that he should not find Jack at the excavations? +</p> +<p> + It was encouraging, somehow, to hear the monotonous rise and fall of + the labor song proceeding as usual, although McLean immediately told + himself that the work would naturally be going on under Thatcher's + direction whether Ryder were there or not. The camp knew nothing of + Cairo. The camp would be as usual. +</p> +<p> + And yet, after his first moment's survey, he had an indefinite but + uneasy idea that the camp was not as usual. +</p> +<p> + True, the tatterdemalion frieze of basket bearers still wove its + rhythmic way over the mounds to the siftings where Thatcher was + presiding as was his wont, but in the native part of the encampment + there appeared a sly stir and excitement. +</p> +<p> + The unoccupied, of all ages and sexes, that usually were squatting + interminably about some fire or sleeping like mummies in + hermetically wrapped black mantles, now were gathered in little + whispering knots whose backward glances betrayed a sense of + uneasiness, and as McLean rode past, a young Arab who had been the + center of attention drew back with such carefulness to escape + observation that McLean's shrewd eyes marked him closely. +</p> +<p> + It might be that his nerves were deceiving him, but there did seem + to be something surreptitious in the air. +</p> +<p> + Over his shoulder he glimpsed the young Arab hurrying out of the + camp. +</p> +<p> + It might be anything or nothing, he told himself. The man might be + going shopping to the village and the others giving him their + commissions, or he might be an illicit dealer in curios trying to + pick up some dishonest treasure. In native diggings those hangers on + were thick as flies. +</p> +<p> + He dismounted and hurried forward to meet Thatcher's advance. + The men had rarely met and Thatcher's air of hesitation and + absent-mindedness made McLean proffer his name promptly with a + sense of speeding through the preliminaries. Then with a manner + he strove to make casual he put his question. +</p> +<p> + "I say, is Ryder back?" +</p> +<p> + He knew, in the moment's pause, how tight suspense was gripping him. + Then Thatcher glanced toward the black yawning mouth of a tomb + entrance. +</p> +<p> + "Why, yes—he's down there." He added. "Been a bit sick. Complains + of the sun." +</p> +<p> + For a moment his relief was so great that McLean did not believe in + it. Jack here—Jack absolutely safe— +</p> +<p> + Mechanically he put, "When did he come in?" +</p> +<p> + "When?" Thatcher hesitated, trying to recall. "Oh, night before + last—rode in after dark." He added reassuringly, as the other swung + about towards the tomb, "He says there's nothing really wrong with + him. There's no temperature." +</p> +<p> + McLean nodded. His relief now was acutely compounded with disgust. + He felt no lightning leap of thanksgiving that his friend was safe, + but rather that flash of irritated reaction which makes the + primitive parent smack a recovered child. +</p> +<p> + Not a thing in the world the matter! A mare's nest—just as he had + prophesied to Miss Jeffries. Why in heaven's name hadn't Jack the + decency to send that over-anxious young lady a card when he + abandoned town so suddenly?... Not that McLean blamed Miss Jeffries. + Given the masquerade and Jack's disappearance and a zealous feminine + interest her concern was perfectly natural. +</p> +<p> + But McLean had left a busy office and taken an anxious and + uncomfortable excursion, and his voice had no genial ring as he + shouted his friend's name down the dark entrance of the tomb shaft. +</p> +<p> + In a moment he heard a voice shouting hollowly back, then a + wavering spot of light appeared upon the inclined floor and Ryder's + figure emerged like an apparition from the gloom. +</p> +<p> + "I say! That you, Andy?" +</p> +<p> + Evidently he had been snatched from sleep. His dark hair was + rumpled, his face flushed, and he yawned with complete frankness. +</p> +<p> + McLean knew a sudden yearning to put an arm about him.... Dear old + Jack.... Dear, irresponsible scamp.... His reaction of the + irritation vanished.... It was so darned good to see the old chap + again.... +</p> +<p> + He muttered something about being in the vicinity while Ryder, + rousing to hostship, called directions to the cook boy to bring a + tray of luncheon. +</p> +<p> + "It's cool down here," he told McLean, leading the way back. +</p> +<p> + It was cool indeed, in the Hall of Offerings. It was also, McLean + thought, satisfying a recovered appetite, a trifle depressing. +</p> +<p> + They sat in a small island of light in an ocean of gloom while about + them shadowy columns towered to indistinguishable heights and + half-seen carvings projected their strange suggestions. +</p> +<p> + It seemed incongruous to be smoking cigarettes so unconcernedly at + the feet of the ancient gods. +</p> +<p> + But McLean's feeling of depression might have been due to his + renewed awareness of catastrophe. For though Jack was here, safe and + sound enough, although a bit unlike himself in manner, yet Jack + <i>had</i> been at that confounded reception in a woman's rig and Jack + had seen the girl and talked with her—apparently on terms of + understanding. +</p> +<p> + And if Jack had left Cairo that night, as he said he did—claiming + delay on the way due to a tired horse—then Jack knew nothing in the + world of the palace fire, and the girl's sudden and tragic death. +</p> +<p> + And McLean would have to tell him. He would have to tell him that + the girl he was probably dreaming of in some fool's paradise of + memory and hope was now only a little mound of dust in an Oriental + cemetery. That a shaft of temporary wood already marked the grave of + Aimée Marie Dejane, daughter of Tewfick Pasha and wife of Hamdi + Bey.... +</p> +<p> + And however much McLean's sound senses might disapprove of the whole + fantastic affair and his sober judgment commend the workings of + Providence, he loved his friend, and he feared that his friend loved + this lost girl. +</p> +<p> + He had to end love and hope and romance and implant a desperate + grief.... +</p> +<p> + He thought very steadily of Jinny Jeffries. He cleared his throat. +</p> +<p> + "Jack, old man—" +</p> +<p> + He started to tell him that there had been a fire in Cairo, a most + shocking fire in a haremlik. It seemed to him that Jack was not + listening, that he had a faraway, yet intent look upon his face, as + of one attending to other things. And then suddenly Jack seemed to + gather resolution and turned to his friend with an air of narration + of his own. +</p> +<p> + "Look here, McLean, there's something I want to tell you—" +</p> +<p> + "Wait a minute now," said McLean quietly. "I want you to hear + this.... It was a fire in the palace of your friend, Hamdi Bey." +</p> +<p> + He had Jack's attention now—he was fairly conscious of arrested + breath. Not looking about him he went grimly on, "The night of the + wedding a fire started in the haremlik.... It was a bad business, a + very bad business, Jack. For the girl—the girl Hamdi had just + married—" +</p> +<p> + He was conscious of Jack's look upon him but he did not turn to meet + it. +</p> +<p> + "She died," he said heavily. "He buried her yesterday." +</p> +<p> + He thought that Jack was never going to speak. +</p> +<p> + Then, "Died?" said Ryder in an odd voice. +</p> +<p> + "I expect she breathed in a bit of smoke," said McLean, trying for a + merciful suggestion. +</p> +<p> + "And he buried her—?" +</p> +<p> + Jack was like a child, trying to fit bewildering facts together. + McLean's sympathy hurt him like a physical pain. He wondered what it + could be like to realize that some loved one you had just talked + with, in radiant life, was now gone utterly.... +</p> +<p> + And then he heard Jack laugh. Mad, he thought quickly, turning now + to look at him. +</p> +<p> + Ryder's head was tilted back; Ryder's shoulders were shaking. "Oh, + my Aunt!" he gasped hysterically. "My Aunt Clarissa—is <i>that</i> what + Hamdi says!" +</p> +<p> + He sobered instantly and leaned towards McLean. "That looks as if + he's done with her—what? Saving his face that way? You're sure it + was Aimée—the girl he had just married? Not some other girl—some + co-wife or something?" +</p> +<p> + And as McLean bewilderedly muttered that he was sure, Ryder began to + laugh again. To laugh jubilantly, joyously, triumphantly. +</p> +<p> + "He's given her up—he's got a saving explanation to thrust in the + world's face! Oh, blessed Allah, Veiler of all that should be + veiled! The man's through. He's had enough. He isn't going to try + to—" +</p> +<p> + Across the bright oblong of the entrance a shadow appeared. +</p> +<p> + "Ryder—I say, Ryder," said a hurried voice—Thatcher's voice—and + Thatcher came hastily forward in perturbed urgency. +</p> +<p> + "There's a lot of men outside—police and natives and what not. With + warrants. They're searching the place. And they want to see you.... + Hang it all, Ryder," said Thatcher explosively but apologetically, + "they say you've made off with some sheik's daughter." +</p> +<p> + He paused, shocked at the monstrosity of the accusation. He was a + delicate-minded man—outside of his knowledge of antiquities—and he + evidently expected his young associate to fall upon him and slay him + for the slander. +</p> +<p> + "A sheik's daughter—?" said Ryder in a mildly wondering voice. From + his emphasis one might have inferred he was saying, "How odd! I + don't remember any sheik's daughter—" +</p> +<p> + A queer uncomfortable flush spread fanways from Thatcher's thin + temples and rayed across his high cheekbones. He did not look at + either of the men as he murmured, "It's most peculiar, but that Arab + horse—the sheik claims the horse is his, too. He says you rode off + on it, with his daughter." +</p> +<p> + "That's all right," said Ryder absently. "I don't want the horse.... + But you say the sheik's there? What does he look like? Thin—with + blond mustaches?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, no, no, not at all. He is quite heavy and bearded—one-eyed, if + I recollect. But there <i>is</i> a man with a blond mustache who appears + to do the directing—" +</p> +<p> + "And you mean they are searching?" said Ryder abruptly. "You've let + them in—?" +</p> +<p> + "They have warrants," Thatcher protested. "And there are proper + policemen conducting the search—" +</p> +<p> + "My good God! Where are they now? Not coming <i>here</i>? I don't have + any policemen trampling here and meddling with my finds—tell them + to clear out, Thatcher, you know there's no sheik's daughter here!" +</p> +<p> + Ryder gave a quick laugh but the impression of his laughter was not + as sharp as the impression of his alarm. +</p> +<p> + "I did tell them it was preposterous," Thatcher began, "but, you + see, after finding the horse—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, the horse! I got him for a song—of course the beggar is + stolen. Give him back, if they claim him. But as for any sheik's + daughter—keep the crowd out, Thatcher, I won't have them here, not + in these tombs—" +</p> +<p> + "I tell you they are policemen—they are armed—you can't resist—" +</p> +<p> + "How many are they? A lot? But they'll take your word, won't they? + Look here, McLean, can't you settle this for me and keep them out?" +</p> +<p> + "The natives have been talking," murmured Thatcher, reddening still + deeper, "and they have said enough about your riding in at night + and—and keeping to this tomb all day to make the men very + suspicious. They are watching this one now—" +</p> +<p> + "Then keep them back—long as you can. For God's sake," entreated + Ryder with that strange passionate violence. "Andy—you do + something—hold them back. Give me time. I—I've got to get some + things together—I won't have them at my things—hold them back—out + here—till I come." +</p> +<p> + He was gone. Gone tearing back into the gloom and silence of his + tomb. And McLean and Thatcher, astounded witnesses of his outburst, + turned speedily to the entrance, avoiding each other's eyes. +</p> +<p> + Agitatedly Thatcher was murmuring that Ryder's finds were valuable, + immensely valuable, and it was disturbing to contemplate any + invasion, and with equal agitation but more mechanical calm McLean + was murmuring back that he understood—he quite understood— +</p> +<p> + As for understanding he was stunned and dazed. A sheik's daughter! + And the father himself claiming her—under the direction of a + blond-mustached man.... And a stolen horse.... Jack conceding the + horse.... Jack utterly upset at the search party.... +</p> +<p> + But he himself had seen that new-placed shaft with its inscription + to Aimée Marie Dejane.... What then in the name of wonders did this + mean? There couldn't be <i>another</i> girl? McLean's imagination + faltered then dashed on at a gallop. Some—some hand-maiden, + perhaps, whom Jack had rescued in mistaken chivalry? Perhaps the + French girl has sent a maid on ahead? +</p> +<p> + McLean's head was whirling now. One thing appeared quite as possible + as another. Pasha's daughters and sheik's daughters, stolen horses + and Djinns and Afrits and palaces and masquerades at wedding + receptions appeared upon the same plane of feasibility. +</p> +<p> + Outwardly he was extremely calm. Calm and cold and crisp. +</p> +<p> + At the mouth of the tomb he detained the party of native policemen + with their hangers-on of curious natives and examined, with great + show of circumspection and authority, the perfectly regular search + warrants which had been issued for them at the instigation of an + apparently bereft parent. +</p> +<p> + He conversed with the alleged parent, a stolid, taciturn native + dignitary whose accusations were confirmed by eagerly assenting + followers. He lived in a small village, not far north of the camp. + He had a young daughter, very beautiful. Three nights ago he had + surprised her with this young American and they had fled upon his + noblest horse. +</p> +<p> + It was a simple and direct story. And Jack—by his own report—had + been out upon the desert that night, had appeared, upon the next + night, with this unknown and beautiful horse, and had since kept to + the tomb, claiming illness, in a most persistent way. +</p> +<p> + The camp boys had testified that he had been vividly critical of the + food sent in to him, and that he had required extraordinary amounts + of heated water. +</p> +<p> + "All of which," McLean said sternly, in the vernacular, "amounts to + nothing—unless you can discover the girl." +</p> +<p> + "And that, monsieur," said a Turk in the uniform of the Sultan's + guards, appearing beside the desert sheik, "that is exactly what we + are here to do." +</p> +<p> + McLean found himself looking into a thin, menacing face, capped + with a red fez, a face deeply lined, marked by light, arrogant eyes + and embellished with a huge, blond mustache. +</p> +<p> + "And your interest in this, monsieur?" he questioned. +</p> +<p> + "I am a friend of Sheik Hassan's," said the Turk loftily. "I shall + see that my friend obtains his rights." +</p> +<p> + And in McLean's other ear a distraught Thatcher was murmuring "That + officer chap is Hamdi Bey—a General of the Guards. You know, Mr. + McLean, this really is—you know, it is—" +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey ... Hamdi Bey, two days after his distressing loss, + befriending this sheik and trying to involve Jack Ryder in disgrace. +</p> +<p> + Mystifying. Mystifying and disquieting—yes, disquieting, in the + face of Jack's alarm. But for that alarm McLean could have believed + the whole thing a farcical attempt of Hamdi's to revenge himself + upon Ryder—supposing that Hamdi had discovered Ryder in his + masquerade or else as the prowler by night—but Jack's furious + anxiety to keep the party out, and his dashing back, ostensibly to + preserve his things— +</p> +<p> + Was it actually possible that he <i>had</i> that sheik's daughter + concealed in some nook or cranny of the place? +</p> +<p> + McLean told himself that it was preposterous. It <i>was</i> + preposterous—but Ryder had been doing preposterous things.... And + glancing at Thatcher he perceived that that perturbed and + transparent gentleman was also telling himself that <i>his</i> + suspicions were preposterous. +</p> +<p> + The search party, tiring of parley, was moving about the hall in + businesslike inspection. +</p> +<p> + And then Ryder reappeared, a distinctly alert but self-contained + Ryder, who met the interrogations of the police with scoffing and + absolute denial. +</p> +<p> + But McLean was conscious that there was something tense and nervous + in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and + his own nerves began to tighten apprehensively. +</p> +<p> + It did not add to his composure to see Ryder salute Hamdi Bey with + an ironic and overdone politeness. +</p> +<p> + "Ah, monsieur le general! We meet as we parted—in the depths!" +</p> +<p> + The general appeared to smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but + McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip, and felt the currents of + animosity. +</p> +<p> + So those two had met! Ryder had been discovered then.... McLean + tried, in futile bewilderment, to recall just what amazing thing + Ryder had been saying when this party had appeared. +</p> +<p> + He kept very close at that young man's side as the strange party + moved on into the inner chamber. The searchers were scrupulously + careful of the excavator's finds; they did not finger a frieze nor + disturb a single small box of the tenderly packed potteries and + beads and miniature boats, but they scraped every heap of dust to + see if it concealed an entrance, they exhausted the resources of + each corner, they circled every pillar, shook out every rug of + Jack's blankets and required the opening of the large chest in which + the wax reproductions of the friezes were placed, awaiting + transportation. +</p> +<p> + "You will perceive, messieurs," declared Ryder in mocking irony, + "that no human being is within this last fold of wax—especially a + being," he added thoughtfully with a glance at the stolid sheik, "of + the proportions of her papa.... This daughter, was she a large young + lady?" he inquired politely of the Arab. +</p> +<p> + The sheik vouchsafed no reply, but from across his ample person the + general leaned forward. +</p> +<p> + "She was small, Monsieur Ryder," he said in silken tones, "but she + can raise a man as high as the gallows—or as low as the grave." +</p> +<p> + "A marvel!" returned young Ryder smoothly. "And was she also of + charm—a charm that could kindle fires—?" +</p> +<p> + It appeared to McLean that he caught the flaunting implications of + the taunt. +</p> +<p> + He wished to heaven that Ryder would hold his reckless tongue. +</p> +<p> + Ryder was turning now to the official in charge of the police. +</p> +<p> + "If you have satisfied yourselves that this place is empty—" +</p> +<p> + The man, a rather apologetic, pleasant fellow, shrugged and smiled. + "We have examined all—" +</p> +<p> + There was a moment in which the searchers regarded one another + through the gloom in the inquiring embarrassment of the + discountenanced and considered departure. But Hamdi Bey had more + insistent eyes. +</p> +<p> + He was circling the place again like a wolf for the scent, flashing + his search light over the carved walls, the dancing gleam picking + out now a relief of Osiris, now a fishing boat upon the Nile, now + the judgment hall of Maat. Suddenly he stopped and began examining a + limestone slab. +</p> +<p> + "These stones—these have been merely piled here," he cried + excitedly. "This is a hole—an entrance. Dig them out, men. There is + a door there, I tell you." +</p> +<p> + Hastily Ryder addressed the police. "It is simply the burial vault," + he told them. "The sarcophagi are there, ready for transportation. + Mr. Thatcher will tell you—" +</p> +<p> + "I assure you it is merely the actual tomb," said Thatcher + nervously. "I have myself assisted my colleague with the + preparation." +</p> +<p> + The slabs had been displaced now, disclosing the small door, with + its fine wrought stele. Hamdi flashed a look of triumph upon the man + who had obviously tried to conceal that door from them, a look which + Ryder ignored as he turned to McLean. +</p> +<p> + "That is the door which is sealed forever upon the dead, and upon + the Ka, the spiritual double," he said in a low conversational + tone. "It has some remarkable representations of the jackal + Anubis—" +</p> +<p> + It seemed to McLean a most extraordinary time for a disquisition + upon Anubis. If Ryder was attempting to prove himself at his ease he + had certainly misjudged his manner. +</p> +<p> + "Damn Anubis," McLean gave back under his breath. "He's not the only + jackal—What the devil's the meaning of this?" +</p> +<p> + Ryder made no reply. The stone had been pushed back and the + searchers were stooping beneath the narrow entrance. Then as + McLean's head bent at the door he heard his friend whispering, "I + say—you haven't a gun you could slip me—?" +</p> +<p> + Mutely he shook his head. And that agitated whisper died away with + the last vestige of belief in Ryder's innocence. Apprehensively + McLean glanced about that inner chamber he was entering, dreading to + encounter instant and damning evidence of a girl. +</p> +<p> + He found himself in the presence of the dead. The chamber was a + small, square, walled-up affair, and at one side stood the three + sarcophagi. The other halls had been in total darkness, but the + blackness of this place appeared something palpable and weighty. And + the air had the dry, acrid tang of dust which has lain waiting for + centuries. +</p> +<p> + It was hot, whereas the other chambers had been cool—or else + McLean's disturbed blood was pumping too furiously through his + pulses. Instinctively he drew close to Jack, as the party stood + flashing their lights over the bare walls and empty corners, and + then concentrated the pale illumination upon those caskets of the + dead. +</p> +<p> + "I told you that the place was empty," Ryder said with distinct + impatience in his voice. "And now, if you have satisfied + yourselves—" +</p> +<p> + "You are in haste, monsieur," said Hamdi Bey's smooth voice. "If you + will permit us to see what is within—" +</p> +<p> + He approached the first sarcophagus. +</p> +<p> + The sheik, who appeared to have committed the restoration of his + daughter into the other's hands, remained imperturbably beside the + entrance while the head of the police came forward to assist Hamdi + in raising the painted lid. +</p> +<p> + "I protest," said Ryder very sharply. He stood upon the other side + of the case, eying them combatively. "It is useless to disturb this + lid—I tell you that the Persians have been considerably before + you." +</p> +<p> + And indeed the case was empty. Hamdi moved to the next and again + Ryder took up his post opposite. +</p> +<p> + "Again I protest," he insisted. "The least jar or injury—" +</p> +<p> + But the men raised the lid, and after the briefest look, moved on. +</p> +<p> + "And now," Ryder spoke very clearly and authoritatively, addressing + the head of the police, "I must ask you to stop. Even the dust that + you are disturbing is precious. This thing has gone beyond all + reason." +</p> +<p> + The police official looked as if he agreed with him, but Hamdi Bey + had moved determinedly to the third sarcophagus. The official + hesitated, evidenced discomfort, but moved finally after the bey. +</p> +<p> + "If there is nothing here," he murmured, "surely you cannot + object—" +</p> +<p> + "There is precious dust here," Ryder repeated. "You must + understand—" +</p> +<p> + "We see for ourselves," said Hamdi Bey, and now his voice had a ring + of triumphant steel through its soft smoothness. "Stand aside. This + is in the name of the law." +</p> +<p> + It seemed to McLean that for one mad moment Ryder was tempted to + resist. In the flickering light of the torches he stood defiantly + above the painted mummy case, his eyes steadily upon the bey, his + hands pressing down upon the vivid bloom of the dead woman's + pictured face. +</p> +<p> + Then with a beaten but ironic smile he stood aside. +</p> +<p> + Slowly the men lifted the lid.... In that moment McLean became aware + that his heart was pumping thickly somewhere in his throat and that + the rest of him was a hollow, horrible void of suspense. +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey turned his arrogant stare from young Ryder and looked + down.... Drawing closer, fearfully McLean's eyes followed him. +</p> +<p> + He could not believe their evidence. His heart could not stop its + idiotic pumping. +</p> +<p> + But there he saw no terror-stricken girl, no pallid runaway of the + harems, but a still, dark-shrouded form, swathed in the tight + bandages of the ancient embalmer, a dry, dusty little mummy creature + blankly and inscrutably confronting this unforeseen resurrection. +</p> +<p> + Over their dumbfounded heads he heard young Ryder's mocking laugh. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXV +</h2> +<h3> + IN CAIRO +</h3> +<p> + "It's good news!" said Miss Jeffries with bright positives. +</p> +<p> + It was her response to Andrew McLean's greeting that evening. He + had made rather a tardy appearance at the hotel, for there had + been an important dinner with an important bank official passing + through Cairo to escape from, but he arrived at last, looking + extraordinarily well in his very best dinner clothes. +</p> +<p> + And Miss Jeffries, for all her harassment of suspense, was no woeful + object in a vivacious blue evening frock with silvery gleams. +</p> +<p> + "He's safe—absolutely safe," McLean confirmed. +</p> +<p> + He expected radiance. Miss Jeffries' expression was arrested + judgment. +</p> +<p> + "Safe—<i>where</i>?" +</p> +<p> + "At his camp ... I just returned—just in time to dine. I motored + out this morning." +</p> +<p> + "Oh!... It took your whole day. I am so sorry!" For a moment the + girl appeared to concentrate her sympathetic interest upon McLean. +</p> +<p> + "You must simply hate me," she told him repentantly, dropping into + one of the chairs in the drawing-room corner she had long been + guarding. "Do sit down and tell me all the horrid details....—Uncle + and Aunt are in the Lounge, and I should like you to meet them, but + they'll be there forever and I do want to hear first.... Was it + fearfully hot?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, rather," murmured the young man, confused by this change of + interest. "I mean, that's quite the usual thing, isn't it, for + deserts? I got up a good breeze going, for I was a bit wrought up, + you know—not a soul in Cairo had seen Jack since that day." +</p> +<p> + "And he was out at his camp," said Jinny thoughtfully. "How—how + long had he been there?" +</p> +<p> + "He says he started that night," said McLean non-committally. +</p> +<p> + "Oh!... That night.... That was rather sudden, wasn't it?" +</p> +<p> + "Jack's sudden, you know," mentioned his friend uncomfortably. "And + he had a lot of finds to pack up for transport—they are taking + their stuff to the museum and Jack had been away so long, here in + the city—" +</p> +<p> + "No wonder I didn't hear then!" said the girl with a laugh in which + it would have taken an acuter ear than McLean's to detect the secret + clamor of chagrin and humiliation. +</p> +<p> + Of course she had <i>wanted</i> Jack to be safe.... But he might have + been ill—or away on some official summons— +</p> +<p> + Just back at his diggings. Gone off on an impulse, with no thought + to let her know.... +</p> +<p> + And she had rushed to McLean with her silly worries and her anxious + concern which he had probably taken for a tender interest.... +</p> +<p> + Heaven knows what disillusionizing thing Jack had said to him that + day!... Men were too hateful. +</p> +<p> + And now McLean had come dutifully to report that the man she was so + worried about was quite well and busy, thank you, only he had + overlooked any friendship for her, and so had sent no word— +</p> +<p> + In Jinny's ears was the rush of the furies' wings. But on Jinny's + lips was a proud little smile, and her bright look was a shining + shield for the wounds of the spirit. +</p> +<p> + "That <i>is</i> a comfort," she said with pleasant, friendly warmth. "You + don't know how horridly responsible I felt! Really, Jack ought to + have let me know—but that's Jack all over. He's never grown up." +</p> +<p> + "He's not had much time," returned McLean from the height of his + twenty-nine years. +</p> +<p> + "He never will," said Jinny sagely, "not until—well, not until + he meets some girl, you know, who will make him feel really + responsible." +</p> +<p> + It occurred unhappily to McLean that the girl Jack had been meeting + so assiduously of late had certainly not added to his claims to + responsibility! +</p> +<p> + Steadily he guarded silence. There are ice fields, on Mont Blanc, + where a whisper precipitates an avalanche, and McLean had no + intention of starting anything in his friend's slippery field of + affairs. +</p> +<p> + "I have spent more time," Miss Jeffries was confiding brightly, for + those imperative reasons of her own so obscure to the bewildered + young man, "introducing Jack to nice girls—but it never takes! Not + seriously. He's a perfectly dear friend, but he doesn't care + anything really about girls—and he does need somebody to get him + out of his antiquities and his dusty old diggings ... But of course + you think I am a sentimental thing!" +</p> +<p> + McLean did not tell her what he thought. He was still fascinatedly + engrossed with her revelation of the impeccable Platonic basis of + her friendship. His mood of complicated emotion lightened and + brightened and at the same time an amazed wonder unfolded its + astonishment. +</p> +<p> + He marveled at his friend. To turn to something fantastic, something + bizarre—for so he thought of that veiled girl of the harem—when he + had this Miss Jeffries for a friend—but probably the young lady + herself had never given him the least encouragement. Women are not + easily moved to romance for men they have always regarded as + brothers and he could see that her feeling for Jack was the warm, + honest, sisterly affection of utter frankness. +</p> +<p> + The worse for Jack. For now there seemed no ministering angel to + mend his troubled future. +</p> +<p> + It was not only Ryder's troubled future that troubled McLean—it + was also Ryder's troubled present. He was very far from easy in his + mind about him. After that mystifying performance in the tomb he had + not wanted to leave without a frank explanation, but there had been + no moment for revelation; Thatcher had hung about them and Hamdi + Bey, of all men, had requested a place in McLean's motor for the + return to Cairo. +</p> +<p> + And that dinner engagement had pressed. He could have abandoned it + for any real reason, but Jack had assured him that there was none. +</p> +<p> + "Get the old devil out of here," had been Jack's furious appeal, + referring to Hamdi. "Deny everything to him. Only get him out." +</p> +<p> + And McLean had got him out. +</p> +<p> + The sheik and his followers after a murmurous conference with the + bey had galloped off; the police had turned towards their post and + Hamdi had accompanied McLean to the nearest village and his waiting + motor. +</p> +<p> + Clearly he had wanted to talk to McLean and McLean was not sorry for + the opportunity to exchange implications. The bey had unfolded his + sympathetic friendship for the sheik; McLean had unfolded a cold + surprise that anything so disgraceful should be attributed to such a + prominent archaeologist. The bey had produced the evidence and + McLean had produced a skeptical wonder, and then a thoughtful wonder + if the British government had not better take the matter up and sift + it, for the benefit of all concerned. +</p> +<p> + Clearly the thing could not go on. Ryder could not accept such a + rumor against his reputation. Yes, he thought he would advise Ryder + to take the matter up. +</p> +<p> + And there he perceived that even the suave and politic Hamdi + squirmed. Doubtless to the Turk, McLean represented British prestige + and political power and all sorts of unknown influence.... And + native testimony, while voluable and unscrupulous, had a way of + offering confused discrepancies to the coldly questioning + investigators of the law. +</p> +<p> + And with no real evidence against Ryder— +</p> +<p> + The matter of the sheik's daughter, McLean perceived, would be + dropped. Unless the girl—whatever girl they sought—could be + discovered. +</p> +<p> + If Hamdi wished to pay off some score against the American he would + choose other weapons. McLean reflected upon the bey's capacity for + assassination or poisoning while he bade him farewell before the + dark wall of his palace entrance. +</p> +<p> + Between them had passed no reference to the bey's recent loss. Since + it would not have been etiquette for him to mention the bey's wife, + he judged it equally inadvisable to refer to her ashes. +</p> +<p> + The whole affair was so wrapped in darkness that he could not decide + upon any creditable explanation. It would have to wait until he saw + Ryder in the next day or two—for Ryder had told him he would try to + get in with his finds as soon as possible. +</p> +<p> + But no matter how he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind he + had found himself asking, through the courses of that important + dinner and now in the pauses of his conversation with Miss + Jeffries—Was there really some girl? Had he only dreamed that tense + anxiety of Jack's—had Jack led them on for his own young amusement? +</p> +<p> + But it was not long possible to maintain an inner communion with + Jinny Jeffries for a vis-à -vis. +</p> +<p> + A divided mind could not companion her swift flights and sudden + tangents. Deriding now her silly anxieties and deploring McLean's + unnecessary trip, she had branched into the consideration of how + busy McLean must be—and McLean found himself somehow embarked in + sketchy descriptions of the institution of which Miss Jeffries + seemed to think he was the backbone and of its very interesting work + throughout the country. +</p> +<p> + And as he had talked he found himself noticing things that he had + never noticed before about girls, the wave of bright hair against a + flushed cheek, the dimples in a rounded arm, the slim grace of + crossed ankles and silver-slippered feet. +</p> +<p> + "And you live all alone in that big house?" Jinny was murmuring. +</p> +<p> + "Not exactly alone." McLean smiled. "There's Mohammed and Hassan and + Abdullah and Alewa and Saord-el-Tawahi—" +</p> +<p> + "What <i>do</i> you call him when you are in a hurry?" laughed the girl. +</p> +<p> + It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint + and secret embarrassment and he had discovered this delightful + interest and bright vivacity. +</p> +<p> + And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever + stilled and chilled in Miss Jeffries' breast—like a poor hidden + corpse beneath bright roses—why at two and twenty expectancies + flourish so gayly that one lone bud is not long missed. And chagrin + is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all + the more delicate for a dimming cloud. +</p> +<p> + Moreover McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing. +</p> +<p> + When in startled realization of time and place he rose at last and + she murmured laughing, "And after all you never met Aunt and Uncle!" + he felt a queer blush tingle his cheek bones and a daring impulse + shape the thought aloud that in that case he must come again. +</p> +<p> + "We're here five days more," said Jinny, the explicit. +</p> +<p> + Thoughtfully he repeated, "Five days," and said farewell. +</p> +<p> + "Now if he decorously waits to the next to the last day—!" murmured + Jinny to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the + balance. +</p> +<p> + He didn't. But it was not the initiative of the Scots race which + brought him to her, late that very next afternoon, but a soiled + looking note which he held crumpled in his hand. +</p> +<p> + He found her at tea upon the veranda with her aunt and uncle and + while he made conversation with the Pendletons he gave Miss Jeffries + the note. +</p> +<p> + "From our friend Ryder," he said with forced lightness. "It explains + itself." +</p> +<p> + But it certainly did not. It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying + that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds and sending this + ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo + Museum to meet him at five and would he please stop on the way and + call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffries and borrow a woman's cloak + and hat and veil, or if she wasn't in, get them elsewhere. +</p> +<p> + "What is it—another masquerade?" said Jinny blankly. +</p> +<p> + McLean looked mutely at her and shook his head, but within him + horrific suspicion was raging like a forest fire. +</p> +<p> + He continued his converse with the Pendletons while Jinny went for + the things; she returned with a small bag containing coat and hat + and veil, and the announcement that she would go right over with + him. +</p> +<p> + "If the things aren't right I'll know what he wants," she declared, + and then, smiling, "What <i>do</i> you suppose he is up to now?" +</p> +<p> + McLean felt that he didn't want to know. And most positively he + didn't want her to know. But having lacked the instant inspiration + to deny her, he could only acquiesce and wonder why he hadn't + thought up some brilliant excuse. +</p> +<p> + He looked helplessly at the Pendletons, but they merely murmured + their adieux and their independent niece accompanied McLean to his + waiting carriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + The caravan was before them. A long line of camels was just turning + in the gates and before the steps of a back entrance other camels, + kneeling with that profound and squealing resentment with which even + the camel's most exhausted moments oppose commands, were being + relieved of their huge loads by natives under the very minute and + exact direction of Thatcher. +</p> +<p> + And within the entrance a young man with rumpled dark hair and a + thin, bronzed face flushed with impatience was imperiously conveying + the Arabs who were bearing the precious sarcophagi. +</p> +<p> + Over his shoulder he caught sight of the two arrivals. +</p> +<p> + "I asked for motors—and they furnished these!" he cried + disgustedly, gesturing at the enduring camels. "It took us all day + though we half killed the brutes.... Hello, Jinny, did you bring the + things?" +</p> +<p> + With light casualness he accepted her appearance on the scene. That + glitter in his bright hazel eyes was not for that. "Come in, both + of you," he called, plunging after his men. +</p> +<p> + At the foot of the stairs McLean waited with Miss Jeffries until the + men had reached the top and deposited their burdens in the room and + in the manner which Ryder was specifying so crisply, and then they + came mechanically up. +</p> +<p> + McLean had the automatic feeling of a mere super in a well rehearsed + scene. He had no idea of plot or appearance but his rôle of dumb + subservience was clearly defined. +</p> +<p> + "You understand," Ryder was calling to the men, "nothing more goes + in this room. All else down stairs.... Come in," he said hurriedly + to his waiting friends, and shutting the door swiftly behind them, + "of course—this doesn't lock!" he muttered. "Jinny, you stand here, + do, and if any one tries to come in tell them they can't." +</p> +<p> + "Tell them you say they can't?" questioned Jinny a little + helplessly. +</p> +<p> + "No—no—not that. Tell them you are using the room; tell them," + said Ryder with very brisk and serious inspiration, "tell them your + petticoat is coming off!" +</p> +<p> + "Why Jack Ryder!" said Jinny indignantly. +</p> +<p> + "Nonsense," said he to her indignation. "Don't you remember when + your aunt's petticoat came off on the way to church? It happens." +</p> +<p> + "But it doesn't run in families!" +</p> +<p> + Her protest fell apparently upon the back of his head. He had + turned to the last sarcophagus and was slipping his fingers beneath + the lid. "Here, Andy," he said quickly. "I had it wedged so it + wasn't tight shut, but it's been so infernally hot and dusty—" +</p> +<p> + He was tremendously troubled. It was not the heat which had brought + those fine beads of moisture to his brow, white above the line of + brown, and drawn such a pale ring about his mouth. McLean saw that + the slim, wiry wrists which supported the case's top were shaking. +</p> +<p> + "Gently now," he murmured and the lid was lifted and laid aside. +</p> +<p> + The same dark, unstirring form of the tomb scene. The same dry, + dusty little mummy.... But with hands strangely reckless for an + archaeologist dealing with the priceless stuff of time Ryder tore at + those bandages; he unwrapped, he unwound, and in a lightning's + flash— +</p> +<p> + To McLean's tense, expectant nerves it was like a scene at the + pantomime. He had divined it; he had foreseen and yet there was the + shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the + supernatural in the revelation. +</p> +<p> + In a wave of an enchanter's wand the mummy was gone. And in its + place lay a Sleeping Beauty, the dark hair in sculptured closeness + to the head, the long, black lashes sweeping the still cheeks. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXVI +</h2> +<h3> + THE PAINTED CASE +</h3> +<p> + "She's fainted," said Ryder in a voice that shook. From his pocket + he drew swiftly a thermos bottle but before the top was off those + long lashes fluttered, and from under their shadow the soft, dark + eyes looked up at him with a smile of very gallant reassurance. +</p> +<p> + "Not—faint," said the girl, in a breath of a voice. "But it was so + long—so hot—" +</p> +<p> + "Drink this." Ryder slipped an arm about her, offering the filled + top of the thermos. "It's over, all over," he murmured as she drank. + "You're safe now, safe.... You're at the museum.... Then we'll get + you to the hotel—" +</p> +<p> + "Hotel—?" the girl echoed with a faint implication of humor in that + silver bell of a voice. +</p> +<p> + She put her hands to her hair and to her face in which the hues of + life mingled with the pallor of exhaustion; on her small fingers + sparkled the gleam of diamonds and from her slender arms fell back + the gold and jade tissues of her chiffon robe. +</p> +<p> + To McLean she had increasingly the appearance of a creature of + enchantments. And to see that young loveliness in its strange gleam + of color lying against his friend's supporting tan linen arm— +</p> +<p> + Sardonically his eyes sought Ryder. +</p> +<p> + "So that was your mummy!" +</p> +<p> + "There was nothing else to do." Ryder had withdrawn his arm; the two + men faced each other across the girl. "I was in a blue funk—you + see, I was hiding her in the inner chamber until I could smuggle her + away. And when those wolves came on the scent, and not an instant to + lose—I got the bandages off the real mummy and about Aimée.... + Lord, it was a close call!" +</p> +<p> + He drew a long breath. "I hadn't a gun. I hadn't a thing—and I had + to grin and play it through ... And I was deathly afraid of + Thatcher." +</p> +<p> + "Thatcher?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, Thatcher. You see I'd popped the mummy into a case without its + bandages and if Thatcher had glimpsed that he'd have said + something—Oh, innocently—that would have given the show away. He + knew there was only one mummy and it was wrapped. But the Lord was + with me. The men opened the empty case first and at the second they + said nothing to show it wasn't empty and Thatcher didn't look in. + Then they went on to the third." +</p> +<p> + "And me—when I heard those voices—I stopped breathing," said the + girl. "But I shook so—I thought they would think that mummy was + coming to life! And the dust—Oh, it was almost beyond my force not + to sneeze—" +</p> +<p> + "You'd have sneezed us to Kingdom Come," said Ryder, gayly now. +</p> +<p> + "But I did not," she protested. "I lay there and thought of Hamdi + looking down upon me, and my flesh crept.... Oh, it was terrible! + And yet it was funny." +</p> +<p> + Funny.... McLean gazed in sardonic astonishment upon the two young + creatures with such misguided humor that they found something funny + in this appalling business. Flying from palaces ... hiding in tombs + ... taking a mummy's place beneath the dusty bandages of the dead + ... Funny.... +</p> +<p> + And yet there was laughter in their young eyes when they looked at + each other and a curve of astounding amusement in their lips. +</p> +<p> + It touched McLean to wonder. It touched him—queerly—to an odd and + aching pain. For he saw suddenly that he was looking upon something + deathless and imperishable, yet fragile and fleeting as the breath + of time.... +</p> +<p> + They were so young, so absorbed, so oblivious.... +</p> +<p> + He had forgotten Jinny Jeffries. So too,—not for the first time, + alas!—had Ryder. Now her clear voice from the doorway made them + start. +</p> +<p> + "You might present me, Jack." +</p> +<p> + Ryder turned, so did the girl in the painted case, and her eyes + widened with a startled surprise. The doorway had not been within + her vision. +</p> +<p> + Jinny was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the + knob she was to guard, her figure still rigid with astonishment. +</p> +<p> + "I didn't know you—you dug them up—alive," she said with a quiver + of uncertain humor. +</p> +<p> + "My dear Jinny, I had for—Miss Jeffries, let me present you to + Mademoiselle Delcassé," said Jack gravely. "I know that you met her + the day of her reception—" +</p> +<p> + Only in that moment did Jinny place the haunting recollection. +</p> +<p> + "But she was burned—she was killed," she protested, shaken now with + excitement. +</p> +<p> + "She was not burned—although there was a fire. The man who called + himself her husband pretended she was killed in order to save his + pride. For she escaped from him. And he tried to get her back, + setting another man, a false father, after her with lying + witnesses—Oh, it's a long story!—so I had to hide her in this + case." +</p> +<p> + "But Jack, you—why were <i>you</i> hiding her—? Did you get her out?" + stammered Jinny. +</p> +<p> + "The night of that reception. You see, I knew she was truly a French + girl who had been stolen by Tewfick Pasha and brought up as his + daughter—Oh, that's a long story, too! But at McLean's I had + happened on the agents who were searching for her from her aunt in + France, and so I knew.... And at the reception when I found she + hated that marriage I stayed behind and—and managed to get her + away,"—thus lightly did Ryder indicate the dangers of that + night!—"so she could escape to France." +</p> +<p> + "Oh—France!" said Jinny. +</p> +<p> + She could be forgiven for the tone. She had been kept shamefully in + the dark, misled, ignored.... She had been a catspaw, a bystander. +</p> +<p> + Not that she cared. Not that she would let them think for a minute + that she cared.... +</p> +<p> + But as for this talk of France— +</p> +<p> + Her eyes met the eyes of the girl in the mummy case. And Jinny found + herself looking, not at the interloper, the enchantress, but at a + very young, frightened girl, lost in a strange world, but resolved + upon courage. She saw more than the men could see. She saw the + loveliness, the helplessness, and she saw too the sensitive dignity, + the delicate, defensive spirit.... +</p> +<p> + Really, she was a child. +</p> +<p> + And to have gone through so much, dared such danger.... She + remembered that dark, forbidding palace, the guarded doors, the + hideous blacks—and that bright, smiling figure in its misty + veil.... And now that little figure sat in its strange hiding place, + confronting her with a lost child's eyes.... +</p> +<p> + Into Jinny's bright gray eyes came a mist of tears. She was queerly + moved. It was a mingled emotion, but if some drops for her own + disconcertment were mingled with the warm prompting of pity, her + compassion was none the less true. +</p> +<p> + "I'll be so glad to do anything I can to help," she said + impulsively. "If you have no friends to trust in Cairo—" +</p> +<p> + "I have no friends to trust—beyond this room," said the girl. +</p> +<p> + "Then I'll take you to the hotel with me. You can register as one of + our party and keep your room till we leave—we are going in four + days now. And, oh, I know! You can cross on the same steamer with us + to Europe, for there's a woman at the hotel who wants to give up her + transportation and go on to the Holy Land—she was moaning about it + only this noon. It would all fit in beautifully." +</p> +<p> + It seemed to McLean that an angel from Heaven was revealing her + blessed goodness. +</p> +<p> + Ryder took the revelation delightedly for granted. +</p> +<p> + "Bully for you, Jinny," he said warmly. "I knew I could count on + you." +</p> +<p> + If for one moment a twinge of wry reminder recalled that she had + never been able exactly to count upon him it did not dim his mood. + He was alight with triumph. +</p> +<p> + "I'll see to the transportation," he said quickly, doing mental + arithmetic about present sums in the bank. "And we won't wire your + aunt until you're safely out of Egypt—better send a wireless from + the ship. I think your aunt is near Paris—" +</p> +<p> + "We are going to hurry to Paris," said Jinny, "That was our regular + plan—" +</p> +<p> + "And London?" said McLean. +</p> +<p> + "London, later, of course. Cathedrals, lakes and universities—then + London." +</p> +<p> + "I shall be in London," said McLean thoughtfully, "in June.... If + you are not too occupied—" +</p> +<p> + "With cathedrals?" said Miss Jeffries. +</p> +<p> + "Where are the things?" demanded Ryder ruthlessly, and thus + recalled, Jinny produced the bag. +</p> +<p> + McLean moved toward the door. "We might go and mount guard in the + corridor," he suggested, and he and Jinny stepped outside, back into + the everyday world of Egypt where nothing at all had been happening + but the arrival of a caravan from the excavations. +</p> +<p> + Within the room Ryder stooped and lifted the girl from the case and + set her lightly on the floor. Ruefully she shook out the torn + chiffons of that French audacity of a robe, and with a whimsical + smile surveyed the soiled little slippers that she had discarded in + her disguise when she had ridden behind the turbaned Ryder upon the + Arab horse. +</p> +<p> + So little time ago, and yet so long away— +</p> +<p> + Under her long lashes she looked up at the young man, who had set + the old life crumbling about her at a touch. Wistfulness edged the + brave smile with which she murmured, "And so it is all arranged—so + quick. I am safe—I go to the hotel with that nice girl—" +</p> +<p> + "And I won't be able to see you," he said suddenly. +</p> +<p> + "But you have seen me, monsieur, these many days—" +</p> +<p> + "Seen you? I haven't seen you. I've sat outside a tomb on guard, + I've marched beside a mummy case—and—and we've said so little—" +</p> +<p> + It was true. They had said little. The hours had been absorbed in + action. Their words had always been of explanation, of reassurance, + of anxious planning. Of the future, the future after safety had been + achieved, they had said nothing. It had all been uncertain, + nebulous, vague.... +</p> +<p> + And now it was upon them. +</p> +<p> + "And I have never said Thank you," she murmured. "I—I think I began + by saying Thank you, monsieur. I remember saying that my education + had proceeded to the Ts!" +</p> +<p> + "If—if only you never want to unsay it," he muttered. "You don't + know what's ahead—life's so uncertain—" +</p> +<p> + "No, I do not know what is ahead," she told him, "but I am + free—free for whatever will come." +</p> +<p> + The brightness of that freedom shone suddenly from her upturned + face. +</p> +<p> + "Anything is better than that man," she vowed. "Even if my aunt, + that Madame Delcassé, should not like me—you see, I have thought of + everything, and I am not afraid." +</p> +<p> + "Like you—? She'll love you," said Ryder bitterly. "She'll go mad + over you and give you all she has—she'll marry you to a count—" +</p> +<p> + "Another marriage?" Aimée raised brows of mockery. "But I am through + with the marriages of convenience—" +</p> +<p> + "You're so lovely, darling, that you'll have the world at your + feet," said the young man huskily. +</p> +<p> + He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain. "Oh, + I—you—it's not fair—" he muttered incoherently. +</p> +<p> + He had meant—ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the + desert—to be very fair. He would not bind her with a word, a touch. + Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he + touched her in caress. With the reverence of his deep tenderness he + had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its + revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth.... +</p> +<p> + Nobly he had resolved.... But now parting was upon him. +</p> +<p> + "It's not fair to you," he said desperately—and drew closer. +</p> +<p> + For at his blurted words her look had magically changed. The + defensive lightness was fled. A breathless wonder shone out at him + ... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the + gleam of a butterfly's wing. +</p> +<p> + No glamorous moonlight was about them now. No scented shadowy + garden.... But the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty + room, with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very + flame of youth. +</p> +<p> + "Sweet, I'll be on the ship—I'll wait till you are ready," he vowed + and at her low murmur, "Ready—?" he gave back, "Ready—for love," + with a boy's stammer over the first sound of that word between them. +</p> +<p> + "But what is this now," she said wondering, yet with a little elfish + gleam of laughter, "but—love?" +</p> +<p> + His last resolve went to the winds. +</p> +<p> + And as his arms closed about her, as he held to his heart all that + young loveliness that had been his despair and his delight, there + was more than joy in the confused tumult of his youth, there was + the supreme exultation of triumphant daring. +</p> +<p> + For he had opened the forbidden door; he had challenged the + adventure and overcome the risk. +</p> +<p> + He had won. And he would hold his winnings. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée," he whispered. "Aimée—Beloved." +</p> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 13498 ***</div> +</body> +</html> diff --git a/13498-h/images/decoration.jpg b/13498-h/images/decoration.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..415f785 --- /dev/null +++ b/13498-h/images/decoration.jpg diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5fae010 --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #13498 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/13498) diff --git a/old/13498-8.txt b/old/13498-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b20427d --- /dev/null +++ b/old/13498-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,10102 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Fortieth Door, by Mary Hastings Bradley + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Fortieth Door + +Author: Mary Hastings Bradley + +Release Date: September 19, 2004 [eBook #13498] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORTIETH DOOR*** + + +E-text prepared by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + +THE FORTIETH DOOR + +by + +MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY + + +AUTHOR OF _The Wine of Astonishment_, etc. + +1920 + + + + + + + +TO +ARTHUR MILLS CORWIN + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + I. A RASH PROMISE + II. MASKS AND MASKERS + III. IN THE PASHA'S PALACE + IV. EXPLANATIONS + V. AT THE GARDEN GATE + VI. A SECRET OF THE SANDS + VII. TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT + VIII. TEWFICK RECEIVES + IX. A WEDDING PRESENT + X. THE RECEPTION + XI. THE FORTY DOORS + XII. THE UNINVITED GUEST + XIII. THE BEY RETURNS + XIV. WITHIN THE WALLS + XV. UNDERGROUND + XVI. OUT OF THE DARKNESS + XVII. AZIZA + XVIII. AZIZA IS OFFENDED + XIX. AN INTERRUPTION + XX. BEYOND THE DOOR + XXI. MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL + XXII. FROM THE BAZAARS + XXIII. IN THE DESERT + XXIV. THE TOMB OF A KING + XXV. IN CAIRO + XXVI. THE PAINTED CASE + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A RASH PROMISE + + +He didn't want to go. He loathed the very thought of it. Every +flinching nerve in him protested. + +A masked ball--a masked ball at a Cairo hotel! Grimacing through +peep-holes, self-conscious advances, flirtations ending in giggles! +Tourists as nuns, tourists as Turks, tourists as God-knows-what, all +preening and peacocking! + +Unhappily he gazed upon the girl who was proposing this horror as a +bright delight. She was a very engaging girl--that was the mischief +of it. She stood smiling there in the bright, Egyptian sunshine, gay +confidence in her gray eyes. He hated to shatter that confidence. + +And he had done little enough for her during her stay in Cairo. One +tea at the Gezireh Palace Hotel, one trip to the Sultan al Hassan +Mosque, one excursion through the bazaars--not exactly an orgy of +entertainment for a girl from home! + +He had evaded climbing the Pyramids and fled from the ostrich farm. +He had withheld from inviting her to the camp on the edge of the +Libyan desert where he was excavating, although her party had shown +unmistakable signs of a willingness to be diverted from the beaten +path of its travel. + +And he was not calling on her now. He had come to Cairo for supplies +and she had encountered him by chance upon a corner of the crowded +Mograby, and there promptly she had invited him to to-night's ball. + +"But it's not my line, you know, Jinny," he was protesting. "I'm so +fearfully out of dancing--" + +"More reason to come, Jack. You need a change from digging up ruins +all the time--it must be frightfully lonely out there on the desert. +I can't think how you stand it." + +Jack Ryder smiled. There was no mortal use in explaining to Jinny +Jeffries that his life on the desert was the only life in the world, +that his ruins held more thrills than all the fevers of her tourist +crowds, and that he would rather gaze upon the mummied effigy of any +lady of the dynasty of Amenhotep than upon the freshest and fairest +of the damsels of the present day. + +It would only tax Jinny's credulity and hurt her feelings. And he +liked Jinny--though not as he liked Queen Hatasu or the little +nameless creature he had dug out of a king's ante-room. + +Jinny was an interfering modern. She was the incarnation of +impossible demands. + +But of course there was no real reason why he should not stop over +and go to the dance. + + * * * * * + +Ten minutes later, when she had extracted his promise and abandoned +him to the costumers, he was scourging his weakness. + +He had known better! Very well, then, let him take his medicine. Let +him go as--here he disgustedly eyed the garment that the Greek was +presenting--as Little Lord Fauntleroy! He deserved it. + +Shudderingly he looked away from the pretty velvet suit; he scorned +the monk's robes that were too redolent of former wearers; he +rejected the hot livery of a Russian mujik; he flouted the banality +of the Pierrot pantaloons. + +Thankfully he remembered McLean. Kilts, that was the thing. Tartans, +the real Scotch plaids. Some use, now, McLean's precious +sporrans.... He'd look him up at once. + +Out of the crowded Mograby he made his way on foot to the Esbekeyih +quarters where the streets were wider and emptier of Cairene +traffickers and shrill itinerates and laden camels and jostling +donkeys. + +It was a glorious day, a day of Egypt's blue and gold. The sky was a +wash of water color; the streets a flood of molten amber. A little +wind from the north rustled the acacias and blew in his bronzed face +cool reminders of the widening Nile and dancing waves. + +He remembered a chap he knew, who had a sailing canoe--but no, he +was going to get a costume for a fool ball! + +Disgustedly he turned into the very modern and official-looking +residence that was the home of his friend, Andrew McLean, and the +offices of that far-reaching institution, the Agricultural Bank. + +A white-robed, red-sashed and red-fezed houseboy led him across the +tiled entrance into the long room where McLean was concluding a +conference with two men. + +"Not the least trace," McLean was saying. "We've questioned all our +native agents--" + +Afterwards Ryder remembered that indefinite little pause. If the two +men had not lingered--if McLean had not remembered that he was an +excavator--if chance had not brushed the scales with lightning +wings--! + +"Ever hear of a chap called Delcassé, Paul Delcassé, a French +excavator?" McLean suddenly asked of him. "Disappeared in the desert +about fifteen years ago." + +"He was reported, monsieur, to have died of the fever," one of the +men explained. + +McLean introduced him as a special agent from France. His companion +was one of the secretaries of the French legation. They were trying +every quarter for traces of this Delcassé. + +Ryder's memory darted back to old library shelves. He saw a thin, +brown volume, almost uncut.... + +"He wrote a book on the Tomb of Thi," he said suddenly. "Paul +Delcassé--I remember it very well." + +Now that he thought of it, the memory was clear. It was one of those +books that had whetted his passion for the past, when his student +mind was first kindling to buried cities and forgotten tombs and all +the strange store and loot of time. + +Paul Delcassé. He didn't remember a word of the book, but he +remembered that he had read it with absorption. And now the special +agent, delighted at the recognition, was talking eagerly of the +writer. + +"He was a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance +to his generation--and he becomes so now through the whim of a +capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time +she has decided to make active inquiries." + +"But you said that Delcassé had died--" + +"He left a wife and child. Her letters of her husband's death +reached his relatives in France, then nothing more. They feared that +the same fever--but nothing, positively, was known.... A sad story, +monsieur.... This Delcassé was young and adventurous and an ardent +explorer. An ardent lover, too, for he brought a beautiful French +wife to share the hazards of his expedition--" + +"An ardent idiot," thrust in McLean unfeelingly. "Knocking a woman +about the desert.... Not much chance of a clue after all these +years," he concluded with a very British air of dismissal. + +But the French agent was not to be sundered from the American who +remembered the book of Delcassé. + +From his pocket he brought a leather case and from the case a large +and ornate gold locket. + +"His picture, monsieur." He pressed the spring and offered Ryder the +miniature. "It was done in France before he returned on that last +trip, and was left with the aunt. It is said to be a good likeness." + +Ryder looked down upon the young face presented to his gaze with a +feeling of sympathy for this unlucky searcher of the past who had +left his own secret in the sands he had come to conquer--sympathy +mingled with blank wonder at the insanity which had brought a woman +with it.... + +McLean couldn't understand a man's doing it. + +Jack Ryder couldn't understand a man's _wanting_ to do it. Love to +Ryder was incomprehensible idiocy. Woman, as far as he was +concerned, had never been created. She was still a spectacle, an +historical record, an uncomprehended motive. + +"Nice looking chap," he commented briefly, fingering the curious old +case as he handed it back. + +"I'll keep up the inquiries," McLean assured them, "but, as I said, +nothing will come of it.... It's been fifteen years. One more grain +lost in the desert of sand.... By luck, you know, you might just +stumble on something, some native who knew the story, but if fever +carried them off and the Arabs rifled their camp, as I fancy, +they'll jolly well keep their mouths shut. No white man will +know.... I don't advise your people to spend much money on the +search." + +"Odd, the inquiries we get," he commented to Ryder when the +Frenchmen had completed their courteous farewells. "You'd think the +Bank was a Bureau of Information! Yesterday there was a stir about +two crazy lads who are supposed to have joined the Mecca pilgrims in +disguise.... Of course our clerks are Copts and _do_ pick up a bit +and the Copts will talk.... I say, Jack, what are you doing?" he +broke off to demand in astonishment, for Jack Ryder had seated +himself upon a divan and was absorbedly rolling up his trouser leg. + +"The dear Egyptian flea?" he added. + +"Not at all. I am looking at my knees," said Ryder glumly. "I just +remembered that I have to show them to-night.... A ball--in +masquerade. At a hotel. Tourist crowd.... How do you think they'll +look with one of your Scotch plaidies atop?" he inquired feelingly. + +"Fascinating, Jack, fascinating," said the promptly sardonic McLean. +"You--at a masquerade!... So that's what brought you to town." + +He cocked a taunting eye at him. "Well, well, she must be a most +engaging young person--you'll be taking her out on the desert with +you now, like our friend Delcassé--a pleasant, retired spot for a +body to have his honeymoon ... no distractions of society ... +undiluted companionship, you might say.... Now what made you think +she'd like your knees?" he murmured contemplatively. "Aren't you +just a bit--previous? Apt to startle and frighten the lady?" + +"Oh, go on, go on," Ryder exhorted bitterly. "I like it. It's better +than I can do myself. Go on.... But while you are talking trot out +your tartans. Something clannish now--one of those ancestral rigs +that you are always cherishing ... Rich and red, to set off my dark, +handsome type." + +"Set off you'll be, Jack dear," promised McLean, dragging out a huge +chest. "Set off you'll be." + + * * * * * + +Set off he was. + +And a fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his +brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid +plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his +shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay +with big buckles. + +"Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the west," warbled McLean +merrily, as he straightened the shoulder pin of silver and Scotch +topaz. + +"Out of Hades," said Ryder, rather pointlessly, for he felt it was +Hades he was going into. + +Chiefly he was concerned with his knees and the striking contrast +between their sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his +face.... Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass.... Bony +hard, they flaunted their angles at every move.... He was grateful +that he was not a centipede. + + "Oh, 'twas all for my rightful king, + That I gaed o'er the border; + Twas all for-- + +"You didn't tell me her name, now, Jack." + +"Where's my mask?" Ryder was muttering. "I say, aren't there any +pockets in these confounded petticoats?" + +"In the sporran, man.... There!" McLean at last withheld his hand +from its handiwork. "Jock, you're a grand sight," he pronounced with +a special Scottish burr. "If ye dinna win her now--'Bonny Charley's +now awa,'" he sung as Ryder, with a last darkling look at his vivid +image, strode towards the door. + +"He's awa' all right--and he'll be back again as soon as he can make +it." + +With this cheerless anticipation of the evening's promise, the +departing one stalked, like an exiled Stuart, to his waiting +carriage. + +For a moment more McLean kept the ironic smile alive upon his lips, +as he listened to the rattle of the wheels and the harsh gutturals +of the driver, then the smile died as he turned back into the room. + +"Eh, but wouldn't you like it, though, Andy," he said to himself, +"if some girl now liked you enough to get you to go to one of those +damned things.... The lucky dog!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MASKS AND MASKERS + + +Moors and Juliets and Circassian slaves and Knights at Arms were +fast emerging from lift or cloak room, and confronting each other +through their masks in sheepish defiance and curiosity. Adventurous +spirits were circulating. Voices, lowered and guarded, began to +engage in nervous, tittering banter.... Laughter, belatedly +smothered, flared to betrayals.... + +The orchestra was playing a Viennese waltz and couple after couple +slipped out upon the floor. + +Lounging against the wall, Ryder glowered mockingly through his mask +holes at the motley. It was so exactly as he had foreseen. He was +bored--and he was going to be more bored. He was jostled--and he was +going to be more jostled. He was hot--and he was going to be hotter. + +Where in the world was Jinny Jeffries? He deserved, he felt, +exhilaratingly kind treatment to compensate him for this insanity. +He gazed about, and encountering a plump shepherdess ogling him he +stepped hastily behind a palm. + +He fairly stepped upon a very small person in black. A phantom-like +small person, with the black silk hubarah of the Mohammedan +high-caste woman drawn down to her very brows, and over the entire +face the black street veil. Not a feature visible. Not an eyebrow. +Not an eyelash, not a hint of the small person herself, except a +very small white, ringed hand, lifted as if in defense of his +clumsiness. + +"Sorry," said Ryder quickly, and driven by the instinct of +reparation. "Won't you dance?" + +A mute shake of the head. + +Well, his duty was done. But something, the very lack of all +invitation in the black phantom, made him linger. He repeated his +request in French. + +From behind the veil came a liquidly soft voice with a note of +mirth. "I understand the English, monsieur," it informed him. + +"Enough, then, to say yes in it?" + +The black phantom shook its head. "My education, alas! has only +proceeded to the N." Her speech was quaint, unhesitating, but oddly +inflected. "I regret--but I am not acquainted with the yes." + +A gay character for a masked ball! Indifference and pique swung +Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and +he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. + +He'd tell McLean just how darned captivating his outfit was, he +promised himself. + +And then he caught sight of a familiar pair of gray eyes smiling +over the white veil of an odalisque. Jinny Jeffries was wearing one +of the many costumes there that passed for Oriental, a glittering +assemblage of Turkish trousers and Circassian veils, silver shawls +and necklaces and wide bracelets banding bare arms. + +As an effect it was distinctly successful. + +"Ten thousand dinars could not pay for the chicken she has eaten," +uttered Ryder appreciatively in the language of the old slave +market, and stepped promptly ahead of a stout Pantalon. + +"Jack! You did come!" There was a note in the girl's voice as if she +had disbelieved in her good fortune. "Oh, and beautiful as Roderick +Dhu! Didn't I tell you that you could find something in that shop?" +she declared in triumph. + +"Do you imagine that this came out of a costumer's?" Ryder swung her +swiftly out in the fox trot before the crowd invaded the floor. "If +Andy McLean could hear you! Why this, this is the real thing, the +Scots-wha-hae-wi'-Wallace-bled stuff." + +"Who is Andy McLean?" + +"Andrew is Scotch, Single, and Skeptical. He is a great pal of mine +and also an official of the Agricultural Bank which is by way of +being a Government institution. These are the togs of his Hieland +Grandsire--" + +"Why didn't you bring him?" + +"Too dead, unfortunately--grandsires often are--" + +"I mean Andrew McLean." + +"It would take you, my dear Jinny, to do that. You brought me--and +I can believe in anything after the surprise of finding myself +here." + +Jinny Jeffries laughed. "If I could only believe what you say!" + +"Oh, you can believe anything I say," Jack obligingly assured her. +"I'm very careful what I _say_--" + +"I wish I were." + +"You'd have to be careful how you look, Jinny--and you can't help +that. The Lord who gave you red hair must provide the way to elude +its consequences.... I suppose the Orient isn't exactly a manless +Sahara for you?" + +She countered, her bright eyes intent, "Is it a girl-less Sahara for +you, Jack?" + +"The only woman I have laid a hand on, in kindness or unkindness, +died before Ptolemy rebuilt Denderah." + +"That's not right--" + +"No? And I thought it such a virtuous record!" + +"I mean," Jinny laughed, "that you really ought to be seeing more of +life--like to-night--" + +"To-night? Do you imagine this is a place for seeing life?" + +"Why not?" she retorted to the irony in his voice. "It's real +people--not just dead and gone things in cases with their lives all +lived. I don't care if you are going to be a very famous person, +Jack, you ought to see more of the world. You have just been buried +out here for two years, ever since you left college--" + +Beneath his mask the young man was smiling. A quaint feminine +notion, that life was to be encountered at a masquerade! This motley +of hot, over-dressed, wrought up idiots a human contact! + +Life? Living?... Thank you, he preferred the sane young English +officials ... the comradeship of his chief ... the glamor of his +desert tombs. + +Of course there was a loneliness in the desert. That was part of the +big feeling of it, the still, stealing sense of immensity reaching +out its shadowy hands for you.... Loneliness and restlessness.... +These tropic nights, when the stars burned low and bright, and the +hot sands seemed breathing.... Loneliness and restlessness--but they +gave a man dreams.... And were those dreams to be realized here? + +The music stopped and the ever-watchful Pantalon bore down upon +them. Abandoning Jinny to her fate, Ryder sought refuge and a +cigarette. + +The hall was crowded now; the ball was a flash of color, a whirl of +satins and spangles and tulle and gauze, gold and green and rose and +sapphire, gyrating madly in vivid projection against the black and +white stripes of the Moorish walls. The color and the music had sent +their quickening reactions among the throng. Masks were lending +audacity to mischief and high spirits. + +Three little Pierrettes scampered through the crowd, pelting right +and left with confetti and balloons, and two stalwart monks and a +thin Hamlet pursued them, keeping up the bombardment amid a great +combustion of balloons. A spangled Harlequin snatched his hands +full of confetti and darted behind a palm. + +It was the palm of the black phantom, the palm of Ryder's rebuff. +Perhaps the Harlequin had met repulse here, too, and cherished +resentment, not a very malicious resentment but a mocking feint of +it, for when Ryder turned sharply after him--oddly, he himself was +strolling toward that nook--he found Harlequin circling with mock +entreaties about the stubbornly refusing black domino. + +"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the +dance?" chanted Harlequin, with a shower of confetti flung at the +girl's averted face. + +There was such a shrinking of genuine fright in her withdrawal that +Ryder had a fine thrill of rescue. + +"My dance," he declared, laying an intervening hand on her muffled +arm. + +His tartan-draped shoulder crowded the Harlequin from sight. + +She raised her head. The black street veil was flung back, but a +black yashmak was hiding all but her eyes. Great dark eyes they +were, deep as night and soft as shadows, arched with exquisitely +curved brows like the sweep of wild birds' wings.... The most lovely +eyes that dreams could bring. + +A flash of relief shone through their childish fright. With sudden +confidence she turned to Ryder. + +"Thank you.... My education, monsieur, has proceeded to the Ts," she +told him with a nervous little laugh over her chagrin, drowned in a +burst of louder laughter from the discomfited Harlequin, who turned +on his heel and then bounded after fresh prey. + +"Shall we dance or promenade?" asked Ryder. + +Hesitatingly her gaze met his. Red and gold and green and blue +flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black +wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her +eye-lashes. + +"It is--if I have not forgotten how to dance," she murmured. "If it +is a waltz, perhaps--" + +It was a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution +before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within +the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her +young form. She was no more than a child.... No child, either, at a +masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight.... She was a leaf +blowing in the breeze.... She was the very breeze and the moonlight. + +And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over. Those moments had +seemed no more than one. + +"We must have the next," he said quickly. "What made you think you +had forgotten?" + +"It is nearly four years, monsieur, since I danced with a man." + +"With a man? You have been dancing with girls, then?" + +She nodded. + +"At a school?" + +"At a--a sort of school." The black domino laughed with ruefulness. +"At a very dull sort of school." + +"To which, I hope, you are not to return?" + +She made no answer to that--unless it was a sigh that slipped out. + +"At any rate," he said cheerily, "you are dancing to-night." + +"To-night--yes, to-night I am dancing!" There was triumph in her +young voice, triumph and faint defiance, and gayety again in her +changing eyes. + +Extraordinary, those eyes. Innocent, audacious, bewildering.... To +look down into them produced the oddest of excitement. + +He took off his mask. Masks were hindering things--he could see so +much better without. + +She, too, could see better--could see him better. Shyly, yet +intently, her gaze took note of him, of the clean, clear-cut young +face, bronzed and rather thin, of the dark hair that looked darker +against the scarlet cap, of the deep-set eyes, hazel-brown, that met +hers so often and were so full of contradictory things ... life ... +and humor ... and frank simplicity ... and subtle eagerness. + +He looked so young and confident and handsome.... + +"You are--a Scotchman?" slipped out from her black yashmak. + +"Only in costume. I am an American." + +She repeated it a little musingly. "I do not think I ever met an +American young man." She added, "I have met old ones--yes, and +middle-aged ones and the women--but a young one, no." + +"A retired spot, that school of yours," said Ryder appreciatively. +"You are French?" + +"That is for your imagination!" Teasingly, she laughed. "I am, +monsieur, only a black domino!" + +It was the loveliest laugh, Ryder was instantly aware, and the +loveliest voice in the world. Yes, and the loveliest eyes. + +He forgot the crowd. He forgot the heat. He forgot--alas!--Jinny +Jeffries. He was aware of an intense exhilaration, a radiant sense +of well-being, and--at the music's beginning--of a small palm +pressed again to his, a light form within his arm ... of shy, +enchanting eyes out from the shrouding black. + +"Do put that veil away," he youthfully entreated. "It's quite time. +The others are almost all unmasked." + +Her glance about the room returned to him with mock plaintiveness. +She shook her head as they spun lightly about a corner. + +"Perhaps, monsieur, I have an unfortunate nose." + +"My nerves are strong." + +"But why afflict them?" Prankishly her eyes sparkled up at him over +the black veil that made her a mystery. "Enjoy the present, +monsieur!" + +"Are you enjoying it?" + +Her lashes dropped, like black butterflies. She was a changeling of +a girl, veering from gayety to shyness.... Her gaze was now on her +wrist watch, a slender blaze of platinum and diamonds. + +"The present--yes," she said in a muffled little voice. + +He bent his head to hear her through the veil. + +A tormenting curiosity was assailing him. It had become not enough +to know that she was young and slender, with enchanting eyes and a +teasing spirit of wit.... Vaguely he had thought her to be French, +one of the quaint _jeunes filles_ so rarely taken traveling. + +But who was she? A child at her first ball? But what in the world +was she doing, back in the palms, away from her chaperon? + +He realized, even in the cloud of his fascination, that French +_jeunes filles_ are not wonted to lurk about palms at a ball. + +Was she a little Cinderella, then, slipping among the guests? Some +poor companion, stealing in for fun?... She was too young. And there +was that watch, that glitter of diamonds upon her wrist. + +"Have you just come to Cairo?" + +She shook her head. "For some time--I have been here." + +"Up the Nile yet?" + +"The Nile--no, monsieur." + +"But you are going?" + +"That--that I do not know. Sometime, perhaps." + +She sounded guarded.... He hurried into revelations. + +"I am staying not far from Cairo, myself. I am an excavator--on an +expedition from an American museum." + +"Ah, you dig?" + +"Well, not personally.... But the expedition digs.... We've had some +bully finds." + +"And you came from America--to dig in the sands?" The black domino +laughed softly. "For how long, monsieur?" + +"This is my second year." + +Still laughing, she shook her shrouded little head at him. "But I +cannot understand! What wonderful thing do you hope to find--what +buried secret--?" + +"Nothing half as wonderful as to know who you are," he said boldly. + +"That, too, is--is buried, monsieur!" + +"But not beyond discovery," he told her very gayly and confidently, +and danced the music out. + +As the last strains died, they paused for an instant as if the spell +still bound them, then his arms fell slowly away, and he heard the +girl draw a quick, startled breath. Her eyes sped to that tiny, +blazing watch; when she lifted them he thought he surprised a gleam +of panic. + +"How fast is an hour!" she said with an excited little laugh. "Time +is a--a very sudden thing!" + +Sudden, indeed! How long since he had been a badly bored, impatient +young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he +had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as +life? How long since he had looked into a pair of dark disquieting +eyes ... listened to a gay little voice.... + +Many important things in life happen suddenly. Juliet happened very +suddenly to Romeo. Romeo happened as suddenly to Juliet. + +But Jack Ryder was not remembering anything about Romeo and Juliet. +He was watching that glance steal to the wrist watch again. + +Then, as if with a determination of the spirit, they smiled up at +him. + +"Monsieur the American," said the black domino, "you have been most +kind to an--an incognita--of a masque. I hope that you dig out of +your sands all the secrets that you most desire." + +"You sound as if you were saying good-bye," said Jack Ryder with +quick denial in his blood. + +The smile in her eyes flickered. + +"Perhaps I have kept you too long from the other guests." + +He shook his head. "They don't exist." + +"Ah! I will give you the chance to say such nice things to them." + +"But I never say nice things--unless I mean them!" + +"Never--monsieur?" + +"Never. I am very careful what I say," he assured her, even as he +had assured another girl, in what different meaning, hours or +centuries before. "You can believe anything that I say." + +"A young man of character! Perhaps that goes with the Scotch +costume. I have read the Scots are a noble people." + +"They haven't a thing on the Americans. You must know me better and +discover--" + +But again her eyes had gone, almost guiltily, to that watch. And +when she raised them again they were not smiling but very strangely +resolved. + +"Monsieur, it is so hot--if you would get me a glass of sherbet?" + +"Certainly." Convention brought out the assent; convention turned +him about and marched him dutifully toward the crowded table she +indicated. + +But something deeper than convention, some warning born of that +too-often consulted watch and that strange look in her eyes, that +uneasy fear and swift resolve, turned him quickly about again. + +Other couples had strolled between them. He hurried through and +stepped back among the palms. + +The place was empty. The black domino was gone. + + * * * * * + +He wasted one minute in assuring himself that she was not hidden in +some corner, not mingled with the crowd. But the niche was deserted +as a rifled nest. Then his eyes spied the door that the green +decorations had conspired to hide and he wrenched it open. + +He found himself on a little balcony overlooking the hotel garden. +He knew the place in daytime--palms and shrubs and a graveled walk +and painted chairs where he had drunk tea with Jinny and watched a +Russian tourist beautifully smoking cigarettes. + +Now the place was strange. Night and a crescent moon had wrought +their magic, and the garden was a mystery of velvet dusks and ivory +pallors. The graveled path ran glimmering beneath the magnolias. +Over the wall's blankness the eucalyptus defined its crooked lines +against the blue Egyptian sky. + +No living thing was there ... nothing ... or did that shadow stir? +There, just at the path's end. + +Ryder's lithe strength was swift. There was one breathless moment of +pursuit, then his hand fell with gripping fierceness upon the +huddled dark figure that had sped so frantically to the tiny door in +the garden's end.... A moment more and she would have been through. + +His hand on her shoulder turned her towards him. Her eyes met his +with a dash of desperation.... He was unconscious how his own were +blazing ... how queerly white his face had gone under its desert +brown. + +She was actually running away. She had meant never to see him again. +He had frustrated her, but the blow she had meant to deal him was +still felt. + +His voice, when it came, sounded shaken. + +"You were going to leave me?" + +Strangely her eyes changed. The defiance, the panic fear, faded. A +cloud of slow despair welled up in them. + +"What else?" she said very softly. + +He did not lose his hold on her. He drew her back into the shadows +with involuntary caution, and he felt her slender body trembling in +his grasp. The tremors seemed to pass into his own. + +A sense of urgency was pressing upon him. He was not himself, not +any self that he had known. He stood there, in the Egyptian night, +in the motley of a Scotch chieftain, grasping this mysterious +creature of the masquerade, and he heard a voice that he did not +know ask of her again and again, "But why? Why? Why were you going?" + +It was not, he was telling himself, and her eyes were telling him, +as if she wanted to go. He knew what he knew.... Those had been +enchanted hours.... Yet she had deceived and fled from him. + +Her eyes looked darkly back at him through the dusk. + +"Because I must return to my own life." Her voice was a whisper. +"And I did not want you to know--" + +"To know what? Who are you? Where were you going?" A confusion of +conjecture, fantastic, horrible, impossible, was surging in him. +Dim, vague, terrible things.... + +"Who are you, anyway?" + +She looked away from him, to the door which she had tried to gain. + +"No masker, monsieur.... For me, there is no unveiling." + +Ryder's hand stiffened. He felt his blood stop a moment, as if his +heart stood still. + +And then it beat on again in a furious turmoil of contradiction of +this impossible thing that she was telling him. + +"That door, monsieur, is to the lane, and in the lane another door +leads to another garden--the garden of a girl you can never know." + +He was no novice to Egypt. Even while his credulity was still +battling with belief, his mind had realized this thing that had +happened ... the astounding, unbelievable thing.... He had heard +something of those Turkish girls, daughters of rich officials, whose +lives were such strange opposition of modernity and tradition. + +Indulgence and luxury. French governesses and French frocks ... +freedom, travel, often,--Paris, London, perhaps--and then, as the +girl eclipses the child--the veil. Still indulgence and luxury, +still books and governesses and frocks and motors and society--but a +feminine society. + +Not a man in it. Not a caller. Not a friend. Not a lover.... Not an +interview, even, with the man who is to be the husband--until the +bride is safe in the husband's home. Hidden women. Secret, secluded +lives.... Extinguished by tradition--a tradition against which their +earlier years only had won modern emancipation. + +And she--this slim creature in the black domino--one of those +invisibles? + +Stark amazement looked out of his eyes into hers. + +"You--a Turk?" he blurted. + +"I--a Turk!" Her head went suddenly high; she stiffened with +defensive pride. "I am ashamed--but for the thing I have done. That +is a shameful thing. To steal out at night--to a hotel--to a +ball--And to dance with a man! To tell him who I am--Oh, yes, I am +much ashamed. I am as bold as a Christian!" she tossed at him +suddenly, between mockery and malice. + +Still his wonder and his trouble found no words and the shadow on +his face was reflected swiftly in her own. + +"I beg you to believe, monsieur, that never before--never have I +done such a thing. My greatest fault was to be out in the garden +after sunset--when all Moslem women should be within. But my nurse +was indulgent." + +Almost pleadingly she looked up at the young man. "Believe this of +me, monsieur. I would not have you think of me lightly. But to-night +something possessed me. I had heard of the masque, and I remembered +the balls of the Embassy where I danced when I was so young and so I +slipped away--there was a garden key that I had stolen, long ago, +and kept for another thing.... I did not mean to dance. Only to look +on at the world again." + +"Oh, my good Lord," said Jack Ryder. + +And then suddenly he asked, "Are you--do you--whom do you live +with?" + +And when she answered in surprise, "But with whom but my father--he +is Tewfick Pasha," he drew a long breath. + +"I thought you'd tell me next you were married," he said limply. + +The next moment they were laughing the sudden, incredibly absorbed +laughter of youth. + +"No husband. I am one of the young revoltées--the moderns--and I am +the only daughter of a most indulgent father." + +"Well, that's something to the good," was Ryder's comment upon that. +He added, "But if that most indulgent father caught you--" + +He looked down at her. The secret trouble of her answering look told +him more than its assumption of courage. + +This was no boarding school girl lingering beyond hours.... This was +a high-born Moslem, risking more than he could well know. + +The escapade was suddenly serious, tremendously menacing. + +She answered faintly, "I have no idea--the thing is so impossible! +But of course," she rallied her spirit to protest, "I do not think +they would sew me in a sack with a stone and drop me in the river, +like the odalisques of yesterday!" + +She added, her voice uncertain in spite of her, "I meant only to +stay a moment." + +"Which is the way?" said Jack briefly. + +With caution he opened the gate into the black canyon of the lane. +Silence and darkness. Not a loiterer, only one of the furtive +starved dogs, slinking back from some rubbish.... + +The girl moved forward and keeping closely at her side he followed; +they crossed to the other wall, and turned towards the right, +stopping before the deeper shadow of a small, pointed door set into +the heavy brick of the high wall. From her draperies the girl drew +out a huge key. + +She fitted it into the ancient lock and turned it; carefully she +pressed open the gate and stared anxiously into the gloom of the +shadowy garden that it disclosed. + +Relief colored her voice as she turned to him. + +"All is quiet.... I am safe, now.... And so--good-bye, monsieur." + +"And this is where you live?" Ryder whispered. + +"There--in that wing," she murmured, slipping within the gate, and +he stole after her, and looked across the garden, through a fringe +of date palms, to the outlines of the buildings. + +Dim and dark showed the high walls, black as a prison, only here and +there the pale orange oblong of a lighted window. + +"Did you climb out the window?" he murmured. + +From beneath the veil came a little sound of soft derision. + +"But there are always bars, even in the garden windows of the +haremlik!... No, I stole down by an old stair.... That wing, there, +on the right." + +Barred on the garden, and on the street the impregnable wooden +screens of the mashrubiyeh, those were the rooms where this girl +beside him was to spend her life--until that most indulgent father +wearied of her modernity and transferred her to other rooms, as +barred and screened, in the palace of some husband!... That thought +was brushing Ryder ... with other thoughts of her present risk ... +of her lovely eyes, visible again, above the veil, thoughts of the +strangeness and unreality of it all ... there in the shrubbery of a +pasha's garden, the pasha's daughter whispering at his side. + +"What about your mother--?" he asked her. "Is she--?" + +"She is dead," the girl told him, with a drop in her voice. + +And after a long moment of silence, "When I was so little--but I +remember her, oh, indeed I do ... She was French, monsieur." + +"Oh! And so you--" + +"I am French-Turk," she whispered back. "That is very often so--in +the harems of Cairo.... She was so lovely," said the girl wistfully. +"My father must have loved her very much ... he never brought +another wife here. Always I lived alone with my old nurse and the +governesses--" + +"You had--lessons?" + +"Oh, nothing but lessons--all of that world which was shut away so +soon.... French and English and music and the philosophy--Oh, we +Turks are what you call blue stockings, monsieur, shut away with our +books and our dreams ... and our memories ... We are so young and +already the real world is a memory.... Sometimes," she said, with a +tremor of suppressed passion in her still little tones, "I could +wish that I had died when I was very young and so happy when my +father took me traveling in Europe.... I played games on the decks +of the ships ... I had my tea with the English children.... I went +down into the hold to play with their dogs..." + +She broke off, between a laugh and a sigh, "Dogs are forbidden to +Moslems--but of course you know, if you have been here two years.... +And emancipated as we may be, there is no changing the customs. We +must live as our grandmothers lived ... though we are not as our +grandmothers are..." + +"With a French mother, you must be very far from what some of your +grandmothers were!" + +"My poor French mother!" Whimsically the girl sighed. "Must I blame +it on her--the spirit that took me to the ball?... To-morrow +this will be a dream to me.... I shall not believe in my +shamelessness.... And you, too, must forget--" + +"Forget?" said Ryder under his breath. + +"Forget--and go. Positively you must go now, monsieur. It is very +dangerous here--" + +"It is." There was a light dancing in his hazel eyes. "It is more +dangerous every moment--" + +"But I mean--" Her confusion betrayed itself. + +"But I mean--that you are magic--black magic," he murmured bending +over the black domino. + +The crescent moon had found its way through a filigree of boughs. +Faintly its exploring ray lighted the contour of that shrouded head, +touched the lovely curves of her arched brows and the tender pallor +of the skin about those great wells of dark eyes.... From his own +eyes a flame seemed to pass into hers.... Breathlessly they gazed at +each other ... like dim shadows in a garden of still enchantment. + +And then, as from a palpable clasp, she tried to slip away. "Truly, +I must go! It is so late--" + +Ryder's heart was pounding within him. He did not recognize this +state of affairs; it was utterly unrelated to anything that had gone +before in his merry, humorous, rather clear-sighted and wary young +life.... He felt dazed and wondering at himself ... and +irresponsible ... and appalled ... but deeper than all else, he felt +eager and exultant and strangely, furtively determined about +something that he was not owning to himself ... something that +leaped off his lips in the low murmur to her, "But to-morrow +night--I shall see you again--" + +She caught her breath. "Oh, never again! To-night has no +to-morrow--" + +"Outside this gate," he persisted. "I shall wait--and other nights +after that. For I must know--if you are safe--" + +"See, I am very safe now. For if I were missed there would be +running and confusion--" + +He only drew a little closer to her. "To-morrow night--or another--I +shall come to this door--" + +"It must not open to you.... It is a forbidden door--forbidden as +that fortieth door in the old story.... There are thirty and nine +doors in your life, monsieur, that you may open, but this is the +forbidden--" + +"I shall be waiting," he insisted. "To-morrow night--or another--" + +She moved her head in denial. + +"Neither to-morrow nor another night--" + +Again their eyes met. He bent over her. He knew a gleam of sharpest +wonder at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding +drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in +the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft, +human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and +through the sheer gauze of her veil his lips pressed her lips.... + +Some one was coming down the walk: Footsteps crunched the gravel. + +Like a wraith the girl was out of his arms ... in anger or alarm +his whirling senses could not know, although it was their passionate +concern. But his last gleam of prudence got him through the gate he +heard her locking after. + +And then, for her sake, he fled. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN THE PASHA'S PALACE + + +Nearer sounded the footsteps on the graveled walk and in frightened +haste the girl drew out the key from the gate and slipped away into +the shrubbery, grateful for the blotting shadows. + +At the foot of a rose bush she crouched to thrust the key into a +hole in the loose earth, covering the top and drawing the low +branches over it. + +"Aimée," came a guarded call. "Aimée!" + +Still stooping, she tried to steal through the bushes, but the +thorns held her and she stood up, pulling at her robes. + +"Yes? Miriam?" she said faintly, and desperately freeing herself, +she hurried forward towards the dark, bulky figure of her old nurse, +emerging now into the moonlight. + +"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God!" ejaculated the old woman, but +cautiously under her breath. "Come quickly--he is here--thy father! +And thou in the garden, at this hour.... But come," and urgently she +gripped the girl's wrist as if afraid that she would vanish again +into the shadows of the shrubbery. + +Aimée felt her knees quake under her. "My father!" she murmured, +and her voice died in her throat. + +Had he discovered? Had some one seen her slip out? Or recognized her +at the ball? + +The panic-stricken conjectures surged through her in dismaying +confusion. She tried to beat down her fear, to think quickly, to +rally her force, but her swimming senses were still invaded with the +surprise of those last moments at the gate, her heart still beating +with the touch of Ryder's arms about her ... of that long, deep look +... that kiss, beyond all else, that kiss.... + +Little rivers of fire were running through her veins. Shame and +proud anger set up their swift reactions. Oh, what wings of wild, +incredible folly had brought her to this! To be kissed like--like a +dancing girl--by a man, an unknown, an American! + +How could he, how could he! After all his kindness--to hold her so +lightly.... And yet there had been no lightness in his eyes, those +eager, shining young eyes, so gravely concerned.... + +But she could not stop to think of this thing. Her father was +waiting. + +"He came in like a fury," the old nurse was panting, as they +scurried up the walk together, "and asked for you ... and your room +empty, your bed not touched!... Oh, Allah's ruth upon me, I went +trotting through the house, mad with fear.... Up to the roofs then +down to the garden ... sending him word that you were dressing that +he should not know the only child of his house was a shameless one, +devoid of sense." + +"But there is no harm in a garden," breathed the girl, her face hot +with shame. "To-night was so hot--" + +"Is there no coolth upon the roof?" + +"But the roses--" + +"Can roses not be brought you? Have you no maids to attend you?" + +"I am tired of being attended! Can I never be alone--" + +"Alone in the garden!... A pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father, +I will have a stop put to this--_hush_, would you have him hear?" +she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door +at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps. + +Like conspirators they fled up the staircase, and then with fumbling +haste the old nurse dragged off the girl's mantle and veil, +muttering at the pins that secured it. She shook out the +pale-flowered chiffon of her rumpled frock and gathered back a +strand of her dark, disordered hair. + +"Say that you were on the roofs," she besought her. + +For a moment the girl put the warm rose of her cheek against the old +woman's dark, wrinkled one. + +"But you are good, Dadi," she said softly, using the Turkish word +for familiar old servants. + +With a sound of mingled vexation and affection Miriam pushed her +ahead of her into the drawing-room. + +It was a long, dark room, on whose soft, buff carpet the little gilt +chairs and sofas were set about with the empty expectancy of a stage +scene in a French salon. French were the shirred, silk shades upon +the electric lamps, French the music upon the chic rosewood piano. + +And then, as if some careless property man had overlooked them in +changing the act, two window balconies of closely carved old wood, +of solidly screening mashrubiyeh wood, jutted out from one +cream-tinted wall, and above a gilded sofa, upholstered in the +delicate fabric of the Rue de la Paix, hung a green satin banner +embroidered in silver with a phrase from the Koran. + +Tewfick Pasha was at one side of the room, filling his match case. +He was in evening dress, a ribbon of some order across a rather +swelling shirt bosom, a red fez upon his dark head. + +At his daughter's entrance he turned quickly, with so sharp a gleam +from his full, somewhat protuberant black eyes that her guilty heart +fairly turned over in her. + +It made matters no more comforting to have Miriam packed from the +room. + +She would deny it all, she thought desperately ... No, she would +admit it, and implore his indulgence.... She would admit nothing but +the garden.... She would admit the ball.... She would _never_ admit +the young man.... + +With conscious eyes and flushing cheeks, woefully aware of +dew-drenched satin slippers and an upsettingly hammering heart, +Aimée presented the young image of irresolute confusion. + +To her surprise there was no outburst. Her father was suddenly gay +and smiling, with a flow of pleasant phrases that invited her +affection. In his good humor--and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be +kept in good humor--he had touches of that boyish charm that had +made him the _enfant gâté_ of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and +Constantinople. An _enfant_ no more, in the robustly rotund forties, +his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that +smiling acquiescence that kept life soft and comfortable. + +And now it suddenly struck Aimée, through her tense alarm, that his +smile was not a spontaneous smile, but was silently, uneasily asking +his daughter not to make something too unpleasant for him ... that +something that had brought him here, at an unprecedented midnight +... that had kept him waiting until she, supposedly, should rise and +dress.... + +If it were not then a knowledge of her escapade--? + +The relief from that fear made everything else bearable. She was +even able to entertain, with a certain welcome, the alternative +alarm that he had decided to marry again--that nightmare from whose +realization the unknown gods (or more truly, the unknown goddesses +of the Cairene demi-monde!) had assisted to save her. + +There was a furtive excitement about him that fanned the +supposition. + +Then, quite suddenly, the illuminating lightning cut the clouds. + +"My dear child, I have news, really important news for you. If I +have not been discussing your future," said Tewfick Pasha, staring +with stern nonchalance ahead and determinedly unaware of her instant +stiffening of attention, "I have by no means been neglectful of +it.... To-day--indeed to-night--there has been a consummation of my +plans.... It is not to every daughter that a father may hurry with +such an announcement." + +Her first feeling was a merciful relief. He knew nothing then of the +ball! She could breathe again.... It was her marriage that had +brought him. + +No new danger, that, but the eternal menace that she had always to +dread.... But how many times had he promised that she should have no +unknown husband, imposed by tradition! How many times had she +indulged dreams of Europe, of bright, free romance! + +And now he was off on some tangent from which it would need all her +coaxing wit to divert him. With wide eyes painfully intent, her +little, jeweled fingers very still in their locked grip in her lap, +the color draining from her cheeks, she sat waiting for the +revelation. + +What was it all? Had he really decided upon something? Upon some +one? + +Tewfick Pasha appeared in no hurry to inform her. He wandered +rather confusedly into a rambling speech about her age and her +position and the responsibilities of life and his inabilities to +prevent their reaching her, and about his very tender affection for +her and his understanding of all those girlish reticences and +reluctances which made innocent youth so exquisite, while silently +his daughter hung her head and wondered what he would be saying if +he knew that she had broken every canon of seclusion and convention, +had talked and danced with a man.... + +His astonishment would be so horrific that she flinched even from +the thought. + +And if he knew, moreover, that this man had caught her and kissed +her--! + +She told herself that she was disgraced for life. She had a dreamy +desire to close her eyes and lean back and dream on about that +disgrace.... + +But she must listen to her father. He was talking now about the +powers of wealth, not merely the nominal riches of his somewhat +precarious political affiliations, but solid, sustaining, invested +and invulnerable wealth. + +Unexpectedly Aimée laughed. "He must be very plain," she declared, +her face brightening with mockery, "if you take so long to tell me +his name!" + +Not, she added to herself under her breath, that any name would +weigh a feather's difference! + +"On the contrary," and the pasha's eyes met hers frankly for the +first time and he seemed delighted to indulge a laugh, "he has the +reputation of good looks. He is much _à la mode_." + +"Beautiful and golden--did you meet him just to-night, my father?" +Aimée went on, in that light audacity which he had loved to indulge. + +Now he smiled, but his glance went uneasily away from her. + +"Not at all. This is a serious affair, you understand--the devil of +a serious affair!" and for the first time she felt she heard the +accents of his candor. + +But again he was back to voluble protestation. This man was really +an old friend. He boggled over the word, then got it out resonantly. +A man he knew well. Not a young man, perhaps--certainly he was not +going to hand his only daughter to any boy, a mere novice in +life!--but a man who could give her the position she deserved. Not +only a rich man, but an influential one. + +His name, he brought out at last, was Hamdi Bey. He was a general in +the armies of the sultan. + +It was a long moment before she could piece any shreds of +recollection together. + +Hamdi Bey ... A general.... Why, that was a man her father had +disliked ... more than once he had dropped resentful phrases of his +airs, his arrogance ... had recounted certain clashes with malicious +joy. + +And now he was planning--no, seriously announcing-- + +A general ... He must be terribly old.... + +Not that it made any difference. Old or young, black or white, +general or ghikar, would mean nothing in her life. She would have +none of him ... none of him.... Never would she endure the +humiliation of being handed over like a toy, an odalisque, a +slave.... + +What had happened? She could only suppose that her father had been +overcome by that wealth of the general's on which he had made her +such a speech. Or perhaps his dislike of Hamdi had been founded on +nothing but resentment of Hamdi's airs of superiority, and now that +the bey was condescending to ask for her hand her father's flattered +appeasement was rushing into genial acceptance. + +Anything might be possible to Tewfick Pasha's eternally youthful +enthusiasms. + +She told her frightened heart that she was not afraid.... Her father +would never really fail her.... And she would never surrender to +this degradation; for all her fright and all her flinching from +defiance she divined in herself some hidden stuff of resistance, +tenacious to endure ... some strain of daring which had made her +brave that wild escapade to-night. + +Was it still the same night? Were the violins still playing, the +people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?... Was that +young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back +there dancing with some other girl? + +What was it he had said? To-morrow night, and another night, he +would be there in the lane.... If she would come! As if she would +demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate, +like a gardener's daughter--! + +Her thoughts were so full of him. And now she had this new horror to +face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey. Did her father dream that she +would not resist? It was against such a danger that she had long ago +stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had +neither a friend nor a piaster to save her.... + +"My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that +you really mean--that you really think you would like to--that you +would consider--this man--" + +He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look. + +"Aimée, I have _arranged_ this matter." + +He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you." + +In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort +to ignore her shocked dismay. He abandoned his airy pretense that +the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm. He sucked at his +cigarette like a rather sullen little boy. + +"I have always indulged you, Aimée," he said at last, without +looking round at her. "I hope you are not going to make me +infernally sorry." + +"I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry," said an unsteady +little voice. + +He looked about. His daughter was sitting very still upon the +gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two +great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks. + +With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace +up and down the room. + +This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who +indulged his daughter. This is what came of French and English +governesses and modern ideas.... After all he had done--more than +any other father! To sit and weep! Weep--at such a marriage! What +did she expect of life? Was she not as other women? Did she never +look ahead? Had she no pride, no ambition--no hopes? Did she wish +never to marry, then, to become an _old mees_ like her English +companion? + +"I am but eighteen," she said quiveringly. "Oh, my father, do not +give me to this unknown--" + +"Unknown--unknown! Do I not know him?" + +"But you promised--" + +Angrily he gestured with his cigarette. "Do I know what is good for +you or do I not? Have I your interest at heart--tell me! Am I a +savage, a dolt--" + +"But you do not know what it is to be unhappy. I beg of you, my +father,--I should die with such a life before me, with such a man +for my husband. I am too French, too like my mother--" + +"Ah, your mother!... Too French, are you?... But what would you have +in France?" he demanded with the bursting appearance of a man +making every effort to restrain himself within unreasonable bounds. +"Would not your parents there arrange your marriage? You might see +the fiancé," he caught the words out of her mouth, "but only for a +time or two--after the arrangements--and what is that? What more +would you know than what your father knows? Are you a thing to be +exhibited--given to a man to gaze at and appraise? I tell you, +no.... You are my daughter. You bear my name. And when you marry you +marry in the sanctity of the custom of your father--and you go to +your husband's house as his mother went to his father." + +Timidly she protested, "But my mother--and you--" + +"Do not speak of your mother! If she were here she would counsel +gratitude and obedience." He turned his back on her. "This is what +comes," he muttered, "of this modernity, this education...." + +He pitched away his stub as if he were casting all that he hated +away with it. + +She had never seen him so angry. Helplessly she felt that his vanity +and his word were engaged with the general more than she had +dreamed. She felt a surge of panic at the immensity of the trouble +before her. + +"But, my father, if you love me--" + +"No, my little one, if _you_ love _me_!" + +With a sudden assumption of good humor over the angry red mottling +his olive cheeks, he came and sat beside her, putting his arm about +her silently shrinking figure. + +"I am a weak fool to stay and drink a woman's tears, as the saying +goes," he told her, "but this is what a man gets for being good +natured.... But, tears or not, I know what is best.... Come, Aimée, +have I not ever been fond of you--?" + +He patted her hand with his own plump one where bright rings were +sparkling deep in the encroaching flesh. Aimée looked down with a +sudden wild dislike.... That soft, ingratiating hand, with its +dimples and polished nails, which thought it could pat her so easily +into submission.... + +It was nothing to him, she thought, chokingly, whether she was happy +or unhappy. He had decided on the match--perhaps he had foreseen her +protests and plunged into it, so as to be committed against her +entreaties!--and he was not stopped by any thought of her feelings. + +After all her hopes! After all he had promised! + +But she told herself that she had never been secure. Beneath all her +trust there had always been the silent fear, slipping through the +shadows like a serpent.... Some instinct for character, more +precocious than her years, had whispered through her fond blindness, +and initiated her into foreboding. + +"Come now, my dear," he said heartily, "this is a surprise, of +course, but after all you will find it is for the best--much for the +best--" + +His voice died away. After a long pause, "You may make the +arrangements," she told him in a still, tenacious little voice, "but +you cannot make me marry him.... I will never put on the marriage +dress.... Never wear the diadem.... Never stir one step within his +house." + +A complete silence succeeded this declaration. He got up violently +from beside her. She did not dare look at him. He was going away, +she thought. + +It would be the beginning of war. She did not know what he would do +but she knew that she would endure it. + +And the gossip of the harems would be her protection. Her +opposition, bruited through those feminine channels, would not be +long in reaching Hamdi Bey.... And no man could to-day be so callous +of his pride or the world's opinion that he would be willing to +receive such a revolting bride. + +Did her father think of that, that poor, pale power of hers? He +stood irresolute, as if meditating a last exhortation, and then +suddenly turned on her the haggard face of a violent despair. + +"Would you see me ruined?" he said passionately. + +Sharply he glanced about the room, at the far, closed doors where it +was not inconceivable that old Miriam was lurking, and strode over +to her and began talking very jerkily and huskily, over her bent +head. + +"I tell you that Hamdi is making this a condition--it is the price +of silence, of those papers back.... He came to me to-night. I knew +that hound of Satan had been smelling about, but I could not +imagine--as if, between gentlemen--" + +At that, she lifted her stupefied head.... Her father, with the face +of a cornered fox!... She caught her breath with the shock of it. +Her lips parted, but only her mute eyes asked their startled +questions. + +Hurriedly, shamefacedly, with angry resentments and +self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at +her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the +imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And +then the word _hasheesh_. + +Sharply then the truth took its outlines. Her father had been +smuggling in hasheesh. Hamdi Bey had discovered this, and Hamdi Bey, +unless silenced, had threatened betrayal. + +The danger was real. English laws were stringent. Vaguely the +horrors loomed--arrest, trial.... Even if he escaped the scandal was +ruin.... + +Small wonder that her father had come flying upon the wings of his +danger and its deliverance, small wonder that his brow was wet and +his lips dry and his eyes hard with terror. + +Thrown to the winds now his pretense of affection for Hamdi Bey! He +hated and feared him. The old fox had done this, he declared, to get +a hold upon him, for always there had been bad blood. + +And the bey had heard, of course, of the beauty of the pasha's +daughter. Some cousin had babbled.... And undoubtedly the rumor of +that beauty--Tewfick Pasha received his inspiration upon the moment, +but that was not gainsaying its truth--had determined the bey to +find some vulnerable hold. + +He was like that, a soft-voiced, sardonic devil! And this accursed +business of the hasheesh had served his ends. To-night, he had come +with his proofs.... + +"So you see," muttered Tewfick Pasha, "what the devil of a serious +business this is. And how any talk of--of unreadiness--if you were +not amiable, for example, to his cousin when she calls upon +you--might serve to anger him.... And so--" + +Significantly his glance met hers. Her eyes fell, stricken. The +color flooded her trembling face. She quivered with confused pain, +with shame for his shame, with terror and fright ... with a hot, +protective compassion that tore at her pride.... + +She struggled against her dismay, trying for reassuring little words +that would not come. Her heart seemed beating thickly in her throat. + +She never knew just what she said, what little broken words of pity, +of understanding, of promise, she achieved. But her father suddenly +dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the _enfant gâté_ +of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their +soft, quiescent palms.... She drew one away and placed it upon his +dark head from which the fez had tumbled. + +For the moment she was sorry, as one is sorry for a hurt child. And +her sorriness held her heart warm, in the glow of giving comfort. + +She had need of that warmth. For a cold tide was rising in her, a +tide of chill, irresistible foreboding.... + +For all the years of her life.... For all the years.... + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +EXPLANATIONS + + +The remaining hours of Jack Ryder's night might be divided into +three periods. There was an interval of astounding exhilaration +coupled with complete mental vacancy, during which a figure in a +Scots costume might have been observed by the astonished Egyptian +moon striding obliviously along the silent road to the Nile, past +sleeping camels and snoring _dhurra_ merchants--a period during +which his sole distinguishable sensation was the memory of +enchanting eyes, of a voice, low and lovely ... of a slender figure +in a muffling tcharchaf ... of the touch of soft lips beneath a +gauzy veil.... + +This period was succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he +lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean's domicile and stared +into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned high heaven and +himself. + +Had he really done this? Had he actually caught and kissed this +girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never +seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a +Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and +self-preservation? + +In the name of wonder, what had possessed him? The night? The moon? +The mystery of the unknown?... If he had never really kissed her he +might have convinced himself that he had never really wanted to. But +having kissed her--! + +He looked upon himself as a stranger. A stranger of whom he would be +remarkably wary, in the days and nights to come ... but a stranger +for whom he entertained a sort of secret, amazed respect. There had +been an undeniable dash and daring to that stranger.... + +During the third period he slept. + +When he awoke, late in the morning, and descended from a cold tub to +a breakfast room from which McLean had long since departed, he +brought yet another mood with him, a mood of dark, deep disgust and +a shamed inclination to dismiss these events very speedily from +memory. For that shadowy and rather shady affair he had abandoned +the merry and delightful Jinny Jeffries and got himself involved now +in the duty of explanations and peacemaking. + +What in the world was he going to say? + +He meditated a note--but he hated a lie on paper. It looked so +thunderingly black and white. Besides, he could not think of any. +"Dear Jinny--Awfully sorry I was called away." + +No, that wouldn't do. He could take refuge in no such vagueness. +Unfortunately, he and Jinny were on such terms of old intimacy that +a certain explicitness of detail was expected. + +"Dear Jinny--I had to leave last night and take a girl home--" + +No, she would ask about the girl. Jinny had a propensity for +locating people. It wouldn't do. + +His masculine instinct for saying the least possible in a matter +with a woman, and his ripening experience which taught him to leave +no mystery to awaken suspicion, wrestled with the affair for some +time and then retired from the field. + +He compromised by telephoning Jinny briefly--and Jinny was equally +as brief and twice as cool and cryptic--and promising to take her +out to tea. + +He reflected that if he took her to tea he would really have to stay +over another night, for it would be too late to regain his desert +camp. But the circumstances seemed to call for some social amend.... +And no matter how many nights he stayed he certainly was not going +to lurk about that lane, outside garden doors! + +He must have been mad, stark, staring, March-hatter mad! + + * * * * * + +That morning, during its remainder, he concluded his buying of +supplies and saw to their shipment upon the boat that left upon the +following morning. That noon he lunched with an assistant curator of +the Cairo museum who found him a good listener. + +That afternoon he escorted Jinny Jeffries and her uncle and aunt, +the Josiah Pendletons, to tea upon the little island in the Cairo +park, where white-robed Arabs brought them tea over the tiny bridge +and violins played behind the shrubbery and white swans glided upon +the blue lake, and then he carried them off in a victoria to view +the sunset from the Citadel heights. + +Not a word about the dance--except a general affirmative to Mrs. +Pendleton's question if he had enjoyed himself. The Pendletons had +not stayed to look on for long, and Jinny had apparently not worn +her bleeding heart upon her sleeve. + +But this immunity could not last. He could not hug the protecting +Pendletons to him forever. + +Nor did he want to. They waned upon him. Mrs. Pendleton's +conversation was a perpetual, "Do look at--!" or dissertations from +the guide books--already she had imparted a great deal of Flinders +Petrie to him about his tombs. Mr. Pendleton was neither +enthusiastic nor voluble, but he was attacking the objects of their +travels in the same thorough-going spirit that he had attacked and +surmounted the industrial obstacles of his career, and he went to a +great deal of persistent trouble to ascertain the exact dates of +passing mosques and the conformations of their arches. + +The travelers had already "done" the Citadel. They had climbed its +rocky hill, they had viewed the Mahomet Ali mosque and its columns +and its carpets and had taken their guide's and their guidebook's +word that it was an inferior structure although so amazingly +effective from below; they had looked studiously down upon the city +and tried to distinguish its minarets and towers and ancient gates, +they had viewed with proper quizzicalness the imprint in the stone +parapet of the hoof of that blindfolded horse which the last of the +Mamelukes, cornered and betrayed, had spurred from the heights. + +So now, no duty upon them, Ryder led them past the Citadel, up the +Mokattam hills behind it, to that hilltop on which stood the little +ancient mosque of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy, where the sunset spaces +flowed round them like a sea of light and the world dropped into +miniature at their feet. + +Below them, in a golden haze, Cairo's domes and minarets were +shining like a city of dreams. To the north, toy fields, vivid +green, of rice and cotton lands, and the silver thread of the +winding Nile, and all beyond, west and southwest, the vast, +illimitable stretch of desert, shimmering in the opalescent air, +sweeping on to the farthest edge of blue horizon. + +"A nice resting place," said Jack Ryder appreciatively of the tomb +of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy. + +"I presume the date is given," Mr. Pendleton was murmuring, as he +began to ferret with his Baedecker. + +Mrs. Pendleton sighed sentimentally. "He must have been very fond of +nature." + +"He was very distrustful of his wives," said Ryder, grinning. "He +had three of them, all young and beautiful." + +"I thought you said he was a saint?" murmured Jinny, to which +interpolation he responded, "Wouldn't three wives make any man a +saint?" and resumed his narrative. + +"And so he had his tomb made where he could overlook the whole city +and observe the conduct of his widows." + +"They could move," objected Miss Jeffries. + +"The female of the Mohammedan species is not the free agent that you +imagine," Ryder retorted, beginning with a smile and ending with a +queer, reminiscent pang. He had a moment's rather complicated twinge +of amusement at her reactions if she should know that to an +encounter with a female of the Mohammedan species was to be +attributed his departure from her party last night. + +And then he remembered that he hadn't decided yet what to tell her +and the time was undoubtedly at hand. + +The time _was_ at hand. The Pendletons were too thorough-going +Americans not to abdicate before the young. They did not saunter +self-consciously away and make any opportunity for Jack and Jinny, +as sympathetic European chaperons might have done; they sat +matter-of-factedly upon the rocks while their competent young people +betook themselves to higher heights. + +Conscientiously Ryder was pointing out the pyramid fields. + +"Gizeh, Abusir, Sakkara, Dahsur--and now here, if you look--that's +the Medun pyramid--that tiny, sharp prick. If we had glasses...." + +"Yes; but why didn't you like the ball?" murmured Jinny the direct. + +"I did like the ball. Very much." + +"Then why didn't you stay?" + +"I--I wasn't feeling top-hole," he murmured lamely, wondering why +girls always wanted to go back and stir up dogs that had gone +comfortably to sleep. + +"Did it come on suddenly?" said Jinny, unsympathetically, her eyes +still upon the pyramids. + +Something whimsical twitched at Jack Ryder's lips. "Very suddenly. +Like thunder, out of China crost the bay." + +"I suppose that dancing with the same girl in succession brings on +the seizures?" + +So she had noticed that!... Not for nothing were those bright, gray +eyes of hers! Not for nothing the red hair. + +"Well, I rather think it did," he said deliberately. "That girl was +a child who hadn't danced in four years--so she said, and I believe +her." + +And Jinny received what he intended to convey. "Stepped on your +buckled shoon and you felt a martyr?... But why bolt? There were +other girls who _had_ danced within four years--" + +"I went into the garden," he murmured. "The fact is, I was feeling +awfully--queer," he brought out in an odd tone. + +Queer was a good word for it. He let it go at that. He couldn't do +better. + +Jinny looked suddenly uncertain. Her pique was streaked with +compunction. She had been horribly angry with him for running away, +and she remembered his opposition to the idea enough to be +suspicious of any disappearance--but there was certainly an accent +of embarrassed sincerity about him. + +Perhaps he _had_ been ill. Sudden seizures were not unknown in +Egypt. And for all his desert brown he didn't look very rugged. + +She murmured, "I hope you hadn't taken anything that disagreed with +you." + +"H'm--it rather agreed with me at the time," said Jack, and then +brought himself up short. "I expect I haven't looked very sharp +after myself--" + +But Jinny did not wholly renounce her idea. "Does it always take you +at dances you don't want to go to?" + +"That's unfair. I came, you know." + +"You came--and went." + +"I'd have been all right if I hadn't come," he murmured, and Jinny +felt suddenly ashamed of herself. + +"Do you suppose that you would stay all right if you came to +dinner?" she offered pacificably. "It's our last night, you know, +till we come back from the Nile." + +"I wish I could." Ryder stopped short. Now, why didn't he? Certainly +he didn't intend-- + +But his tongue took matters promptly out of his hesitation's hands. +"Fact is, I've an engagement." He added, appeasingly, "That's why I +was so keen on getting you for tea." And Jinny told him +appreciatively that it was a lovely tea and a lovely view. + +"We're going to be at the hotel, I expect," she threw out, +carelessly, "and if you get through in time--" + +Rather hastily he assured her that indeed, if he got through in +time-- + +She was a nice girl, was Jinny. A pretty girl, with just the right +amount of red in her hair. Sanity would have sent him to the hotel +to dine with her. + +Sanity would also have sent him to the Jockey Club with McLean. + +Certainly sanity had nothing to do with the way that he kept himself +to himself, after his farewells at the hotel with the Pendletons, +and took him to an out-of-the-way Greek café where he dined very +badly upon stringy lamb and sodden baklava. + +Later he wandered restlessly about dark, medieval streets where +squat groups were clustered about some coffee house door, intent +upon a game of checkers or some patriarchal story teller, +recounting, very probably, a bandied narration of the Thousand and +One Nights. Through other open doors drifted the exasperating nasal +twang of Cairene music, and idly pausing, Ryder could see above the +red fezes and turbans that topped the cross-legged audiences the +dark, sleek, slowly-revolving body of some desert dancing girl. + +Irresolutely he drifted on to the Esbekeyih quarters, to the streets +where the withdrawn camels and donkeys had left pre-eminent the +carriages and motors of that stream of Continental night life which +sets towards Cairo in the season, Russian dukes and German +millionaires, Viennese actresses and French singers and ladies of no +avowed profession, gamblers, idlers, diplomats, drifters, vivid +flashes of color in the bizarre, kaleidoscopic spectacle. + +It was quite dark now. The last pale gleam of the afterglow had +faded, and the blue of the sky, deepening and darkening, was pierced +with the thronging stars. It was very warm; no breeze, but a fitful +stirring in the tops of the feathery palms. + +The streets were growing still. Only from some of the hotels came +the sound of music from lighted, open windows. + +Jinny would be rather expectant at her hotel. He could, of course, +drop in for a few minutes since he was so near.... He walked past +the hotel.... Jinny would be packing--or ought to be. A pity to +disturb her.... And his dusty tweeds and traveling cap was no +calling costume.... + +He walked past again. And this time he paused, on the brink of a +dark canyon of a lane, running back between walls hung with +bougainvillea. + +Quite suddenly he remembered that he had told that girl, whose name +he did not know, that he would come. It was a definite promise. It +was an obligation. + +He could do nothing less. It might be unwelcome, absurd, a nuisance, +but really it was an obligation. + +He sauntered down the lane, keeping carefully in the shadow. He +loitered within that deep-set door--and felt a queer throb of +emotion at the sight of it--and so, sauntering and loitering, he +waited in the darkening night, promising himself disgustedly through +the dragging moments to clear out and be done with this, but still +interminably lingering, his pulses throbbing with that disowned +expectancy. + +Very cautiously, the gate began to open. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AT THE GARDEN GATE + + +Inch by inch the gate edged open. Warily he presented himself. The +furtive crack gave him an instant's glimpse of a dark form within +the shadows, then, in his face, it closed. + +Ryder waited. In a moment it was opened wider, and he saw the +dark-shrouded head and the veiled face of the Turkish girl, and out +from the blackness the sparkle of young eyes. + +"Is it--but who is it?" whispered a doubtful voice, and at his, "Why +it is I--the American," quickly drawing off his cap, a little hand +darted out of the darkness to pluck him swiftly within and the door +was closed to within an inch of its opening. + +Then the black phantom, drawing him back among the shrubbery, +against the wall, turned with a muffled note of laughter. + +"But the costume! Imagine that I--I was looking again for a Scottish +chieftain with red kilts and a feather in his cap!" + +"And instead--" Ryder glanced down at his tweeds with humorous +recognition of his change of figure. Then his eyes returned to her. + +"But you are the same," he murmured. + +She was indeed the same. The same black street mantle, down to her +very brows. The same black veil, up to her very eyes. And the +eyes--! Their soft mysterious loveliness--the little winged tilt of +the brows! + +Apparently their effect was disconcertingly the same. He was +conscious of a feeling that was far from a normal calm. + +"So you were all right?" he half whispered. "Those steps, last +night, you know, made me horribly afraid for you--" + +"But, yes, I am all right." + +As excitement gained upon him, a constraint was falling upon her. +They were both remembering that moment, overlooked in the rush of +recognition, when they had parted in this place, when he had had the +temerity to clasp and kiss her. + +Aimée was standing rigid and wary, ready for flight at the first +fear. She told herself that she had only come through pride, the +pride that insisted upon humbling his presumption. She would let him +see how bitterly he had offended.... She had only come for this, she +told herself--and to see if he had come. + +If he had _not_ come! That would have dealt a sorrily humiliating +blow. + +But he was here. And reassured and haughty, repeating that she was +mortally offended, her spirit alternating between pride and shame +and a delicious fear, she stood there in the shrubbery, fascinated, +like a wild, shy thing of another age. + +"That was old Miriam," she explained constrainedly. "My father had +come in--with unexpectedness." + +"Lord, it was lucky you were back!" + +"Yes, it was--lucky," she assented. "If it had been half an hour +before--" + +She broke off. There came to the young man a sobering perception of +the risk she ran, of the supreme folly of this escapade to which +they were entrusting themselves. + +It was a realization that deserved some consideration. But, +obstinately, with young carelessness, he shook it off. After all, +this was comparatively safe for her. She was not out of bounds. At +an alarm he could slip away and no one could ever know. What risk +there might be was chiefly his own. + +"When you asked who it was," he murmured, "it occurred to me that +you did not know my name--nor I yours. My own," he added, as she +stood unresponsive, "is Ryder--Jack Ryder. You can always get a +letter to me at the Agricultural Bank. That is the quickest way. My +friend, McLean there, always knows where my diggings are. When in +Cairo I stop with him; or at the Rossmore House." + +"I shall not need to get a letter to you, monsieur," she told him +stiffly. + +"But, if you did, how would you sign it?" + +"Aimée.... That is French--after my mother." + +"Aimée. That means Beloved, doesn't it?" + +She was silent. + +Surely, she thought with a swelling heart, if he were sorry he would +tell her now. It was the moment for contrition, for appeasement, for +whatever explanation his American ways might have. + +She had thought about him all night. She had given his declaration a +hundred forms--but always it had been a declaration. + +Now she waited, flagellating her sensitive pride. + +Ryder was conscious of the constraint tightening about them and in +the dragging pause an uncomfortable common sense had time to put its +disconcerting questions. + +What did it matter what her name meant? What in the world was he +doing here?.... And what did she think she was doing here?... Not +that he wanted her to go.... + +And suddenly it didn't matter--whatever they thought. It was enough +that they were together in that still, soft, jasmine-scented dark. +He was breathing quickly; his pulses were beating; he had a feeling +of strange, heady delight. + +The crescent moon was up at last, sailing clear of the house tops, +sending its bright rays through the filigree of tall shrubs. A +finger of light edged the contour of her shrouded head. + +He bent a little closer. + +"Won't you," he said softly, "take off your veil for me?" + +Appalled, she clasped it to her. He had no idea in the world of the +shock of that request. It would be only a faint parallel of its +impropriety to suggest to Jinny Jeffries that she discard her frock. +Even Ryder's acquaintance with Egypt could not tell him how that +swift, confident eagerness of his could startle and affront. + +"I want to see you so very much," he was murmuring, and met the +chill disdain of her retort, "But it is not for you to see my face, +monsieur!" + +"Who is to see it?" he demanded. + +"Who but the man I am to marry," she gave distinctly back. + +The word hit him like stone. + +He was conscious of a shock. Did she intend to rebuke--or to +imply--to question his intention? The steadiness of her low voice +suggested a certain steadiness of design.... He had heard of girls +who knew their own minds ... girls with unexpectedly far-sighted +vision.... Perhaps, poor child, she looked upon him as romantic +escape from all that was restrictive in her life. Secluded women go +fast--when they start. + +The devil take him for that kiss! + +A somewhat set look upon his thin face guarded the fluctuations of +his soul, but the blood rose strongly under his dark skin. + +For a moment he did not venture upon a reply, and in that moment he +was suddenly aware that she had caught his meaning from him--and +that it was a horrible mistake. It was one of those instants of +highly-charged exchanges of meanings whose revelation was as useless +to be denied as powerless to be explained. + +Then her words came in tumultuous, passionate refutation of his +thought. "That is what my father had come to tell me--that he had +arranged my marriage. It is a very splendid thing. To a general--a +rich general!" + +She had not meant to tell him like that! But for the moment she was +savagely glad to hurl it at him. + +He made no answer. His eyes were inscrutably intent. A variety of +things were rearranging themselves in his head. + +"You're--you're going to marry him?" he said slowly. + +"What else?" But she felt the phrase unfortunate and plunged past +it. "It is not for me to say no, monsieur. It is for my father to +arrange." + +"But his indulgence--? You were telling me, you know, that he was so +fond of you. And that you were one of the moderns--the revolting +moderns--" + +Jack Ryder's tone was questioningly cynical and its raillery cut +through her brief sham of pride. + +"So I thought, too, last night." A tinge of infinite disillusionment +was in her young voice. "But it is not so." + +"Then you accept--?" + +The shrouded head nodded. + +"But you can't want to," he broke out with sudden heat. "You don't +know him at all, do you--this general?" + +"Know him? I have never seen his face nor heard his voice--and I +would die first," she added with bitter, helpless fierceness under +her breath. + +The veil muffled that from him. "But why--why?" he repeated in an +angrily puzzled way. + +She made a little gesture of weary impotence. Out of the dark +draperies her hands were like white fluttering butterflies. + +"What can I do?" + +"I should think you could do the Old Harry of a lot." + +"Weep?" said the girl with a pale irony not lost upon him. + +"Weep--or row. Or run," he added, almost reluctantly. + +She turned away her head. "I know, I thought once that I could run. +For that I stole the key to this gate. But where would I run, +monsieur? I have neither friends, nor--nor the resources.... There +have been girls--two sisters--who ran away last year--but they were +already married and they had cousins in France. For me, my cousins +do not exist. I do not know my mother's family. They disowned her +for her marriage, my father says. And so--but it is not possible to +evade this.... It is not possible. This marriage is required." + +"Required--rot! Can't you--don't you--" he paused, looking down upon +her in tremendous and serious uncertainty. The impulse was strong +upon him to tell her that he would help her. The accents of her +voice had seemed to tear at his very heart. + +It was utter madness. Where, in the map of Africa, would he hide +her? And how would he take care of her? What would he do to her? +Make love to her? Marry her? Take home a wife from an Egyptian +harem--a surprising acquisition with which to startle and enchant +his decorous family in East Middleton! + +And a pretty end to his work here, his reputation, his +responsibilities-- + +It was madness. And the fact that the thought had presented itself, +even for his flouting mockery, indicated that he was mad. He told +himself to be careful. Better men than he had everlastingly done for +themselves because upon a night of stars and moonshine some +dark-eyed girl had played the very devil with their common sense. + +He reminded himself that he had never set eyes on her until last +night, that she might be the consummate perfection of a minx, that +there might not be a word of truth in all of this. + +This general, now! Sudden. Not a word about it last night. And now-- + +He had an inkling that even Mohammedan fathers do not rush matters +at such a pace. + +For all he knew the girl might be inventing this general--for some +artless reasons of her own. For all he knew she might be married to +him and desirous of escape. + +But he didn't believe it. She was too young and shy and virginal. +The accents of her candor rebuked his skepticism. He merely told +himself these things because the last vestige of his expiring common +sense was prompting him. + +And after all these creditable and excellent exhortations, to the +utter extinction of the last vestige of that common sense he heard +himself saying abruptly, "But isn't there anything in the world that +I can do--?" + +"Nothing, monsieur." + +"But for you to submit--like this--" + +"It is not to be helped." + +"But it _is_ to be helped--if you really dislike it," he added +jealously. + +"I cannot help it, because--because my father--" She hesitated. The +honor of her father and her family pride and affection were all +involved, yet suddenly the sacrifice of these became more tolerable +than to consent to that image of herself which she saw swiftly +defining itself in his mind, that slight, weak creature, whose +acquiescent passivity submitted to this marriage. + +The thought was unbearable. She was burning beneath her veil. She +would tell him.... And perhaps she was not averse, in her childish +pride, to the pitiful glory of having him see her in the beauty of +her filial sacrifice. + +"My father has--has done something against the English laws," she +faltered, "and Hamdi Bey, this general, knows of it, and will inform +unless--unless my father makes this marriage. A cousin of his has +seen me," she added, her young vanity forlornly rearing its head, +"and told Hamdi that I am not--not too ill-looking a girl--" + +Her essay of a laugh died. + +Ryder's look deepened its sharp, defensive concentration. + +"This is true--I mean your father is not just putting something +over--telling you to get your consent?" + +Her thoughts flew back to her father's haggard face. "Oh, it is +true! I know." + +"And he's going to hand you over--What sort is this Hamdi?" + +"A general. Old. Evil enough to lay traps to obtain me." + +"It's abomination." The anger in the young man surged beyond his +control. "You must not do it.... If your father is clever enough to +break a law let him be clever enough to mend it--by himself. Such a +sacrifice is not required.... You must realize what this means to +you. You must realize--Look here, I'll help you. I'll plan some +escape. There must be ways. I have friends--" + +She stifled the leap of her heart. She held her head high and made +what she thought was a very noble little speech. "It is for my +father, monsieur. You do not understand. It is to save my father." + +He looked at her in silence. He was afraid to answer for a moment; +he could feel the unruly blood beating even in the lips he pressed +together. + +"But don't you understand--" he blurted at last and broke off. + +After all, he did not know this girl. If he swayed her judgment now, +and dragged her away, what life, what compensation could he offer +her? How did he know that she would not regret it? Would she be +happier in a world unknown?.... + +She had been brought up to this sort of thing. It was bred in +her.... Marriage was her inevitable game. This very charm she +exercised, this subtle, haunting invasion of his senses, what was +that but another proof of the harem existence where all influences +were forced to serve the ends of sex ... + +And she was so maddeningly resigned to taking this general! + +A queer hot rage was gaining possession of him. "Oh, well, if you +prefer this," he said brutally, with a youthful desire to wreak pain +in return for that strange pain which something was inflicting upon +him. + +A girl who would let him kiss her one night--and on the next inform +him that she was giving herself to an unknown--an old Turk.... If +she could go like that, to some other's arms and lips ... + +He wanted to take her fiercely in his arms and crush her lips +against his and then fling her away and say, "Oh, go to him now--if +you can!" + +And at the same time he wanted to gather her to him as tenderly as +if she were a flower he was guarding and tell her that he would +protect her against all the world. + +He was divided and confused and blindly angry. He felt baffled and +frustrated. He was both aching and raging. And yet he was capable of +reminding himself, in some corner of his uninvaded mind, that this +was undoubtedly the best thing for them both. + +What else? For him? For her? + +And yet his tongue went on stabbing her. + +"If this is what you are determined to do--" he heard himself saying +hardly, yet with a hint of deferred finality. + +It was as if he had said, "If this, then, is what you are like! If +you are the soft, submissive harem creature, the toy, the +odalisque--If you will endure undesired love rather than face the +world--" + +And she knew that was what he was saying to her. The injustice +brought a lump of self-pity to her throbbing throat.... That he +should not realize and honor the courage of her sacrifice.... That +he should reproach, despise.... She had expected other entreaties +... protestations.... + +Her heart ached with a throb of steady dreariness. + +But she did not stir. Not a line of her drooping draperies wavered +towards him. And swallowing that lump in her throat, she achieved a +toneless, "That is what I am going to do." + +At the other end of the garden a sound came from the house. + +Ryder seemed to rouse himself. "Good-bye, then," he said, +uncertainly. + +"Good-bye, monsieur." + +He looked oddly at her. "Good-bye," he muttered again, and turned, +and stumbled out of the gate. + +A pool of moonlight lay without its arches, and he stepped into it +as if coming out of the shadows of an enchanted garden. He stood and +straightened himself as if throwing off that garden's spell. He put +back his shoulders and took a quick step down the lane. + +A slight sound drew his eyes back. + +She had followed him to the gate; she stood there, in the moonlight, +against the inky wells of shadow into which her black robe flowed, +and in the moonlight her face, gazing after him, was an exquisite, +ethereal apparition, like a spirit of the garden. + +She had cast off her veil. He had a vision of her dark eyes shining +over rose-flushed cheeks, of deeper-rose-red lips in curves of +haunting sweetness, of the tender contour of her young face, fixed +unforgettingly in the radiant moonlight--only an instant's vision, +for while the blood stopped in his veins the darkness engulfed her, +like a magician's curtain. + +But he waited while he heard the gate closed. Still he waited while +he heard her locking it. And then for all his hot young pride, he +turned back and knocked upon it. He called softly. He whispered +entreaties. + +Not a sound. Not an answer. + +In a revulsion of feeling he turned and made his way blindly from +the lane. + +She had heard his voice. Like a creature utterly spent, she had been +leaning against the great gate from which she had withdrawn the key. +But she uttered not a breath in answer, and after she had heard his +footsteps die away she turned slowly back and groped among the rose +roots for the key's hiding place. + +Mechanically she smoothed it over and moved on towards the house. +All was quiet there. That sound had been no alarm. Unobserved she +slipped within the little door, and up the spiral steps. + +She had not seen the dark eyes that were watching her, from the +other side of the rose thicket. After the girl had gained the house, +the old woman came forward and stooped before the marked bush, +muttering under her breath at the thorns. After a few moments she +gave a little grunt of satisfaction and her exploring hand drew out +the key. + +Smoothing again the rifled hiding place among the roses, she made +her careful way into the house. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A SECRET OF THE SANDS + + +The siesta was past. The sun was tilting towards the west and +shadows were beginning to jut out across the blazing sands. + +Over the mounds of rubbish the bearers had resumed their slow +procession, a picturesque frieze of tattered, indigo-robed, ebony +figures, baskets on heads, against a cloudless cobalt sky, and again +the hot air was invaded with the monotonous rise and fall of their +labor chant. + +A man with a short, pointed red beard and an academic face beneath a +pith helmet was stooping over the siftings from those baskets, +intent upon the stream of sand through the wire screens. Patiently +he discarded the unending pebbles, discovering at rare intervals +some lost bead, some splinter of old sycamore wood, some fragment of +pottery in which a Ptolemy had sipped his wine--or a kitchen wench +had soaked her lentils. + +Beyond the man were traces of the native camp, a burnt-out fire, a +roll of rags, a tattered shelter cloth stuck on two tottering +sticks, and distributed indiscriminatingly were a tethered goat, a +white donkey with motionless, drooping ears, and a few supercilious +camels. + +The camp was in the center of a broken line of foothills on the +desert's edge. North and south and west the wide sands swept out to +meet the sky, and to the east, shutting out the Nile valley, the +hills reared their red rock from the yellow drift. + +Among the jutting rock in the foreground yawned dark mouths that +were the entrances of the discovered tombs, and within one of these +tombs was another white man. He was conducting his own siftings in +high solitude, a lean, bronzed young man, with dark hair and eyes +and, at the present moment, an unexhilarated expression. + +It had been two weeks since Jack Ryder had returned to camp. Two +interminable weeks. They were the longest, the dullest, the +dreariest, the most irritatingly undelighting weeks that he had ever +lived through. + +But bitterly he resented any aspersion from the long-suffering +Thatcher upon his disposition. He wanted it distinctly understood +that he was _not_ low-spirited. Not in the least. A man wasn't in +the dumps just because he wasn't--well, garrulous. Just because he +didn't go about whistling like a steam siren or exult like a cheer +leader when some one dug up the effigy of a Hathor-cow.... Just +because he objected when the natives twanged their fool strings all +night and wailed at the moon. + +The moon was full now. Round and white it went sailing blandly over +the eternal monotony of desert.... Round and white, it lighted up +the eternal sameness of life.... He had never noticed it before, but +a moon was a poignantly depressing phenomenon. + +He couldn't help it. A man couldn't make himself be a comedian. It +wasn't as if he wanted to be a grump. He would have been glad to be +glad. He wanted Thatcher to make him glad. He defied him to. + +He didn't enjoy this flat, insipid taste of things, this dull grind, +this feeling of sameness and dullness that made nothing seem worth +while.... A feeling that he had been marooned on a desert island, +far from all stir and throb of life. + +Suppose he did dig up a Hathor-cow? Suppose he dug up Hathor +herself, or Cleopatra, or ten little Ptolemies? What was the good of +it? + +Not Jinny Jeffries herself could have cast more aspersions upon the +personal value of excavations. + +When he was tired of denying to himself that there was anything +unusual the matter with him, he shifted the inner argument and took +up the denial that anything which had happened in Cairo those two +weeks before had anything to do with it. As if that rash encounter +_mattered_! As if he were the silly, senseless sentimental sort of +idiot to go mooning about his work because of a girl--and a girl +from a harem with a taste for secret masquerades and Turkish +marriages! + +As if he cared--! + +Of course--he admitted this logically and coldly now to himself, as +he sat there in the ray of his excavator's lantern, on the sanded +floor at the end of the Hall of Offerings--of course, he was sorry +for the girl. It was no life for any young girl--especially a +spirited one, with her veins bubbling with French blood. + +The system was wrong. If they were going to shut up those girls, +they had no business to bring them up on modern ideas. If they kept +the mashrubiyeh on the windows and the yashmak on their faces they +ought to keep the kohl on their eyes and the henna on their fingers +and education out of their hidden heads. + +It was too bad.... But, of course, they were brought up to it. Look +how quickly that girl had given in. She was Turkish, through and +through. Submissive. Docile.... And a darned good thing she was, +too! Suppose she had taken him at his fool word. Suppose she had +really wanted to get away! + +Lucky, that's what he'd been. And it would be a lesson to him. Never +again. No more masked young things with their stolen keys and their +harem entrances. No more whispered tales of woe in a shady garden. +No more-- + +Violently he wrenched himself from his No Mores. Recollection had a +way of stirring an unpleasant tumult. + +But it was all over. He had forgotten it--he _would_ forget it. He +would forget _her_. Work, that was the thing. Normal, sensible, +every day work. + +But there was no joy in this tonic work. Somewhere, between a night +and a morning, he had lost that glow of accomplishment which had +buoyed him, which had made him fairly ecstatic over the discovery of +this very tomb. + +For this tomb was his own find. It had been found long before by the +plundering Persians, and it had been found by Arabs who had +plundered the Persian remains--but between and after those findings +the oblivious sands had swept over it, blotting it from the world, +choking the entrance hall and the shafts, seeping through +half-sealed entrances and packing its dry drift over the rifled +sarcophagus of the king and over the withered mummy of the young +girl in the ante-room. The tombs had been cleared now, down almost +to the stone floors, and Ryder was busy with the drifts that had +lodged in the crevices about the entrance to the shaft. + +It was really an important find. Although much plundered, the walls +were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls +were exceptional examples. And there were some very interesting +things to decipher. A scholar and an explorer could well be +enthusiastic. + +But Ryder continued to look far from enthusiastic. Even when his +groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard +substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance. +Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it +off. A gleam of gold shone in his hand. But it was no ancient amulet +or necklace or breast guard--nor was it any bit of the harness of +the plundering Persians. It was a locket, very heavily and ornately +carved. + +He stood a moment staring down at the thing with a curious feeling +of having stood staring down at exactly the same thing before--that +subconscious feeling of the repetition of events which supports the +theories of reincarnationists--and then, quite suddenly, memory came +to his aid. + +In McLean's office. That day of the masquerade. Those visiting +Frenchmen and that locket they had shown him. Of course the thing +reminded him-- + +And it was remarkably alike. The same thick oval, the same ponderous +effect of the coat of arms--if it should prove the same coat of arms +that would be a clue! + +With his mind still piecing the recollection and surmise together +his fingers pressed the spring. There was a miniature within, but it +was not the picture of Monsieur Delcassé. Ryder was looking down +upon the face of a girl, a beautiful, spirited face, with merry eyes +and wistful lips--dark eyes, with a lovely arch of brow, and +rose-red lips with haunting curves. + +And eyes and brows and lips and curves, it was the face of the girl +who had gazed after him in the moonlight against the shadows of the +pasha's garden. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT + + +"It is no end of good of you, Jack, to take this trouble," Andrew +McLean remarked appreciatively, looking up from his scrutiny of the +packet which his unexpected luncheon guest had pushed over to his +plate. + +"Uncommon thoughtful. It's undoubtedly a twin to that locket, the +portrait of the man's wife--whatever his name was." + +"Delcassé," said Jack Ryder promptly. + +Gratefully he drained the second lemon squash which the +silent-footed Mohammed had placed at his elbow. It had been a hard +morning's trip, this coming in from camp in high haste, and he was +hot and dusty. + +"You might have sent the thing," McLean mentioned. "I daresay that +special agent chap has left the country, for I recollect he said he +was at the end of his search.... And, of course, this isn't much of +a clue--eh, what?" + +"It's everything of a clue," insisted Ryder. "It shows where this +Frenchman was working, for the first thing--" + +"Unless it had been stolen by some native who lost it in that +tomb." + +"Natives don't lose gold lockets. Of course it might have been +stolen and hidden--but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely +that this was the very tomb where Delcassé was working at the time +of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous +excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern +got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of +the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcassé wrote his +book about--looks very much as if it might be by the same artist. +There's a flock of hippopotami in a marsh scene with the identical +drawing, and there's the same lovely boat in full sail--but there, +you bounder, you don't know the Tomb of Thi from a thyroid gland. +You're here to administer financial justice, the middle, the high, +and the low; your soul is with piasters, not the past. But take my +word for it, it's exactly the spot where an enthusiast of the Thi +Tomb would be grubbing away.... Lord, they could choose their find +in those days!" + +"It's uncommonly likely," McLean conceded, abandoning his demolished +cherry tart and pulling out his briar. "And if the locket proves the +duplicate of the other it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame +Delcassé, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame +Delcassé.... Though in a general way," McLean deduced with Scotch +judicialness, "it supports the theory of foul play. The woman would +hardly have lost her miniature, or have sold it, except under +pressing conditions. In fact--" + +Ryder was brusque with his facts. + +"That doesn't matter--Madame Delcassé doesn't matter. The thing that +matters is--" + +As brusquely he broke off. His tongue balked before the revelation +but he goaded it on. + +"That there is a girl--the living image of that picture." + +"I say!" McLean looked up at that, distinctly intrigued. "That's +getting on.... You mean you've seen her?" + +Ryder nodded, suddenly busy with his cigarette. + +"Where is she, now? In Cairo? That's luck, man!... And you say she's +like?" + +"You'd think it her picture." + +"It's an uncommon face." McLean bent over it again. "I fancied the +artist had just been making a bit of beauty, but if there's a girl +like that--! Fancy stumbling on that!... But where is she? And what +name does she go by?" + +"Oh, her name--she doesn't know her own, of course." Ryder paused +uncertainly. "She's in Cairo," he began again vaguely. "She'd be +just about the right age--eighteen or so. She--she's had awf'ly +hard luck." Distressfully he hesitated. + +The shrewd eyes of McLean dwelt upon him in sorrowful silence. "Eh, +Jock," he said at last, with mock scandal scarcely veiling rebuke. +"I did not know that you knew any of that sort--the poor, wee lost +thing.... Tell me, now--" + +"Tell you you're off your chump," said Jack rudely. "She's no lost +lamb. Fact is, she's never spoken to a man--except myself." He +rather enjoyed the start this gave McLean after his insinuations. It +helped him on with his story. + +"The girl doesn't know her own name at all, I gather. She thinks +she's the daughter of Tewfick Pasha. Her mother married the Turk and +died very soon afterwards and he brought up this girl as his own. +She says she's his only child." + +He paused, ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually +to enjoy McLean's astonishment. As astonishment, it was distinctly +vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into +his friend's mind. + +McLean knew--slightly--Tewfick Pasha. He knew--supremely--the +inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the +utter impossibility of any man's speech with her. + +Yet here was Ryder telling him-- + +Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the +girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He +touched lightly upon her attempted flight and his pursuit. Even more +lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate +and the exchange of confidences. + +"She said that her dead mother had been French. And that her name +was her mother's--Aimée. So there is--" + +"But the likeness, man--her face? She never unveiled to you?" + +"Well, the next night--" + +"The _next_ night?" + +It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of McLean's +astonishment. + +"Yes, the next night," he repeated with careful carelessness.... "I +told the girl I would come and see if she got in all right--there +had been some footsteps the night before--" + +"And you went? And she came?" + +"Do you suppose she sent her father?" + +"You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch," McLean retorted +grimly. "Well, get on with your damning story. The girl took off her +veil--" + +"Nothing of the kind," said Jack a trifle testily--so soon does +conventional masculinity champion the conservatism of the other sex! +"That was just as I was going--gone, in fact. I looked back and she +had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face--I saw her +as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a +picture of her. She is Delcassé's daughter and she doesn't know it. +Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old Turk--" + +"Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago Tewfick could hardly have been +thirty and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love +affair or it may have been plunder.... The girl remembers her?" + +"Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that +the father was so in love that he never married again." + +"H'm ... It seems to me that I've heard tales of our Tewfick and of +pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and +tattlers. However--as to this Delcassé inheritance, I'll just notify +the French legation--" + +"We'll have to look sharp," said Ryder quickly. "There's no time to +lose. The girl is to be married." + +"Married?... But she'll inherit the money just the same." + +"But she doesn't want to be married," Ryder insisted anxiously. "Her +father--her alleged father--has just sprung this on her. Says there +are political or financial reasons. He's been caught in some dirty +work by this Hamdi Bey and he's stopping Hamdi's mouth with the +girl.... And we've got to stop that." + +"I wonder if we can," said McLean thoughtfully. + +"If we can? When the girl is French? When she's been lied to and +deceived?" + +"She seems to have been taken jolly well care of. Brought up as his +own and all that. Keep your shirt on, Jack," McLean advised dryly +with a shrewd glance from his gray eyes at the other's unguarded +heat. + +Then his eyes dropped to the miniature again. A lovely face. A +lovely unfortunate creature.... And if the daughter looked like +that, small wonder that Jack was touched.... Beauty in distress. + +Some men had all the luck, McLean reflected. He had never taken Jack +for the gallivanting kind, either, yet here he was going to +masquerades with one girl and coming home with another.... + +Jack was too good looking, that was the trouble with the youngster. +Good looking and gay humored. The kind that attracted women.... +Women and romance were never fluttering about lank, light-eyed, +uninteresting old Scotchmen of twenty-nine! + +A mild and wistful pang, which McLean refused to name, made itself +known. + +"I'll see the legation," he began. + +"At once. I'll wait," urged Ryder. + +And at once McLean went. + + * * * * * + +The result was what he had foreseen. The legation was appreciative +of his interest. That special agent had returned to France but his +address was left, and undoubtedly the family of Delcassé would be +grateful for any information which Monsieur McLean could send. + +"Send!" repudiated Ryder hotly. "Write to France and back--wait for +somebody to come over! Can't the legation do something now?" + +"The legation has no authority. They can't take the girl away from +the man who is, at any rate, her step-father." + +"They can put the fear of God into him about this marriage. They +can deny his right to hand her over to one of his pals. They can +threaten him with an inquiry into the circumstances of her mother's +marriage." + +"And why should they? They may regard it as a very natural marriage. +And remember, my dear Jack, that the legation has no desire to +alienate the affections of influential Turks, or criticize +fifteen-years-ago romances. You have a totally wrong impression of +the responsibilities of foreign representatives." + +"But to let him dispose of a French girl--" + +"He is disposing of her, as his daughter, in honorable marriage to a +wealthy and aristocratic general. There can be no question of his +motives--" + +"Of course, if you think that sort of thing is all right--" + +Carefully McLean ignored the other's wrath. + +Patiently he explained. "It's not what I think, my dear fellow, it's +what the legation thinks. There's not a chance in the world of +getting the marriage stopped." + +"Then I'll do it myself," declared Ryder. "I'll see this Tewfick +Pasha and talk to him. Tell him the money is to come to the girl +only when she is single. Tell him the French law gives the father's +representatives full charge. Tell him that he kidnapped the mother +and the government will prosecute unless the girl is given her +liberty. Tell him anything. A man with a guilty conscience can +always be bluffed." + +In silence McLean gazed upon him, perplexed and clouded, his +quizzical twinkle gone. Jack was taking this thing infernally to +heart.... And it was a bad business. + +"You will let me do the telling," he stated at last, grimly. "What +can be said, I'll say. Like a fool, I will meddle." + +And so it happened that within another hour two very stiff and +constrained young men were ringing the bell at the entrance door of +Tewfick Pasha. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +TEWFICK RECEIVES + + +A huge Soudanese admitted them. They found themselves in a tiled +vestibule, looking through open arches into the green of a +garden--that garden, Ryder hardly needed to remind himself, with +whose back door he had made such unconventional acquaintance. + +Now he had a glimpse of a sunny fountain and fluttering pigeons, +and, on either side of the garden, of the two wings of the building, +gay white walls with green shutters more suggestive of a French +villa than an Egyptian palace, before the Soudanese marshaled them +toward the stairs upon the right. + +The left, then, was the way to the haremlik. And somewhere in those +secluded rooms, to which no man but the owner of the palace ever +gained admission, was Aimée. + +The Soudanese mounted the stairs before them and held open a door +into a long drawing-room from which the pasha's modernity had +stripped every charm except the color of some worn old rugs; the +windows were draped in European style, the walls exhibited paper +instead of paneling; in one corner was a Victrola and in another, +beside a lounge chair, stood a table littered with cigarette trays +and French novels with explicit titles. + +The only Egyptian touch to the place was four enormous oil portraits +of pompous turbaned gentlemen, in one of whom Ryder recognized the +familiar rotundity of Mahomet Ali in his grand robes. + +As a pasha's palace it was a blow, and Ryder's vague, romantic +notions of high halls and gilded arches, suffered a collapse. + +Tewfick Pasha came in with haste. He had been going out when these +callers were announced and he was dressed for parade, in a very +light, very tight suit, gardenia in his button-hole, cane in his +gloved hands, fez upon his head. For all their smiling welcome, his +full, dark eyes were uneasy. + +He had grown distrustful of surprises. + +It was McLean's affair to reassure him. Far from fulminating any +accusations the canny Scot announced himself as the bearer of glad +tidings. A fortune, he announced, was coming to the pasha--or to the +pasha's family. A very rich old woman in France had decided to +change her will. + +There he paused and the pasha continued to smile non-committally, +but the word fortune was operating. In the back of his mind he was +hastily trying to think of rich old women in France who might change +their wills. + +"I am afraid that it is my stupidity which has kept you from the +knowledge of this for some weeks," McLean went on. "I had so many +other matters to look up that I did not at once consult my records. +And it has been so many years since you married Madame Delcassé that +the name had slipped general recollection.... It was twelve years +ago, I believe, that she died?" + +Casually he waited and Jack Ryder held his breath. He felt the full +suspense of a pause long enough for the pasha's thoughts to dart +down several avenues and back. If the man should deny it! But why +should he? What harm in the admission, after all these years, with +Madame Delcassé dead and buried? And with a fortune involved in the +admission. + +The Turk bowed and Ryder breathed again. + +"Ten years," said Tewfick softly. + +"Ah--ten. But there has been no communication with France for twelve +years or even longer?" + +"Possibly not, monsieur." + +"This old aunt," pursued McLean, "was a person of prejudice as well +as fortune--hence it has taken a little time for her to adjust +herself." He paused and looked understandingly at the Turk, who +nodded amiably as one whose comprehension met him more than half +way. + +"My own aunt was of a similar obstinacy," he murmured. He added, +"This fortune you speak of--it comes through my wife?" + +"For her inheritors. Madame Delcassé--the former Madame Delcassé I +should say--left but one daughter?" + +Again the pasha bowed and again Ryder felt the throb of triumph. He +looked upon his friend with admiration. How marvelously McLean had +worked the miracle. No accusations, no threats, no obstacles, no +blank walls of denial! Not a ruffle of discord in the establishment +of these salient facts--the marriage of Madame Delcassé to the pasha +and the existence of the daughter. + +Wonderful man--McLean. He had never half appreciated him. + +But the pasha was not wholly the simple assenter. + +"Do I understand," he inquired, "that there is a fortune coming from +France for my daughter?" And at McLean's confirmation, "And when you +say fortune," he continued, "you intend to say--?" and his glance +now took in the silent American, considering that some cue must be +his. + +But McLean responded. "The figures are not to be divulged--not until +the aunt is in communication with her niece. But they will be large, +monsieur, for this aunt is a person of great wealth." + +"And yet alive to enjoy it," said Tewfick with smiling eyes. + +"An aged and dying woman," thrust in Ryder in haste. "Her only care +now is to see her niece before she dies." + +"Ah!... But that could be arranged," said Tewfick amiably. + +"We have at once communicated with France," McLean told him, "but we +came instantly to you, to, inform you--" + +"A thousand thanks and a thousand! The bearers of good tidings," +smiled their host. + +"Because we understand that there is a question of the young lady's +marriage," pursued McLean, "and you would, of course, wish to defer +this until these new circumstances are complied with." + +The pasha stared. "Not at all. A fortune is as pleasant to a wife as +to a maid." + +"There are so many questions of law," offered McLean with purposeful +vagueness. "French wardship and trusteeship and all that. It would +be advisable, I think, to wait." + +"Absurd," said the pasha easily. + +"You would want no doubts cast upon the legality of the marriage," +McLean persisted thoughtfully, "and since mademoiselle is under age +and the French law has certain restrictions--" + +"Pff! We are not under the French law--at least I have not heard +that England has relinquished her power," retorted Tewfick not +without malice. + +"But Mademoiselle Delcassé is French," thrust in Ryder. He knew that +McLean had ventured as far as he, an official and responsible +person, could go, and that the burden of intimation must rest upon +himself. "And under her father's will his family there is +considered in trusteeship. So there would be certain technicalities +that must be considered before any marriage can be arranged, the +signature of the French guardian, the settlement of the dot--this +inheritance, for instance--all mere formalities but involving a +little delay." + +Tewfick Pasha turned in his chair and cocked his eyes at this +strange young man who had dropped from the blue with this extensive +advice. He looked puzzled. This American fitted into no type of his +acquaintance. He was so very young and slim and boyish ... with not +at all the air of a legal representative.... But McLean's position +vouched for him. + +"You speak for the French family, monsieur?" + +Unhesitatingly Ryder declared that he did. + +"Then you may inform the family," announced Tewfick, bristling, +"that my daughter has been very well cared for all these years +without advice from France." + +"I haven't a doubt of it," said Ryder quickly, "but the French law +might begin to entertain doubts of it, if mademoiselle were married +off now without consultation with the authorities.... Already," he +added a little meaningly, as the other shrugged the suggestion away, +"there have been questions raised concerning the mother's marriage +and the separation of the little Mademoiselle Delcassé from her +relatives in France, and now if she were to be married without any +legal settlement of her estate--" + +Steadily he sustained the other's gaze, while his unfinished thought +seemed to float significantly in the air about them. + +"Have a cigarette," said the pasha hospitably, extending a gold case +monogrammed with diamonds and emeralds. "Ah, coffee!" he announced, +welcomingly, as a little black boy entered with a brass tray of +steaming cups. + +"I hope, gentlemen, that you like my coffee. It is not the usual +Turkish brew. No, this comes from Aden, the finest coffee in the +world. A ship captain brings it to me, especially." + +Beamingly he sipped the scalding stuff, then darted back to that +suspended sentence. "But you were saying--something of a +trusteeship?... Do I understand that it is an aunt of Madame +Delcassé--the former Madame Delcassé--who is leaving this money?" + +"Not of Madame but of Monsieur Delcassé," McLean informed him. + +"Ah!... That accounts ... But in that case, then, there need be no +concern in France over my daughter's marriage...." He turned his +round eyes from one to the other a moment. + +"There is no Mademoiselle Delcassé." + +"Sir?" said Ryder sharply. + +"There is no Mademoiselle Delcassé," repeated the pasha, his eyes +frankly enlivened. + +"But--we have just been speaking--you cannot mean to say--" + +"We have been speaking of my daughter--the daughter of the former +Madame Delcassé." + +Smilingly he looked upon them. "A pity that we did not understand +each other. But you appear to know so much--and I supposed that you +knew that, too, that the daughter of Monsieur Delcassé was dead." + +Neither of the young men spoke. McLean looked politely attentive; +Ryder's face maintained that look of concentration which guarded the +fluctuations of his feelings. + +"It was many years ago," the pasha murmured, putting down his coffee +cup and selecting another cigarette. "Not long after her mother's +marriage to me.... A very charming little girl--I was positively +attached to her," Tewfick added reminiscently. + +"Well, well, well, what a pity now," said McLean very slowly. +"This will be a great disappointment.... And so the present +mademoiselle--" + +"Is my daughter." + +McLean was silent. Ryder could hardly trust himself to speak. + +"What did she die of?" he asked at last, in a voice whose edged +quality brought the pasha's glance to him with a flash of hostility +behind its veil. + +But he answered calmly enough. "Of the fever, monsieur.... She was +never strong." + +"And her grave... I should like to make a report." + +"It was in the south ... desert burial, I am afraid. You must know +that the little one was hardly a true believer for our cemetery." + +"And you would say that she was only five or six years old?" Ryder +persisted. + +The pasha nodded. + +"I should like to get as near as possible to the date if it is not +too much trouble.... The father died about fifteen years ago and the +mother was married to you soon after?" + +"Really, monsieur, you--" + +Tewfick was frankly restive. + +"I know nothing of the father," he said sullenly. "And as to the +child's death--how can one recall after these years? In one, two +years after she came to me--one does not grave these things upon the +eyeballs." + +"But you do remember that it was long ago--when your own daughter +was very little?" + +"Exactly. That is my recollection, monsieur.... And I recall," said +the pasha, suddenly obliging and sentimental, "that even my little +one cried for the child. It was afflicting.... Assure the family in +France of my sympathy in their disappointment." + +"I am sorry that my news is after all of no interest to you," +observed McLean, setting the example for rising. "You will pardon my +error of information--and accept my appreciation of your courtesy." + +"It is I who am indebted for your trouble," their host assured +them, all smiles again. + +But Ryder was not to be led away without a parting shot. + +"The name of the Delcassé child--was Aimée?" + +Imperceptibly Tewfick hesitated. Then bowed in assent. + +"Odd," said young Ryder thoughtfully. "And your own daughter's name, +also, is Aimée.... Two little ones with the same name." + +With a slight, vexed laugh, as one despairing of understanding, the +pasha turned to McLean. "Your young friend, monsieur, is uninformed +that Turkish children have many names.... After the loss of the +elder we called the little one by the same name.... I trust I have +made everything perfectly clear to you?" + +"As crystal," said McLean politely. + + * * * * * + +"As lightning," said Jack Ryder hotly, striding down the street. "It +was a flash of invention, that yarn. When I spoke about the +questions raised by his marriage the old fox sniffed the wind and +was afraid of trouble--he decided on the instant that no future +fortune was worth interference with his plans, and he cut the ground +from under our feet.... Lord, what a lie!" + +"Masterly, you must admit." + +"Oh, I admired the beggar, even while I choked on it. But +fever--desert burial--two Aimées! And the sentimental face he +pulled--he ought to have had a spot-light and wailing woodwinds." + +McLean chuckled. + +"I'll believe anything of him now," Ryder rushed on. "I'll bet he +murdered Delcassé and kidnapped the mother--and now he is selling +their daughter--" + +"I fancy murder's a bit beyond our Tewfick. That's too thick. He's +probably telling the truth there--he may never have known Delcassé. +And as for the widow--she must have been in no end of trouble with a +dead man and a wrecked expedition and a baby on her hands, and +Tewfick may have offered himself as a grateful solution to her. +You'd be surprised at the things I've heard. And if she looked like +her picture Tewfick probably laid himself out to be lovely to +her.... I rather like the chap, myself." + +"I love him," Ryder snorted. "The infernal liar--" + +"Steady now--suppose it's all the truth? Nothing impossible to it. +Fact is, I rather believe it," said McLean imperturbably. "It hangs +together. If this girl you met thinks she's his daughter, that's +conclusive. She'd have some idea--servants' gossip or family +whisperings.... And why should he have brought her up as his own?" + +"No other children. And he'd grown fond of her, of course. If you +could see her!" retorted Ryder. + +"Just as well, I can't.... And I think he could hardly have kept her +in the dark.... We'd better call it a wild goose chase and say the +man's telling the truth." + +"If this girl were his daughter she couldn't be more than fourteen +years old. And I've seen the girl and she's eighteen if she's a +day--you might take her for twenty. _Fourteen_!" said Ryder in +repudiating scorn. + +Hesitating McLean murmured something about the early maturity of the +natives. + +"Natives?" Ryder flung angrily back. "This girl's French!" + +"As far as we are concerned, Jack, this girl is Turkish--and +fourteen.... We can't get around that, and you had better not forget +it," his friend quietly advised. "We've done everything that we can +and there is no use working yourself up.... If anybody's to blame in +this business, I don't think it's Tewfick--he's done the handsome +thing by her--but the fool Frenchman who took his baby and his wife +into the desert, and it's too late to rag him. Cheer up, old top, +and forget it. There's nothing more to be done." + +It was sound advice, Jack Ryder knew it. They had done all that they +could. McLean had been a brick. There remained nothing now but to +notify the Delcassé aunt that Tewfick Pasha claimed the child. + +"And I've a notion, Jack," said McLean thoughtfully, "that he might +not have done that if you hadn't rushed him so, trying to break off +the marriage. That was what frightened him." + +"I thought you said she was his own daughter," Ryder responded +indignantly, and to that McLean merely murmured, "She will be now, +to all time." + +It was a haunting thought. It left Ryder with the bitter taste of +blame in his mouth, the gall and wormwood of blame and a baffled +defeat. + +But for that sense of blame he might have taken McLean's advice. He +might--but for that--have gone the way of wisdom, and accepted the +inevitable. + +As it was, he did none of these things. + + * * * * * + +He said to himself that all that he could do now--and the least that +he could do--was to let the girl know as much of the story as he +knew and draw her own conclusions. Then, if she wanted to go on and +sacrifice herself for Tewfick, very well. That was none of his +affair. + +But she had a right to the truth and to the chance of choice. + +He did not know what he could do, but secretly and defiantly he +promised himself that he would do something, and in the back of his +mind an idea was already taking shape. It was manifest in the +tenacity with which he refused to send the locket to the Delcassés. +He had the case and the miniature photographed very carefully by the +man who did the reproductions for museum illustrations, and he sent +that, conscious of McLean's silent thought that he was cherishing +the portrait for a sentimental memory. + +But he had other plans for it. + +He did not return to his diggings. He sent a message to the deserted +Thatcher, faking errands in Cairo, and he took a room at the hotel +where Jinny Jeffries--now up the Nile--had stayed. He spent a great +deal of time evenings in the hotel garden, staring over the brick +walls to the tops of distant palms beyond, and not infrequently he +slipped out the garden's back door and wandered up and down the dark +canyon of a lane. + +He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepheard's +Hotel. + +And yet the girl had her key. She could get away if she wanted to +and she might want to if she knew the truth. + +But how to get that truth to her? That was his problem. A dozen +plans he considered and rejected. There were the mails--simple and +obvious channel--but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan +seclusion do not receive their letters directly. And now, +especially, Tewfick would be on his guard. + +Then there was the chance of a message through some native's hands. +The house servants--? There were hours, one day, when Ryder +sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy-trousered +_sais_ who stood holding a horse in the sun or the tattered baker's +boy, approaching the entrance with his long loaves upon his head, +but Ryder's Arabic was not of a power or subtlety to corrupt any +creature, and he stayed his tongue. + +Bitterly he regretted his wasted years. If he had not misspent them +in godly living he would now be upon such terms of intimacy with +some official's pretty wife who had the entrée to a pasha's daughter +that she could be induced to make use of it for him. + +Desperately he thought of remedying this defect. There were several +charming young matrons not averse to devoted young men, but the time +was short for establishing those confidential relations which were +what he required now. + +Jinny Jeffries would do it for him if she could, but Jinny would not +return for another week. And if she changed her mind and took the +boat back--as he, alack! had advised--instead of the express, then +she would be longer. + +And meanwhile the days were passing, four of them now since he and +McLean had heard the Soudanese locking the door behind them. + +There seemed nothing for it but to trust to that idea which had been +slowly shaping in his mind. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A WEDDING PRESENT + + +In a room high in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. +Before a tall pier glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging to +the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly +from the image in the glass. + +Through the open window, banded with three bars, she looked into the +rustling tops of palms, from which the yellow date fruit hung, and +beyond the palms the hot, bright, blue sky and the far towers of a +minaret. + +"A bit more to the left, h'if you please, miss," the woman entreated +through a mouthful of pins, and apathetically the young figure +moved. + +"A bit of h'all right, now, that drape," the woman chirped, sitting +back on her heels to survey her work. + +She was an odd gnome-like figure, with a sharp nose on one side of +her head and an outstanding knob of hair on the other. Into that +knob the thin locks were so tightly strained that her pointed +features had an effect of popping out of bondage. + +She was London born, brought out by an English official's wife as +dressmaker to the children, remaining in Cairo as wife of a British +corporal. Since no children had resulted to require her care and +the corporal maintained his distaste for thrift, Mrs. Hendricks had +resumed her old trade, and had become a familiar figure to many +fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening, +sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have +graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the +family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a +vis-à-vis when the men in the family dropped in for luncheon. + +As the girl did not turn her head she looked for approbation to the +third person in the room, a tall, severely handsome Frenchwoman in +black, whose face had the beauty of chiseled marble and the same +quality of cold perfection. This was Madame de Coulevain, teacher of +French and literature to the _jeunes filles_ of Cairo, former +governess of Aimée, returned now to her old room in the palace for +the wedding preparations. + +There was history behind madame's sculptured face. In an incredibly +impulsive youth she had fled from France with a handsome captain of +Algerian dragoons; after a certain matter at cards he had ceased to +be a captain and became petty official in a Cairo importing house; +later yet, he became an invalid. + +Life, for the Frenchwoman, was a matter of paying for her husband's +illness, then for his funeral expenses, and then of continuing to +pay for the little one which the climate had required them to send +to a convent in France. + +There was, at first, the hope of reunion, extinguished by each +added year. What could madame, unknown, unfriended, unaccredited, +accomplish in France? The mere getting there was impossible--the +little one required so much. Her daughter was no dependent upon +charity. And in Cairo madame had a clientèle, she commanded a price. +And so for the child's sake she taught and saved, concentrating now +upon a dot, and feeding her heart with the dutifully phrased letters +arriving each week of the years, and the occasional photographs of +an ever-growing, unknown young creature. + +It was to madame's care that Aimée had been given when the +motherless girl had grown beyond old Miriam's ministrations, and for +nearly nine years in the palace madame had maintained her courteous +and tactful supervision. Indeed, it was only this last year that +madame had undertaken new relations with the world outside, +perceiving that Aimée would not longer require her. + +"Excellent," she said now in her careful, unfamiliar English to Mrs. +Hendricks, and in French to Aimée she added, with a hint of +asperity, "Do give her a word. She is trying to please you." + +"It is very nice, Mrs. Hendricks," said the girl dutifully, bringing +her glance back from that far sky. + +The little seamstress was instantly all vivacity. "H'and now for the +sash--shall we 'ave it so--or so?" she demanded, attaching the wisp +of tulle experimentally. + +"As you wish it.... It is very nice," Aimée repeated vaguely. She +picked up a bit of the shimmering stuff and spread it curiously +across her fingers. A dinner gown.... When she wore this she would +be a wife.... The wife of Hamdi Bey.... A shiver went through her +and she dropped the tulle swiftly. + +In ten days more.... + +Gone was her first rush of sustaining compassion. Gone was her +fear for her father and her tenderness to him. Only this numb +coldness, this dumb, helpless certainty of a destiny about to be +accomplished.... Only this hopeless, useless brooding upon that +strange brief past. + +There was a stir at the door and on her shuffling, slippered feet +old Miriam entered, handing some packages to Madame de Coulevain. +Then she turned to revolve about the bright figure of her young +mistress, her eyes glistening fondly, her dark fingers touching a +soft fold of silver ribbon, while under her breath she chanted in a +croon like a lullaby, "Beautiful as the dawn ... she will walk upon +the heart of her husband with foot of rose petals ... she will +dazzle him with the beams of her eyes and with the locks of her +hair, she will bind him to her ... beautiful as the dawn...." + +It was the marriage chant of Miriam's native village, an old love +song that had come down the wind of centuries. + +Mrs. Hendricks, thrusting in the final pins, paid not the slightest +attention and Madame de Coulevain displayed interest only in the +packages. If she saw the stiffening of the girl's face and the rigid +aversion of her eyes from the old nurse's adulation she gave no +sign. + +Towards Aimée's moods madame preserved a calm and sensible +detachment. Never had she invited confidence, and for all the young +girl's charm she had never taken her to her heart in the place of +that absent daughter. As if jealously she had held herself aloof +from such devotion. + +Perhaps in Aimée's indulged and petted childhood, with a fond pasha +extolling her small triumphs, her dances, her score at tennis at the +legation, madame found a bitter contrast to the lot of that lonely +child in France. Certainly there was nothing in Aimée's life then to +invite compassion, and later, during those hard, mutinous months of +the girl's first veiling and seclusion, she had not tried to soften +the inevitable for her with a useless compassion. + +So now, perceiving this marriage as one more step in the +irresistible march of destiny for her charge, she overlooked the +youthful fretting and offered the example of her own unmoved +acceptance. + +"What diamonds!" she said now admiringly, holding up a pin, and, +examining the card. "From Seniha Hanum--the cousin of Hamdi Bey." + +A moment more she held up the pin but the girl would not give it a +look. + +"And this, from the same jeweler's," continued madame, while the +dressmaker was unfastening the frock, aided by Miriam, anxious that +no scratch should mar that milk-white skin. + +"How droll--the box is wrapped in cloth, a cloth of plaid." + +Aimée spun about. The dress fell, a glistening circle at her feet, +and with regardless haste she tripped over it to madame. + +"How--strange!" she said breathlessly. + +A plaid ... A Scotch plaid. Memories of an erect, tartan-draped +young figure, of a thin, bronzed face and dark hair where a tilted +cap sat rakishly ... memories of smiling, boyish eyes, darkening +with sudden emotion ... memories of eager lips.... + +She took the box from madame. Within the cloth lay a jeweler's case +and within the case a locket of heavily ornamented gold. + +Her heart beating, she opened it. For a moment she did not +understand. Her own face--her own face smiling back. Yet unfamiliar, +that oddly piled hair, that black velvet ribbon about the throat.... + +Murmuring, madame shared her wonder. + +It was Miriam's cry of recognition that told them. + +"Thy mother--the grace of Allah upon her!--It is thy mother! Eh, +those bright eyes, that long, dark hair that I brushed the many hot +nights upon the roof!" + +"But you are her image, Aimée," murmured the Frenchwoman, but half +understanding the nurse's rapid gutturals, and then, "Your father's +gift?" + +With the box in her hands the girl turned from them, fearful of the +tell-tale color in her cheeks. "But whose else--his thought, of +course," she stammered. + +That plaid was warning her of mystery. + +The dressmaker was creating a diversion. Leaving, she wished to +consult about the purchases for to-morrow's work, and madame moved +towards the hall with her, talking in her careful English, while +Miriam bent towards the dropped finery. + +Aimée slipped through another door, into the twilight of her +bedroom, whose windows upon the street were darkened by those +fine-wrought screens of wood. Swiftly she thrust the box from sight, +into the hollow in the mashrubiyeh made in old days to hold a water +bottle where it could be cooled by breezes from the street. + +Leaning against the woodwork, her fingers curving through the tiny +openings, she stared toward the west. The sky was flushing. Broken +by the circles, the squares, the minute interstices of the +mashrubiyeh, she saw the city taking on the hues of sunset. + +Suddenly the cry of a muezzin from a nearby minaret came rising and +falling through the streets. + +"_La illahé illallah Mohammedun Ressoulallah_--" + +The call swelled and died away and rose again ... There is no God +but _the_ God and Mahomet is the Prophet of God ... From farther +towers it sounded, echoing and re-echoing, vibrant, insistent, +falling upon crowded streets, penetrating muffling walls. + +"_La illahé illallah_--" + +In the avenue beneath her two Arabs, leading their camels to market, +were removing their shoes and going through the gestures of +ceremonial washing with the dust of the street. + +"_La illahé_--" + +The city was ringing with it. + +The seamstress and the Frenchwoman, still talking, had passed down +the hall. In the next room Miriam's lips were moving in pious +testimony. + +"_Ech hedu en la illahé_--! I testify that there is no God but _the_ +God." + +In the street the Arabs were bowing towards the east, their heads +touching the earth. + +And in the window above them a girl was reading a note. + + * * * * * + +The last call of the muezzin, falling from the tardy towers of Kait +Bey drifted faintly through the colored air. With resounding whacks +the Arabs were urging on their beast; Miriam, her prayers concluded, +was shaking out silks and tulle with a sidelong glance for that +still figure in the next room, pressing so close against the +guarding screens. + +She could not see the pallor in the young face. She could not see +the tumult in the dark eyes. She could not see the note, crushed +convulsively against the beating breast, in the fingers which so few +moments ago had drawn it from the hiding place in the box. + +Ryder had not dared a personal letter. But clearly, and distinctly, +he stated the story of the Delcassés. He gave the facts which the +pasha admitted and the ingenious explanation of the two Aimées. And +for reference he gave the address of the Delcassé aunt and agent in +France and of Ryder and McLean at the Agricultural Bank. + + * * * * * + +The pasha did not dine with his daughter that night. He had been +avoiding her of late, a natural reaction from the strain of +too-excessive gratitude. A man cannot be continually humble before +the young! And it was no pleasure to be reminded by her candid eyes +of his late misfortunes and of her absurd reluctance towards +matrimony. + +As if this marriage were not the best thing for her! As if it were a +hardship! To make sad eyes and draw a mouth because one is to be the +wife of a rich general.... Irrational ... The little sweetmeat was +irritating. + +To this point Tewfick's buoyancy had brought him, and all the more +hastily because of his eagerness to escape the pangs of that +uncomfortable self-reproach. To Aimée, in her new clear-sightedness +of misery, it was bitterly apparent that he was reconciled with her +lot and careless of it. + +So blinded had been her young affection that it was a hard +awakening, and she was too young, too cruelly involved, to feel for +his easy humors that amused tolerance of larger acquaintance with +human nature. She had grown swiftly bitter and resentful, and deeply +cold. + +And now this letter. It dazed her, like a flame of lightning before +her eyes, and then, like lightning, it lit up the world with +terrifying luridity. Fiery colored, unfamiliar, her life trembled +about her. + +Truth or lies? Custom and habit stirred incredulously to reject the +supposition. The romance, the adventure of youth, dared its swift +acceptance. How could she know? Intuitively she shrank from any +question to the pasha, realizing the folly and futility of exposing +her suspicion. If he needed to lie, lie he would--and in her +understanding of that, she read her own acceptance of the +possibility of his needing to lie. + +Madame de Coulevain? Madame had never known her mother. Only old +Miriam had known her mother and Miriam was the pasha's slave. But +the old woman was unsuspecting now, and full of disarming comfort in +this marriage of her wild darling. + +Through dinner she planned the careless-seeming questions. And then +in her negligée, as the old nurse brushed out her hair for the +night, "Dadi," said the girl, in a faint voice, "am I truly like my +mother?" and when Miriam had finished her fond protestation that +they were as like as two roses, as two white roses, bloom and bud, +she launched that little cunning phrase on which she had spent such +eager hoping. + +"And was I like her when I was little--when first she came to my +father?" + +"Eh--yes. Always thou wast the tiny image which Allah--Glory to his +Name!--had made of her," came the nurse's assurance. + +"I am glad," said Aimée, in a trembling voice. + +She dared not press that more. Confronted with her unconscious +admission the old woman would destroy it, feigning some evasion. But +there it was, for as much as it was worth.... + +Presently then, she found another question to slip into the old +woman's narrative of the pasha's grief. + +"Eh, to hear a man weep," Miriam was murmuring. "Her beauty had set +its spell upon him, and--" + +"And he lost her so soon. Three or four years only, was it not," +ventured Aimée, "that they had of life together?" + +It seemed that Miriam's brush missed a stroke. + +"Years I forget," the nurse muttered, "but tears I remember," and +she began to talk of other things. + +But it seemed to Aimée that she had answered. As for that other +matter, of the dead Delcassé child, she dared not refer to it, lest +Miriam tell the pasha. But how many times, she remembered, had she +been told that she was her mother's only one! + +Yet, oh, to know, to hear all the story, to learn Ryder's discovery +of it! It was all as strange and startling as a tale of Djinns. And +the life that it held out to her, the enchanted hope of freedom, of +aid--Oh, not again would she refuse his aid! + +She had no plans, no purposes. But that night over her +hastily-donned frock she slipped the black street mantle and when at +last, after endless waiting, the murmuring old palace was safely +still and dark, she stole down the spiral stair and gained the +garden. And then, a phantom among its shadows, she fled to the rose +bushes by the gate. + +Breathlessly she knelt and dug into the hiding place of that gate's +key. To the furthest corner her fingers explored the hole, pushing +furiously against the earth. And then she drew back her hand and +crushed it against her face to check the nervous sobs. + +The hole was empty. The key was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE RECEPTION + + +In Tewfick Pasha's harem everything was astir. + +It was the morning of the marriage, almost the very hour when the +wedding cortège would bear the bride from her father's home to the +house of her husband. + +The invited guests were already arrived and streaming through the +reception rooms, a bright, feminine tide in evening toilettes, +surrounding the exhibited gifts or pausing about tables of cool +syrups, and their soft, low voices, the delicious musical tones of +highbred Turkish women, rose like a murmuring of somnolent bees to +the tenser regions about, tightening the excitement of haste. + +The bride was not yet ready. Still and white, she was the only image +of calm in that fluttering, confusing room. Her nearer friends were +hovering about her, and her maids of honor, two charming little +Turks in rose robes, were draping her veil while old Miriam, +resplendent in green and silver, endeavored jealously to outmaneuver +them. + +On her knees, the gnome-like Mrs. Hendricks was adding an orange +blossom to the laces on the train. Then she sat back on her heels, +her head a-tilt like a curious bird's, her eyes beaming +sentimentally upon the bride. + +"The prettiest h'I h'ever did see," she pronounced with +satisfaction, "H'as pretty as a wax figger now--h'only a thought +_too_ waxy." + +And like a wax figure indeed, immobile, rigid, the bride was +standing before them, arrayed at last in the shimmering white of the +sweeping satin, overrich of lace and orange flowers, and shrouded in +the clouding waves of her veil. White as her robes, pale as death +and as still, the girl looked out at them, and only that sick pallor +of her face and the glitter of her dark eyes betrayed the tumult +within. + +"Your diadem, my dear--you are keeping us attending," came Madame de +Coulevain's voice from the door. + +The diadem, that heavy circlet of brilliants which crowned the +Eastern bride in place of the orange wreath of Western convention, +must not be touched by the bride's fingers but placed by one of her +friends, married and married but once, and exceptionally happy in +that marriage. + +Ghul-al-Din, Aimée's selection from her friends, stepped hastily +forward now, a soft, dimpled, slow-smiling girl, her eyes drowsy +with domesticity. No question of Ghul-al-Din's happiness! She +extolled her husband, a young captain of cavalry, and she adored her +infant son, a prodigy among children. Life for her was a rosy, +unquestioning absorption. + +A shaft of irony sped through Aimée, as she bent her head for its +crowning at this young wife's hands, and received the ceremonial +wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once +in her lifetime. Irony was the only salvation for the hour; without +that outlet for her tortured spirit she felt she would grow suddenly +mad, hysterical and babbling or passionate and wild. + +So many moods had stormed through her since that night when she had +found all hope of rescue gone with her lost key! So many impulses +seethed frantically now beneath her quiet, as she faced for the last +time that white-misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing +to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy robe, to scatter the +ornaments and drive out all those maddening spectators, all those +interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of her +humiliation. + +Arranging her veil, draping her satins, as if gauze and silk were +all that mattered to this hour! Wishing her happiness--as if +happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing! Smiling, +fluttering, complimenting, lending to the ghastly sacrifice the +familiar acceptances of every day.... + +If only she could wake from this nightmare and find that it was all +a dream. If only she could brush this confusion from her senses and +from her heart its dumb terrors.... If only she had the courage for +some desperate revolt, some outburst of strength-- + +"I am ready," she said faintly, turning from the glass, and moved +towards the door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that +train of three yards length, which stretched so regally behind her +in her slow descent of the stairs. + +In the French drawing-room below her father was waiting for the +ceremonial farewell, in which the father received the daughter's +thanks for all his care of her. + +Mechanically Aimée advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her +eyes--and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless, +questioning intensity that it was like something palpable.... She +had not foreseen this, sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant +passion of her spirit.... + +Her father? Was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so, +careless, callous--or was it only a father's semblance, and did +there lie in the background of those petted, childish years some +darker shadow, of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and +broken her heart--? + +Like flashing light that look passed between them. It penetrated +Tewfick's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his +olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's +pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his +power,--but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in +that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul. + +It was a moment in which the last cord of their relationship was +severed forever. + +She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom +dictated, but to sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a +maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but +with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered. + +And yet there was wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear +and supplication. + +Useless to beg now. She knew it, and yet the eyes implored. + +And then she smiled. And before that smile Tewfick faltered in his +paternal benediction and hastened the phrases. + +Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a +hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs +for the journey to the bridegroom's house. + +That day Aimée did not put on her veil. On either side of her, as +she went out her father's gate, huge negroes held up silken walls of +damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that +awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulevain and the two little +maids of honor. + +It was when the carriage began to move that the panic inside of her +grew to whirlwind. The horse' hoofs, trotting, trotting, the motion +of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If +she could only stop it! If she could only cry out, tear open the +windows, scream to the passers by. She knew these were only the +impotent visions of hysteria, but she indulged them pitifully. + +She saw herself, in those moments, helpless, and hopeless, passing +on into the slavery of this marriage--Aimée, no longer the daughter +of Tewfick Pasha, but Aimée Delcassé, child of a dead Frenchman, +inheritor of freedom, sold like any dancing girl.... + +And her own lips had assented. In the supreme, silly uselessness of +sacrifice she had given herself for the safety of that man who had +spent such careless indulgence upon her ... that man whom perhaps +her mother had loved and perhaps had hated.... + +Faster and faster the horses were trotting, leading the long file of +carriages and impatient motors that bore the relatives and guests +and trousseau, rolling on under the lebbeks and sycamores of the +wide Shubra Avenue, once the delight of fashionables before the +Gezireh Drive had drained it of its throngs and its prestige. + +Now some bright-eyed urchins ran out from their games in the dust to +curious attention, and through a half open gate Aimée caught once a +glimpse of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled +greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Farther on came +glimpses of farm lands, the wheat rising in bright spears, and of +well-wooded heights and in the distance the white houses of +Demerdache against the Gibel Achmar beyond. + +But where were they bearing her? Aimée had a despairing sense of +distance and desolation as the carriage turned again--Abdullah, the +coachman, having traversed unnecessary miles to gratify his pride +before the house of his parents--and made a zigzag way towards the +river, where old palaces rose from the backwaters, their faces +hidden by high walls or covered with heavy vines and moss. + +Deeper and deeper grew the girl's dismay. It was a different world +from that bright, modern Cairo that she knew; this was as remote +from her daily life as the old streets of Al Raschid. Her thoughts +flew forward to that unknown lord, that Hamdi Bey, whose image she +had refused to assemble to her consciousness. Now she comforted her +terror with a sudden assumption of age and dignity and kindness, of +a courtesy that would protect her and a deference that would assuage +the horror of a life together, when unknown, fearful familiarities +would alone vibrate in the empty monotonies. + +Before a high wall the carriage had stopped. A huge, repellent +Ethiopian was standing before an opened doorway, through which a +rich carpet was spread. + +"Ah, but he looks like an ogre, that new eunuch of yours, Aimée," +murmured one of the little Turks. The other, more touched with +thought, gave her a disturbed glance, and laughed in nervousness. + +Madame, alone serene, ignored the dismaying impression. + +"The palace is of a fine, ancient beauty, I am told," she mentioned +cheerfully. + +For one wild instant Aimée thought to plead with her, to implore her +to tell Abdullah to drive on, to give her the freedom of flight, if +only flight down those deserted streets. And then a mad vision of +herself in her bridal robes in flight, brought the hysterical +laughter to her throat. The time for flight had gone by ... And as +for madame's pity on her--this was not the first time that Aimée had +thought of invoking her aid, but she had always known, too well, +that thought's supreme futility. + +Sympathetic as Madame de Coulevain might be in her inmost heart--and +Aimée divined in her an understanding pity for the necessities of +existence--never would that sympathy betray her to rashness. She +never would believe that in serving Aimée she would not be ruining +her; and even if assured of Aimée's safety, she could never be +brought to betray her own reputation for truthworthiness among the +harems of Cairo.... As well appeal to the rocks of the Mokattam +hills. + +The carriage stopped. The negroes extended the damask walls, and one +sprang to open the carriage door and bear the bride's train. In one +moment's parting of the silken walls the girl saw a sun-flooded +cluster of staring faces, thronging for her arrival, and then the +damask intervened and through its lane, followed by her duenna and +her maids of honor, she entered the arched doorway. + +She was in a garden, a great gloomy place, over-spread with ancient, +moss-encrusted trees. A broken, marble fountain flung up waters into +which no sunlight flashed, and the heavy stepping stones, leading to +it, were buried in untrodden grass. A garden in which no one +lingered. + +The Ethiopian was marshaling them to the left, to an entrance in the +dark palace walls before them. Behind them the oncoming guests were +streaming out in veiled procession. + +He opened a door. Ancient, beautiful arches framed a long vestibule +and against a background of profuse cut flowers a man's figure +stepped forward in the glittering uniform of the Sultan's guard. +Aimée had a confused impression of a thin, meager, dandified figure +with a waspish waist ... of a blond mustache with upstanding ends +... of sallow cheek-bones and small, light eyes smiling at her in a +strained, eager curiosity.... + +Through all her sinking dismay she had a flash of clear, +enlightening irony at that look's suspense. If she were not as +represented! If his cousin's fervor had misled his hope--! + +But in that instant's encounter his eyes cleared to triumph and +gayety, and he smiled--a smile curiously feline, ironic, for all its +intended ingratiation--a conqueror's smile, winged to reassure and +melt. + +He stepped forward. There were formal words of welcome to which she +returned a speechless bow, and then he offered his arm and conducted +her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its scabbard, to the +apartment which was to be her home, and the prison for the spirit +and the body. + +She knew in a moment that she hated this man and that he inspired +her with fear and horror. + +Across a long expanse of drawing-room he conducted her to the +ancient marriage throne upon its platform, surmounted by a pompous +crown from which old, embroidered silks hung heavily. + +Then with an unheard phrase, and another bow, he left her to the +day-long ordeal of the reception while he withdrew to his own +entertainment at her father's house. She would not see him again +until night, when he would pay her a call of ceremony. + +She saw his figure hesitating a moment, as he faced the oncoming +guests, such a flood of femininity, unmantled now and unveiled, +sparkling in rainbow hues of silks and tulle and gauze that he had +never before faced and never would again. Like a bright wave the +throng closed about him and then surged on towards the bride upon +the throne. + +How often, in the last years, Aimée had pitied that poor puppet of a +bride, stuck there like some impaled, winged creature, helpless for +flight, to the exhibition of the long stream of passersby! How often +she had promised herself that never would this be her fate, never +would she be given to an unknown! And now-- + +She was smiling as she faced them, that light, fixed smile she had +seen so often on others' lips, the smile of pride trying desperately +to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious. +Satiric, cynical, or sympathetic, that light smile defied them all, +but beneath its guard she felt she was slowly bleeding to death of +some mortal hurt. + +The sympathy unconsciously betrayed, was hardest. The whispers of +her young maids of honor, "Really, Aimée, he looks so young! One +would never surmise," were more galling in their intended +consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends' own +shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man than the barbed dart +of the uncaring, inquisitive, "How do you find him, my dear? He has +the reputation for conquest!" + +They were all there, her friends, young, slim, modish Turkish girls +whose time had not yet come, glancing quizzically about the ancient +drawing room, with its solid side of mashrubiyeh, its old wall +panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their +glances back at her, as if to ask, "And is this our revoltée? Is +this her end, in this dim, old palace among the ghosts of the past?" + +Some, the frankest, murmured, "But why did you not refuse?" and +others attempted consolation with a light, "As well the first as the +last--since we must all come to it." + +Of the married women there were those who raised blank, bitter eyes +to her, and others, more mild, romantic, affectionate, tried to +infuse encouragement into their smiles as if they said, +"Come--courage--it's not so bad. And what would you? We are women, +after all; we do not need so much for happiness. + +"Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your +spirit in place of a master delighting in your beauty alone, what +are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies? For other +races, perhaps--but for you, take hold of life. There are realities +yet in it to bring you joy." + +It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their +pressure of her hands. + +And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile +demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening +unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in +vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes +saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of +terror rose higher and higher in her soul. + +Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night +when she found the key was gone. + +Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen +back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the +breaking sobs of rebellion and despair--and of a longing so deep and +so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a +pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar. + +Never again would she see him now.... Never would she know--never +would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe +her still aloof, incredulous.... It was finished--forever and ever. + +She had told herself that before. But always there had been the key. +And now there was no key and no escape and her heart broke itself +against the iron of necessity. + +She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion, +not peace but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison +gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never +again the sight of that too-remembered face and the sound of that +voice--why, then, as well one fate as another. And it was too late +now to recede. + +So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its +part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half-contemptuous +pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she +would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she +would keep its own, in its unsullied dreams ... and in its +memories.... Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly borne. + +But now she had seen the man. Now this wild dislike, this sickening +terror. + +To be alone with him, to have only the few days grace of courtship +which the Mohammadan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be +forever at his mercy in this solitary palace, with its echoing +corridors, its blackened walla, its damp breath of age.... + +She thought wildly of death. + +And all the time she was smiling, bending her cheek to the kiss of a +friend, feeling the fingers of some well-wisher press upon her, +listening to praises of her beauty.... + +For she was beautiful. No image of wax now. The scarlet of her +frightened blood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as +the jewels in her diadem, and beneath the thrown-back veil her dark +hair revealed its lovely wealth. + +"Is she not a rose--will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard +that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared +on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal +youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated +master. + +And still the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the +flickering light and shadow of the mashrubiyeh, slender young Turks +or blonde Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or +malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some +rotund matron grave and serene, her head encircled with an old +fashioned turban of gauze, her stout flesh encased in heavy silks, +bought at Damask so as not to enrich the Unbelievers at Lyons. + + * * * * * + +And then the spectacle changed, the black street mantles appeared, +yashmaks and tcharchafs, for now the doors were opened to all the +feminine world, and there came strange, unknown women, slipping out +from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace, old-timers often, +draped and turbaned in the fashion of some far province of their +youth; women, incredibly fat, in rich stuffs of Asia, their bright, +deep-sunken eyes spying delightedly upon the scene, or furtive, poor +women, keeping courage in twos and threes. + +Now, too, at four, came the women from the Embassies, a Russian girl +with whom Aimée had played tennis in ages past, rosy now with +yesterday's sun and sleepy with last night's dance, who touched the +bride's hand as if it were the hand of one half-dead, already +consigned to the tomb; other girls she did not know, who stared at +her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities; older women, +experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and smoking cigarettes +and gossiping of their own affairs, and occasionally among them a +tourist agog with wonder and exultation, storing away details for a +lifetime of talk, asking amiably the most incredible questions.... + +"And is it true you have never met your husband? Listen, Jane--she +says she has never met him--" + +A girl in a creamy white silk came forward a little uncertainly. She +was a pretty girl, with a curve of ruddy hair visible under her +smart straw, and very bright eyes, where shyness was at variance +with a friendly smile. + +Indeed Jinny Jeffries was extraordinarily intimidated by the +occasion. She had a distinct sense of intrusion mingling with her +delight at having intruded, and she murmured her good wishes in an +almost inaudible tone. + +"It is very good of you to let us come ... I wish you every +happiness," she said. + +Beside her a tall slender figure, in black tcharchaf and yashmak, +made its appearance. + +Aimée's eyes slipped past the pretty American; the mechanical smile +was frozen on her lips. Over the black veil she saw the hazel eyes, +bright with excitement, vivid as speech; the eyes of the masquerader +in the Scotch costume, the eyes of the man at the garden gate--Jack +Ryder's eyes ... the eyes of her dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE FORTY DOORS + + +When Ryder had despatched from the jeweler's who had polished the +locket for him, that package with its secret note, and its warning +plaid, he had no real assurance that the message would fall into +Aimée's hands. But he could think of nothing better, and he argued +very favorably for his stratagem. + +That miniature should have some effect, and given the miniature, and +the bit of plaid cloth, Aimée's quick wit ought to divine a message. + +She had always the key, he remembered, and the power of egress from +her prison. And surely it ought not to be difficult for her to +devise some way of getting a letter into the post. + +So his hope fluctuated between the garden gate and the daily mail at +the Bank, and he rather surprised McLean by the frequency and +brevity of his visits, and by the duration of his stay in Cairo. + +For that he had an excuse, both to McLean and to the deserted +Thatcher, at the excavation camp, two excuses in fact--some belated +identification work to be done at the Museum and a cracked wisdom +tooth. + +Chiefly he spoke of the necessity for dentistry and accounted for +his moods with his molar. + +Of moods he had many. Moods when he contemplated his behavior +lightly and brightly or darkly, in unrelieved disgust, moods when he +refused to contemplate it at all. But he stayed. That was the +conspicuous and enduring thing. He stayed. + +Jinny Jeffries returned from the Nile by express to find him +ensconced at her hotel, and her bright confidence suffered no +diminution of its self respect. And it was through Jinny that chance +set another straw of circumstance dancing his way. + +Jinny had a frock she wished repaired. Mrs. Heath-Brown, whom she +had met upon the Nile, recommended to her a Mrs. Hendricks, wife of +a British soldier and a most clever little needle woman. Jinny +looked up Mrs. Hendricks and found it impossible to secure her for +some days as she was busy refitting for a fashionable wedding in the +Mohammedan world. + +A night later, and two nights before the wedding, Jinny made a +narrative of the circumstances for Jack Ryder's benefit. + +"Such frocks h'as h'I 'ave to do--and the young lady no more +caring!" had been a saying of the Hendricks that Jinny passed +interestedly on to Jack. She had no memory of the young lady's name, +but distinctly she recalled that she was young and beautiful and to +marry a general. + +It was enough to launch Jinny's eager interest in Mohammedan +marriages and foster the wish that she might attend one. She +regretted Mrs. Heath-Brown's absence and her lack of acquaintance, +and suggested that Jack ought to know some one-- + +"Better than that, _I'll_ take you," said Jack with a promptness +that brought a light to Miss Jeffries' eyes. + +There was also a light in Jack Ryder's eyes, a swift burning of +excitement and adventure. + +Why not? The thing was possible. Muffled in a tcharchaf and veiled +with a heavy yashmak, armed with enough Arabic for the briefest of +encounters, he might dare the danger. Who in the world would +discover him? Who would ever know? + +The thing was unthinkable. It was a desperate desecration, +comparable only, in his vague analogies, to the Mecca pilgrimage and +profanation of a Holy Tomb. But its very improbability would prevent +detection. + +Only Jinny had to keep her mouth extremely shut--before and +afterwards. + +He impressed this upon her so thoroughly, as they did their shopping +for the costume together the next morning, that she had compunctious +moments of solicitude when she said he really ought not to.... She +would feel responsible.... + +Thereupon he laughed, and dared her to be game, and she grew all +mirthful confidence again. + +But that night, sitting alone in a native café over his Turkish +coffee, Ryder was grimly serious. + +He knew that it was a mad thing to do. He felt, not so much the +danger he ran from discovery, but the danger to his already +shattered peace of mind from another glimpse of that strange girl +... that young unknown, on whom he had spent such time and thought, +of late, that she seemed a very part of his existence. + +What was the good of going to her wedding reception? Feebly he told +himself that it was his only chance to inform her upon the history +of the Delcassés. There might have been reasons for her +non-appearance at the gate, for her not writing.... He could have no +glimmering of what went on behind those barred windows. This was his +only chance--he meant to say, to tell her--but his eager senses +murmured, to see her again. + +That was it--to see her again. He owned the lure, at last, with a +bitter ruefulness. But--he brightened up at that--it was partly his +duty to himself. Now he had all sorts of fool imaginings about this +girl. He was remembering her as something lovelier than a Houri, +more enchanting than fairy magic, more sweet than spring. He owed it +to himself to rout these imbecile prepossessions and prove clearly +and dispassionately that the girl was just a very nice little girl, +a pretty bride, marrying into a very distinct life from his own--and +a girl with whom he would not have an idea in common. A girl, in +fact, far inferior to any American. A girl not to be compared to +Jinny Jeffries. + +Besides, there was fun in the thing. It tempted him tremendously. +It was adventurous, romantic forbidden. + +He heard the word echoed in Turkish behind him. + +So engrossed in his thoughts had he been that he had been +inattentive to the rhythm of old Khazib, the tale teller's voice, as +he held forth, from the divan, beside his long-stemmed pipe, to his +nightly audience, of men and boys, camel drivers, small merchants, +desert men from the long caravans who were the frequenters of this +café. + +To-night there were few about the old man, and Ryder had small +difficulty in drawing nearer the circle. A green-turbaned Arab, with +the profile of a Washington and the naïve eyes of youth, whispered +to him courteously that it was the tale of the Third Kaland, and the +Prince Azib was in the palace of the forty damsels who were +farewelling him, as they were to depart, according to custom, for +forty days. + +Khazib, with a faint salutation of his turban towards the newcomer, +went slowly, sonorously on with his tale. + +"We fear," said the damsel unto Azib, "lest thou contraire our +charge and disobey our injunctions. Here now we commit to thee the +keys of the palace which containeth forty chambers and thou mayest +open of these thirty and nine, but beware (and we conjure thee by +Allah and by the lives of us!) lest thou open the fortieth door, for +therein is that which shall separate us forever." + +For a moment the café faded from Ryder's eyes. He was in the gloom +of a garden, a shadowy darkness just touched by a crescent moon, and +beside him in the shrubbery a dark-shrouded form, shaking its +shawled head at him in denial, and whispering, lightly but +tremblingly. "It is a forbidden door ... forbidden as that +fortieth.... There are thirty and nine doors in your life, monsieur, +that you may open, but this is the forbidden...." + +He had meant to look up that tale. And now chance was reminding him +of it again. A superstitious man--Ryder's great grandfather, +perhaps, would have felt it an omen of warning, and a devout +man--Ryder's grandfather, perhaps--would have taken it for a sign +from Heaven to divert his steps. Ryder reflected upon coincidence. + +"When I saw her weeping," Khazib was intoning, and now Ryder +attended, his scanty knowledge of the vernacular straining and +overleaping the blanks, "Prince Azib said to himself, 'By Allah, I +will never open that fortieth door, never, and in no wise!'" + +"A wise bird," thought Ryder to himself, drawing on his cigarette. + +"And I bade her farewell," continued the voice slipping into the +first person. "Thereupon all departed, flying like birds, leaving me +alone in the palace. When evening drew near, I opened the door of +the first chamber and found myself in a place like one of the +pleasances of Paradise. It was a garden with trees of freshest +green and ripe fruits of yellow sheen. And I walked among the trees +and I smelt the breath of the flowers and heard the birds sing their +praise to Allah, the One, the Almighty." + +"_Allhamdollillah_," murmured Ryder's neighbors reverently. + +"And I looked upon the apple, whose hue is parcel red and parcel +yellow ... and I looked upon the quince whose fragrance putteth to +shame musk and ambergris ... and upon the pear whose taste +surpasseth sherbet and sugar, and the apricot, whose beauty striketh +the eye as she were a polished ruby.... + +"On the morrow I opened the second door and found myself in a +spacious plain set with tall date palms and watered by a running +stream whose banks were shrubbed with rose and jasmine, while privet +and eglantine, oxe-eye, violet and lily, narcissus, origane and the +winter gilliflower carpeted the borders; and the breath of the +breeze swept over those sweet-smelling growths...." + +How inadequate, Ryder realized, had been the description given by +the Book of Genesis to the Garden of Eden. + +"And the third door," droned on the rhythmic voice, "into an open +hall, hung with cages of sandal-wood and eagle-wood; full of birds +which made sweet music, such as the mocking bird, and the cusha, the +merle, the turtle dove--and the Nubian ring-dove." + +A trifle restively Ryder stirred. He liked birds but he wanted to +be getting on to that fortieth door and this was slow progress. Not +a sign of impatience marred the bright, absorbed content of the +other listeners, intent now upon the wonders behind that the fourth +chamber revealed, stores of "pearls and jacinths and beryls, and +emeralds and corals and carbuncles and all manner of precious gems +and jewels such as the tongue of man could not describe." + +The story teller proceeded, "Then, quoth Prince Azib, now verily am +I the monarch of the age, since by Allah's grace this enormous +wealth is mine; and I have forty damsels under my hand nor is there +any to claim them save myself." + +The handsome Arab beside Ryder inhaled his pipe luxuriously. "By the +grace of Allah!" he said reverently. + +"Then I gave not over opening place after place until nine and +thirty days were passed and in that time I had entered every chamber +except that one whose door I was charged not to open. But my +thoughts ever ran upon that forbidden fortieth and Satan urged me to +open it for my own undoing...." + +"I see his finish," said Ryder interestedly to himself--and he +thought of the analogy. + +"So I stood before the chamber, and after a few moments' hesitation, +opened the door which was plated with red gold and entered. I was +met by a perfume whose like I had never before smelt; and so sharp +and subtle was the odor that it made my senses drunken as with +strong wine, and I fell to the ground in a fainting fit which lasted +a full hour. When I came to myself I strengthened my heart, and +entering found myself in a chamber bespread with saffron and blazing +with light.... Presently, I spied a noble steed, black as the murks +of night when murkiest, standing ready saddled and bridled (and his +saddle was of red gold) before two mangers one of clear crystal +wherein was husked sesame, and the other, also of crystal containing +water of the rose scented with musk. When I saw this I marveled and +said to myself, 'Doubtless in this animal must be some wondrous +mystery, and Satan--'" + +"Satan the Stoned!" murmured Ryder's neighbor religiously. + +"Satan cozened me, so I led him without and mounted him ... and +struck him withal. When he felt the blow he neighed a neigh with a +sound like deafening thunder and opening a pair of wings flew up +with me in the firmament of heaven far beyond the eyesight of man. +After a full hour of flight he descended and shaking me off his back +lashed me on the face with his tail, and gouged out my left eye, +causing it to roll along my cheek. Then he flew away." + +On rolled the voice, narrating the prince's descent to the table of +the other one-eyed youths, but Ryder was unheeding. And at the close +he inclined his head with the other listeners, murmuring "May Allah +increase thy prosperity," as he felt in his pockets for the silver +which the others were drawing from turban and sleeves and sash to +lay in the patriarch's lap, and then raised his head to question +diffidently, "Would you interpret, O Khazib, the meaning of that +door? For I hear that it hath now become a saying of a forbidden +thing." + +The sage hesitated, sucking at his pipe. Then he said slowly, "To +every man, O Youth, is there a forbidden door, beyond which waits +the steed of high adventure ... with wings beyond man's riding. And +so the rider is lost and his vision is gone." + +"But for him who could ride?" Ryder suggested. + +"Inshallah! Who can say till he has tried his destiny--and better +are the nine and thirty chambers of safe pleasance than the lonely +sightlessness of the outcast one.... It is a tale which if it were +written upon the eye-corners with needle-gravers, were a warning to +those who would be warned." + +For a moment their eyes held each other, smiling but grave. Ryder's +thoughts were of the morrow, of that forbidden entry he was planning +to make, of the risks, the wild uncertainties.... + +Wisdom and counsel looked significantly out at him out of those +patriarchal eyes. Prudence and sanity clamored within him for a +hearing. + +And then he smiled, the whimsical, boyish smile of young +adventuring. + +"But whoever, O, my father, had opened that forbidden door +the veriest crack, and breathed its scent and glimpsed its +dazzlement--then for him there is no turning back," he confided. + +He rose and Khazib's eyes followed him. + +"Luck go with you, my son," he said clearly, "in Allah's name," and +smiling in faint ruefulness, "May Allah heed thee!" Ryder murmured +piously. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE UNINVITED GUEST + + +Now as he stood before Aimée, and saw her eyes widen with +recognition, he knew that he would have need of all his luck and all +his wit. He stepped hastily forward. + +"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God that he has permitted me to behold +you this day," he murmured, in the studiously sing-song Arabic that +might be expected from a humble Turkish woman in plain mantle and +yashmak. "May Allah continue to spread before thee the carpet of +enjoyment--" and then lower, almost muffled by the thick veil, "Can +you give me a moment--?" + +Eagerly, significantly, his eyes met hers. + +Half fearfully, Aimée flashed an excited look around her. The space +before the marriage throne had thinned, for there were no more +arrivals waiting to offer their congratulations and the guests were +clustering now about the tables for refreshment or drifting into the +next salon where behind firmly stretched silken walls a stringed +orchestra was playing. + +Miss Jeffries alone was lingering near, but she moved off now--at a +secret look from Ryder--with an appearance of unconcern. + +"I am going to try my vernacular on the bride," Ryder had told her. +"Don't linger or look alarmed. I won't give the show away." + +So there was no one to overhear a low-toned colloquy between the +bride and the veiled woman, no one to note or wonder that the veiled +woman was speaking, strangely enough, in rapid English. + +"When I didn't hear from you I had to come, to know if you received +the package and letter I sent--" + +With a swift gesture of her little ringed hand Aimée drew from the +laces on her bosom that heavy gold locket. + +"Indeed I have it--and the note, too, I found. But I could not write +you. There was no way--no one to trust to mail it. And they had +stolen my key," she whispered, and the confessing words with their +quiver of forlornness told Ryder something of the story of those +helpless days and nights. + +He murmured, "I didn't dare write you more personally for fear they +would find the note." + +"I understood. That plaid about the box--that was so clever a +warning. I kept the box and hunted in it." + +"I wanted to tell you more about that locket. I dug it up myself +from the tomb I was excavating--do you remember how you wished that +I would dig from the sands whatever secret I most desired? And I +found that.... And it happened that at McLean's I had met the French +agent who was searching for any trace of the Delcassés, of the wife +and child of the explorer who had disappeared fifteen years before. +That miniature was your image, and I guessed at once. McLean and I +went to the pasha--Oh, I didn't tell him I'd met you!" he flung in, +his eyes twinkling, "and we pretended we knew all about his marriage +to Madame Delcassé and he owned up without a quiver. But when we +tried to claim you for the French family, he doubled like a hare. He +said the Delcassé child was dead, died when his own child was a +baby, and that you were his own. But I was sure that you were more +than fourteen, and that he was simply putting it over on us so as to +have this marriage go on without interference--and so I tried to get +the story to you. Even now I thought you ought to know," he added, +as if in palliation of his invasion here. + +For he realized now how tremendous an invasion it was. + +All the guests about him had not given him that feeling, all that +sea of femininity, those grave matrons whose serenely unveiled faces +would burn with shame to be beheld by this stranger, those bright, +slim girls in their extravagant frocks, their tulle, their lace, +their pearls, their diamonds, all the hidden charms that no man had +yet seen stirred in him no more than an excited and adventurous +curiosity. + +But the vision of Aimée--that delicate beauty in its tragic irony +of throne and diadem! It touched him to tenderness and to an actual +sense of sacrilege at the freedom of his gaze. No moonlight vision +this, ethereal and dream-like, but a vivid, disquieting radiance of +dark, shining eyes and rose-flushed cheeks. He had never seen her +hair before, midnight hair, escaping little curls from the veil and +the diadem. And he had never really seen her mouth--wistful and gay, +like the mouth of the miniature ... nor her chin, so tender and +willful ... nor her skin, satin-soft, in its veiling from the +daylight.... + +She was more than young and sweet and fair. She was beauty, beauty +with its elusive, ineluctable spell, entangled with the appeal of +her helplessness. + +A bright blush flooded her now and her eyes fell in confusion, +before the prolonging of his look. + +"But it is dangerous--your being here," she murmured. + +"The fortieth door," he reminded her. + +Under her breath, "Ah, you remember?" + +"I remember. And but last night I heard Khazib, the story teller, +tell the tale, and I thought of you and your warning--of the door +that hid you, that it was forbidden for me to open." + +"And so you opened it, monsieur." Faintly she smiled, with downcast +lashes. + +"And I came as you first came to me--in mantle and veil." + +For a moment their thoughts fled back to that masquerade, which +seemed so long ago. + +"But it is too late," she said tremulously. + +"_Is_ it too late--for me to help you?" + +At that her eyes rose to his again in a swift flash of hunted fear. + +"Oh, take me away from him!" she breathed suddenly, unpremeditately. +"Somehow--somewhere--" + +Another figure came towards them. Madame De Coulevain in all her +severe elegance of black. + +"Come and join your friends at the supper, my dear; there is no need +for you to be pilloried here any longer," she observed with an +indifferent scrutiny of the persistent veiled woman, and Ryder moved +slowly away while Aimée came dutifully down from the throne, a huge +black bending to hold her train. + +"I thought you were _never_ coming! What _were_ you talking about?" +demanded a voice in Ryder's ear, and he found Jinny Jeffries at his +side, her bright gray eyes pouncing upon him with curiosity. + +"Oh, I wished her joy--native phrases--that sort of thing," he +answered mechanically as they drew back into an embrasure of the +mashrubiyeh that formed one side of the great room. + +"But you were talking forever. I saw you holding forth at a +tremendous rate. Why wouldn't you let me stay and listen--?" + +"You'd have put me off my shot, I had to feel unobserved to play +up." + +"You must be fearfully good at Arabic," said Jinny guilelessly. +"And what did she say?" + +"Why--she didn't say anything in particular--" + +"But what was that she was showing you? I saw her bend forward with +a locket or something--?" + +A plague upon Jinny's bright eyes! "Oh, yes, the locket," said Ryder +with an effort. "She--ah--she showed it to me." + +"But _why_? Wasn't that awfully funny--" + +"Oh, I believe it's a custom, courtesy stunt you know, to show a +poor guest some of the presents," he explained, manufacturing under +pressure. + +"I wish she'd show _me_ her rings. Did you ever see so many? It was +the only thing about her you'd call really Eastern--all those +glittering diamonds on her fingers. And did you notice her hands?" +Jinny went on enthusiastically. "Jack, I never knew there was +anything so lovely as that girl in the world. She's simply +_exquisite_.... I suppose it's her whole life," Miss Jeffries +reflected, "keeping herself beautiful." Her eyes rested curiously on +the feminine groups before them. "They haven't anything else to do +or think about, have they?" + +"I understand some of them are remarkably educated young women." + +"What's the use of it?" said the practical daughter of an American +college. "They can't ever meet any men, but just a husband--" + +"They can read for themselves, can't they? And talk to each other. +And--well, what do you girls do with your education anyway? You +don't lug anything very heavy about the golf course and the ball +room." + +"Who wants us to? But we do bring something to committees and clubs +and--and welfare work," Miss Jeffries maintained stoutly. "And we +are always into arguments at dinners. While these girls, they can't +dine out, they haven't anybody but themselves to argue with, and it +doesn't matter a straw politically what they think--they can't even +change the customs that their great, great, great grandfathers +imposed. + +"If I were one of these girls," she declared positively, "I wouldn't +bother about Kant and chemistry and history--I'd stuff myself full +of sweetmeats and loll around on a divan and not care what happened +outside. Or else I'd be miserable." + +"Perhaps they are miserable." + +"They ought to fight. Think, _think_," said Jinny dramatically, "of +marrying some man you've never seen--the way that lovely girl is +doing. Suppose she doesn't like him? Suppose he's dull and cranky +and mean and greedy? Suppose he bores her? Suppose she actually +hates him? Why, Jack, it's horrible! And yet she submits--she +_submits_ to it--" + +"Suppose she has to submit, that she hasn't a soul on earth to help +her? How would you fight, I wonder--" + +"Well, you don't need to shout about it! That woman's looking +now--that one with the green turban and the stuffed-date eyes." + +Nervously Jinny glanced around. + +"It's a fearful lark," she murmured, "but I don't believe I'd ever +have had the nerve if I'd realized.... What do you suppose they +would _do_, Jack, if they found you out?... Those big blacks look +so--so uncivilized." + +Her eyes rested upon the huge eunuch at the far entrance of the +salon, a huge hideous fellow, with red fez, baggy blouse and +trousers, and a knife handle sticking piratically from a sash. + +"He has on English oxfords," said Ryder lightly. "That's a saving +something. But they aren't going to find out..... I have an idea we +ought to make our getaway now, and that we had better not go +together. You go first and then I'll stroll along, and whisk off +these duds in some quiet corner.... I have to meet a man to-night, +but I'll probably see you to-morrow. And _don't_," he entreated, +"don't as you love your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, +breathe a word of my being here like this to any one--any +time--anywhere. I was an unmitigated ass to link you up with it. So +be wary." + +"Oh, I shall!" Jinny Jeffries promised vividly and with a last look +about the old palace, the empty marriage throne and the dissolving +knots of guests, she gave a little nod to her veiled companion, +sauntered without visible trepidation past the staring eunuch at +the door, went down the long stairs where other departing guests +were drawing on mantles and veils, and so made her way across a +shadowy garden and out the gate that another black opened. + +And then she drew a sudden breath of relief and glanced up at a sky +of sunset fires and felt the free airs play with her hair and face +and so shook off, lightly and gratefully, that darkening impression +of shuttered rooms and guarding blacks. + +Little rivers of wine and fire were bubbling in Aimée's veins. She +was gay at supper, as a bride should be gay. It was enough, for +those first few moments, that she had seen him again, that he had +dared to come and try to help her--that he cared enough to come! + +Her heart sang little pæans of joy and triumph. She sketched +impossible scenes of escape--she saw herself, in a shrouding mantle, +slipping with him past the guests at the door, she saw them speeding +away in a motor, she saw France, the unknown Delcassés--a bright, +gay world of freedom and romance. + +Or, perhaps, if not to-night, then to-morrow.... They would plan ... +she would obtain permission to take a drive and there would be a +signal, a waiting car.... + +But, better now. She could not endure even the call of ceremony from +that man who called himself her husband. The very memory of his eyes +on her.... + +Decidedly, it must be to-night. And Ryder would think of a way. She +must get back to him ... he would be lingering. She must get away +from this hateful table, these guests and companions.... + +A wild impatience tore at her. She grew uneasy, anxious, fretted at +the frightening way that time was slipping past.... + +Her radiance vanished, her smile was nervous, forced, as she sat at +her table of honor, amid the circle of her friends, with a linked +wreath of candelabra sending its sparkle of lights over the young +faces and jewel-clasped throats, over the glittering silver on the +white satin cloth among the drift of pink and white rose petals. + +She began to bite her lips nervously... she did not hear what her +bridesmaids were chattering about ... her eyes went often, with that +stealth that invites regard, to the tiny platinum and diamond watch +upon her wrist. + +Would they never finish? Would they never be free? She wondered if +she dared feign an illness to rise and leave them; but no, that +would mean solicitude, companions.... + +And now the slaves were bringing still another round of trays.... + +Oh, hurry, hurry, her tightening nerves besought. + +At last! The older women were going. Not even for a wedding would +they deeply infringe upon that rule which keeps the Moslem women +indoors after the sun has set. Ceremoniously each made to the bride +her adieux and good wishes, and ceremoniously a frantically +impatient Aimée returned the formal thanks due for "assistance at +the humble fête." + +She did not see that black mantle anywhere. + +Her heart sank. Stupid, she told herself with quivering lips, to +dream that he could dare to linger, that he had any way to get her +out. By help he meant no more than getting letters to France for +her.... And yet his eyes when they had met hers.... Surely he had +meant--but when she had disappeared from the reception room to +attend the supper, when there seemed no way of speaking again to +her, and all the outsiders, all but the invited guests were +departed, he had been, obliged to go, too. + +Perhaps some one had begun to notice him.... She wondered if he had +been careful about his shoes, his hands.... How had he managed about +the dress anyway? + +And then she remembered that girl, that pretty American with the +ruddy hair to whom she had seen him talking, and she conjectured +that there was feminine aid and confidence.... + +A wave of bitterness swept over her. He had told that girl about +her--he knew that girl well enough to tell her! And perhaps he was +only sorry for the poor little French girl in the Turkish harem, +perhaps they were _both_ sorry.... + +Had he told that girl, she thought with bitter mutiny, that he had +kissed her? + +That girl must have been very sure of him not to be jealous of his +interest in herself! + +And now they could be somewhere together, perhaps talking her over, +while she was here ... here forever.... + +She was so white now, so silent, so distrait, that all the chatter +of the younger girls who were lingering around her could not dispel +the feeling of depression. They cast covert glances of discomfort at +each other, begged for more music from the orchestra, tallied with +an effort of the size and spaciousness of the palace and the +magnificence of the feast. + +She had told herself that she had ceased to hope. She did not know +how false it was until the eunuch brought his message. Then hope +really died. + +The general was below and begged to be announced to madame. + +"We fly!" whispered a lingerer with nervous laughter, and hastily +the young people hurried into their tcharchafs and veils, murmuring +among themselves, with sidelong glances at that white figure whose +cold hand and cheek they had just touched, hastily they sped, like +light-footed nymphs in some witches' robes, down the long room, +while Madame de Coulevain drew back a strand of the girl's dark hair +and murmured, "But smile, my dear," to the still figure and escaped +with the guests. + +And then Aimée was alone in the great room, deserted of its throngs, +a darkening room, full of burned-down candles and fallen flower +petals, with here and there the traces of the revelers, a scented +handkerchief ... a fan ... a buckle from some French slipper ... or +a feather from some ancient turban clasp.... + +Like the ghost of some deserted queen, with her regal satins and +glittering circlet, she waited. There was a moment of grace in which +she tried, to turn a gallant face toward the next moment. + +Then he came, advancing.... It may have been her distorted fancy, +but down the long perspective, that figure looked more mincing, more +waspish, more unreal than ever. And she was conscious of that swift +rising of dislike, of antagonism touched with reasonless fear. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE BEY RETURNS + + +He kissed her hands. She caught the murmur of compliments and the +mingled scent of musk and wine. He had been dining at his reception +for the men, but he called now for a table and more refreshment. + +A small table was brought to the end of the room near the marriage +throne where all the day she had paraded; a richly embroidered cloth +of satin was flung over it, and from crowding candelabra fresh +lights shed down a little circle of brilliance. + +Faintly Aimée protested that eat she could not, and then she made a +feint of eating, lingering over her sherbets, because eating was, +after all, so safe and uncomplicated a thing. + +The black brought champagne in its jacket of ice and filled their +glasses. + +The general rose. "_À notre bonheur_--to our happiness," he +declared, holding out his glass, and she clinked her own to it and +brought her lips to touch the brim, but not to that toast could she +swallow a single one of the bubbles that went winking up and down +the hollow stem. + +The glass trembled suddenly in her hand as she set it down. An +overpowering sense of fatigue was upon her. With the death of her +poor hope, with the collapse of all those flighty, childish dreams, +the leaden weight of realities seemed to descend crushingly upon +her. She felt stricken, inert, apathetic. + +It was all so unreal, so bizarre. This could not possibly be taking +place in her life, this fantastic scene, this table set with lights +and food at the end of a dark, deserted old room opposite this +grimacing, foppish stranger.... + +She could barely master strength for her replies. How had it all +gone? Excellently? She was satisfied with her new home? With the +service? The appointments? + +He plied her with questions and she tried to summon her spirit: she +achieved a few perfunctory phrases, the words of a frightened child +struggling for its manners. She tried to smile, unconscious of the +betrayal of her eyes. + +He told her, sketchily, of his day. A bore, those affairs, those +speeches, he told her, gazing at her, his wine glass in his hand, a +flush of wine and excitement in his face. She found it unpleasant to +look at him. Her glance evaded his. + +She stammered a word of praise for the palace. It must be very +ancient, she told him. Very--interesting. + +He waved a hand on which an enormous ruby glittered. He could tell +her stories of it, he promised. It had been built by one of the +Mamelukes, his ancestor. Its old banqueting hall was still +untouched--the collectors would give much to rifle that, but they +would never get their sharks' noses in. Nothing had been changed, +but something added. Once the Mad Khedive had borrowed it for some +years and begun his eternal additions. + +"Forty girls, they say, he kept here," smiled Hamdi Bey. "They +gulped their pleasure, in those days. It is better to sip, is it +not?" + +He smiled. "But these are no stories for a bride! I only trust that +you will not find your palace dull. It is very quiet now, very much +of the old school. You may miss your pianos, your electricity, all +your pretty Parisian modernity." + +She glanced at the glittering table. + +"But I do not find this so--so much of the old school. Here one does +not eat rice with the fingers!" + +"And I?" said the bey, leaning suddenly towards her on his outspread +arm. "Do you find me too much of the old school? Eh? eh?" + +"But you, monsieur," she stammered, still looking down, "you--I do +not know you--not yet." + +"Not--yet. Excellent! There will be time." + +"I confess that now I am weary--" + +"Ah,--and that diadem is heavy. Your head must ache with it," he +said solicitously. + +Perhaps it was the diadem that gave her that leaden, constricted +sense of a band tightening about her forehead. She put up her hands +to it. + +"Permit me," he said quickly, springing to his feet. "Permit me to +aid you." + +He stepped behind her and bent over her. She held her head very +still, stiff with distaste, and felt the weight lifted. He surveyed +the circlet a moment then placed it upon the marriage throne behind +her. She had an ironic memory of the false omen of her crowning, of +soft, satisfied little Ghul-al-Din's bestowal of her own +happiness.... Happiness, indeed.... + +"And that veil--surely that is incommoding?" suggested the suave +voice, and she felt the touch of his hands on her hair where the +misty veil was secured. + +She stammered that it was quite light--she would not trouble him-- + +Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil +aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled +sanctities, for a Moslem, the back of her neck. + +She did not stir. She sat fixed and tense. Then slowly the blood +came back to her heart, for he was moving away from her again to his +place at the table. + +Laughing a little, pulling at his blond mustache in a gesture of +conquest, his kindling eyes glinting down at her, "You must forgive +the precipitateness--of a lover," he murmured. "You do not know your +own beauty. You are like a crystal in which the world has thrown no +reflections. All is pure and transparent--" + +If she did not find words to answer him, to divert his admiration, +she felt that she was lost. + +"You are not complimentary--a bit of glass, monsieur, instead of a +diamond! But I am too weary to be exacting.... If now, you will +permit me to bid you good evening and withdraw--" + +"Little trembler," said the general facetiously, and reached out a +hand to touch her cheek, the light, reassuring caress that one might +give a petted child, but it almost brought a cry of nervous terror +from her lips. + +She thought that if he touched her again she would scream. He +inspired her with a horrible fear. There was something so false, so +smiling in him... he was like an ogre sitting down to a delicate +dish of her young innocence, her childish terrors, her frank +fears.... + +She could not have told why she found him so horrible, but +everything in her shrank convulsively from him. + +And the need of courtesy to him, of propititation--! + +The cup was bitterer than her darkest dreams.... She wondered how +many other women had drained such deadly brews... had sat in such +ghastly despair, before some other bridegroom, affable, confident, +masterful.... + +She told herself that she was overwrought, hysterical. The man was +courteous. He was trying to be agreeable, to make a little expected +love. He had drank a little too much--another time she might find +him different. He was probably no worse than any other man of her +world. + +It was not in her world, each young Turkish girl said in those days, +that one could find love. + +But it was _not_ her world! It was an alien world, enforced, +imprisoning.... That was the bitterest gall of all the deadly cup. + +"There is no need for haste," he was assuring her. "In a moment I +will call your woman. Fatima, her name is, an old slave of our +house." + +"I could wish," said Aimée, "that I had been permitted to bring my +old nurse, Miriam, without whom I feel strange--" + +"No old nurses--I know their wiles," laughed the bey, setting down +his drained cup with a wavering hand. "They are never for the +husbands, those old nurses--we will have no old trot's tricks here!" + +He laughed again. "This Fatima is a watch dog, I warn you, my little +one ... but if she does not please you, we can find another. And as +for the rooms--I have assigned this suite to you, the suite of +honor. This is the salon, and there," he pointed to a curtained door +behind them, opening into a small room that Aimée had already seen, +"there is your boudoir and beyond that, your sleeping apartment. I +have had them done over for you, but you shall choose your own +furnishings--everything shall be to your taste, I promise you. You +are too sweet to deny. You have but to ask--" + +Certainly, she thought, he was drunk. He moved his head so jerkily +and his whole body swayed so queerly. Desperately she fought against +her horror. Perhaps it was better for him to be drunk. + +Drunken men grow sleepy. Perhaps he would fall down and sleep. +Perhaps she ought to urge him to drink. Long ago the black had left +the bottle at his elbow and gone out of his room. + +But she did not move. She sat back in her chair, withdrawn and +shrinking, watching him out of those dark, terrified eyes. + +"You are beautiful as dreams," he told her, leaning towards her with +such abruptness that his sword struck clankingly against the table. +"Beyond even the words of my babbling cousin--eh, Allah reward +her!--but she did me a good turn with her talk of you!" + +Fixedly he stared at her, out of those intent, inflamed eyes. + +"I did not know that there was anything like you in the harems of +Cairo. You are like a vision of the old poets--but I suppose that +you do not know the ancient poetry. You little moderns are brought +up upon French and English and music and know little of the Arabic +and the Persian.... I daresay that you have never heard of the poet +Utayyah." + +Still leaning towards her he began to intone the stanzas in a very +fair tenor voice, and if his movements were at all unsteady, his +speech was most precise and accurate. + + "From her radiance the sun taketh increase when + She unveileth and shameth the moonlight bright." + +He chuckled.... "Ah, I shall put the triple veil upon you, my little +moon.... How Is this one? + + "'On Sun and Moon of Palace cast thy sight, + Enjoy her flower-like face, her fragrant light, + Thine eyes shall never see in hair so black + Beauty encase a brow so purely white.'" + +He got up and drew his chair closer to her. "That is the song for +you, little white rose of beauty." + +Back went her own chair, and she rose to her feet. + +"I thank you for the compliment, monsieur. But now have I your +permission to retire? For it has been a long day and I am indeed +fatigued--" + +To her vexation her voice was trembling, but she steadied it +proudly. + +"I bid you good evening." + +"Nonsense, my little white rose. This is not so fatiguing--a few +words more. But you are like the flower that flies before the +wind.... But your room, yes, to be sure. Shall I show you the way?" + +"I can discover it, monsieur." + +"Monsieur--fie on you, my little dove.... Hamdi, I tell you, your +lover Hamdi." + +He laughed unsteadily, and put a hand on her arm. "You are running +away, I know that. And I have so much to tell you ... Oh, it was +tedious in that villa of your father's! 'Yes,' I thought to myself, +'that is a fine story, a funny story, but I have heard them all +before. And you are in no haste, you revelers--you have no little +bride waiting for you at home.'... That one glance at you--I tell you +it was the glance of which the poet sings--the glance that cost him +a thousand sighs. I was on fire with impatience.... For I am +beauty's slave, little dove.... You may have heard--but no matter. A +wife must be a pearl unspotted.... I am not as the English who take +their wives from the highways, where all men's glances have rested +upon them. Have I not been at their balls? Their women dance in +other men's arms. They marry wives whose hands other men have +pressed. Sometimes--who knows?--their lips have been kissed.... And +then a husband takes her.... Oh, many thanks!" + +He laughed sardonically and waved his hands a little wildly. "Oh, I +know English--all the Europeans. I have seen their women. I have +seen them selling their wares--stripping themselves half bare in the +evenings, the shameless--For me, never! My wife is a hidden +treasure. You know what the poet says: + + "'An' there be one who shares with me her love + I'd strangle Love tho' Life by Love were slain, + Saying, O Soul, Death were the nobler choice, + For ill is Love when shared twixt partners twain.'" + +"You are fond of your poets," said Aimée with stiff lips. + +"You--you kindle poetic fires, my little one. You--I--" He stammered +a moment, then forgot his fierce speech against foreign ways. "You +have the raven hair--" + +His hand went out to it. He smoothed it back out of her eyes, then +tried to draw her to him. + +Desperately she resisted. "Monsieur, one does not expect a +gentleman--" + +"Expect! Ho--what should one expect when a man has such a little +sweetmeat, such a little syrup drop, such a rose petal--Come, come, +you would not struggle--" + +But it was not the struggling hand of the frightened girl that sent +the general back. + +It was a brown, sinewy hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from +a well tailored gray sleeve and lilac striped cuff, that caught +Hamdi Bey by the epauleted shoulder and sent him spinning about. + +Another hand was holding a revolver very directly at him. + +"Silence!" said Jack Ryder in his best Turkish and repeated it, with +amplification, in English. "Not a sound--or I'll blow your head +off." + +Aimée gave a strangled gasp. + +He had not gone, then! He had hidden there, in some nook of that +boudoir behind those shadowy curtains, waiting to protect her, to +rescue.... + +Over one arm he had the black mantle and veil, "Better put these +on," he suggested, without taking his eyes from the rigid bey, "and +then run for it." + +"But you--you--?" + +"I'll take care of myself. After you are out of the way. Dare you +try that? Or what do you suggest?" + +"Oh, not alone. Together--" + +"So--so--" said Hamdi Bey inarticulately, his head nodded, he +staggered, his knees gave way and he crumpled very completely upon +the floor, and lay like a felled log. + +After a quick look down at him Ryder turned to Aimée. "Quick, then. +We'll make a run for it--" + +He did not finish. Hamdi Bey, upon the floor, fallen half under the +folds of the white cloth, made a swift and very expert roll and +darted to his feet beside Aimée, whirling her about, with pinioned +elbows, for his shield. + +And so screened, he gave a shrill whistle. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +WITHIN THE WALLS + + +Ryder sprang forward, trying to reach the bey, but he dodged +skillfully; his holding Aimée blocked Ryder in his attack. + +He knew that high, peculiar whistle had been a signal, a call for +aid, and he flung a lightning glance down that long room, tightening +his hold on the revolver--but he did not see the small door that +opened in the shadowy paneling behind him, nor the shadow that grew +into the gorilla-like shape of the black as it launched itself +through the air upon his back. + +He only heard Aimée's scream, and then before the crashing weight +upon his shoulders he staggered and went down. + +The bey flung Aimée aside and rushed upon the prostrate figure, +kicking the revolver from the outspread hand. The black knelt +swiftly down, unfastening his silken sash. + +Giddily the room whirled about Aimée.... In the candle light, +leaping in the rush of conflict, she saw the bey and the black, and +their distorted shadows in a goblin blur.... And beneath them she +saw Ryder, helpless, his hands and feet pinioned.... With the +madness of despair she rushed forward, but the general intercepted +her. + +"He is quite helpless.... You need not be alarmed for my safety, +madame!" + +The cold, biting fury of his voice steadied her. She saw his face +was distorted, livid with anger. His breathing was stertorous. + +She stood helplessly by the table; the general turned and looked +down upon the face of the man who had dared to violate the sanctity +of his harem and attempt to steal his bride; beyond the man's head +Yussuf, the black, was squatting with a grinning, dog-like +watchfulness. + +But Ryder did not require watching. That sash had been tied strongly +about his hands and feet. He was as helpless as a baby. + +But the peculiar flavor of his helplessness was not so much fear +before the fanatic fury of this man he had outraged, although he had +a clear notion that his position was not enviably secure, but a +bitter, black chagrin. + +To have had the game in his hands and have bungled it! To have been +surprised by that simple strategy, taken off his guard by a feigned +collapse! The wily old Turk for all his champagne had the clearer, +quicker brain.... + +To have let him get to Aimée and call in his black! To have been +thrown, disarmed.... It was crass stupidity. It was outrageous +mismanagement, abominable, maddening.... + +And Aimée must pay for it. He tried to think very quickly what could +best clear her. + +He fixed his eyes on those glittering eyes, staring down upon him. + +"I realize I owe you an explanation," he said grimly. "If you will +let me tell you--" + +The bey turned to Aimée with a smile that was the lifting of a lip +and the distention of his nostrils. + +"This fool thinks he has the time to talk--his English." + +Desperately Ryder grasped for his vernacular. "I want to tell +you--why I came. This--this young lady doesn't know me." + +Past the general he shot a look of warning at the girl. + +"I was trying to get hold of her for her family in France--She is +really a French girl. Tewfick Pasha is not her father but her--" +he could not find the word and dropped into English. "Her +step-father--do you understand? And he had no business to marry her +off, so I tried to steal her for the French family. It was a mad +attempt which has failed--but for which the young lady should not be +blamed. She had never seen me before. She had no idea I was here." + +After a pause, "A remarkable story," said the general distinctly. He +turned about to the table and drank off the last of a glass of +champagne, then wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that +trembled. + +He turned back to stand over his prostrate invader. "Now, you--you +dog of Satan," he snarled in a sudden snapping of restraint, "how +did you get here? Who admitted you?" + +And at that, for all his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder +grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird of yours here." + +"Yussuf--never!" + +"The very one. But he didn't know it--I was in that black +mantle--and veil." + +"Oh, the mantle, I had forgot. So you stole in, disguised, to +violate my hospitality, to outrage my harem, to gaze upon the +forbidden faces of women and to steal the bride--" + +"I tell you I was trying to rescue the girl for her French family. +She _is_ French and Tewfick Pasha is only--" + +"And what is that to me? Do I--" the bey broke off and then turned +to the silent girl who stood leaning towards them, a trembling ghost +in white. + +"And you, my little one," he murmured sardonically with a savage +irony of restraint, "you, the little dove secluded from the world, +who trembled at a kiss, the crystal vase who had never reflected the +blush of love, whose virginal praises I was chanting when I was so +oddly assaulted, do you support this idiot's story?" + +Mechanically her head moved in assent, her eyes, dilated with fear, +were like the dark, fascinated eyes of some helpless bird. + +"You never saw this young man?" the bey pursued. "And yet you were +ready to run off with him--a pretty character you give yourself, my +snowdrop!--and you liked his eyes and hastened to obey?" + +Aimée was silent. From his ignominy upon the floor Ryder hastened to +interpose. + +"It is true she had never seen me, but I had already written to her +and acquainted her with the story. I tried to reach her first +through her father but that was useless so I resorted to these +desperate means." + +"Oh you wrote! And you told her you would be here, and murder her +husband--" + +"I told her nothing of the kind. She didn't know that I was coming +until I spoke to her here, and then she had no idea that I was going +to wait and carry her off--" + +"In the name of Allah! Do you take me for a dolt, an ass? You, with +your writing and your masquerade and your secrets! Do any families +try to recover their relatives with such means? Daughter or +step-daughter, it is nothing to me--" + +"But it is true," Aimée insisted, in a trembling voice. "My father +was Paul Delcassé--" + +"_Yahrak Kiddisak man rabbabk_--curse the man who brought thee up! +Delcassé or devil, it is Tewfick Pasha who is your step-father, your +guardian, who gave you to me for wife--what has your genealogy to +do with this affront upon my honor?" + +"But he did not intend to affront your honor--only to aid the family +in France--" + +"I ask you again, do I resemble an ass that you should put such a +burden of lies upon me? As if I did not know why young men risked +their lives, in the dead of night, in other men's rooms! If I did +not know what turns their brains to mush and their hearts to leading +strings! And you--you--you little white rose of seclusion--!" + +His venom leaped out at her in his voice. It was a terrible voice, +the cold, grating menace of a madman. + +"You, who had never seen this man but who fluttered to him like a +white moth to a fire, you who cowered from your husband's hand but +who turned to follow this strange dog into the streets--there will +be care taken of you later. But now--you complained of fatigue. +Surely this scene is overtaxing for your delicacy. If you will come +to your rooms--" + +She drew back from the hand he laid upon her. "Do not injure him! +By Allah's truth! He is rash, mad, but a stranger. He did not +know--" + +"He needs enlightenment. He needs to learn that a nobleman's harem +is not a café of dancing girls, where all may enter and stare and +fondle. _Bismallah_--he shall learn!... And now come--" + +"I shall not go," she said breathlessly. + +"What--struggle? But your father has been strangely remiss with his +discipline.... Permit me." + +His hand tightened in a grasp of iron. + +"My train is caught," she said in a tone of sudden pettishness; she +stooped to lift it with her hand that was free. + +"My train--!" he mimicked her in a quivering falsetto. "Have a care +of my frock--do not crush my chiffons.... And these are the women +for whom men break their heads and hearts!" + +"I tell you, sir," came urgently from Ryder, "that the girl is +innocent of all--" + +"Keep your tongue from her name--and your eyes from her face!... +Come, madame." + +With his iron grasp on her elbow he thrust her towards the boudoir +at the end of the drawing-room, behind whose curtains Ryder had so +long been hiding. + +The chamber was in darkness, lighted only by a pale gleam from the +other room. Aimée stumbled across the rug and found herself upon a +huge divan against a window screen. + +"Fatima is in the next room to come at a call. But perhaps you would +prefer to wait for me alone? I shall not be long." + +Desperately she caught at his arm, imploring, "I beg you, monsieur. +He has done no real harm. Let him go. He is a stranger--he +did not know. And he will never trouble you again. I will do +anything--everything you desire--if only you will not injure him--" + +"You trouble yourself strangely for a stranger." + +"He is a stranger in danger for my sake. For it was in his duty to +my--my family--" her trembling lips stumbled over the ridiculous +lies, "that he has blundered into this. He has no idea how shocking +a thing he has--" + +"And you had no idea, either, I suppose. You had never heard of +honor or treachery or--" + +"I was wrong, oh, I was wrong! I did want to go to France--I own it. +And I was not ready for marriage. And I had heard that you--I was +afraid. But now--if you will let him go for my sake, if you will not +visit my sins upon him, oh, I should be so grateful--so grateful +that anything I can ever do--" + +"But you will be grateful, anyway, my little blossom. I promise you +that you will learn to be very grateful--" + +"It is easier to die than to learn to love a hated one," she +reminded him softly, leaning towards him. "I can die very willingly, +monsieur.... And you would not want a wife before whom there was +always an object of terror--" + +Through the dusk her great eyes sought his. + +"Be generous--and harm him not," she breathed. "I beg of you, I +implore--" + +"And if I am--lenient--you will always be grateful?" + +Mutely she nodded, her eyes trying pitifully to read that shadowy +mask of mockery he turned towards her. + +"And how grateful could you be, little dove?" + +Pitifully she smiled. + +"Could you," he murmured, "could you learn to kiss?" + +He leaned nearer and involuntarily she shrank back. Faintly, "At +this moment--I beg of you, monsieur--" + +"Oh, if it is to be an affair of moments! We shall never find the +right one. But you were so full of promises--" + +"I will do anything," said Aimée, convulsively, "if you will promise +me--" + +"Come, then a kiss. A peck from my little dove." + +She looked at him out of wretched eyes. + +"And you promise to free him, not to hurt him--" + +"I promise not to hurt a hair of his head. Come, that is generous, +isn't it? As to freeing him--h'm--that is for later. Perhaps, if you +are very good. A kiss then... and later...." + +He bent over her. She shut her eyes and heard the taunt of his +laugh. She kissed him, and he laughed again. + +"What is it the Afghan poets say? 'Kissed lips lose no sweetness, +but renew their freshness with the moon.' Certainly if you have ever +been kissed, little bud, you have lost no dew.... Delicious.... I +shall hurry back." + +He cast a hard look down at her as she sat there, her arms drooping +at her sides. He looked about the room as if consideringly, then +nodded at an unseen door at the right. + +"Fatima is there if you want lights or assistance.... And Alsamit, +Yussuf's brother, is at the other door beyond. Do not stir, little +bird. I shall be back very soon." + +"And he--you promised--" + +"I shall not hurt a hair of his head." + +But he was smiling evilly in the darkness as he drew shut the door +and returned to the bound figure by the guarding black. + +For a moment he stood silent, considering, while Yussuf looked up +with glistening-eyed intentness like an eager dog ready for the word +of attack. + +Then in hasty Turkish the general gave his directions and the black +nodded and strode to a portière, jerking it down, which he wrapped +about Ryder's helpless form. + +Then he hoisted his burden over his huge shoulder and bore it on +after the general. + +Across the great room they went and down the long stairs up which +that day a most complacent Hamdi Bey had escorted his just-glimpsed +bride. + +Now at the bottom of the stairs a shadowy figure of a sleeping +eunuch was stretched. + +Hamdi Bey spoke sharply, giving a quick order. The black scrambled +to his feet, yawned, nodded, and strode away into the main vestibule +and out into the garden to investigate a shadow which the general +had just reported, and when he was out of sight the general and +Yussuf, with his unwieldy burden, came quietly down the stairs and +turned back into a long, dark hall. + +For a moment they paused outside a wide, many-columned banqueting +room, and there Hamdi Bey stood listening, straining attentive ears +for the faint sounds from the service quarters on the other side of +the room. He caught the guttural of a half inaudible voice, and the +wash of water and clink of a dish, showing that the belated work of +the reception was going draggingly on, but it was all far away and +invisible. + +Satisfied he went on a few steps to a pointed door set in the heavy +stone. From a nail he took down a lantern of heavy, fretted brass +and lighted it, not without some difficulty, for his hands were +still trembling. Then he took from the black a cumbersome key which +he fitted into the lock and turned heavily. + +Drawing back the door he motioned Yussuf ahead, and followed, +drawing the door shut. Down a steep, stone spiral stair they went, +and at the bottom, at the general's order, the black set Ryder down +from his shoulder and flung aside the portière. + +From its muffling folds Ryder looked out bewilderedly into the +darkness about him, illumined only by the yellow flare of the +ancient lantern. The general cautioned him to silence while Yussuf +knelt and untied the strip that bound his feet, then, his arms still +bound, he was ordered to march on before them. + +This, he said to himself, as he silently obeyed that order, this +really was the time to pinch himself and wake up! Of all the dark, +eerie nightmares! This slow procession through these underground +halls, the giant black on his heels, the general's lantern throwing +its flickering rays over the huge, seamed blocks of granite +foundations. + +It made him think of the Catacombs. It made him think of the +Serapeum. It made him think of those damp, tortuous underground ways +of the Villa Bordoni.... + +They seemed to be in the wine cellars. He saw bins and barrels and +barred vaults that would have done credit to an English squire, and +he reflected fleetly that wine bibbing was forbidden to Mohammedans +and that Hamdi Bey was a fanatic Moslem.... Then he saw open spaces +of ancient stuffs, broken tables and dismantled caiques and a broken +oar. His earlier observation of the palace had told him that it had +a water gate and he thought now that they might be near some +opening. + +He wondered if they were going to throw him, pinioned, into the +river. He wouldn't put it past this livid, silent, shaking man--and +yet the thing appeared so impossible, so theatric, so utterly +unrelated to any of the ways that he, Jack Ryder, might be expected +to end his days, that it couldn't possibly send more than a shiver +of speculation down his spine. + +And yet men _had_ been thrown into rivers--this very river. And men +had disappeared from just such palaces as this. There was the story +about young Monkton. He knew it perfectly; he had reminded himself +of it the last evening while he reflected upon this escapade, but he +had never actually appreciated the peculiar poignancy of the thing +until now. + +Monkton had met--so rumor reported--a Turkish lady of position, +flirted with her, it was said, while on horseback outside her motor +when caught in the crush at Kasr-el-Nil bridge. There had been a +meeting or two in the back of shops, and then he had boasted, +lightheartedly, of a design to take tea in her harem. + +He had never boasted about the tea. No one had ever seen Monkton +again and he was generally reported, after a stifled inquiry, to +have been thrown from his horse in the desert, or spilled out of his +sailing canoe. + +The government, English or Egyptian, assumed no interest in the +matter of gentlemen found in other gentlemen's harems. + +There were other stories, too. There was one of a little Viennese +actress who after a dramatic escape reported a whole winter of +captivity in one of these old palaces, and there was a vaguer rumor +of a rash young American girl, detained for days.... + +Ryder had always known these stories. They were part of the gossip +and thrill of Cairo. But he had never till now realized how +exquisitely possible was their occurrence. + +Anything, everything might happen in these hidden, secret chambers. +These Turks were as much masters here as their old predecessors who +had reared these stones. This black upon his heels might have been +the grinning, faithful executioner of some Khedive or Caliph--he +might have been the very Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance of Al +Raschid. + +He told himself that it was no time to think of the past. His +business--acutely--was the present. If only he could get his hands +untied! If only he could get those untied hands upon that demoniac +Turk! + +But, strain as he could upon the knots, they held. + +It seemed to him that they had been walking for an interminable +distance, in odd, roundabout ways. Once they had stopped and he had +involuntarily glanced back over his shoulder, but at a word from the +general he had kept his head forward again, while he heard the black +behind him gathering something that clinked. Later, a stolen glance +had revealed the eunuch with some tools in one hand and bag slung +over his shoulder. + +The bag disquieted him. Bags filled a foreboding place in the +Eastern literature of vengeance. He wondered if he were to go into +the river in that bag, with the tools for weight. + +He decided, feeling now a very odd and definite disturbance in the +region of his stomach, that he would tell that general that he was a +cousin of the late Lord Cromer and a nephew of Lord Kitchener. +Something insistent would have to be done about this. + +They were passing now through a strange, open space, between old +arches that for an instant arrested his excavator's interest. He saw +in the shadows about them, a crumpled, crumbling dome and broken +shafts, with half a wall of masonry pierced with Arabesques. Traces +of old ruins, fragments of some old, forgotten mosque over which the +palace had spread its foundations in bygone days.... Buried +treasure, looted, some of it, for the palace overhead, but still +rare and lovely.... That was a gleam of lapis lazuli that winked at +him from the crumbling mortar under his feet. + +Then they were between other walls, not crumbling ones, but the +solid, pillared blocks of the palace masonry with here and there +broad arches of old brick. + +They stopped. Between two arches the general held his lantern high, +flashing it over the surface while Yussuf swung down his sack and +knocked with the handle of his tool. + +Suddenly he stopped and looked at his master, nodding cheerfully. +The general lowered his light and stepped back and Yussuf reared the +pickaxe in his powerful arms and sent it dexterously at the wall, +between two broken bits of brick. + +It caught, and sent the mortar spraying; another blow and another +loosened a hole in which the black inserted a short iron and began +nervously grinding and prying. + +Ryder, watching with oppressed and helpless fury, saw the bricks at +last break and tumble faster and faster in a cloud of dust, and saw +a pocket in the wall become revealed, a long, upright niche, the +size, perhaps, of a man's coffin, on end. + +He tried, very suddenly, to talk. His tongue felt thick and swollen +and there seemed no words in all the world to fit his need of +overcoming this fanatic madman,--and after all, he had no chance for +them, for Yussuf, with a huge palm upon his mouth, urged him +suddenly backwards towards that horrible niche. + +"Gently, Yussuf, gently," said the general, suavely and with a slow +distinctness that was for Ryder's ears. "I gave my word that I would +not hurt a hair of his head--" + +Grinning, the black lifted him over the remaining wall, and set him +down into the niche, leaving him standing in there like a helpless +statue, tasting to the full fury of his heart the bitterness of his +helplessness and the ludicrous impotence of all struggle. + +"Good God, sir, you must be mad," he said in a strained sharp +voice that his ears would not have known as his own. "Do you +realize--there will be an inquiry--there is such a thing as law--" + +It seemed to him that he talked, in English and stammering Arabic, +for a long time. The black was kneeling, out of sight, stooping over +a basin of water and his abominable sack, and Ryder was facing that +silent, sardonic face, with its fantastic mustache, its evil, +gloating eyes.... + +He stopped for very shame. The man was mad. Mad and drunk--and there +was no appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.... Mad or drunk, he +had devised his vengeance shrewdly. + +Upon Ryder's helpless body a cold sweat of incredulous horror broke +softly out. + +At his feet he heard the black beginning to fit his bricks and +smooth his mortar. + +"You do well to save your breath," said Hamdi Bey at last, as Ryder +still stood silent. "You will need it in this chamber I am +providing.... But it may be," he said thoughtfully, "that your +breath will last your need. Thirst may be the more impatient for her +victim; they tell me thirst is an obtrusive visitor. As you were, +this evening.... Still, why do you not cry out a little? It will +amuse my black." + +Yes, this was real, Ryder reminded himself. And these things could +happen--had happened. He remembered suddenly the hideous scene, +outside the dungeons, in "Francesca da Rimini," when that bestial +brother goes in to the helpless prisoners. He remembered the sick +horror of those groans.... + +He remembered also various excursions of his in the Tower of London +and the Seigniory of Florence, and the sight of old rings and stakes +and racks and the feeling of their total unrelatedness to every +actuality. + +And yet they had happened. And this thing, for all its fantastic +medieval horror, was happening. Brick by brick the imprisoning wall +was rising. Brick by brick it intervened between him and sane, +sensible, happy, normal life. + +Eye for eye he gave the general back his look. He had always +wondered about the poor devils in underground torture chambers. Had +wondered how they had the stuff to hold out, against such odds, for +some belief, some information.... Now he knew the stiffening stuff +of a personal hate, upholding to the very grave.... + +That sardonic, devil's face.... That face which was going back +upstairs to Aimée.... But he must not think of that or he should +give way and begin to babble, to plead.... He must simply stand and +meet that glance.... + +And there came the incredible, insane moment when Ryder looked out +on that face through one last breathing space, and then saw the +fitted brick, settled into place, blot the world to darkness before +his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +UNDERGROUND + + +Alone in the gloom of that strange room, Aimée sat rigid. Listening. +Not a sound, beyond the closed door, from the long drawing room. Not +a sound, beyond the other door, from the room where the slave, +Fatima, waited to assist in her disrobing. + +Silence everywhere--save for a low lapping of water against the +masonry beneath her windows. + +The palace was on the river, then, or on some old backwater. She +remembered glimpses of dark canals on her drive that morning--had it +only been that morning? The sound of that soft, hidden water added +to her feeling of isolation and remoteness from everything that had +been her life before--she thought fleetingly, almost indifferently +of her friends, Azima, who to-day had crowned her for happiness, and +fond, foolish old Miriam and Madame de Coulevain and Tewfick Pasha, +weakly cruel, but amiable; she thought of them all, as unreal +figures from whom she had long taken leave. + +The old life was over. It had died for her when she passed through +the dark doorway and met that arrogant, sardonic, fatuous man, the +master of this palace.... + +Or more truly that old life had died for her when she had flung a +black mantle about her chiffon frock and a street veil across her +sparkling face and had stolen, daring and breathless, into the +lights and revelry of that hotel masquerade. There, when she had +shrunk back from the Harlequin and had looked up to meet the +kindling glance of that mask in tartans--yes, there, the old life +had died for her forever if only she had known it. + +And now--she would only like to die, too, she thought miserably, +after she had been assured of Ryder's safety. She was tense with +fear for him, distrusting in every fiber the assurance of that +fanatic, outraged Turk. + +She was not utterly resourceless. When Ryder's revolver had dropped +to the floor she had maneuvered, unseen by Hamdi Bey, to get her +train over it, and when she had stooped for her train her one free +hand had closed over the revolver handle beneath the satin and lace. + +Now the revolver lay on the divan, and very eagerly she drew it out, +feeling it in the darkness, curling her finger about the trigger. +Never in her life had she fired a shot, for her most formidable +weapon had been the bows and arrows of the Children's Archery +Contest of the English Club, but she felt in herself now that +highstrung tensity which at all cost would carry her on. + +Carefully she bestowed the small, steel thing in the bosom of her +dress, then she stared questioningly at the dress itself, hastily +unpinning the veil, and tying the long train up to her girdle. Then, +with a wary glance for the closed door behind which waited that +Fatima she dreaded, she stole to the door the general had shut and +pressed it softly ajar, peering out into the deserted throne room. + +Like a great cave of darkness the room stretched before her, peopled +with goblin shadows from the dying candles upon the disordered, +abandoned table; she saw the chair pushed back where she had risen +to struggle with the bey, the long folds of white cloth, sweeping +the floor, behind which Hamdi had rolled so agilely; a stain was +still spreading about an upset glass, and from the overturned cooler +the ice water was dripping, dripping with a steady, sinister +implication. + +She thought of flight.... There was another black, the general had +warned her, beyond the door, and there would be bars and bolts on +any egress from the harem, but with the revolver in her possession +some desperate escape might be achieved. + +But Ryder.... No, the gun was for another purpose.... She would not +squander it yet upon herself.... + +From the boudoir she moved slowly, carrying one of the gilt +candelabra from the table to light the room. She would need light +for her plan.... + +For ages, long, unending ages, she sat there, waiting.... A hundred +times it seemed to her that she could stand no more, that she must +make her way out at all costs, must discover what fate they were +dealing to Ryder, but still she forced herself to sit there, her +pulses racing, her heart sick with suspense, but desperately +waiting.... + +She felt a sudden wave of weakness go through her at an advancing +step from the next room. But her chin was up, her eyes fixed and +desperate as the figure of the general appeared in her opening door. + +"Ah, light! This is more cheerful, little one." + +She had risen, half moved towards him. "Is he safe?" + +"The stranger? Safe as treasure--buried treasure, little one." + +The bey laughed, and that laughter and the glittering satisfaction +of his eyes, filled her with foreboding although his next words came +with smiling reassurance. + +"Not a hair of his head is hurt, I give you my word." + +"But where is he--what have you done?" + +"Shut him up, to be sure. Kept him as hostage for your sweet +humility--a novel way to win a bride, oh, essence of shyness!" + +Malevolently he smiled down at her and in the back of her frightened +mind she realized that this man did well to be angry, that the +affront to him had been immeasurable, and that many a Turk would +have simply driven his dagger through the intruder's heart--and her +own, too. + +But though she tried to tell herself that there was forbearance in +him, she felt, instinctively, that there was deeper kindness in +direct, thrusting fury than in this man's sinister mockery. + +She had sunk back upon the divan on the bey's approach; now as he +stood before her with that mask of a smile upon his face, drawing a +silk handkerchief across a forehead she saw glistening in the +candlelight, she leaned towards him again, her hands involuntarily +clasping. + +"Monsieur, I seem to have done you a great wrong," she said +tremblingly, "but it is not so great as you suppose. Will you listen +to me? I--" + +"Useless, useless." He waved the handkerchief negligently at her. "I +have had words enough. You are not the daughter of Tewfick +Pasha--you are his step-daughter--your French family desires to +capture you--I know the rigmarole by heart, you observe. And of +course when a French family desires to obtain possession of a +charming step-daughter, on the eve of her marriage, that family +always employs a handsome young man to break into the bride's +chamber--and point a gun at the husband--" + +His mustache lifted in a grimacing sneer. + +"But it _is_ true, and I _am_ French," she interposed swiftly. + +"Excellent--I do not object in the least." He shot his handkerchief +up his cuff, and turned to her with eyes that lightly mocked +the agonized appeal of the young face. "French blood is +delightful--quicksilver and champagne. You will enliven me, I +promise you." + +"But the marriage--it is not legal, monsieur," she said desperately, +summoning all her courage. "Tewfick Pasha has no right to give me to +you--" + +Indulgently he smiled down at her, then his narrowed eyes traveled +slowly about the room. + +"But this is a strange time--and place!--to talk of legalities. Do +not distress yourself--your step-father is your guardian and your +marriage will be as binding as the oaths of the prophet. Have no +qualms.... And now, if your French blood will smile a little--" + +He started to seat himself beside her, but in that instant she was +on her feet. With all the courage in her beating heart she whipped +out that revolver and pointed it at him. + +"If you call--I shoot," she said breathlessly. + +The round mouth of the gun shook ever so slightly in the excited +hand gripping it, but in the blazing look she turned on him was the +unshaken, imperious passion of a woman swept absolutely beyond all +fear. + +Meeting that look Hamdi Bey stood extremely still and made no sound. + +"There are plenty of shots--for you, at the first noise, and for +the servants, if they come," she went on in that fierce undertone, +and then, passionately, "What did you do to him? Take me to him--at +once!" + +Irresolutely the man stood and looked up at her under his +half-lowered lids. He was near enough for a spring--and yet if that +excited finger should press.... The girl was capable of anything. +She was possessed.... And men had died of such accidents before +that.... + +"May I speak?" he murmured, in a tone scarcely audible, yet +preserving somehow its flavor of sardonic amusement. + +"Under your breath. One sound, remember--and I am a very good shot." + +"But what a wife," he sighed. "All the talents--" + +"I tell you that I will see him for myself. Take me to him, this +moment--" + +"Shall I give orders and have him brought here? He is quite safe, I +assure you." + +"Orders? If you summon a servant I will shoot. No, lead the way, and +I will follow you. And if you make one sound--one false move--" + +Decidedly the girl was possessed. She stood there like a white image +of war, her hand on that infernal automatic.... He hesitated, gnawed +his mustache, then swung sullenly upon his heel. + +Like some fantastic sculpture from an Amazonian triumph, they +crossed the long drawing-room, the erect, gilt-braided general +preceding, very slowly, the white-clad feminine creature, who held +one hand extended, with something boring almost into his shoulder +blades. + +He did not lead her down the long stairs, past the guarding eunuch. +He took, instead, an inner way through the late supper room which +led down into the pillared hall of banquets. That way was safe of +servants now; crossing the pillared hall there were no more sounds +of late work from the service quarters beyond. Oblivious of the wild +developments of that wedding reception, the tired servants, stuffed +with the last pasty, warmed with the last surreptitious drop of +wine, were asleep at last. + +Outside the door in the stone wall the bey took down the lantern +which so short a time before he had replaced upon its nail and +lighted its still smoking wick. He had not restored the key to +Yussuf, and he drew it now from his pocket and fitted it into the +lock, drawing back the door. + +"These stairs are steep," he murmured. "I hardly like you to descend +them unaided, but if you insist--" + +"Go on," she said imperiously. + +Down he went, and after him she came, following the way he led her +down the long stone underground ways. + +"We have, of course, very pleasant stairs down to our water gate," +he murmured apologetically, "but since you prefer this way--really +not the way that I would have chosen to have you first explore your +palace, madame! These, you perceive, are the cellars and old +storerooms--" + +"I do not want you to talk," she said urgently. + +"But you would not shoot me for it? Only for raising an alarm? And +surely you cannot be unreasonable about a few words--you must be +very careful, here, this doorway is low--" + +It was not past the old ruined mosque, included in the palace's +underground world, that he was leading her, but down a narrow +branching way, between walls so low that the general's head was +bowed in caution. + +"This part of the palace is very old," he murmured, over his +shoulder. "An ancestor of mine, Sharyar the Wazir, raised these +walls during the wars--for the dispensing of that sacred duty of +hospitality which Allah enjoins upon the faithful. It is reported +that he was host here to fifty of the enemy during their remaining +lifetime--although they had the delicacy not to cumber him with +overlong living. It is not, as I said, a pleasant place, but the +walls are strong and so I selected a spot here--" + +Here, somewhere, then, in these grim ruins, Ryder was penned, +helpless and questioning the to-morrow. The girl trembled with +excitement when she thought of his joy, his deliverance--and at her +hands. For their escape she had no plans, only the decision to +thrust the gun into his hands and follow him unquestioningly ... +Perhaps they could leave the general in his place and he could wear +the general's uniform for disguise.... + +Everything was possible now that she was nearing him and his safety +was at hand. She thrilled with a reanimating excitement that flew +its scarlet banners in her cheeks ... Only a few steps now.... + +"Go on," she said breathlessly. + +The bey had stopped and now flashed his lantern over a low, timbered +door, studded with ancient nail heads in a design whose artistry did +not arrest her. From a peg beside it he took down a key of brass, +fitted it to the lock and turned it with a deliberation maddening to +her tense nerves. + +Her heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds. Only a moment +or two-- + +He had trouble with that door. It took his shoulder; at last he set +it swinging inward slowly on its creaking hinges. Then he stepped +back and with a wave of his hand invited her to enter. + +"Not a chamber of luxury, you understand, but substantial, as you +will see--" + +"Go first," she ordered. + +He laughed. "Ever distrustful, little thorn-of-the-rose! Follow, +then," and he stepped within, into the darkness, which his failing +lantern but little illumined, calling out in a louder tone in his +halting English, "A visitor, my friend. A tourist of the +subterranean." + +She had followed him to the threshold, seeing nothing in the +blackness but the seamed blocks of stone within the lantern's rays, +afraid always to turn her eyes from him or her hand from its +outstretched pointing. + +He said very quickly to her in Turkish, "If you will wait by the +door. The floor is bad and there is another lantern, here on the +wall--" + +At her left he fumbled along the stone wall. She heard him mutter +... and then reach.... And then--she did not know what was +happening. For the very ground on which she stood, the solid block +of stone began to slip swiftly beneath her feet--she staggered--and +felt herself falling, falling, into some precipitately opened +abyss.... + +She gave a wild scream, flinging out her arms in terror, and then +cold waters closed above her, and the scream ended in a gurgling +cry. + +It was no great distance that she fell. What the dropped stone had +revealed, answering the signal of the old lever in the wall that the +general had pressed, was a stone well, narrow, deep, implanted there +by some ingenious lord of the palace in by-gone days, for the subtle +elimination of friend or foe or rival. + +But it was not part of Hamdi's plan to leave the young girl there +and close the obliterating stone. Scarcely had the waters met above +her head than he was flinging down a rope ladder whose upper ends +were fastened to rings in the floor and descending this with swift +agility until the waters reached his waist. + +Then he leaned out and clutched the floating satin bubbling and +ballooning yet unsubmerged above the stagnant depths and drew it +towards him. As the struggling girl came gasping within his reach, +he carried her panting up the ladder again, and laid her down in the +darkness, while he drew up the ladder and closed the stone by +pressing that hidden lever. + +But the stone which had dropped so swiftly, was slow and heavy in +slipping back in place, and when he turned again to Aimée, she had +ceased her choking cough and was sitting up, thrusting back the +dripping hair from her black eyes, staring bewilderedly about the +gloom as murky as any genie's cave. + +The lantern light was almost out. In its expiring gleams she saw no +more inky water, but only the damp, moss-grown stones, on which a +pool was widening from her wet garments, and the half-defined figure +of the general stooping over to squeeze the streams from his own wet +clothes. + +The nightmarish horror of it overwhelmed her. For a moment she could +have screamed with horror, and then she felt a cold and terrible +despair lay its paralyzing hand upon her heart. + +Somewhere, she felt, beneath those secret stones lay Ryder, drowned +... And she was living, in her helplessness ... No revolver now. +That was gone ... in the water, perhaps.... + +There was no resource, now, no refuge.... Strength went out of her, +and passive in a dream of evil darkness she felt herself being +hurried, stumblingly, back through the secret corridors and the dark +halls. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +OUT OF THE DARKNESS + + +There was no measure of time for Ryder in that walled coffin of +death. The seconds seemed hours, the minutes ages. + +He drew quick, short breaths as if economizing the air that was so +soon to fail him; he tugged at his bonds till the veins rose on his +forehead, but the silk held and the confines of the prison permitted +him no room for struggle; then he leaned forward, to press with all +his might upon the bricks before him; he grunted, he sweated with +the agony of his exertions, but not a brick was stirred, not a crack +was made in the mortar that gripped them tighter every instant. + +He died a thousand deaths in the horror that invaded him then. +Already he felt strangling, and the painful pumping of his heart +seemed the beginning of the end. + +Cold sweat stood out all over him; it ran down his face in trickling +streams and his body was drenched with that clammy dew of fear. + +He tried to count the minutes, the hours, to estimate how long he +would hold out.... + +And then he heard his own voice saying very distinctly and clearly +and dispassionately, "This thing is absurd." + +It was absurd. It was idiotic. It was utterly irrational. It was an +impossible end for an able-bodied young American, an excavator of no +mean attainments, a young scholar and explorer of twentieth century +science, a sane, modern, harmless young man, to die immured in the +ancient walls of a Turkish palace--because he had invaded a marriage +reception and intervened between man and wife. + +Violent death in any form must always appear absurd to the young and +energetic. And the fantastic horror of his death removed it +definitely from any realm of possibility. The thing simply could not +happen.... He thought of the amazement and the incredulity of his +friends.... + +Dangers in plenty they had warned him against, to his youthful +amusement--sand storms and chills and raw fruit and unboiled waters, +but they had not warned him against veiled women and the resentments +of outraged lords and masters. + +He thought of his mother's consternation and dismay. He thought of +his father's stern amazement.... What an awful jolt it would give +them, he reflected, with an irrational tickling of young humor. + +But no, it would not. They would never know. Not a word of this fate +would percolate into the world without. Not a comment upon his true +end would enliven the daily columns of the East Middleton +_Monitor_. Never would it regret the tragic and romantic interment +of a young native son of talent, buried alive by a revengeful +general of the Sultan.... + +He amused himself by writing the paragraph that would never be +written. Then he told himself that he was lightheaded and hysterical +and that he had better wonder what would actually be written. What +explanation would be found? + +A desert storm perhaps, or some accident. McLean would poke +about--but for all McLean knew he might be on his way back to camp +that very moment. And sometimes he went by sailing canoe, and a +rented horse, and sometimes by the accredited steamer and a camel, +and sometimes by tram or train to the nearest station. Even McLean's +mind and McLean's Copts wouldn't make much of all the alternatives +that his unsettled habits had afforded. + +Was there any possibility of his being traced, of any rescue +reaching him? He thought hard and long upon his last free moments. +Jinny Jeffries knew that he was in the palace, and Jinny had been +reiteratedly warned about the danger of betraying that knowledge. It +would take some little time for alarm before Jinny said anything. +And it would take a little time for Jinny to begin to worry. + +He had not been so instant in attendance upon Jinny of late, for all +their residence in the same hotel, that she would suspect that his +absence of twenty-four hours was due to actual incarceration. + +His cursed passion for freedom in which to ramble up and down that +deserted lane without Tewfick Pasha's garden! His inane love of +solitary mooning.... + +No, Jinny would not soon wonder about him. She had not expected to +see him that evening, anyway--he had muttered something to her about +a man and an engagement. + +She _would_ rather look to see him the next day and talk about their +adventure.... But still she would feel no more than pique at his +absence; positive worry would not develop until later. + +Besides, all the revelations that Jinny could make would do no good. +Jinny could only report that he had maintained a disguise at a +wedding reception, and talked a few moments, apparently undetected, +to a bride. Hamdi Bey, and Hamdi's eunuchs, would be blandly +ignorant of such a scandal. What his disappearance would indicate +would be some further frolic on his part, some tempting of a later +Providence before he had abandoned his disguise.... If he were +discovered, for instance, in some of those native quarters, behind a +woman's veil.... + +Decidedly the only effect of Jinny's revelations would be an +unsavory cloud upon his character. + +There was no hope to be looked for. + +And yet he could not believe it. There were moments when the black +terror mastered him, but involuntarily his young strength shook it +off. He could not believe in its reality. He could not believe that +he was actually here, bricked and bound, in this infernal coffin.... + +But, indisputably, the evidence was in favor of belief.... Only to +believe was to feel again that horror.... + +He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter. One had to die some +time. Everybody did. One might as well go out young and strong and +still interested in life. + +But that was remarkably cold comfort. He didn't want to go out at +all. He didn't want to die, not for fifty or sixty years yet, and of +all the ways of dying, he wanted least to smother and choke and +stifle like a rat walled in its hole in the wall. + +He recalled, with peculiar pain, a woodchuck that he had penned up +as a boy, and he hoped with extraordinary passion that the poor +beast had made another hole. Never again, he resolved, would he pen +up a living creature, never again, if only again he could see the +light of day and breathe the free air.... + +He thought of Aimée. And when he thought of her his heart seemed to +turn to water. Useless to repeat to himself now those old reminders +that he had seen her so little, known her so slightly. Useless to +measure that strange feeling that drew him by any artifice of time +and acquaintance. + +She was Aimée. She was enchantment and delight. She was appeal and +tenderness. She was blind longing and mystery. She was beauty and +desire.... + +Even to think of her now, in the infernal horror of this cramping +grave, was to feel his heart quicken and his blood grow hot in a +helpless passion of dread and fear. She was alone, there, helpless, +with that madman. + +He tried to tell himself that she was not wholly helpless, that she +had wit and spirit and courage, and that somehow she would manage to +quell the storm; she might persuade Hamdi to their story, make him +remember that this was the twentieth century wherein one does not go +about immuring inconvenient trespassers as in the earlier years of +the Mad Khedive--years which had probably formed the general's +impulses--but in telling himself this there was no comfort for the +thought of the price that Aimée would have to pay. + +It was pleasanter to pretend that Hamdi was really only joking, in a +shockingly exaggerated, practical way, and that presently, when the +suitable time had elapsed, he would present himself, smiling, to end +the ghastly, antiquated jest. + +For some time he continued to tell himself that. + +And then suddenly he told himself that the time for intervention had +surely come. It was very hard to breathe. + +The next minute he was assuring himself that this was merely some +devil's trick of his apprehensive imagination. There must be a +great deal of air left.... But he was distressingly ignorant of the +contents of air, and his calculations were lamentably unsupported by +any sound basis of fact. + +Mistake, not to have gone in for chemistry and physics. A chap who'd +done time in those subjects wouldn't now be rocking with suspense; +he'd comfortably and satisfactorily know just how many hours, +minutes and seconds were allotted before his finish and he could +think his thoughts accordingly. + +Undoubtedly, so he insisted to himself, there was air enough here to +last him till morning. This gasping stuff was all imagination. He +wanted to keep cool and quiet. But for all his reassurance there +_was_ something a little queer with his lungs, and his heart was +lurching sickeningly in his side, like a runaway ship's engine. + +And then he heard his own voice repeating very tonelessly, "O God, O +God," and the horror of it all came blackly over him and a feeling +of profound and awful sickness.... + +It _was_ a sound. The faintest scraping and knocking without that +wall. It went through him like an electric current.... And then a +roar burst from him that fairly split his ears, the reaction of his +quivered nerves and racking fears of his uncertainties, his +tightening terrors. + +But now--nothing. He could not hear a thing. A delusion? A torture +of his final hours?... No, it came again. More definitely now, a +little grinding and scraping. + +Faster and faster, a muffled, driving thud. + +A jubilant reassurance sang gayly through him. He had expected +this--this was what he had predicted. Hamdi was no foul friend. He +was a devilish uncomfortable customer with antiquated notions of +revenge, but now he had shot his wad and was going to undo his +tricks. + +Ryder braced himself to present a carefree jauntiness--an air +somewhat difficult to assume when one is trussed like a spitted +bird, in a hot coffin space, with hair falling dankly over a +steaming brow, with a collar like a string, and an indescribable +pallor beneath the bronze of one's face. + +Something stirred. One end of a brick was driven in against his +chest. Then he felt the blind working of some tool that caught it +and worried it free. + +It seemed to him that through that dark aperture a current of cold, +delicious air came rushing in about him. The blows sounded against +the adjoining bricks and he thought of the glorious joy of seeing +out again, feeling that he would welcome even the sight of Hamdi's +blond mustache and the eunuch's hideous grin. + +Now the aperture admitted a pale gleam upon his chest. Staring +steadily down he caught a glimpse of the fingers curving about a +brick, and his heart that had steadied, began to race again wildly. +For they were not the fingers of the black nor yet the wiry joints +of the general. + +They were soft, white fingers, with a gleam of rings. + +Aimée! Somehow, somewhere, she had managed to come to him, to +achieve this rescue.... + +"Aimée!" He breathed the name. + +"S-sh!" came a warning little whisper, and impatiently he waited +until that opening should be greater and permit of sight and speech. + +His helplessness was maddening. If only he could raise his hands, +could get those bonds off! He twisted, he writhed, he tried to lift +his elbows and get his wrists in reach of the opening, but the +coffin was too diabolically cramped for movement until the hole was +very much larger. Then with a convulsive pressure he swung his +wrists within reach and after a moment's wait he felt a thin blade +drawn across the silk. + +The relief was glorious. He swung his hands free, rubbing the chafed +wrists, then thrust an opened hand out into the opening, and with +instant comprehension a short, pointed bit of iron was put within +it. + +Now he could do something! With furious strength he attacked the +bricks edging the hole and as he pried free each brick he could +again get a glimpse of those white delicate fingers lifting it +carefully away. + +And now the hole was large enough. He twisted about and thrust out a +leg, and then, with a feeling of ecstasy which made the official +literary raptures of saints and conquerors but pale, dim moods, he +wormed his way out of that jagged hole and turned, erect and free, +to the shrouded figure of his rescuer. + +She had drawn back a little against the wall, a gauzy veil across +her face. Beside her, upon the stone floor, a solitary candle sent +its flickering rays into the shadows, edging with light her slender +outlines. + +Ryder took one quick step to her, his heart in his throat, and put +out eager arms. But in the very moment that he was gathering her to +him, even when he felt her pliant body, at first resistant, then +softly yielding, swept against his own, he felt, too, a little palm +suddenly upon his mouth. + +"Hsh!" said the soft, whispering voice, cutting into his low murmur +of "Aimée!" and then, in slow emphatic caution, "Be--careful!" + +He had need of that caution. For under the saffron veil was not the +face of Aimée. He was clasping a young creature that he had never +seen before, a girl with flaming henna hair and kohl darkened brows, +a vivid blazoning face that smiled enigmatically with a certain +mockery of delight at the amazement he reflected so unguardedly. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +AZIZA + + +From the slackening grip of his astounded arms she stepped backward, +still smiling faintly and holding up in admonishment the palm she +had pressed against his mouth. + +"But what--what the dev--" muttered Ryder. + +She nodded mysteriously, and beckoned. + +"Come," she whispered, catching up her candle, and after holding it +high for a moment, staring at him, she extinguished it suddenly, and +turned to lead the cautious way across the stone spaces while Ryder +closely followed. + +Not Aimée, then. But some messenger, he could only suppose. Some +confidante, at need. A handmaid? The whisper of her silks, the +remembered gleam of jewels in the henna hair flouted that thought, +and not troubling his ingenuity with alternatives he was content to +follow her swift steps. + +They were now in those open rubbishy spaces where he remembered the +crumbling masonry and broken arches of old, disregarded mosques; now +they were again enclosed in narrow stone walls, winding past cellars +and store rooms. + +The girl's advance grew more cautious. Often she stopped and +listened, peering ahead into the darkness, and now, as she took +another turning, her care redoubled and Ryder needed no exhortation +to imitate it. Obeying a gesture of her arm, he followed at a +greater distance, prepared, at the warning of a sound, to flatten +himself against the wall or dart into some cranny of retreat. + +They were now in the cellars. The corridor was widening out before +them with a pallid showing of light, crossed with many bars, at some +far end.... They stole towards it. It was a window, or barred gate, +he saw, and he heard again that lapping of restless water against +stone. + +He could see, too, in the dimness the curve of a stair near the +gate. + +Abruptly his guide checked him. Wary and noiseless he waited while +she stole forward to those stairs, peering up into the gloom, +attentive for any sound from above.... Apparently satisfied, she +went on towards the barred gate, and bent down over a spot of +darkness which Ryder had taken for a shadow. + +He saw now that it had some semblance to a human outline. + +Closely the girl bent and he caught the pallor of her hands, +searching swiftly, and then a muffled clink.... Next moment, a +wraith with soundless steps, she was back at his side again, urging +him on with her. They passed the stairs; he felt the soft yield of +carpet beneath his feet; they passed that recumbent figure and now +he heard the rhythm of a sleeper's heavy breath, escaping muffledly +from the folds of a thick mantle which the sleeper's habits had +wrapped about his head. For all the mantle he was aware of the fumes +of wine. + +"I saw that Ja'afar had his drink," said the girl suddenly in softly +whispered Turkish, her head close to his. "He is my friend. I do not +neglect him," and under her breath she laughed, as she exhibited the +great bunch of keys she had taken from the imbiber. + +Stooping now before the gate she fitted the key into the lock. Then +over her shoulder she looked up at the young man, and asked him a +quick question. + +He did not understand. That was the trouble with his vernacular. It +would go on very well for a time, when he had a clue to the sense, +or when it was a question of every day expression, but a sudden +divergence, an unexpected word, was apt to prove a hopeless +obstacle. + +Now she repeated her question again, more slowly, and again he shook +his head. + +Now she stood up, frowning a little and began again in English, +"You--no, I not know--This way? You do it?" A sudden smile broke +over her face as she made a swift pushing gesture with her hands, +that, with her pointing to the water outside, sent Ryder a sudden +enlightenment. + +"Swim? You mean--do I swim?" + +She nodded. "Not go--" She made a swift downward movement of her +hands and then pointed again to that water just outside the gate. + +"Not go down--not sink?" interpreted Ryder. "No, indeed, I can +swim," he assured her, and revisited with smiling satisfaction she +knelt again before the barred gate. + +Open it swung with so sharp a crack that both glanced at the figure +behind them, and then at the shadowy gloom of the stairs. But no +alarm sounded. Outside the gate Ryder saw the darkness of fairly +wide rippling waters, visited with floating stars, and beyond a +low-lying, dun bank. + +Escape was there. Freedom. Safety. He felt an exultant longing to +plunge in and strike out, but he turned, questioningly, to the +mysterious rescuer. + +"Aimée?" he asked, under his breath. "Where is she?" He repeated it +in the vernacular, distrusting her English, and in the vernacular +she answered, "You want her? You want to take her away with you?" + +She laughed softly at the quick flash in his eyes and hardly waited +for his speech. + +"Good--what a lover! You are not afraid?" + +Mendaciously he assured her that he was not. + +"Good!" she said again, with a showing of white teeth between her +carmined lips. "You take her--you take her away from him. That is +what I want. You understand?" + +Very suddenly he understood. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +AZIZA IS OFFENDED + + +This was no emissary from Aimée. This was no philanthropic +bystander. It was some girl of the palace, jealous and daring, +conspiring shrewdly for the removal of her rival. + +"Take her away," she was saying urgently. "Out of this palace. We +want no brides here." Lowering and sullen, she turned bitter on the +word. + +"To-night, I was watching," she went on swiftly. "I heard--the +noise--and then the whispering.... The darkness has ears and +eyes--and a tongue. And so I waited out there...." + +He could not distinguish all the quick flow of her speech, but he +caught enough to understand how she had lurked in the halls, +jealously spying, defying the eunuchs' authority, and how she had +caught with passionate delight that stifled alarm of scandal. Later, +hanging over some banister, she had seen the Ethiopian pass with his +burden and had stolen down afterwards, stalking like a cat, and had +discovered the lantern gone, the door unlocked.... And then she had +watched until the pair emerged without the burden. + +She had not been able to get hold of the key to the door. But she +had resolved to explore and so she had furnished the waterman with +his wine, drugged, Ryder gathered, and so stolen past him on the +other route to those underground foundations to which her suspicions +had been directed by the mortar and dust upon Yussuf. + +Evidently she knew the possibilities of the place and the mind of +its master. And when she found the old niche freshly bricked and the +mortar at hand she had not needed more to assure her that here was +the burial place of her rival's lover. + +Now, for the boon of his life, he was to relieve her of that rival. +Or try to. + +"For once--he might not kill her," she whispered, "but if again--" +Her eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark. "Take her away. Make her +name a spitting and a disgrace.... Her memory a shame and a +sting.... Is she beautiful?" she broke off to demand. "They say--but +slaves lie--" + +"Can you believe a lover?" he said whimsically for all his +impatience. "She is a pearl--a rose--a crescent moon--" + +"They say she is very pale and thin--" + +"She is an Houri from Paradise," he said distinctly. "And now, in +the name of Allah, let me get to her. Tell me the way--" + +"Will she go gladly with you?" the low, insistent voice went on, and +at his quick nod, "Holy Prophet, what a bride!" + +She clapped her two ringed hands to smother the impish joy of her +laugh. "A warning to those who can be warned--he will not be so +eager for another stripe from that same stick!--It was his cousin, +Seniha Hanum--Satan devour her!--who made this marriage. Always she +hated me.... But now I will tell you how to get to her. Look out, +with me." + +Kneeling at the gate, over the dark flow of the water, she drew him +down beside her, and thrusting out her veiled head, she pointed +upward and to the right to a jutting balcony of mashrubiyeh, where a +pale light showed through the fretwork. + +"There--you see? That is my room. And if you climb up, I can let you +in.... There... Up," she repeated in English, resolved to make +certain. + +"I see. I can get there," he assured her, measuring with his eye the +dim distance. + +"At once," she said. "I will be there. I cannot take you with me +through the upper hall--it is dangerous even for me to be caught. +But no eunuch wants my displeasure." + +He could believe it, watching the subtle, malicious daring of her +face. Even in the gloom he caught the steady-lidded arrogance of her +kohl-darkened eyes and the bold insolence of a high cheek bone. She +had a hint of gypsy.... + +"And you can get me in? You're a wonder!" he whispered. "I can't +thank you enough--" + +"Rid me of her," said the girl swiftly. "But not--not him. You must +swear--what is it that Christians swear by?" she broke off to +demand. "By the grave of your father? Yes? You will swear not to +hurt him, to hurt Hamdi, by the grave of your father? Yes?" + +Ryder nodded quickly. His father, to be sure, was in no grave at +all. He was, allowing hastily for the difference in time, in his +treasurer's cage at the bank in East Middleton, but he did not wait +to explain this to the girl. + +"I swear it," he repeated. "I won't hurt your Hamdi, since that's +your condition. But we're wasting time--" + +"Up, then. And if you fall down--do like this." + +Smiling mischievously, she made the gesture of swimming. "Allah go +with thee--and with me also," he heard her murmur, as he stepped out +to the ledge of the entrance, twisted himself agilely about and +climbing up the opened gate swung himself up to the stone carving +overhead. + +Below him, he heard the gate swing shut. He did not hear her lock +it. Fervently he hoped she had not, since it was a possible exit for +any one in a hurry, but at any rate, he need not worry about a way +out of the place until he had got into it again. + +And the getting in was not any too simple. It was work for a +mountain goat, he reflected, after a short interval devoted to +tentative reaches and balancing and digging in of hands and feet. +The distances were far greater than the first-glimpsed, +foreshortened perspective had allowed him to guess, and there was +only the starlight to illumine the gray face of the palace. + +He had no idea of the time. Somewhere about the middle of the night +or early morning, he judged vaguely by the stars, although it seemed +impossible that so few hours had passed. + +The river was all silence and darkness. No nuggars with their +sleeping crews were moored below. He seemed the only living, +breathing thing clambering across the face of time and space. + +Gingerly he kicked off the nondescript black shoes he had worn with +his disguise that afternoon and essayed a perilous toehold while he +reached for the interstices of a mashrubiyeh window just overhead. + +Once gripping the rounds he pulled himself up, reflecting that it +was well it was night and that no lady was sitting within her +shelter to be affrighted at this intrusion of fingers and toes. + +From the jutting top of this projection he surveyed his further +field of operation. The window with a light was two stories higher +yet and to the right. There were two other windows with lights on +the second story, very much farther along, and he wondered painfully +if these were the rooms of Aimée. + +That boudoir in which he had hidden through the end of the long +reception had been upon the water. And there had been a door into an +adjoining room, for he had seen a sallow-faced attendant passing in +and out. + +A wild longing seized him to crawl on and over into those windows. +But it was a difficult, almost an impossible distance, and even when +there he would be like a fly on the outside of a pane with no way of +getting in. + +The unknown girl had promised him a way through her window and he +had confidence in her ingenuity and daring. + +So he went on, worming cautiously along old gutters and ledges and +jutting balconies until at last he was clasping the lower grill of +that mashrubiyeh from which her light gleamed. + +Instantly the light went out. + +"Wait!" he heard her voice say sharply over his head. She was +standing by the window fumbling with the woodwork, and in a moment +he heard the click of a knob and then, just opposite his head, the +screening grill slipped aside and an aperture appeared. + +"Quick!" admonished the voice, and quickly indeed he drew himself up +and in, reflecting whimsically as he did so that this girl had first +helped him out of a hole and then into one. + +The next moment she had moved the grill into place and lifted the +cover she had placed over her triplet of candles on a stand. + +Triumphant, her eyes dancing, her teeth a gleam of light between +those scarlet lips of hers, she looked at him for the admiration +she saw twinkling back at her in his eyes. + +"But not me--no!" she protested, her supple hands gesturing towards +the magic casement. "I found it here. It is very old--you +understand? Some other, long ago, found time dull and so--" + +Delightedly she shared the flavor of that secret of the vagabond +lady of long ago who had devised this cunning entrance for her +lover. + +On some dark night like this, with the gatekeeper drowsy with old +wine, some other stripling had climbed that worn façade before him +and slipped through the secret space and stood triumphantly before +some daring, laughing girl who had cast aside for him her veil and +her fear of death. + +What ingenuity, Ryder wondered fleetly, had smuggled in the +carpenter for the contrivance, what jewels had gone to the bribing, +what lies had been told!... And what had been the end of it all? + +Evidently not the discovery of the opening.... + +He hoped, with singular intensity, for the safety of the daring +young lovers, that unknown youth whose feet had foreworn the path +for his feet and that dead and gone young girl, who had dared +anything rather than endure the mortal ennui of those hours behind +the veil.... + +These thoughts all went through him like one thought as he stood +there, his eyes roving about the dim, shadowy room of old divans and +Eastern hangings, and then turning back to the glimmering figure of +its mistress. + +She was staring frankly at him, her eyes boldly curious and +examining. They were not dark eyes, he saw now; that had been the +impression given by the kohl about them and the black line of the +brows penciled into one line; they were yellow eyes, golden and +glowing, scornful and lazy-lidded. + +As she looked at him, these eyes smiled slowly. She was seeing in +this lover of her rival a singularly delightful looking young man, +for all his dust and disarray, a slender, bronzed, hardy-looking +young man, with dark, disordered hair straying across a white brow, +and audacious, eager eyes in which the fear of death, so lately +glimpsed, had left no daunting reflection. + +Slowly she lifted her hand and with deliberate softness put back +that straying hair of his. + +"Poor boy," she said slowly in English, and then, smiling ruefully, +she held out her hands for his inspection. The grime of the bricks +had discolored their scented delicacy and he saw bruised finger tips +and a torn nail. + +"I'm infernally sorry," he said quickly. + +Her smile deepened at his look of concern, as he held, a little +helplessly, the witnesses of her work of rescue which seemed somehow +to stray into his keeping. + +"It is nothing--but you--poor boy," she said again, in that English +of which she seemed naïvely proud. + +"If you could give me some water," he suggested, and drank deep +with delight the last drop she brought him from an earthen jar. It +seemed to wash from his throat the taste of that dust and fear. + +"I can't begin to thank you," he murmured. "I only wish that I could +do something for you--" + +She looked up at him. They were standing close together, their +voices cautiously low. + +"Perhaps, yes, you can--" + +"It's not doing anything for you to save Aimée," he told her. +"That's what you are doing for her and for me.... But if ever you +want me for anything after this--my name is Ryder, Jack Ryder, and +you can reach me at the Agricultural Bank." + +He had a vague vision of some day repaying his enormous debt by +assisting this girl, grown tired of her Hamdi, out of this aperture +and into a waiting boat. He would do it like a shot, he told himself +gladly; he would do anything on God's green earth if only she helped +him get Aimée away from that infernal villain. + +"Jack," she repeated, under her breath, and then in her slow +English, "I like--Jack." + +"Don't forget it. I'll always come and do anything for you. And if +you'll tell me your name--" + +"Aziza." + +"Aziza. I'll never forget that. And now, if you'll tell me how I can +get to her and then the best way out--" + +"Why you so hurry--" + +"Why?" he looked a little blank. "I can't lose a minute--he may be +with her--" + +She came a little nearer to him, her head tilting back with a slow, +indolent challenge. + +Gone was the silken mantle that had been about her below stairs and +he saw now that she was a vivid, exotic shimmer of gauzy green +against the saffron veil that fell from her henna hair. There was +barbaric beauty in her, in the bold, painted face, the bare, +gold-banded arms, the slender, sinuous lines, and there was barbaric +splendor in the heavy jewels that winked and flashed.... + +It struck Ryder that she was gotten up regardless.... In pride, +perhaps, on her rival's wedding night?... Or had there been some +defiant, desperate design upon Hamdi--? + +She did not miss that sudden prolonging of his look upon her. + +"You like me--yes?" she murmured, and then slipping back into +the vernacular, "I--I am not the stupid veiled girl of the +seclusion--not forever. I come from the west, the deserts. I have +seen the world: Men--men, I know ... I danced before them, not the +dances of the Cairene cafés," she uttered with swift scorn, "but the +dance of the two swords, the dance of the serpents.... Men threw the +gold from their turbans about my feet when I had danced to them ... +And others, English, French--" + +She broke off, but her eyes told many things. "Then--Hamdi," she +said slowly. "Him I ruled--and his palace.... But I have known other +things." + +Closer yet she came to him. Her eyes, golden fires of eyes, were +smiling up into his, her scarlet lips gathered in soft, sensual +curves ... her whole silken scented body seemed to slip into his +embrace. A bare arm touched his neck, resting heavily. + +"Sweet--heart," she said slowly, in her difficult English. + +It was the deuce of a position. + +No man can rudely snatch from his neck the arm of the lady who has +just saved him from a harrowing death. And a lady who was risking +more than her life in sheltering him--decidedly the situation was +delicate. + +It was not the lady's fault that her impetuosity, the impetuosity +which had been his salvation, now plunged her into amorous caprice. +There were obvious handicaps, moral, social and ethical, in her +upbringing. She was a child of nature, a nature undisciplined, +unruly, tempestuous. + +And even queening over Hamdi and his palace must have offered little +diversion to a wild dancing girl familiar with the excitement of +more varied conquest. + +Ryder was horribly embarrassed. He was visited with a fearful +constraint, a chivalrous wish not to hurt her feelings, and a sharp +prevision of the danger of offending her. + +He took the first turn of least resistance. + +He did not need to bend his head; their eyes were on a level. He +simply kissed her. And she kissed him back. + +He hated himself for the leap of his blood... and for the +Puritanical discomfort of his nature.... + +Her arm about his neck was pressing closer. It was the moment for +action and Ryder acted. Very firmly he put his hand upon her hand, +withdrew it from its clasp about him, and raised it to his lips. + +His kiss was respectful gratitude and an abdication of the delights +of dalliance. + +"Good-bye, my dear," he murmured. "Now, if you will show me the way +out--" + +Her eyes agleam between half-closed lids, she studied him. It +occurred to Ryder that probably never before had her hands been +detached--and kissed--and put away. He must be a phenomenon, an +enigma. + +Then her lips parted in a faintly scornful smile. + +"You afraid--you? You want--run?" + +"I'm horribly afraid," he said earnestly. "I want to get out of here +as quick as I can." + +That was putting, he considered, the very wisest construction upon +it. + +Negligently her gesture reminded him of the opening in the window. +"Here you are safe." she murmured in the vernacular. "And the doors +are locked--" + +"Yes, but--but Aimée isn't safe, you know--and I must get her out of +here." + +"Aimée?" In those yellow eyes he caught the flash of capricious +resentment at the reminder. Then, indifferently, she brushed the +distraction away. + +"There is time enough for Aimée. She is not lonely now." + +"Not lonely?" he shivered at the cold carelessness of her tone. "I +must get to her quickly then." + +"But that is not safe.... A little--later." + +Uncomfortably he tried to infuse his glance with innate innocence +and utter lack of understanding. + +"I shan't hurt him--if I have the chance," he told her. "I've given +you my word--" + +"And I trust you--much." Her gaze sought his in a trifle of +impatience at such simplicity. "But it is not safe for you now.... +Later ... By and by." + +"You don't want him to have a chance to make love to her, do you?" +said Ryder sharply. "I thought that was the very thing you +_didn't_--" + +Her smile was a subtle, confessing caress. "I shall have my +revenge," she murmured, and pressed closer to him again, every +sensuous, sumptuous line of her a challenge and an enticement. + +"I give you life," she whispered, very low in her throat. "You give +me, perhaps, an hour--?" + +"I _haven't_ an hour," said Ryder very desperately and unhappily. +"Not when Aimée is with that devil--" + +It took every thought of Aimée to get the words out. + +He felt a brute about it, a low, ungrateful dog. She _had_ given him +life and every fiber in him clamored to save her pride and champion +her caprice. + +It seemed so dastardly to wrench away from her now, like some +self-centered Joseph, leaving that beastly stab in her vanity.... +And she was a stunning creature, lawless, elemental, hot and cold +like the seventh wind of the inferno.... + +But it was Aimée who was in his blood like a fever.... Aimée, that +frail white rose of a girl, in her bonds of terror.... + +He saw the flame in Aziza's eyes. He saw the stiffening of her +defiance, of half-incredulous affront. Then, her form drawn up, her +bared arms outflung, her vivid, painted, furious face challenging +him. "I am not beautiful--like Aimée?" she said in a voice of venom, +and in the English, for double measure, "You not like me--no?" + +"You _are_ beautiful and I _do_ like you," Ryder combated, feeling a +bungling fool. And then went on to thrust into that half-second of +suspended fury, a faint breath of appeasing. "But--don't you +see--it's my duty--" + +"You go--?" she said clearly. + +Even in that moment he had a sharp prescience of the unwisdom of his +rejection. A cold calculator of chance and probabilities would have +reckoned that a half hour of assuagement here would have been a +wiser investment of his mortal moments than any virtuous plunge into +single-hearted duty. + +But Ryder did not calculate. He could not, with Aimée under that +beast's hand. His heart and soul were possessed with her danger and +his heart and soul carried his body instinctively back from the +dancing girl's advance, and he whispered, "I must go. There is no +time--" + +She flung back her fiery-hued head with a gesture of intolerable +rage. Her eyes were lightnings. + +"Dog of a Christian!" she said chokingly and flew to the doors. + +Back she thrust the heavy hangings, turning a quick key in the lock +and wrenching the door wide. And before Ryder could understand, +before he could bring himself to realize that she was not simply +violently expelling him from her room, she gave a shriek that rang +wildly down the long-unseen corridors. + +At the top of her lungs, with one hand out to thrust him back or +cling to him if he attempted to pass, she shrieked again and again. + +Instantly there came a running of feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +AN INTERRUPTION + + +When Hamdi Bey had taken Aimée back to her apartments he pulled +sharply upon a bellcord. In a few moments the slave woman, Fatima, +made her appearance, no kindly-eyed old crone like Miriam, but a +sallow, furtive-faced creature, with an old disfiguring scar across +a cheek. + +The general pointed to the wet and fainting girl huddling weakly +upon the divan. + +"Your new mistress has met with an accident, out boating--a curse +upon me for gratifying forbidden caprice!" he said crisply. "Be +silent of this and array her quickly in garments of rest. I will +return." + +Very hurriedly he took himself and his own wet condition away. He +was furious, through and through. What a night--what a wedding +night! Scandal and frustration... a bride with a desperate lover... +a bride who, herself, drew revolvers and threatened. + +It was beyond any old tale of the palace. For less, girls had had +his father's dagger driven through their hearts--his grandfather, at +a mere whisper from a eunuch, had given his favorite to the lion. +The whisper was found incorrect at a later--too late--date, and the +eunuch had furnished the lion another meal. + +His modern leniency in this case would have outraged his ancestors. + +But it was not in the bey's nature to deal the finishing stroke to +anything so soft and lovely as Aimée. He had no intention of +depriving himself of her. If she were red with guilt he would feign +belief in her, to save his face until his infatuation was gratified. + +But actually he did not believe in any great guilt of hers. Tewfick +Pasha, for all his indulgent modernity, would keep too strict a +harem for that. What he rather believed had happened was that the +young American--now so happily immured in his masonry--had become +aware of the girl through the story of her French father, and in +that connection had struck up the clandestine and romantic +correspondence which had led to their mutual infatuation and his +desperate venture there that afternoon. + +The young man had been dealt with--and the thought of the very +summary and competent way he had been dealt with drew the fangs from +the bite of that night's invasion. + +His fury felt soothingly glutted. + +He had been a match for them both. He recalled his own subtlety and +agility with a genuine smile as he exchanged his dripping uniform +for more informal trousers and a house coat. He had taught that +young man a lesson--a final and ultimate lesson. And he was +beginning to teach one to that girl. Before he was done with +her ... + +He felt for her a mingled passion for her beauty and a lust for +conquest of her resistant spirit that fed every base and cruel +instinct of his nature. + +A find--a rare find--even with her circumvented lover! He would have +his sport with her.... But though he promised this to himself with +feline relish, apprehension and chagrin were still working. + +The fond fatuity with which he had welcomed that starry-eyed little +creature had been rudely overthrown. And his pride smarted at the +idea of the whispers that might echo and re-echo through his palace. +He was too wise an old hand to flatter himself that it would +preserve its bland and silent unawareness of this night. + +So far, he believed, he had been unobserved. In Yussuf's silence he +had absolute confidence.... But of course there were a hundred other +chances--some spying, back-stairs eye, some curious, straining +ear.... + +And for this matter of the boating mishap--he cursed himself now, as +he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his +thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his +malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have +done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his +dramatic itch--and now had paid for it with that idiotic story of +the boating expedition. + +He had reason to trust Fatima--there was history behind the old +sword scar upon her cheek, and he had a hold over her through her +ambition for a son. But Fatima was a woman. And she--or some other +who would see that drenched satin would be curious of that boating +story.... + +And of course they could find out from the boatman. + +It occurred to him to go and see the boatman and order him away so +that afterward the man could say he had been sent off duty, and the +story of a nocturnal river trip would not appear too incredible. It +was a small concession to stop gossip's mouth. + +So drawing on a swinging military cloak, the general stole down +through the stair of the water entrance into the lower hall, where +the pale light gleamed through the cross-barred iron of the gate and +the gatekeeper slept like a log in his muffling cloak. + +The soundness of that slumber--loudly attested by the fumes of +wine--afforded the general a profound pleasure. He took the man's +keys softly, and went to the gate; it afforded him less pleasure to +observe that the gate was unlocked, but he put this down to the +keeper's muddleheadedness. + +Carefully he turned the lock and pocketed the keys--for a lesson to +the man's overdeep sleep in the morning and to attest his own +presence there that night; then he went back and brought out an oar, +which he placed conspicuously beside the smallest boat, drawn up +just within the gates. + +He was afraid to alter the boat's position lest the noise should +prove too wakening, but he considered he had laid an artistic +foundation for his story and with a gratifying sense of triumph he +mounted the stairs. + +He was not conscious of fatigue. He had always been a wiry, +indefatigable person, and the alarms and emotions of this night had +cleared his head of its wines and drowsiness. He felt the sense of +tense, highstrung power which came to him in war, in fighting, in +any element of danger. + +Youth! He snapped his fingers at it. Youth was buried in +his masonry--and helpless in its shuttered room. Power was +master--power, craft, subtlety. + +But his elation ebbed as he crossed again that long drawing room +with its faded flowers about the marriage throne, and its abandoned +table with its cloth askew, its crystal disarrayed, its candles +gutted and spent. + +The memory of that insolent moment when a man's hand had gripped +him, had whirled him from Aimée--when a man's voice and gun had +threatened him--that memory was too overpowering for even his +triumph over the invader to lay wholly its smart of outrage. + +He felt again the tightening of his nerves, like quivering wires, as +he crossed the violated reception room and entered the boudoir. It +was empty, but on the divan the flickering candle light revealed the +damp, spreading stain where Aimée's drenched satins had been. + +He thrust aside a hanging and pushed open the door into the room +beyond. + +It was a small bedroom evidently very recently furnished in new and +white shining lacquer of French design, elaborately inlaid with +painted porcelains and draped with a profusion of rosy taffeta. +Among this elegance, surprisingly unrelated to the ancient paneled +walls, stood the hastily opened trunk and bags of the bride, their +raised lids and disarranged trays heaped with the confusion of +unaccustomed, swiftly searching hands. + +Aimée herself, in a gay little French boudoir robe of jade and +citron, sat huddled in a chair, like a mute, terrified child, in the +hand of her dresser, who was shaking out the long, damp hair and +fanning it with a peacock fan. + +At the bey's entrance Fatima suspended the fanning, but with easy +familiarity exhibited the long ringlets. + +Curtly the bey nodded, and gestured in dismissal; the woman laid +down her fan, and with a last slant-eyed look at that strangely +still new mistress she went noiselessly out a small service door. + +With an air of negligent assurance Hamdi Bey gazed about the room +and yawned. "Truly a fatiguing evening," he remarked in his dry, +sardonic voice. "But you look so untouched! What a thing is radiant +youth." + +He sauntered over to her, who drew a little closer together at his +approach, and lifted one of the long dark curls that the serving +woman had exhibited. + +"The ringlets of loveliness," he murmured. "You know the old saying +of the Sadi? 'The ringlets of the lovely are a chain on the feet of +reason and a snare for the bird of wisdom.'... How long ago he said +it--and how true to-day ... Yet such a charming chain! Suppose, +then, I forgive you, little one, since sages have forgiven beauty +before?" + +She was silent, her eyes fixed on him with the silent terror with +which a trapped bird sees its captor, in their bright darkness the +same mute apprehension, the same filming of helpless despair. + +Ryder was dead, she thought. This cruel, incensed old madman had +killed him, for all his oaths. Somewhere beneath those ancient +stones he was lying drowned and dead, a strange, pitiable addition +to the dark secrets of those grim walls. + +He had died for her sake, and all that she asked now of life, she +thought in the utter agony of her youth, was death. And very +quickly. + +"I am so soft hearted," he sighed, still with that ringlet in his +lifted hand, his hand which wanted palpably to settle upon her and +yet was withheld by some strange inhibition of those fixed, helpless +eyes. "Who knows--perhaps I may forgive you yet? You might persuade +me--" + +"He is dead," she said shiveringly. + +"Dead? He?... Ah, the invader, the intruder, the young man who +wanted you for a family in France!" The bey laughed gratingly. "No, +I assure you he is not dead--I have not harmed a hair of his head. +He is alive--only not with quite the widest range of liberty--" + +He broke off to laugh again. "Ah, you disbelieve?" he said politely. +"Shall I send, then, for some proof--an ear, perhaps, or a little +finger, still very warm and bleeding, to convince you?... In five +minutes it will be here." + +Then terror stirred again in her frozen heart. If Ryder were alive +and still in this man's power-- + +"You are horrible," she said to him in a voice that was suddenly +clear and unshaken. "What is it you want of me--fear and hate--and +utter loathing?" + +Her unexpected spirit was briefly disconcerting. The Turk looked +down upon her in arrested irony and then he smiled beneath his +mustaches and bent nearer with kindling gaze. + +"Not at all--nothing at all like that, little dove with talons. I +want sweetness and repentance--and submission. And--" + +"You have a strange way to win them," she said desperately. + +"You have taken a strange way with me, my love! Little did I +foresee, when I escorted you up the stairs this morning--" He broke +off. "There are men," he reminded her, "who would not consider a +cold bath as a complete recompense for your bridal plans." + +She was silent. + +"But I," he murmured, "I am soft hearted." He dropped on one knee +before her and tried to smile into her averted face. "I can never +resist a charming penitent.... I assure you I am pliability itself +in delicate fingers--although iron and steel to a threatening +hand.... If you should woo me very sweetly, little one--" + +She could not overcome and she could not hide from his mocking eyes +the sick shrinking that drew her back from his least touch. But she +did fight down the wild hysteria of her repugnance so that her voice +was not the trembling gasp it wanted to be. + +"How can I know what you are?" she told him. "You mock me--you +threaten to torture that man--it would be folly not to think that +you are deceiving me. If you would only prove to me so that I could +believe--" + +"If you would but prove to _me_ so that _I_ could believe--! Prove +that you are mine--and not that infidel's. Prove that you bring me a +wife's devotion--not a wanton's indifference." He caught her cold +hands, trying to draw her forward to him. "Prove that you only pity +him," he whispered, "but that your love will be mine--" + +She felt as if a serpent clasped her. And yet, if that were the only +way to win Ryder's safety--if it were possible for her sickened +senses to allay this madman's suspicions and undermine his revenge-- + +Quiveringly she thought that to save Ryder she would go through +fire. + +But the hideous, mocking uncertainties! Her utter helplessness--her +lost deference.... + +It was not a sudden sound that broke in upon them but rather the +perception of many sounds, muffled, half heard, but gaining upon +their consciousness. Running feet--a stifled voice--something faint +and shrill-- + +Aimée sprang to her feet; the general rose with her and turned his +head inquiringly in the direction. Then he jerked open the door +through which Fatima had disappeared; it led to a dark service +corridor and small anteroom, from whose bed the attendant was +absent. An outer door was ajar. + +No need to question the sounds now. Faint, but piercingly shrill +shrieks were sounding from above, while the footsteps were racing, +some down, some up-- + +The bey flung shut the door behind him and hurried towards the +confusion. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +BEYOND THE DOOR + + +Ryder had stood stock still with amazement when the girl began to +scream. She had gone mad, he thought for an instant, in masculine +bewilderment, and then her madness revealed its treacherous cunning, +for she began crying wildly for help against an invader, an infidel, +a dog of a Christian who had stolen into her rooms. + +She had chucked him to the lions, Ryder perceived; one furious flash +of lightning jealousy and Oriental anger had overthrown, in that +wild and lawless head, every other design for him for which she had +risked so much. + +He had scorned her.... He had flouted her caprice.... He had dared +to refuse the languors of those dangerous eyes.... + +The hurrying footsteps appeared to him the tread of a legion in +action, and he had no desire to rush out upon the oncomers; he had, +indeed, distinct doubts of his ruthless ability to pass that supple, +clawing, incensed creature at the door. + +He whirled and made a bolt for the window, striking at the fastened +grill. He heard the snapping of wooden bolts and the splintering of +wood and out through the hole he climbed to a precipitous, head-long +flight that fairly felt the clutching hands upon his ankle. + +He had meant to make a jump for it. A three-story plunge into the +Nile appeared a gentle exercise compared to the alternative within +the palace, but in the very act of releasing his hold he changed his +mind. + +Quicker than he had ever moved before, in any vicissitude of his +lithe and agile youth, he clambered up, not down, and crouching back +from sight upon the jutting top of the window, he sent his coat +sailing violently through space. + +He dared not look over for its descent upon the water, for other +heads were peering from below and he could hear an excited outburst +of speech, that broke sharply off. + +Evidently they were hurrying down to the water gate. Swiftly he +utilized this misdirection for his own ends. + +The roofs. That was the refuge to make for. Flat, long-reaching +roofs, from which one could climb off onto a wall or a palm or a +side street. + +He had only a story to ascend and he made it in record time, fearful +that the searchers whom he heard now launching a boat below would +turn their eyes skywards. + +But he gained the top without an outcry being raised and found +himself upon the roof where the ladies of the harem took their air +unseen of any save the blind eyes of the muezzin in the Sultan +mosque upon the hill. There were divans and a little taboret or two +and a framework where an awning could be raised against the sun. + +There was also a trap door. + +And here, tempestuously he changed his mind again. He abandoned the +goal of outer walls and chances of escape. He wrenched violently at +that trap door. It was bolted but the bolt was an ancient one and +gave at his furious exertions, letting him down into a narrow spiral +staircase between walls. + +Down he plunged in haste, before some confused searcher should dash +up. It was no place to meet an opposing force. Nor was the corridor +in which he found himself much better. + +It was black and baffling as a labyrinth, with unexpected turnings, +and he kept gingerly close to the wall with one hand clutching a bit +of iron which he had taken into his possession and his pocket when +Aziza had led him out of the underground walls--the very bit of +pointed iron, it was, with which the volatile creature had effected +his rescue. + +He considered it an invaluable souvenir and twice, in his nervous +apprehension, he almost brought it down upon shadows. + +Direction he judged vaguely by the screaming which was still going +on at a tremendous rate--evidently the girl had gone off into +genuine hysterics or else she had determined not to leave her +agitation at the intrusion in any manner of question. No doubt the +outcries were a relief to her mingled emotions--remorse at her +impetuosity and chagrin that her thwarted plans might conceivably be +now among those emotions--and since the vicinity of those shrieks +must be a gathering place to be avoided by him he stole on, down the +upper hall, and finding a stair, he went down for two continuous +flights. + +Aimée's rooms, he knew, had been upon the water, and recalling the +general direction of those two lighted windows that he had seen so +recently from without, his excavator's instinct led him on. Once he +saw the flitting figure of a turbaned woman in time to draw back +into a heaven-sent niche and again he flattened into a soundless +shadow against the wall as two young serving girls ran by on +slippered feet, their anklets tinkling, chattering to each other in +delighted excitement. + +And then the stealthy opening of a door--it was the very door by +which Yussuf had precipitated himself upon the struggle at the +supper table some age-long hours ago--gave him a glimpse into the +far glooms of the reception room, where its long side of mashrubiyeh +windows revealed now between its fretwork tiny chinks of a paling +sky. + +He could make out the dark-draped marriage throne and the pallor of +the disordered cloth upon the abandoned table below, and behind the +table the dark draperies of the remaining portières before the +doorway into the boudoir where he had hidden himself and into which +he had last seen Aimée thrust. + +At the other end of the great room were the entrance stairs to the +harem, and there, he imagined, a watchman was stationed, or else +stout bolts and bars were guarding the situation. There remained an +arched doorway into other formal rooms through which he had seen +Aimée and the guests disappear for the wedding supper, and that way +led, he surmised, down into the service quarters. + +A sorry choice of exits! He could form no plan in advance but trust +blindly to the amazing chances of adventure. And first, before he +rushed for escape, there was Aimée to find. + +Yet for all the mad hazard of the situation he was elated with life. +He felt as if he had never fully lived until now, when every breath +was informed with the sharp prescience of danger. He was at once +cool and exultant, wary yet reckless, with the joyous recklessness +of utter desperation. + +With cat-like care he surveyed the drawing-room; it appeared +deserted but as he watched his tense nerves could see the shadows +forming, taking furtive, crouching shape--and then dissolving +harmlessly into a rug, a chair, or a stirring drapery. His eyes +grown used to the dimness he identified the mantle upon the floor in +which he had come and which he had extended to Aimée in that brief +moment of fatuous triumph, and beyond it, across a chair, was the +portière which the black had torn down from the doorway to wrap +about Ryder's helpless form as he had carried him down to living +death. + +That mantle, he thought, might yet be useful, and he stole forward +and recovered it, but, as he straightened, another shadow darted out +from the boudoir door and silhouetted for an instant against the +lighted, room he saw a figure in a long, swinging military cloak. + +Discovery was inevitable and Ryder made a swift plunge to take the +cloaked figure by surprise, but even as one hand shot out and +gripped the throat while the other held his threatening iron aloft, +his clutch relaxed, his arm fell nervelessly at his side. + +For from the figure had come the broken gasp of a soft voice, and +the face upturned to his was a pale oval under dark, disordered +hair. + +"Aimée!" he breathed in exultant, still half-incredulous joy. +"Aimée!... Did I hurt you--?" + +"Oh, no, no!" came Aimée's shaken voice. "Oh, you are safe!" + +He felt her trembling in his clasp and he swept her close to him. +For one breathless instant they clung together, in a sharp, +passionate gladness which blurred every sense of dread or danger. +They were safe--they were together--and for the moment it was +enough. Every obstacle was surmounted, every terror conquered. + +They clung, obliviously, like children, her pale face against his +shoulder, her hair brushing his lips, her wild heartbeats throbbing +against his own. + +Then the girl, remembering, lifted her head. + +"Quick--we must go," she whispered. "For there I made a fire--" + +He followed her frightened, backward glance at the boudoir door and +suddenly saw its cracks and key hole strangely radiant with light. + +"He left me, to go to those screams," she was saying rapidly. "I +tried to run that way--and found that woman coming back. And I told +her to wait--in her own room--and I slipped back in there--and +suddenly it came to me to thrust the candle about. I thought I would +run out and if I met any one I would call, 'Fire', and say the +general was burning and perhaps in the confusion--" + +The terrible desperation of her both stirred and wrung him. She was +so little, so helpless, so trembling in his clasp ... so made for +love and tenderness.... And to think of her in such fear and horror +that she went thrusting reckless candles into her hangings, setting +a palace on fire in the blind fury for escape.... + +To such work had this night brought her.... This night, and three +men--for he and the craven Tewfick and the fanatic bey were all +linked in this night's work. Yes, and another man--and he thought +swiftly, in a lightning flash of wonder, how little that Paul +Delcassé had known when he set his eager face toward the Old World, +with his wife and baby with him, that he was setting his feet into +such a web ... that his wife would die, languishing in a pasha's +harem, and his little daughter would one night be flying in mad +terror from the cruel beast the weak pasha had sold her to! + +And how little, for that matter, he had known when he had set his +own face toward those same sands what secrets he would discover +there and what forbidden ways his heart would know. + +These thoughts all went through him like one thought, in some clear, +remote background of his mind, while he was swiftly drawing on the +military cloak she gave him and wrapping her in the black mantle. +There was a veil on the mantle's hood that she could fling across +her face when she wished, but Ryder had no fez to complete the +deceptive outline of his masquerade. He must trust to the dark and +to the concealment of the high, military collar of the cloak. + +"Do you know a way?" he whispered and at her shaken head, "The water +gate," he said, thinking swiftly. + +There would be a crowd now about the gate, but if they could only +manage to gain those cellars and hide somewhere they could steal out +later upon that waterman. + +It seemed the most feasible of all the desperate plans. The roofs +might be a trap. The harem entrance led into a garden and the garden +was guarded by an impassable wall. But if he could only get to the +river he knew that he was a strong enough swimmer to save Aimée, or +he might even terrorize the watchman into furnishing a boat. + +She did not question but guided him swiftly through the arch that +led down into the banqueting hall. Twice that day she had gone down +those stairs. Once in her bridal state, her eyes shining, her cheeks +glowing with the wild joy of Ryder's arrival and dreams of escape, +and again, scarcely an hour gone by, she had descended them, tense +and desperate, her revolver at the general's head, seeking vainly +Ryder's rescue. + +And now a third time, a guilty, reckless fugitive in the night, she +stole down those stairs into the many-columned hall where she had +been fêted in state among her guests. Here her only knowledge was of +the stone corridor and the locked door through which the bey had led +her, but Ryder knew the way that Aziza had brought him and he turned +cautiously toward those wide, curving stairs. + +Keeping Aimée a few steps behind him, he went down the soft carpet +and peered out at the bottom towards the water gate. He saw no bars; +the gate was open and against the pale square of the water were the +black silhouettes of the general and the gateman, both leaning out +at some splashing in the river. + +He knew a boy's reckless impulse to shove them both in. It was an +unholy thought his better judgment rejected--unless driven to +it--yet some prankish element in his roused recklessness would not +have deplored the necessity. + +If they looked about--! + +But they did not stir as, with Aimée's cold hand in his, he made the +tiptoed descent and slipped softly about the corner of the steps. +Then, instead of going on down the hall to some hiding place in the +ruins, he took a suddenly revealed, sharper turn into a narrow +passage just beyond the stairs. + +It might lead to another gate, some service entrance, perhaps, it +ran so straight and direct between its walls. + +Intuitively that excavator's sense of his defined the direction. +They were going parallel with the river, although a little way back +from the water wall, and in the direction of the men's part of the +palace, the selamlik. + +He recalled the selamlik vaguely as an irregular mass of buildings, +and though the formal entrance was of course through the garden from +the avenue, there was a narrow side street or lane leading back to +the water's edge between this part of the palace and the nest +building, and very likely there was some entrance on that lane. + +Bitterly he blamed himself for his lack of complete inspection that +morning. To be sure he had told himself, then, as he strolled about +the high garden walls and peered down the narrow lane on one side of +the Nile backwaters, that he didn't need a map of the place for his +arrival at an afternoon reception; he was simply going in and out, +and clothes and speech were his only real concern. + +He had even said to himself that he might not reveal himself to +Aimée--if she did not discover him. He wanted merely to see her +again, and be sure that she understood her own history--he had no +notion of attempting any further relations with her, any resumption +of their forbidden and dangerous acquaintance. + +And it was true that had been the defiant and protesting surface of +his thoughts, but deep within himself there had always been that +hot, hidden spark, ready to kindle to a flame at her word--and with +it the unowned, secret longing that she would speak the word. + +And when she had called on him for help, when the trembling appeal +had sprung past her stricken pride, and he had seen the terror in +her soft, child's eyes, then the spark had struck its conflagration. +He had become nothing but a hot, headstrong fury of devotion. + +And he said to himself now that he might have known it was going to +happen, and that if he had not been so concerned that morning about +saving his face and preserving this fiction of indifference he would +know a little more about the labyrinth they were poking about +in--the little more that tips the scale between safety and +destruction. + +But he did not know and blind Chance was his only goddess. + +The passage had brought him to a wall and a narrow stairs while +another passage led off to the right, apparently to the forward +regions of the place. + +He took the stairs. He had had enough of underground regions when +they did not lead to water gates and the stairs promised novelty at +least. + +He wished he knew more about Turkish palaces. He supposed they had a +fairly consistent ground plan, but beyond a few main features of +inner courts and halls he was culpably ignorant of their intentions. +If it were an early Egyptian tomb or temple now! But then, perhaps +the Turks were more indefinite in their building and rebuilding. + +At the head of the stairs a door stood half ajar. Through the crack +he strained his eyes, but his anxious glance met only the darkness +of utter night. Not a gleam of light. And not a sound--except the +far, hollow stamping of some stabled horse. + +Softly he pushed the door open and he and Aimée slipped within. The +place, whatever it was, appeared deserted, a dark, bare, backstairs +region--for he stumbled over a bucket--from which to the right he +could just discern a hall leading into the forward part of the +palace, wanly lighted some distance on, with the pale flicker of an +old ceiling lamp. + +They seemed to be at the end of the hall and the darker shadows in +the walls about them appeared to be a number of doors--closed, so +his groping hands informed him. + +Oh, for his excavator's steady light, or a pocket flash! Oh, for a +light of any kind, even a temporary match! But he dared not risk the +scratch, for now he caught the thud of footfalls overhead, heavy +footfalls, and there might be stairs unexpectedly close at hand. + +He turned to Aimée but the girl shook her head helplessly and +hesitant and dashed, for all their young confidence, they wavered a +moment hand in hand in the dark, fearful of what a rash move might +bring upon them. And in the beating stillness Ryder became conscious +that the muffled, monotonous stamping of a horse is a gloomy, +disheartening thing in the night, and that footsteps overhead are of +all noises the most nervous and unsettling. + +What was behind those doors? Not a spark of light came from them, +that was one comfort. The rooms, kitchen, service, store rooms or +whatever they were, appeared in the same blackness and oblivion.... +But any door might open on a roomful of sleeping gardeners and +grooms.... + +Life and more than life hung on the blind goddess. + +It was only an instant that they hesitated there, yet it appeared an +eternity of indecision, then nearer footsteps sounded, coming down +that hall. No more wavering of the scales! + +Ryder turned to the door at his left, at the very end of the wall +beyond which came that far stamping, and wrenched it open, closing +it swiftly behind him. He saw a light now, a mild, yellow ray +through an opened door ahead that vaguely illumined the strange old +vehicles of the palace, and the stables were beyond. + +Some one else was beyond, too, in the stables, for that very instant +he saw a black horse backed restively into sight, its tossing head +evading the hands that were trying to bridle it. + +"The Fortieth Door!" said Ryder to himself with an involuntary +thrust of humor. + +The door of the horse! The door of forbidden daring! He knew now the +vague associations that had stirred in him as he had stared blindly +about that place of doors.... But he had opened so many forbidden +doors of late that this last was welcome as the supreme test. + +And nothing in the world could have been more welcome than a +horse--a horse with a way out behind it! + +"Stay back," he said under his breath to Aimée, and clasping his bit +of iron he moved toward the door. + +He could see the attendant now, who was finishing his bridling, and +it was Yussuf, the eunuch, so busy gentling and soothing the horse +that he cast only one glance in the direction of the sounds he heard +and that one glance misled him in its glimpse of the general's +cloak. + +"By your favor--but an instant," he called out, "and he is ready--" + +"Stand aside," said Ryder very clearly, emerging from the shadows at +the horse's heels. "Out of the way with you. The horse is for me." + +A moment Yussuf gaped. Then he dropped the bridle and his hand went +swiftly to the knife hilt in his belt. + +"Fool!" said Ryder contemptuously. "Would you tempt fate? Do you +think I am such that your knife could harm me? Must I prove to you +again that walls are nothings--that I but let myself be taken to +prove my powers?" + +Ethiopians are superstitious. And Yussuf knew that his brick and +mortar had been strong.... Yet they have great trust in a crooked, +short-bladed knife, and Yussuf did not relax his hold upon his and +for all that Ryder could See there was no hesitation in the grinning +ferocity of his black face. + +Yet his spring was an instant delayed and in that instant Ryder +spoke again. + +"Look, now at the wall behind you," he said quickly. + +Yussuf looked. And as he turned his bullet head Ryder jumped close +and brought his iron down upon it with a sickening force he thought +scarcely short of murder. + +To his amazement the black did not fall, but staggered only, and +Ryder had need to send the knife spinning from his grasp and strike +again before the eunuch's knees sagged and his huge bulk sank at +Ryder's feet. + +This time Ryder took no chance with a shammed unconsciousness. He +snatched down bits of leather from the wall and bound the man's +hands and feet in tight security and seeing that he was breathing, +although heavily, he thrust a gagging handkerchief into his mouth. + +Then he dragged the heavy body towards a pile of hay he saw +in a vacant stall and concealed it effectively but not too +smotheringly--although Yussuf, he felt, would be no grievous loss +to society. + +Vaguely in the back of his consciousness he had been aware of the +excited plunge of the horse and then of a low, soothing murmur of +speech, and now he turned to find Aimée holding the bridle and +stroking the quivering creature with gentle, fearless hands. + +"Is he dead?" she asked quietly of the eunuch. + +"Stunned," said Ryder, meaning reassurement and was startled by the +passion of her cry, "Oh, I could kill them all--all!" + +"I will--if they try to stop us," he promised grimly, forgetful of +that oath to Aziza. + +Hastily he glanced about the stalls. There was no other horse there, +only a pair of mild-eyed donkeys, and though there might conceivably +be other horses behind other doors there was no instant to spare in +search. + +This luck was too prodigious to risk. + +The door to the street had already been unbolted and now he threw +it back with a quick look into the dark emptiness of the narrow side +street, and then, with a tight hold of the reins, he swung himself +into the saddle and Aimée up into his arms, her head on his +shoulder, her arms clasping him. + +It was a huge Bedouin saddle with high-arched back and curved pummel +and the slender pair no more than filled it, making apparently no +weight at all for the spirited beast which tore out of the stalls at +the charging gallop beloved of Eastern horsemen. + +For a moment Ryder felt wildly that he might meet the fate of the +rash youth in his patron story. He had never ridden a horse like +this, which, like all high-mettled Arabs, resented the authority of +any but his master, and though a good horseman Ryder had all he +could do to keep his seat and Aimée in his arms. + +Around the corner of the lane the horse went racing, and down the +dark, lebbek-lined avenue his flying feet struck back their sparks +of fire. Across an open square he plunged, while irate camels +screamed at him and a harsh voice shouted back loud curses. It +seemed to Ryder that other voices joined in--that there was a +pursuit, an outcry--and then they were out down an open road, wildly +galloping, like a mad highwayman under a pale morning sky. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL + + +That morning Miss Jeffries ate two eggs. She ate them successively, +with increasing deliberation, and afterwards she lingered +interminably over her toast and marmalade. + +Still Ryder made no appearance and since the Arab waiter had +informed her that he had not yet breakfasted she concluded that he +was not at the hotel but had spent the night with some friend of +his--probably that Andrew McLean to whom he was always running off. + +Nor was he in to luncheon. That was rank extravagance because he was +paying at pension rates. His extravagance, however, was no affair of +hers. Neither, she informed herself frigidly, was his appearance or +his non-appearance. It was only rather dull of Jack to lose so many, +well, opportunities. + +She was not going to be in Cairo forever. Not much longer, in fact. +There were adages about gathering rosebuds while ye may and making +hay while the sun shone that Jack Ryder would do well to observe. + +Other men did, reflected Jinny Jeffries with a proud lift of her +ruddy head. Only somehow, the other men-- + +Well, Jack _was_ provokingly attractive! Only of course, if he was +going to rely upon his attraction and not upon his attentions-- + +Deliberately Miss Jeffries smiled upon a stalwart tourist from New +York and promised her society for a foursome at bridge in the hotel +lounge that evening. + +Later, when Jack still failed to materialize and behold her +inaccessibility, the exhibition seemed hardly to have been worth +while.... And there were difficulties getting rid of the New Yorker +the next day. He had ideas about excursions. + +It was during the forenoon of the next day that the first twinge of +genuine worry shot across the sustained resentment which she was +pleased to call her complete indifference. She recalled the vigor of +Ryder's warnings about mentioning his adventure and the grave +dangers of disclosure, and she began to wonder. + +She wished, rather, that he had gone safely out of the house before +she went away. + +Of course nothing could happen. He had done nothing to give himself +away. He was simply a veiled shadow, moving humbly as befitted a +lowly stranger among the high and hospitable surroundings. + +But still, it would have been better if he had gone.... + +Those turbaned women had looked queerly at them when they were +talking so long in the window. Perhaps it was not simply at the +intimacy between a young American and a veiled Oriental. Perhaps +their voices had been unguarded or Jack's tones had awakened +suspicion. Perhaps he had given himself away in his long talk with +the bride. She remembered a Frenchwoman who had come to interrupt +that talk who had looked rather sharply at Jack.... And that +dreadful eunuch was always staring.... + +She thought of a great many things now, more and more things every +minute. + +And still she told herself that she was absurd, that Jack would be +the first to ridicule her alarm. He was probably enjoying himself, +staying on with his friends, forgetting all about herself.... Still +his room at the hotel had not been slept in for two nights now nor +had he called at the hotel and he certainly didn't have an extensive +supply of clothes and linen upon him beneath the mantle. + +Particularly she remembered that he had exhibited some funny black +tennis shoes which he had thought would go appropriately with a +woman's robes. Absurd, to think of him as spending two days in +tennis shoes, and absurd to say that he would go to the shops and +buy more when he had plenty of footgear in his hotel room. + +Unless he wore McLean's. + +She had always regarded the unknown McLean as a most unnecessary +absorbent of Jack Ryder's time and attention and now that view was +deeply reinforced. + +By noon she decided to do something. She would telephone that +Andrew McLean and see if Jack had been there. The Agricultural Bank, +that was the place. An obliging hotel clerk--clerks were always +obliging to Miss Jeffries--gave her the number and she slipped into +the booth feeling a ridiculous amount of excitement and suspense. + +She had never telephoned in Cairo--only been telephoned to--and she +was not prepared for the fact that the telephone company was French. +At the phone girl's "_Numero?--Quel numero, s'il vous plait?_" Jinny +hastily choked back the English response and clutched violently at +French numerals. + +"_Huit cent--no, quatre vingt--un moment!_" she demanded desperately +and hanging up the receiver, sat down to write out her number in +French correctly. + +And then she got the Bank, and, still clinging to her French, she +requested to speak to Monsieur McLean and was informed that it was +Monsieur McLean himself. + +"_Je suis_--oh, how absurd! Of course you speak English," she +exclaimed. "This French telephone upset me.... I wanted to speak to +Mr. Ryder if he is there--or else leave a message for him, if you +know when he will come in." + +"Ryder?" There was a faint intonation of surprise in the voice. +"I've no idea really when he'll be in," said McLean, "but you may +leave the message if you like." + +"Hasn't he--haven't you seen him for some time?" stammered Jinny, +feeling that McLean must be taking her for a pursuing adventuress. + +"Well--not for some time." + +Her heart sank. + +"Not--not for two days?" + +"It might be that," said the Scotchman cautiously. + +Two days. Forty-eight hours, almost, since she had left him in that +harem! And McLean had not seen him. Of course there might be other +friends who had and McLean might know of them. + +"I'm afraid I'll have to see you," she said desperately. "It's +rather important about Jack Ryder--and if I could just talk with you +a minute--this afternoon--?" + +"I have no appointment for three fifteen," McLean told her +concisely. + +Evidently he expected her to call at the Bank.... He was used to +being called on.... "Shall I come--?" she began. + +"I can see you at three fifteen," McLean reassured her, and she +repeated "Three fifteen," with an odd vibration in her voice. + +"I wonder," she murmured, "if I came at three ten--or three +twenty--?" + + * * * * * + +But she didn't. She was humorously careful to make it exactly a +quarter past the hour when she left her cab before McLean's +official looking residence and stepped into the tiled entrance. + +She had no very clear notion of Andrew McLean except that he was, as +Jack had said, Scotch, single, and skeptical, that he was Jack's +intimate friend and an official sort of banker--and the word banker +had unconsciously prepared her for stout dignity and middle age. + +She was not at all prepared for the lean, sandy-haired, rather +abrupt young man who came forward from the depths of the gratefully +cool reception room, and after a nervous hand clasp waved her to a +chair. + +He was still holding her card, and as he glanced covertly at it she +recalled that she had given him no name over the telephone and that +he had known her only by the time of her appointment. Decidedly she +must have made an odd impression! + +Well, he could see for himself now, she thought, a trifle defiantly. +Certainly he was taking stock of her out of those shrewd swift gray +eyes of his. He could see that she was, well--certainly a nice girl! + +As a matter of fact McLean could see that she was considerably more. +Rather disconcertingly more! It was not often that such white-clad +apparitions, piquant of face and coppery of hair, teased the eyes in +his receiving room. + +"You wanted to see me--?" he offered mechanically. + +"Perhaps you have heard Jack Ryder speak of me--of Jinny Jeffries?" +began the girl, determined to put the affair on a sound social +footing as soon as possible. + +McLean considered and, in honesty, shook his head. "He very seldom +mentioned young ladies." + +"Oh--!" Jinny tried not to appear dashed. "We are very old +friends--in America--and of course I've seen a good deal of him +since I've been in Cairo. In fact, he is stopping now at the same +hotel with us--with my aunt and uncle and myself." + +McLean smiled. "He said it was a tooth," he mentioned dryly. + +In Jinny's eyes a little flicker answered him, but her words were +ingenuous. "Oh, of course he _has_ been having a time with the +dentist. That's why he couldn't return to his camp. What I meant +was, that at the hotel we have been seeing him every day until--he +has just disappeared since day before yesterday and we--that is, +I--am very much concerned about it." + +"Disappeared? You mean, he--" + +"Just disappeared, that's all. He hasn't been at the hotel--he +hasn't been anywhere that I know of, and I haven't heard a word from +him--so I telephoned you and then when I found he hadn't been +here--" + +McLean looked off into space. "Eh, well, he'll turn up," he said +comfortingly. "Jack's erratic, you may say, in his comings and +goings. He means nothing by it.... I've known him do the same to +me.... Any time, now; you're likely to hear--" + +Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter and her cheeks burned with +brighter warmth. + +"It isn't just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean," she took quietly +distinct pains to explain. "It's because I am anxious--" + +"Not a need, not a need in the world. Jack knows his way about.... +He may have been called back to the diggings, you know--if they dug +up a bit porcelain there or a few grains of corn the boy would +forget the sun was shining." + +Perhaps his caller's burnished hair had shaped that thought. "Jack +knows his way about," he repeated encouragingly, as one who +demolishes the absurd fears of women and children. + +"You don't quite understand." Jinny's tones were silken smooth. "You +see, I left him in rather unusual circumstances. It was a place +where he had no business in the world to be--" + +At McLean's unguardedly startled gaze her humor overtook her wrath. + +"Oh, it was quite all right for _me_" she replied mischievously to +that look. "Only not for him. You see, he was masquerading--" + +"Again?" thought McLean, involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the +lassies that lad was--and he had thought him such an aloof one! + +"Masquerading as a woman--so he could take me to a reception." + +Jinny began to falter. Just putting that escapade into words +portrayed its less commendable features. + +"It was a woman's reception," she began again, "at a Turkish house. +A marriage reception--" + +She had certainly secured McLean's whole-hearted attention. + +"A marriage reception--a Turkish marriage reception?" he said very +sharply and amazedly as his caller continued to pause. "Do you mean +to say that Jack Ryder went into a Turkish house dressed as a +woman--?" + +There was a pronounced angularity of feature about the young +Scotchman which now took on a chiseled sternness. + +Swiftly Jinny interposed. "Oh, you mustn't blame him, Mr. McLean! +You see, I wanted very much to go to a Turkish reception and I +didn't have the courage to go alone or drag some other tourist as +inexperienced as myself, and so Jack--why, there didn't seem any +harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish +mantle and a veil up to his eyes and he was sure he'd never be found +out. I ought not to have let him, I know--it was my fault--" + +She looked so flushed and innocent and distressed that McLean's +chivalry rose swiftly to her need. + +"Indeed you mustn't blame yourself Miss--Miss Jeffries. You don't +know Egypt--and Jack does. He knew that if he had been discovered +there would have been no help for him--and no questions asked +afterwards. And it might have been very dangerous for you. The +blame is just his now," he said decisively, yet not without a +certain weak-kneed sympathy with the culprit. + +For if the girl had looked like this ... he could see that she would +be a difficult little piece to withstand ... though any man with an +ounce of sense in his head would have behaved as a responsible +protector and not as a reckless school boy. + +"What happened?" he said quickly. + +"Oh, nothing happened--nothing that I know of. We got along very +well, I thought, although now I remember that some people _did_ +stare.... But I wasn't worried at the time. I thought it was just +because I was an American and he was apparently a Turkish woman, but +there was no reason why an American might not get a Turkish woman to +act as a guide, was there?... And then Jack told me to go home +first--he said it would be simpler that way and that he would slip +over to some friend's or to some safe place and take his disguise +off. He wore a gray suit beneath it, and the only funny thing was +some black tennis shoes.... So I left him. And he hasn't been back +since." + +She added as McLean was silent, "He told me that he had some +engagement for that evening, so I did not begin to worry until the +next day." + +"Now just how long ago was this?" + +"Two days ago. Day before yesterday afternoon." + +She looked anxiously at McLean's face and took alarm at his careful +absence of expression. + +"Oh, Mr. McLean, do you think--" + +He brushed that aside. "And where was it--this reception?" + +"At an old palace, forever away on the edge of the city. I don't +remember the street--we drove and I had the cab wait. But it +belonged to a Turkish general. Hamdi Bey," she brought out +triumphantly. "General Hamdi Bey." + +McLean did not correct her idea of the title. His expression was +more carefully non-committal than ever, while behind its quiet guard +his thoughts were breaking out like a revolution. + +Hamdi Bey.... A wedding reception.... The daughter of Tewfick +Pasha.... + +In the secret depths of his soul he uttered profane and troubled +words. That French girl, again.... So Ryder had not forgotten that +affair, although he had kept silent about it of late. He had bided +his time and taken that rash means of seeing the girl again--and he +had involved this unknowing young American in a risk of scandal and +deceived her into believing herself responsible for this caprice +while all the time she had been a mere cloak and it had been his own +diabolical desire.... + +Miss Jeffries was surprised to see a sudden sorry softness dawn in +the young man's look upon her. And she was surprised, too, at his +next question. + +"I wonder, now, if you were the young lady who took him to a +masquerade ball--some time ago?" + +Lightly she acknowledged it. "You'll think I'm always taking him to +things," she said brightly, but McLean's troubled gaze did not +quicken with a smile. + +He was experiencing a vast compassion. She was so innocent, so +unconscious of the quicksands about her.... Probably she had never +heard a breath of that first adventure. + +And it was this fair Christian creature whom Jack Ryder had +abandoned for a veiled girl from a Turk's harem! + +McLean filled with cold, antagonistic wonder. He forgot the lovely +image of the French miniature, and remembering Tewfick's rounded +eyes and olive features he thought of the veiled girl--most +illogically, for he knew that Tewfick was not her father--as some +bold-eyed, warm-skinned image of base allure. + +Sorrowfully he shook his head over his friend. He determined to +protect him and to protect this girl's innocence of his behavior. He +would help her to save him.... She could do it yet--if only she did +not learn the truth and turn from him. If ever she had been able to +make Jack go to a masquerade--that cursed masquerade!--she could +work other, more beneficent, miracles. + +So now he asked, very cautiously, his mind on divided paths, "Do you +say there was nothing to draw suspicion--he did not talk to any +one, the guests or the bride--?" + +"Oh, yes, he did talk to the bride," said Miss Jeffries with such +utter unconsciousness that McLean's heart hardened against the +renegade. + +"He talked quite a while to her," she said. + +"Did you notice anything--?" + +"Oh, I couldn't hear what was said. He was the last in line and he +stayed for some time. He said afterward that it was all right. She +was very nice to him," said Jinny earnestly, producing every scrap +of incident for McLean's judgment. "She showed him some of her +presents--something about her neck." + +In mid-speech McLean changed a startled "God!" to "Good!" + +"She wasn't suspicious, then?" he said weakly. + +"Not as far as I could see. Oh, nothing _seemed_ to be wrong. But I +did feel uneasy until I got away and then, Jack hasn't come back--" + +Again she looked at the young Scotchman for confirmation of her fear +and again she saw that careful expressionless calm. + +"It's no need for alarm," he told her slowly, "since nothing went +wrong. I see no reason why Jack couldn't have walked out of that +reception. If we only knew where he was going later--" + +"Yes, something might have happened later," Jinny took up. "I +thought of that. He might have wanted some more fun and felt more +reckless--Oh, I _am_ worried," she confessed, her gray eyes very +round and childlike. + +And if anything had happened she would always blame herself, thought +McLean ironically.... The unthinking deviltry of the young +scoundrel!... When he found him he'd have a few things to say! + +"That's why I came to you," Jinny went on. "I hesitated, for he had +warned me so against telling any one, but no one else knows--" + +"And no one must know," McLean assured her crisply. "I daresay it's +a mare's nest and Jack will be found safe and sound at his diggings +or off on a lark with some friend or other, but it's well to make +sure and you did quite right in coming to me." + +Jinny thought she had done quite right, too. + +There was a satisfying strength about McLean. She resented a trifle +his masculine way of trying to keep the dark side from her; she was +not greatly misled by that untroubled look of his and yet she was +unconsciously reassured by it.... And although he refused to be +stampeded by alarm he was not incredulous of it, for his manner was +frankly grave. + +"I'll send out at once," he said decisively, "and see if I can pick +up any gossip of that reception. I've a very clever clerk with +brothers in the bazaars who is a perfect wireless for information. +He has told me the night before a man was to be murdered." + +He paused, reflecting that was not a happy suggestion. + +"Then I'll send out to Jack's diggings. That express doesn't stop +to-night, but I'll find a way. And I'll let you know as soon as I +can." + +"You're very kind," said Jinny gratefully. + +His competent manner brought her a light-hearted sensation of +difficulties already solved. Jack was as good as found, she felt in +swift reaction. If he was in any trouble this forceful young man +would settle it. + +But probably he wasn't in any trouble. Probably he was just at his +diggings--rushing off from her in the exasperating way he seemed to +do whenever they were getting on particularly well.... She +remembered how he had bolted from that masquerade which had begun so +happily. He had said he was ill, but she had never completely slain +the suspicion that his illness sprang from ennui and disinclination. + +She rose. "I mustn't take any more of your time, Mr. McLean--and you +probably have a four fifteen engagement." + +But her light raillery failed of its mark. + +"Eh? No, I have not," seriously he assured her. "You are quite the +last one I took on--the last before tea." + +He paused confused with a strange suggestion.... Tea.... His servant +did it rather well.... And it was time-- + +Usually he had it in the garden. It was a charming garden, full of +roses, with a nice view of the Citadel--and his strange suggestion +expanded with a rosy vision of Jinny among the roses, beside his +wicker table.... Would she possibly care to--? + +He struggled with his idea--and with his shyness. And then the sense +that it wasn't quite decent, somehow, to be offering tea to this +girl whom anxiety for Ryder's unknown lot had brought to him +overcame that unwonted impulse. + +He dismissed the idea. And like all shy men he was oddly relieved at +the passing of the necessity for initiative, even while he felt his +mild hope's expiring pang. + +He stepped before her to open the doors to which she was now taking +herself. + +In the entrance he saw his clerk--the clever one--going out, and +excusing himself he went forward to detain the man. For a moment +there ensued a low-toned colloquy. Then the clerk, a dark-browned +keen-featured fellow in European clothes with a red fez, began to +relate something. + +When McLean turned back to Jinny Jeffries she saw that his look was +sharply altered. There was a transfixed air about him and when he +spoke his voice told her that he had had a shock. + +"My man tells me," he said, "that Hamdi Bey's bride is dead. He +buried her yesterday." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +FROM THE BAZAARS + + +There was a moment's pause. + +"What? That lovely girl?" said Jinny in startled pity. She added +incredulously, "Yesterday?... And only the day before--why, what +_could_ have happened?" + +That was what McLean was asking himself very grimly. + +Aloud he told her slowly. "They say that fire happened. Some +accident--a candle overturned in her apartments. And of course the +windows were screened--" + +"_Fire_--how terrible! That lovely girl," said Jinny again. She was +genuinely horrified and pitiful, yet she found a moment to wonder at +the evident depths of McLean's consternation. For of course he had +never seen the girl. + +Yet he looked utterly upset. + +"It's one of the most dreadful things I ever heard of," Jinny +murmured. "On her wedding night.... And she was so young, Mr. +McLean, and so exquisite. She didn't look like a real girl.... She +was a fairy creature.... I never dreamed there _really_ were +rose-leaf skins before but hers was just like flower petals. Jack +and I talked about it, I remember. And her face had something so +bewitching about it, something so sweet and delicate--" + +She broke off revisited with that vision of Aimée's sprite-like +beauty.... How little that poor girl had thought, as she stood there +in the bright splendor of her robes and diadem, that in a few hours +more-- + +"Oh, I hope that fire--that it was merciful--that she didn't +suffer," she said almost inaudibly. + +But speech itself was too definitive of horrors. + +"It's tragic," she finished simply. + +It was tragic, with a complicated tragedy, thought Andrew McLean as +he stood there, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed, his mind +invaded with a dark swarm of conjecture, surmise, suspicion, his +vision possessed by a flitting rush of pictures. + +He saw Jack talking with the girl at the reception.... The girl +showing him something about her neck--that accursed locket, he +thought acutely.... Jack sending Miss Jeffries home.... Had he +arranged that purposely? Was there some mad, improvised scheme of +escape in the air? + +The pictures became mere flitting wraiths of conjecture, yet touched +with horrifying possibility.... Jack lingering, hiding.... Jack +making love to the girl, attempting flight.... Jack discovered--and +the quick saber thrust--for both. + +A fire?... Very likely--to screen the darker tragedy. Hamdi was +capable of it to save his pride. And it would dispose so easily of +the--evidence. + +McLean's thoughts flinched from the grim outcome of his fear. He +tried to tell himself that he was inventing horrors, that the fire +might be the simple truth, that Ryder's talk with the girl might +actually have ended in farewell--at least a temporary farewell--and +that his consequent low spirits had taken him off to mope in camp. + +That was undoubtedly the thing to believe, at least until there was +actual necessity to disbelieve it, and looking at the story in that +way, McLean's Scotch sense of Providence was capable of pointing out +the stern benefits of the sad visitation. + +Whatever mischief might have been afoot between his friend and that +unfortunate young girl the fire had prevented. And however hard Jack +might take this now, decidedly the poor girl's death was better for +him than her life. + +No more wasting himself now on sad romance and adventure. No more +desire and danger. No more lurking about barred gates and secret +doors and forbidden palaces. No more clandestine trysts. No more +fury of mind, beating against the bars of fate. + +Jack was saved. + +Even if he had succeeded in rescuing the girl--what then? McLean was +skeptical of felicity from such contrasting lives. Better the +finality, the sharp pain, the utter separation. And then-- + +His eyes returned to the young American before him. She was the +unconscious answer to that future. She would save Ryder from regret +and retrospection.... In after years, looking back from a happy and +well-ordered domesticity, this would all become to him a fantastic, +far-off adventure, sad with the remembered but unfelt sadness of +youth, yet mercifully dim and softened with young beauty. + +Jack must never tell this girl the story. McLean had read somewhere +of the mistakes of too-open revelation to women and now he was very +sure of it.... She must never receive this hurt, never know that +when she had been troubling over Jack's disappearance he had been +agonizing over another girl--that the escapade she thought so +intimate a lark had been a trick to see the other--that the young +creature whose loveliness she so innocently praised had been her +rival, drawing Jack from her.... + +McLean would speak clearly to Ryder about this and seal his lips.... +But first he would have to be found. + +He became conscious that he had been a long time silent, following +these thoughts, while Jinny waited. + +"I'll do everything I can to find out about that fire," he told her. +"I mean, about any discovery of Jack in the palace," he quickly +amended as her face was touched with instant question. "And I'll see +if any one in Cairo knows where he is. Then if nothing turns up I'll +just pop out to his diggings in the morning and make sure he's all +right.... I'll get back that night and telephone you. And until +then, not a word about it. Much better not." + +"Not a word," Jinny promised. "And if you should happen to find out +anything to-night--" + +"I'll let you know at once. Well, rather. But don't count on that. +The old boy is out in his tombs, dusting off his mummies. You may +get a letter, yourself, in the morning," he threw out with +heartening inspiration, "And while you are reading it, I'll be +tearing along to the infernal desert--" + +He had brought the smile to her eyes as well as lips. Bright and +reassured and comfortably dependent upon his resourceful strength, +she took her leave. + +But there was no smile remaining upon Andrew McLean's visage. + +Twenty-four hours. Two nights and a day.... And the girl was dead +and in her grave--Moslems wasted no time before interment--and Jack +was--where? + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +IN THE DESERT + + +Clinging to that plunging horse Ryder made little attempt at first +to guide the flight. It was enough to keep himself in the saddle and +Aimée in his arms while every galloping moment flung a farther +distance between them and that palace of horror. + +His heart was beating in a wild, triumphant exultation. Glorious to +be out under the free sky, the wind in his face, the open world +ahead! He felt one with that dashing creature beneath him. + +And Aimée was in his arms, untouched, unhurt, out from the power of +that sinister man and the expectation of dread things. + +The moment was a supreme and glorious emotion. + +They were headed south. And to Ryder's exhilaration this seemed +good. Cairo offered no hiding place for that fugitive girl. Even the +harbor that McLean could give would not be proof against the legal +forces of the Turks. Law and order, power and police were all in the +hands of the husband or father. Even now the alarm might be given, +the telephones ringing. + +Aimée must be hidden until she could be smuggled to France--or +until the French authorities could get out their protective +documents. The hiding place that occurred to Ryder was a wild and +desperate expedient. + +The American hospital at Siut. The isolation ward--the pretense of +contagious illness. And then later travel north, in the care of +nurses-- + +All this, if he could win over one of the doctors. At that moment +winning over a doctor appeared a sane and simple thing to Ryder's +mind. The only difficulty he recognized was getting Aimée into that +hospital. + +But they would not be looking for him in the south. He could manage +it, he felt jubilantly. He could smuggle her into his diggings at +night and then make his arrangements. Anything, everything was +possible, now that the nightmare of a palace was left behind them. + +South they went then, at a quieter pace, the Arab's rhythmic +footfalls ringing through the still, gray world of before dawn. +Across the Nile they made their way, working out on sandbars to the +narrow depths, where Ryder swam beside the swimming horse while +Aimée clung to the saddle. Then south again along the river road. + +The sky was light now. And the river was light. Only the palms and +the villages and the flat dhurra fields were dark. And in the east +behind the Mokattam hills a thin band of gold began to brighten. + +Life was stirring. Small black boys on huge black buffaloes +splashed in the river. Veiled girls with water jars on their +high-held heads from which the shawls trailed down to the dust filed +past from the villages like a Parthenon frieze. On the high banks +the naked fellaheen were already stooping to the incessant dipping +of the shadouf, while from the fields came the plaintive creaking of +the well sweep, as some harnessed camel or bullock began its eternal +round. + +A flock of sheep came down the river road, driven by their ragged +shepherds, and a string of camels, burdened beyond all semblance to +themselves, bobbed by like rhythmic haystacks, led by a black-robed, +bare-footed child, carrying a live turkey in her arms while before +her rode her father, in shining pongee robes on a white donkey +strung with beads of blue. + +And by these travelers there passed in that brightening dawn two +other travelers from the north, a pair on a powerful but tired black +horse, a man in a military cloak and a green and gold turban about +his bronzed head, and behind him, on a pillion, a black-mantled, +black-veiled girl, with bare, dangling feet. + +It was Aimée who had evolved the disguise, constructing the turban +from the negligee beneath her mantle, and it was Aimée who bargained +with the villagers for their breakfast, eggs and goats' milk and +bread and rice, while her lord, as befitted his dignity, stayed +aloof upon his steed, returning a courteous response of "_Allah +salimak_--God bless you" to their greetings. + +Then as the day brightened and the last soft veil of mist was +burned away before a blood-red sun, that pair of travelers left the +highroad and turned west upon a byway that led past fields of corn +and yellow water and mud villages where goats and naked babies and +ragged women squatted idly in the dust, and on through low, +red-granite hills swirled about with yellow sand drift and out into +the desert beyond. + +Here fresh vigor came to the Arab horse, and tossing his mane and +stretching out his nostrils to the dry air he broke into a gallop +that sent sand and pebbles flying from his hoofs. To right and left +the startled desert hares scattered, and from the clumps of spiky +helga the black vultures rose in heavy-winged flight. + +Then the breeze dropped, and the swift-coming heat rushed at them +like a furnace breath, and slower and slower they made their way, +Ryder leading the jaded horse and Aimée nodding in the saddle, mere +crawling specks across the immensity of sand. + +Then, in the shade of a huge clump of gray-green _mit minan_ beside +a jutting boulder they stopped at last to rest. The horse sank on +his knees; Ryder spread out his cloak and Aimée dropped down upon +its folds, lost in exhausted sleep as soon as her head touched the +sands. Ryder, his back against the rock, kept watch. + +It was not the exultant Ryder of that first hour of flight. The +excitement of the night had subsided and withdrawn its wild +stimulation. It was a hot and tired and immensely sobered young man +who sat there with eyes that burned from lack of sleep and a brow +knit into a taut and anxious line. + +Realization flooded him with the sun. Responsibility burned in upon +him with the heat. + +Alone in the Libyan desert he sat there, and at his feet there slept +the young girl whose life he had snapped utterly off from its roots. + +He was overwhelmingly responsible for her. If she had never met him, +if he had never continued to thrust himself upon her, she would have +gone on her predestined way, safe, secluded, luxurious--vaguely +unhappy and mutinous at times, perhaps, in the secret stirrings of +her blood, but still an indulged and wealthy little Moslem. + +And now--she lay there, like a sleeping child, the dark tendrils of +hair clinging to her moist, sun-flushed cheeks, her long lashes +mingling their shadows with the purple underlining of the night's +terrors, homeless, exhausted, resourceless but for that anxious-eyed +young man. + +Desperately he hoped that she would not wake to regret. Even a +sardonic tyrant in a palace might be preferable in the merciless +daylight to a helpless young man in the Libyan desert. + +And she was so slight, so delicate, so made for rich and lovely +luxury.... Looking down at her he felt a lump in his throat ... a +lump of queer, choking tenderness.... + +He wanted to protect her, to save her, to spend himself for her.... +He felt for her a reverent wonder, a stirring that was at once +protective and possessive and denying of all self. + +He would die to save her. He tried to tell himself reassuringly that +he _had_ saved her.... If only he could keep her safe.... + +He thought of the life before her. He thought of that family in +France in whose name he had urged his interference. That unknown +Delcassé aunt who had sent out her agents for her lost heirs--would +she welcome and endow this lovely girl? + +He could not doubt it.... Aimée's youth and beauty would be treasure +trove to a jaded lonely woman with money to invest in futures. Aimée +would be a belle, an heiress.... + +He looked down at her with a sudden darkness in his young eyes.... +And still she slept, wrapped in the sorry mantle of his masquerade, +the torn chiffons of her negligée fluttering over her slim, bare +feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE TOMB OF A KING + + +There were several approaches to the American excavations. McLean, +on that morning after his visit from Jinny Jeffries, chose to borrow +a friend's motor and man and break the speed laws of Upper Egypt, +and then shift to an agile donkey at the little village from which +the gulleys ran west through the red hills into the desert. + +It was a still, hot day without cloud or wind and the sun had an air +of standing permanently high in the heavens, holding the day at +noon. Shimmering heat waves quivered about the base of the farther +hills and veiled the desert reaches. It was not conducive to comfort +and Andrew McLean was not comfortable. He was hot and sticky and +sandy and abominably harassed. + +Not a creature, as far as he could discover, had seen Jack Ryder in +Cairo since the afternoon of that reception at Hamdi Bey's. He had +not been seen at the Museum nor the banks, nor at Cook's, nor the +usual restaurants, nor at the clubs with his friends. And the clever +clerk--with the two brothers in the bazaar--had unearthed quite a +bit of disquieting news about that reception--disquieting, that is, +to one with secret fears. + +There had been a fire in the apartments of the bride of Hamdi Bey +and the bride had been killed instantly--that much was known to all +the world. The general had been distracted. He had sat brooding +beside his bride's coffin, allowing no one, not even her father, to +look upon the poor charred remains that he had placed within. He had +been a man out of his mind with grief, gnawing his nails, beating +his slaves,--Oh, assuredly, it had been a calamity of a very high +order! + +One of the brothers in the bazaar had himself talked with an old +crone whose sister's child was employed in the general's kitchen, +and the fourth-hand story had lost nothing on the route. + +The bride's youth and beauty, her jewels, her robes, the general's +infatuation, and the general's grief, the reports of these ran +through the city like wildfire. And from the particular channel of +the kitchen maid and the old aunt and the brother in the bazaars +came news of the very especial means that Allah had taken to +preserve the general from destruction. + +For he had been in the bride's apartments just before the fire. But +the power of Allah, the Allseeing, had sent a thief, a prowler, by +night, upon the palace roofs, and the screams of a girl in the upper +story had called the general to that direction. + +And so his preservation had been accomplished. + +It was that rumor of the thief upon the roofs which sent the chill +of apprehension down McLean's spine. For though the bazaars knew +nothing of the thief's identity and it was reported he had escaped +by the river yet McLean felt the sinister finger of suspicion. If +the thief had not been a thief--unless of brides!--and if he had +_not_ escaped--? + +Impatiently the young Scotchman clapped his heels against the +donkey's sides, enhancing the efforts of the runner with the +gesticulating stick. + +Suppose, now, that he should not find Jack at the excavations? + +It was encouraging, somehow, to hear the monotonous rise and fall of +the labor song proceeding as usual, although McLean immediately told +himself that the work would naturally be going on under Thatcher's +direction whether Ryder were there or not. The camp knew nothing of +Cairo. The camp would be as usual. + +And yet, after his first moment's survey, he had an indefinite but +uneasy idea that the camp was not as usual. + +True, the tatterdemalion frieze of basket bearers still wove its +rhythmic way over the mounds to the siftings where Thatcher was +presiding as was his wont, but in the native part of the encampment +there appeared a sly stir and excitement. + +The unoccupied, of all ages and sexes, that usually were squatting +interminably about some fire or sleeping like mummies in +hermetically wrapped black mantles, now were gathered in little +whispering knots whose backward glances betrayed a sense of +uneasiness, and as McLean rode past, a young Arab who had been the +center of attention drew back with such carefulness to escape +observation that McLean's shrewd eyes marked him closely. + +It might be that his nerves were deceiving him, but there did seem +to be something surreptitious in the air. + +Over his shoulder he glimpsed the young Arab hurrying out of the +camp. + +It might be anything or nothing, he told himself. The man might be +going shopping to the village and the others giving him their +commissions, or he might be an illicit dealer in curios trying to +pick up some dishonest treasure. In native diggings those hangers on +were thick as flies. + +He dismounted and hurried forward to meet Thatcher's advance. +The men had rarely met and Thatcher's air of hesitation and +absent-mindedness made McLean proffer his name promptly with a +sense of speeding through the preliminaries. Then with a manner +he strove to make casual he put his question. + +"I say, is Ryder back?" + +He knew, in the moment's pause, how tight suspense was gripping him. +Then Thatcher glanced toward the black yawning mouth of a tomb +entrance. + +"Why, yes--he's down there." He added. "Been a bit sick. Complains +of the sun." + +For a moment his relief was so great that McLean did not believe in +it. Jack here--Jack absolutely safe-- + +Mechanically he put, "When did he come in?" + +"When?" Thatcher hesitated, trying to recall. "Oh, night before +last--rode in after dark." He added reassuringly, as the other swung +about towards the tomb, "He says there's nothing really wrong with +him. There's no temperature." + +McLean nodded. His relief now was acutely compounded with disgust. +He felt no lightning leap of thanksgiving that his friend was safe, +but rather that flash of irritated reaction which makes the +primitive parent smack a recovered child. + +Not a thing in the world the matter! A mare's nest--just as he had +prophesied to Miss Jeffries. Why in heaven's name hadn't Jack the +decency to send that over-anxious young lady a card when he +abandoned town so suddenly?... Not that McLean blamed Miss Jeffries. +Given the masquerade and Jack's disappearance and a zealous feminine +interest her concern was perfectly natural. + +But McLean had left a busy office and taken an anxious and +uncomfortable excursion, and his voice had no genial ring as he +shouted his friend's name down the dark entrance of the tomb shaft. + +In a moment he heard a voice shouting hollowly back, then a +wavering spot of light appeared upon the inclined floor and Ryder's +figure emerged like an apparition from the gloom. + +"I say! That you, Andy?" + +Evidently he had been snatched from sleep. His dark hair was +rumpled, his face flushed, and he yawned with complete frankness. + +McLean knew a sudden yearning to put an arm about him.... Dear old +Jack.... Dear, irresponsible scamp.... His reaction of the +irritation vanished.... It was so darned good to see the old chap +again.... + +He muttered something about being in the vicinity while Ryder, +rousing to hostship, called directions to the cook boy to bring a +tray of luncheon. + +"It's cool down here," he told McLean, leading the way back. + +It was cool indeed, in the Hall of Offerings. It was also, McLean +thought, satisfying a recovered appetite, a trifle depressing. + +They sat in a small island of light in an ocean of gloom while about +them shadowy columns towered to indistinguishable heights and +half-seen carvings projected their strange suggestions. + +It seemed incongruous to be smoking cigarettes so unconcernedly at +the feet of the ancient gods. + +But McLean's feeling of depression might have been due to his +renewed awareness of catastrophe. For though Jack was here, safe and +sound enough, although a bit unlike himself in manner, yet Jack +_had_ been at that confounded reception in a woman's rig and Jack +had seen the girl and talked with her--apparently on terms of +understanding. + +And if Jack had left Cairo that night, as he said he did--claiming +delay on the way due to a tired horse--then Jack knew nothing in the +world of the palace fire, and the girl's sudden and tragic death. + +And McLean would have to tell him. He would have to tell him that +the girl he was probably dreaming of in some fool's paradise of +memory and hope was now only a little mound of dust in an Oriental +cemetery. That a shaft of temporary wood already marked the grave of +Aimée Marie Dejane, daughter of Tewfick Pasha and wife of Hamdi +Bey.... + +And however much McLean's sound senses might disapprove of the whole +fantastic affair and his sober judgment commend the workings of +Providence, he loved his friend, and he feared that his friend loved +this lost girl. + +He had to end love and hope and romance and implant a desperate +grief.... + +He thought very steadily of Jinny Jeffries. He cleared his throat. + +"Jack, old man--" + +He started to tell him that there had been a fire in Cairo, a most +shocking fire in a haremlik. It seemed to him that Jack was not +listening, that he had a faraway, yet intent look upon his face, as +of one attending to other things. And then suddenly Jack seemed to +gather resolution and turned to his friend with an air of narration +of his own. + +"Look here, McLean, there's something I want to tell you--" + +"Wait a minute now," said McLean quietly. "I want you to hear +this.... It was a fire in the palace of your friend, Hamdi Bey." + +He had Jack's attention now--he was fairly conscious of arrested +breath. Not looking about him he went grimly on, "The night of the +wedding a fire started in the haremlik.... It was a bad business, a +very bad business, Jack. For the girl--the girl Hamdi had just +married--" + +He was conscious of Jack's look upon him but he did not turn to meet +it. + +"She died," he said heavily. "He buried her yesterday." + +He thought that Jack was never going to speak. + +Then, "Died?" said Ryder in an odd voice. + +"I expect she breathed in a bit of smoke," said McLean, trying for a +merciful suggestion. + +"And he buried her--?" + +Jack was like a child, trying to fit bewildering facts together. +McLean's sympathy hurt him like a physical pain. He wondered what it +could be like to realize that some loved one you had just talked +with, in radiant life, was now gone utterly.... + +And then he heard Jack laugh. Mad, he thought quickly, turning now +to look at him. + +Ryder's head was tilted back; Ryder's shoulders were shaking. "Oh, +my Aunt!" he gasped hysterically. "My Aunt Clarissa--is _that_ what +Hamdi says!" + +He sobered instantly and leaned towards McLean. "That looks as if +he's done with her--what? Saving his face that way? You're sure it +was Aimée--the girl he had just married? Not some other girl--some +co-wife or something?" + +And as McLean bewilderedly muttered that he was sure, Ryder began to +laugh again. To laugh jubilantly, joyously, triumphantly. + +"He's given her up--he's got a saving explanation to thrust in the +world's face! Oh, blessed Allah, Veiler of all that should be +veiled! The man's through. He's had enough. He isn't going to try +to--" + +Across the bright oblong of the entrance a shadow appeared. + +"Ryder--I say, Ryder," said a hurried voice--Thatcher's voice--and +Thatcher came hastily forward in perturbed urgency. + +"There's a lot of men outside--police and natives and what not. With +warrants. They're searching the place. And they want to see you.... +Hang it all, Ryder," said Thatcher explosively but apologetically, +"they say you've made off with some sheik's daughter." + +He paused, shocked at the monstrosity of the accusation. He was a +delicate-minded man--outside of his knowledge of antiquities--and he +evidently expected his young associate to fall upon him and slay him +for the slander. + +"A sheik's daughter--?" said Ryder in a mildly wondering voice. From +his emphasis one might have inferred he was saying, "How odd! I +don't remember any sheik's daughter--" + +A queer uncomfortable flush spread fanways from Thatcher's thin +temples and rayed across his high cheekbones. He did not look at +either of the men as he murmured, "It's most peculiar, but that Arab +horse--the sheik claims the horse is his, too. He says you rode off +on it, with his daughter." + +"That's all right," said Ryder absently. "I don't want the horse.... +But you say the sheik's there? What does he look like? Thin--with +blond mustaches?" + +"Oh, no, no, not at all. He is quite heavy and bearded--one-eyed, if +I recollect. But there _is_ a man with a blond mustache who appears +to do the directing--" + +"And you mean they are searching?" said Ryder abruptly. "You've let +them in--?" + +"They have warrants," Thatcher protested. "And there are proper +policemen conducting the search--" + +"My good God! Where are they now? Not coming _here_? I don't have +any policemen trampling here and meddling with my finds--tell them +to clear out, Thatcher, you know there's no sheik's daughter here!" + +Ryder gave a quick laugh but the impression of his laughter was not +as sharp as the impression of his alarm. + +"I did tell them it was preposterous," Thatcher began, "but, you +see, after finding the horse--" + +"Oh, the horse! I got him for a song--of course the beggar is +stolen. Give him back, if they claim him. But as for any sheik's +daughter--keep the crowd out, Thatcher, I won't have them here, not +in these tombs--" + +"I tell you they are policemen--they are armed--you can't resist--" + +"How many are they? A lot? But they'll take your word, won't they? +Look here, McLean, can't you settle this for me and keep them out?" + +"The natives have been talking," murmured Thatcher, reddening still +deeper, "and they have said enough about your riding in at night +and--and keeping to this tomb all day to make the men very +suspicious. They are watching this one now--" + +"Then keep them back--long as you can. For God's sake," entreated +Ryder with that strange passionate violence. "Andy--you do +something--hold them back. Give me time. I--I've got to get some +things together--I won't have them at my things--hold them back--out +here--till I come." + +He was gone. Gone tearing back into the gloom and silence of his +tomb. And McLean and Thatcher, astounded witnesses of his outburst, +turned speedily to the entrance, avoiding each other's eyes. + +Agitatedly Thatcher was murmuring that Ryder's finds were valuable, +immensely valuable, and it was disturbing to contemplate any +invasion, and with equal agitation but more mechanical calm McLean +was murmuring back that he understood--he quite understood-- + +As for understanding he was stunned and dazed. A sheik's daughter! +And the father himself claiming her--under the direction of a +blond-mustached man.... And a stolen horse.... Jack conceding the +horse.... Jack utterly upset at the search party.... + +But he himself had seen that new-placed shaft with its inscription +to Aimée Marie Dejane.... What then in the name of wonders did this +mean? There couldn't be _another_ girl? McLean's imagination +faltered then dashed on at a gallop. Some--some hand-maiden, +perhaps, whom Jack had rescued in mistaken chivalry? Perhaps the +French girl has sent a maid on ahead? + +McLean's head was whirling now. One thing appeared quite as possible +as another. Pasha's daughters and sheik's daughters, stolen horses +and Djinns and Afrits and palaces and masquerades at wedding +receptions appeared upon the same plane of feasibility. + +Outwardly he was extremely calm. Calm and cold and crisp. + +At the mouth of the tomb he detained the party of native policemen +with their hangers-on of curious natives and examined, with great +show of circumspection and authority, the perfectly regular search +warrants which had been issued for them at the instigation of an +apparently bereft parent. + +He conversed with the alleged parent, a stolid, taciturn native +dignitary whose accusations were confirmed by eagerly assenting +followers. He lived in a small village, not far north of the camp. +He had a young daughter, very beautiful. Three nights ago he had +surprised her with this young American and they had fled upon his +noblest horse. + +It was a simple and direct story. And Jack--by his own report--had +been out upon the desert that night, had appeared, upon the next +night, with this unknown and beautiful horse, and had since kept to +the tomb, claiming illness, in a most persistent way. + +The camp boys had testified that he had been vividly critical of the +food sent in to him, and that he had required extraordinary amounts +of heated water. + +"All of which," McLean said sternly, in the vernacular, "amounts to +nothing--unless you can discover the girl." + +"And that, monsieur," said a Turk in the uniform of the Sultan's +guards, appearing beside the desert sheik, "that is exactly what we +are here to do." + +McLean found himself looking into a thin, menacing face, capped +with a red fez, a face deeply lined, marked by light, arrogant eyes +and embellished with a huge, blond mustache. + +"And your interest in this, monsieur?" he questioned. + +"I am a friend of Sheik Hassan's," said the Turk loftily. "I shall +see that my friend obtains his rights." + +And in McLean's other ear a distraught Thatcher was murmuring "That +officer chap is Hamdi Bey--a General of the Guards. You know, Mr. +McLean, this really is--you know, it is--" + +Hamdi Bey ... Hamdi Bey, two days after his distressing loss, +befriending this sheik and trying to involve Jack Ryder in disgrace. + +Mystifying. Mystifying and disquieting--yes, disquieting, in the +face of Jack's alarm. But for that alarm McLean could have believed +the whole thing a farcical attempt of Hamdi's to revenge himself +upon Ryder--supposing that Hamdi had discovered Ryder in his +masquerade or else as the prowler by night--but Jack's furious +anxiety to keep the party out, and his dashing back, ostensibly to +preserve his things-- + +Was it actually possible that he _had_ that sheik's daughter +concealed in some nook or cranny of the place? + +McLean told himself that it was preposterous. It _was_ +preposterous--but Ryder had been doing preposterous things.... And +glancing at Thatcher he perceived that that perturbed and +transparent gentleman was also telling himself that _his_ +suspicions were preposterous. + +The search party, tiring of parley, was moving about the hall in +businesslike inspection. + +And then Ryder reappeared, a distinctly alert but self-contained +Ryder, who met the interrogations of the police with scoffing and +absolute denial. + +But McLean was conscious that there was something tense and nervous +in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and +his own nerves began to tighten apprehensively. + +It did not add to his composure to see Ryder salute Hamdi Bey with +an ironic and overdone politeness. + +"Ah, monsieur le general! We meet as we parted--in the depths!" + +The general appeared to smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but +McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip, and felt the currents of +animosity. + +So those two had met! Ryder had been discovered then.... McLean +tried, in futile bewilderment, to recall just what amazing thing +Ryder had been saying when this party had appeared. + +He kept very close at that young man's side as the strange party +moved on into the inner chamber. The searchers were scrupulously +careful of the excavator's finds; they did not finger a frieze nor +disturb a single small box of the tenderly packed potteries and +beads and miniature boats, but they scraped every heap of dust to +see if it concealed an entrance, they exhausted the resources of +each corner, they circled every pillar, shook out every rug of +Jack's blankets and required the opening of the large chest in which +the wax reproductions of the friezes were placed, awaiting +transportation. + +"You will perceive, messieurs," declared Ryder in mocking irony, +"that no human being is within this last fold of wax--especially a +being," he added thoughtfully with a glance at the stolid sheik, "of +the proportions of her papa.... This daughter, was she a large young +lady?" he inquired politely of the Arab. + +The sheik vouchsafed no reply, but from across his ample person the +general leaned forward. + +"She was small, Monsieur Ryder," he said in silken tones, "but she +can raise a man as high as the gallows--or as low as the grave." + +"A marvel!" returned young Ryder smoothly. "And was she also of +charm--a charm that could kindle fires--?" + +It appeared to McLean that he caught the flaunting implications of +the taunt. + +He wished to heaven that Ryder would hold his reckless tongue. + +Ryder was turning now to the official in charge of the police. + +"If you have satisfied yourselves that this place is empty--" + +The man, a rather apologetic, pleasant fellow, shrugged and smiled. +"We have examined all--" + +There was a moment in which the searchers regarded one another +through the gloom in the inquiring embarrassment of the +discountenanced and considered departure. But Hamdi Bey had more +insistent eyes. + +He was circling the place again like a wolf for the scent, flashing +his search light over the carved walls, the dancing gleam picking +out now a relief of Osiris, now a fishing boat upon the Nile, now +the judgment hall of Maat. Suddenly he stopped and began examining a +limestone slab. + +"These stones--these have been merely piled here," he cried +excitedly. "This is a hole--an entrance. Dig them out, men. There is +a door there, I tell you." + +Hastily Ryder addressed the police. "It is simply the burial vault," +he told them. "The sarcophagi are there, ready for transportation. +Mr. Thatcher will tell you--" + +"I assure you it is merely the actual tomb," said Thatcher +nervously. "I have myself assisted my colleague with the +preparation." + +The slabs had been displaced now, disclosing the small door, with +its fine wrought stele. Hamdi flashed a look of triumph upon the man +who had obviously tried to conceal that door from them, a look which +Ryder ignored as he turned to McLean. + +"That is the door which is sealed forever upon the dead, and upon +the Ka, the spiritual double," he said in a low conversational +tone. "It has some remarkable representations of the jackal +Anubis--" + +It seemed to McLean a most extraordinary time for a disquisition +upon Anubis. If Ryder was attempting to prove himself at his ease he +had certainly misjudged his manner. + +"Damn Anubis," McLean gave back under his breath. "He's not the only +jackal--What the devil's the meaning of this?" + +Ryder made no reply. The stone had been pushed back and the +searchers were stooping beneath the narrow entrance. Then as +McLean's head bent at the door he heard his friend whispering, "I +say--you haven't a gun you could slip me--?" + +Mutely he shook his head. And that agitated whisper died away with +the last vestige of belief in Ryder's innocence. Apprehensively +McLean glanced about that inner chamber he was entering, dreading to +encounter instant and damning evidence of a girl. + +He found himself in the presence of the dead. The chamber was a +small, square, walled-up affair, and at one side stood the three +sarcophagi. The other halls had been in total darkness, but the +blackness of this place appeared something palpable and weighty. And +the air had the dry, acrid tang of dust which has lain waiting for +centuries. + +It was hot, whereas the other chambers had been cool--or else +McLean's disturbed blood was pumping too furiously through his +pulses. Instinctively he drew close to Jack, as the party stood +flashing their lights over the bare walls and empty corners, and +then concentrated the pale illumination upon those caskets of the +dead. + +"I told you that the place was empty," Ryder said with distinct +impatience in his voice. "And now, if you have satisfied +yourselves--" + +"You are in haste, monsieur," said Hamdi Bey's smooth voice. "If you +will permit us to see what is within--" + +He approached the first sarcophagus. + +The sheik, who appeared to have committed the restoration of his +daughter into the other's hands, remained imperturbably beside the +entrance while the head of the police came forward to assist Hamdi +in raising the painted lid. + +"I protest," said Ryder very sharply. He stood upon the other side +of the case, eying them combatively. "It is useless to disturb this +lid--I tell you that the Persians have been considerably before +you." + +And indeed the case was empty. Hamdi moved to the next and again +Ryder took up his post opposite. + +"Again I protest," he insisted. "The least jar or injury--" + +But the men raised the lid, and after the briefest look, moved on. + +"And now," Ryder spoke very clearly and authoritatively, addressing +the head of the police, "I must ask you to stop. Even the dust that +you are disturbing is precious. This thing has gone beyond all +reason." + +The police official looked as if he agreed with him, but Hamdi Bey +had moved determinedly to the third sarcophagus. The official +hesitated, evidenced discomfort, but moved finally after the bey. + +"If there is nothing here," he murmured, "surely you cannot +object--" + +"There is precious dust here," Ryder repeated. "You must +understand--" + +"We see for ourselves," said Hamdi Bey, and now his voice had a ring +of triumphant steel through its soft smoothness. "Stand aside. This +is in the name of the law." + +It seemed to McLean that for one mad moment Ryder was tempted to +resist. In the flickering light of the torches he stood defiantly +above the painted mummy case, his eyes steadily upon the bey, his +hands pressing down upon the vivid bloom of the dead woman's +pictured face. + +Then with a beaten but ironic smile he stood aside. + +Slowly the men lifted the lid.... In that moment McLean became aware +that his heart was pumping thickly somewhere in his throat and that +the rest of him was a hollow, horrible void of suspense. + +Hamdi Bey turned his arrogant stare from young Ryder and looked +down.... Drawing closer, fearfully McLean's eyes followed him. + +He could not believe their evidence. His heart could not stop its +idiotic pumping. + +But there he saw no terror-stricken girl, no pallid runaway of the +harems, but a still, dark-shrouded form, swathed in the tight +bandages of the ancient embalmer, a dry, dusty little mummy creature +blankly and inscrutably confronting this unforeseen resurrection. + +Over their dumbfounded heads he heard young Ryder's mocking laugh. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +IN CAIRO + + +"It's good news!" said Miss Jeffries with bright positives. + +It was her response to Andrew McLean's greeting that evening. He +had made rather a tardy appearance at the hotel, for there had +been an important dinner with an important bank official passing +through Cairo to escape from, but he arrived at last, looking +extraordinarily well in his very best dinner clothes. + +And Miss Jeffries, for all her harassment of suspense, was no woeful +object in a vivacious blue evening frock with silvery gleams. + +"He's safe--absolutely safe," McLean confirmed. + +He expected radiance. Miss Jeffries' expression was arrested +judgment. + +"Safe--_where_?" + +"At his camp ... I just returned--just in time to dine. I motored +out this morning." + +"Oh!... It took your whole day. I am so sorry!" For a moment the +girl appeared to concentrate her sympathetic interest upon McLean. + +"You must simply hate me," she told him repentantly, dropping into +one of the chairs in the drawing-room corner she had long been +guarding. "Do sit down and tell me all the horrid details....--Uncle +and Aunt are in the Lounge, and I should like you to meet them, but +they'll be there forever and I do want to hear first.... Was it +fearfully hot?" + +"Oh, rather," murmured the young man, confused by this change of +interest. "I mean, that's quite the usual thing, isn't it, for +deserts? I got up a good breeze going, for I was a bit wrought up, +you know--not a soul in Cairo had seen Jack since that day." + +"And he was out at his camp," said Jinny thoughtfully. "How--how +long had he been there?" + +"He says he started that night," said McLean non-committally. + +"Oh!... That night.... That was rather sudden, wasn't it?" + +"Jack's sudden, you know," mentioned his friend uncomfortably. "And +he had a lot of finds to pack up for transport--they are taking +their stuff to the museum and Jack had been away so long, here in +the city--" + +"No wonder I didn't hear then!" said the girl with a laugh in which +it would have taken an acuter ear than McLean's to detect the secret +clamor of chagrin and humiliation. + +Of course she had _wanted_ Jack to be safe.... But he might have +been ill--or away on some official summons-- + +Just back at his diggings. Gone off on an impulse, with no thought +to let her know.... + +And she had rushed to McLean with her silly worries and her anxious +concern which he had probably taken for a tender interest.... + +Heaven knows what disillusionizing thing Jack had said to him that +day!... Men were too hateful. + +And now McLean had come dutifully to report that the man she was so +worried about was quite well and busy, thank you, only he had +overlooked any friendship for her, and so had sent no word-- + +In Jinny's ears was the rush of the furies' wings. But on Jinny's +lips was a proud little smile, and her bright look was a shining +shield for the wounds of the spirit. + +"That _is_ a comfort," she said with pleasant, friendly warmth. "You +don't know how horridly responsible I felt! Really, Jack ought to +have let me know--but that's Jack all over. He's never grown up." + +"He's not had much time," returned McLean from the height of his +twenty-nine years. + +"He never will," said Jinny sagely, "not until--well, not until +he meets some girl, you know, who will make him feel really +responsible." + +It occurred unhappily to McLean that the girl Jack had been meeting +so assiduously of late had certainly not added to his claims to +responsibility! + +Steadily he guarded silence. There are ice fields, on Mont Blanc, +where a whisper precipitates an avalanche, and McLean had no +intention of starting anything in his friend's slippery field of +affairs. + +"I have spent more time," Miss Jeffries was confiding brightly, for +those imperative reasons of her own so obscure to the bewildered +young man, "introducing Jack to nice girls--but it never takes! Not +seriously. He's a perfectly dear friend, but he doesn't care +anything really about girls--and he does need somebody to get him +out of his antiquities and his dusty old diggings ... But of course +you think I am a sentimental thing!" + +McLean did not tell her what he thought. He was still fascinatedly +engrossed with her revelation of the impeccable Platonic basis of +her friendship. His mood of complicated emotion lightened and +brightened and at the same time an amazed wonder unfolded its +astonishment. + +He marveled at his friend. To turn to something fantastic, something +bizarre--for so he thought of that veiled girl of the harem--when he +had this Miss Jeffries for a friend--but probably the young lady +herself had never given him the least encouragement. Women are not +easily moved to romance for men they have always regarded as +brothers and he could see that her feeling for Jack was the warm, +honest, sisterly affection of utter frankness. + +The worse for Jack. For now there seemed no ministering angel to +mend his troubled future. + +It was not only Ryder's troubled future that troubled McLean--it +was also Ryder's troubled present. He was very far from easy in his +mind about him. After that mystifying performance in the tomb he had +not wanted to leave without a frank explanation, but there had been +no moment for revelation; Thatcher had hung about them and Hamdi +Bey, of all men, had requested a place in McLean's motor for the +return to Cairo. + +And that dinner engagement had pressed. He could have abandoned it +for any real reason, but Jack had assured him that there was none. + +"Get the old devil out of here," had been Jack's furious appeal, +referring to Hamdi. "Deny everything to him. Only get him out." + +And McLean had got him out. + +The sheik and his followers after a murmurous conference with the +bey had galloped off; the police had turned towards their post and +Hamdi had accompanied McLean to the nearest village and his waiting +motor. + +Clearly he had wanted to talk to McLean and McLean was not sorry for +the opportunity to exchange implications. The bey had unfolded his +sympathetic friendship for the sheik; McLean had unfolded a cold +surprise that anything so disgraceful should be attributed to such a +prominent archaeologist. The bey had produced the evidence and +McLean had produced a skeptical wonder, and then a thoughtful wonder +if the British government had not better take the matter up and sift +it, for the benefit of all concerned. + +Clearly the thing could not go on. Ryder could not accept such a +rumor against his reputation. Yes, he thought he would advise Ryder +to take the matter up. + +And there he perceived that even the suave and politic Hamdi +squirmed. Doubtless to the Turk, McLean represented British prestige +and political power and all sorts of unknown influence.... And +native testimony, while voluable and unscrupulous, had a way of +offering confused discrepancies to the coldly questioning +investigators of the law. + +And with no real evidence against Ryder-- + +The matter of the sheik's daughter, McLean perceived, would be +dropped. Unless the girl--whatever girl they sought--could be +discovered. + +If Hamdi wished to pay off some score against the American he would +choose other weapons. McLean reflected upon the bey's capacity for +assassination or poisoning while he bade him farewell before the +dark wall of his palace entrance. + +Between them had passed no reference to the bey's recent loss. Since +it would not have been etiquette for him to mention the bey's wife, +he judged it equally inadvisable to refer to her ashes. + +The whole affair was so wrapped in darkness that he could not decide +upon any creditable explanation. It would have to wait until he saw +Ryder in the next day or two--for Ryder had told him he would try to +get in with his finds as soon as possible. + +But no matter how he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind he +had found himself asking, through the courses of that important +dinner and now in the pauses of his conversation with Miss +Jeffries--Was there really some girl? Had he only dreamed that tense +anxiety of Jack's--had Jack led them on for his own young amusement? + +But it was not long possible to maintain an inner communion with +Jinny Jeffries for a vis-à-vis. + +A divided mind could not companion her swift flights and sudden +tangents. Deriding now her silly anxieties and deploring McLean's +unnecessary trip, she had branched into the consideration of how +busy McLean must be--and McLean found himself somehow embarked in +sketchy descriptions of the institution of which Miss Jeffries +seemed to think he was the backbone and of its very interesting work +throughout the country. + +And as he had talked he found himself noticing things that he had +never noticed before about girls, the wave of bright hair against a +flushed cheek, the dimples in a rounded arm, the slim grace of +crossed ankles and silver-slippered feet. + +"And you live all alone in that big house?" Jinny was murmuring. + +"Not exactly alone." McLean smiled. "There's Mohammed and Hassan and +Abdullah and Alewa and Saord-el-Tawahi--" + +"What _do_ you call him when you are in a hurry?" laughed the girl. + +It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint +and secret embarrassment and he had discovered this delightful +interest and bright vivacity. + +And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever +stilled and chilled in Miss Jeffries' breast--like a poor hidden +corpse beneath bright roses--why at two and twenty expectancies +flourish so gayly that one lone bud is not long missed. And chagrin +is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all +the more delicate for a dimming cloud. + +Moreover McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing. + +When in startled realization of time and place he rose at last and +she murmured laughing, "And after all you never met Aunt and Uncle!" +he felt a queer blush tingle his cheek bones and a daring impulse +shape the thought aloud that in that case he must come again. + +"We're here five days more," said Jinny, the explicit. + +Thoughtfully he repeated, "Five days," and said farewell. + +"Now if he decorously waits to the next to the last day--!" murmured +Jinny to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the +balance. + +He didn't. But it was not the initiative of the Scots race which +brought him to her, late that very next afternoon, but a soiled +looking note which he held crumpled in his hand. + +He found her at tea upon the veranda with her aunt and uncle and +while he made conversation with the Pendletons he gave Miss Jeffries +the note. + +"From our friend Ryder," he said with forced lightness. "It explains +itself." + +But it certainly did not. It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying +that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds and sending this +ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo +Museum to meet him at five and would he please stop on the way and +call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffries and borrow a woman's cloak +and hat and veil, or if she wasn't in, get them elsewhere. + +"What is it--another masquerade?" said Jinny blankly. + +McLean looked mutely at her and shook his head, but within him +horrific suspicion was raging like a forest fire. + +He continued his converse with the Pendletons while Jinny went for +the things; she returned with a small bag containing coat and hat +and veil, and the announcement that she would go right over with +him. + +"If the things aren't right I'll know what he wants," she declared, +and then, smiling, "What _do_ you suppose he is up to now?" + +McLean felt that he didn't want to know. And most positively he +didn't want her to know. But having lacked the instant inspiration +to deny her, he could only acquiesce and wonder why he hadn't +thought up some brilliant excuse. + +He looked helplessly at the Pendletons, but they merely murmured +their adieux and their independent niece accompanied McLean to his +waiting carriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world. + + * * * * * + +The caravan was before them. A long line of camels was just turning +in the gates and before the steps of a back entrance other camels, +kneeling with that profound and squealing resentment with which even +the camel's most exhausted moments oppose commands, were being +relieved of their huge loads by natives under the very minute and +exact direction of Thatcher. + +And within the entrance a young man with rumpled dark hair and a +thin, bronzed face flushed with impatience was imperiously conveying +the Arabs who were bearing the precious sarcophagi. + +Over his shoulder he caught sight of the two arrivals. + +"I asked for motors--and they furnished these!" he cried +disgustedly, gesturing at the enduring camels. "It took us all day +though we half killed the brutes.... Hello, Jinny, did you bring the +things?" + +With light casualness he accepted her appearance on the scene. That +glitter in his bright hazel eyes was not for that. "Come in, both +of you," he called, plunging after his men. + +At the foot of the stairs McLean waited with Miss Jeffries until the +men had reached the top and deposited their burdens in the room and +in the manner which Ryder was specifying so crisply, and then they +came mechanically up. + +McLean had the automatic feeling of a mere super in a well rehearsed +scene. He had no idea of plot or appearance but his rôle of dumb +subservience was clearly defined. + +"You understand," Ryder was calling to the men, "nothing more goes +in this room. All else down stairs.... Come in," he said hurriedly +to his waiting friends, and shutting the door swiftly behind them, +"of course--this doesn't lock!" he muttered. "Jinny, you stand here, +do, and if any one tries to come in tell them they can't." + +"Tell them you say they can't?" questioned Jinny a little +helplessly. + +"No--no--not that. Tell them you are using the room; tell them," +said Ryder with very brisk and serious inspiration, "tell them your +petticoat is coming off!" + +"Why Jack Ryder!" said Jinny indignantly. + +"Nonsense," said he to her indignation. "Don't you remember when +your aunt's petticoat came off on the way to church? It happens." + +"But it doesn't run in families!" + +Her protest fell apparently upon the back of his head. He had +turned to the last sarcophagus and was slipping his fingers beneath +the lid. "Here, Andy," he said quickly. "I had it wedged so it +wasn't tight shut, but it's been so infernally hot and dusty--" + +He was tremendously troubled. It was not the heat which had brought +those fine beads of moisture to his brow, white above the line of +brown, and drawn such a pale ring about his mouth. McLean saw that +the slim, wiry wrists which supported the case's top were shaking. + +"Gently now," he murmured and the lid was lifted and laid aside. + +The same dark, unstirring form of the tomb scene. The same dry, +dusty little mummy.... But with hands strangely reckless for an +archaeologist dealing with the priceless stuff of time Ryder tore at +those bandages; he unwrapped, he unwound, and in a lightning's +flash-- + +To McLean's tense, expectant nerves it was like a scene at the +pantomime. He had divined it; he had foreseen and yet there was the +shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the +supernatural in the revelation. + +In a wave of an enchanter's wand the mummy was gone. And in its +place lay a Sleeping Beauty, the dark hair in sculptured closeness +to the head, the long, black lashes sweeping the still cheeks. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +THE PAINTED CASE + + +"She's fainted," said Ryder in a voice that shook. From his pocket +he drew swiftly a thermos bottle but before the top was off those +long lashes fluttered, and from under their shadow the soft, dark +eyes looked up at him with a smile of very gallant reassurance. + +"Not--faint," said the girl, in a breath of a voice. "But it was so +long--so hot--" + +"Drink this." Ryder slipped an arm about her, offering the filled +top of the thermos. "It's over, all over," he murmured as she drank. +"You're safe now, safe.... You're at the museum.... Then we'll get +you to the hotel--" + +"Hotel--?" the girl echoed with a faint implication of humor in that +silver bell of a voice. + +She put her hands to her hair and to her face in which the hues of +life mingled with the pallor of exhaustion; on her small fingers +sparkled the gleam of diamonds and from her slender arms fell back +the gold and jade tissues of her chiffon robe. + +To McLean she had increasingly the appearance of a creature of +enchantments. And to see that young loveliness in its strange gleam +of color lying against his friend's supporting tan linen arm-- + +Sardonically his eyes sought Ryder. + +"So that was your mummy!" + +"There was nothing else to do." Ryder had withdrawn his arm; the two +men faced each other across the girl. "I was in a blue funk--you +see, I was hiding her in the inner chamber until I could smuggle her +away. And when those wolves came on the scent, and not an instant to +lose--I got the bandages off the real mummy and about Aimée.... +Lord, it was a close call!" + +He drew a long breath. "I hadn't a gun. I hadn't a thing--and I had +to grin and play it through ... And I was deathly afraid of +Thatcher." + +"Thatcher?" + +"Yes, Thatcher. You see I'd popped the mummy into a case without its +bandages and if Thatcher had glimpsed that he'd have said +something--Oh, innocently--that would have given the show away. He +knew there was only one mummy and it was wrapped. But the Lord was +with me. The men opened the empty case first and at the second they +said nothing to show it wasn't empty and Thatcher didn't look in. +Then they went on to the third." + +"And me--when I heard those voices--I stopped breathing," said the +girl. "But I shook so--I thought they would think that mummy was +coming to life! And the dust--Oh, it was almost beyond my force not +to sneeze--" + +"You'd have sneezed us to Kingdom Come," said Ryder, gayly now. + +"But I did not," she protested. "I lay there and thought of Hamdi +looking down upon me, and my flesh crept.... Oh, it was terrible! +And yet it was funny." + +Funny.... McLean gazed in sardonic astonishment upon the two young +creatures with such misguided humor that they found something funny +in this appalling business. Flying from palaces ... hiding in tombs +... taking a mummy's place beneath the dusty bandages of the dead +... Funny.... + +And yet there was laughter in their young eyes when they looked at +each other and a curve of astounding amusement in their lips. + +It touched McLean to wonder. It touched him--queerly--to an odd and +aching pain. For he saw suddenly that he was looking upon something +deathless and imperishable, yet fragile and fleeting as the breath +of time.... + +They were so young, so absorbed, so oblivious.... + +He had forgotten Jinny Jeffries. So too,--not for the first time, +alas!--had Ryder. Now her clear voice from the doorway made them +start. + +"You might present me, Jack." + +Ryder turned, so did the girl in the painted case, and her eyes +widened with a startled surprise. The doorway had not been within +her vision. + +Jinny was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the +knob she was to guard, her figure still rigid with astonishment. + +"I didn't know you--you dug them up--alive," she said with a quiver +of uncertain humor. + +"My dear Jinny, I had for--Miss Jeffries, let me present you to +Mademoiselle Delcassé," said Jack gravely. "I know that you met her +the day of her reception--" + +Only in that moment did Jinny place the haunting recollection. + +"But she was burned--she was killed," she protested, shaken now with +excitement. + +"She was not burned--although there was a fire. The man who called +himself her husband pretended she was killed in order to save his +pride. For she escaped from him. And he tried to get her back, +setting another man, a false father, after her with lying +witnesses--Oh, it's a long story!--so I had to hide her in this +case." + +"But Jack, you--why were _you_ hiding her--? Did you get her out?" +stammered Jinny. + +"The night of that reception. You see, I knew she was truly a French +girl who had been stolen by Tewfick Pasha and brought up as his +daughter--Oh, that's a long story, too! But at McLean's I had +happened on the agents who were searching for her from her aunt in +France, and so I knew.... And at the reception when I found she +hated that marriage I stayed behind and--and managed to get her +away,"--thus lightly did Ryder indicate the dangers of that +night!--"so she could escape to France." + +"Oh--France!" said Jinny. + +She could be forgiven for the tone. She had been kept shamefully in +the dark, misled, ignored.... She had been a catspaw, a bystander. + +Not that she cared. Not that she would let them think for a minute +that she cared.... + +But as for this talk of France-- + +Her eyes met the eyes of the girl in the mummy case. And Jinny found +herself looking, not at the interloper, the enchantress, but at a +very young, frightened girl, lost in a strange world, but resolved +upon courage. She saw more than the men could see. She saw the +loveliness, the helplessness, and she saw too the sensitive dignity, +the delicate, defensive spirit.... + +Really, she was a child. + +And to have gone through so much, dared such danger.... She +remembered that dark, forbidding palace, the guarded doors, the +hideous blacks--and that bright, smiling figure in its misty +veil.... And now that little figure sat in its strange hiding place, +confronting her with a lost child's eyes.... + +Into Jinny's bright gray eyes came a mist of tears. She was queerly +moved. It was a mingled emotion, but if some drops for her own +disconcertment were mingled with the warm prompting of pity, her +compassion was none the less true. + +"I'll be so glad to do anything I can to help," she said +impulsively. "If you have no friends to trust in Cairo--" + +"I have no friends to trust--beyond this room," said the girl. + +"Then I'll take you to the hotel with me. You can register as one of +our party and keep your room till we leave--we are going in four +days now. And, oh, I know! You can cross on the same steamer with us +to Europe, for there's a woman at the hotel who wants to give up her +transportation and go on to the Holy Land--she was moaning about it +only this noon. It would all fit in beautifully." + +It seemed to McLean that an angel from Heaven was revealing her +blessed goodness. + +Ryder took the revelation delightedly for granted. + +"Bully for you, Jinny," he said warmly. "I knew I could count on +you." + +If for one moment a twinge of wry reminder recalled that she had +never been able exactly to count upon him it did not dim his mood. +He was alight with triumph. + +"I'll see to the transportation," he said quickly, doing mental +arithmetic about present sums in the bank. "And we won't wire your +aunt until you're safely out of Egypt--better send a wireless from +the ship. I think your aunt is near Paris--" + +"We are going to hurry to Paris," said Jinny, "That was our regular +plan--" + +"And London?" said McLean. + +"London, later, of course. Cathedrals, lakes and universities--then +London." + +"I shall be in London," said McLean thoughtfully, "in June.... If +you are not too occupied--" + +"With cathedrals?" said Miss Jeffries. + +"Where are the things?" demanded Ryder ruthlessly, and thus +recalled, Jinny produced the bag. + +McLean moved toward the door. "We might go and mount guard in the +corridor," he suggested, and he and Jinny stepped outside, back into +the everyday world of Egypt where nothing at all had been happening +but the arrival of a caravan from the excavations. + +Within the room Ryder stooped and lifted the girl from the case and +set her lightly on the floor. Ruefully she shook out the torn +chiffons of that French audacity of a robe, and with a whimsical +smile surveyed the soiled little slippers that she had discarded in +her disguise when she had ridden behind the turbaned Ryder upon the +Arab horse. + +So little time ago, and yet so long away-- + +Under her long lashes she looked up at the young man, who had set +the old life crumbling about her at a touch. Wistfulness edged the +brave smile with which she murmured, "And so it is all arranged--so +quick. I am safe--I go to the hotel with that nice girl--" + +"And I won't be able to see you," he said suddenly. + +"But you have seen me, monsieur, these many days--" + +"Seen you? I haven't seen you. I've sat outside a tomb on guard, +I've marched beside a mummy case--and--and we've said so little--" + +It was true. They had said little. The hours had been absorbed in +action. Their words had always been of explanation, of reassurance, +of anxious planning. Of the future, the future after safety had been +achieved, they had said nothing. It had all been uncertain, +nebulous, vague.... + +And now it was upon them. + +"And I have never said Thank you," she murmured. "I--I think I began +by saying Thank you, monsieur. I remember saying that my education +had proceeded to the Ts!" + +"If--if only you never want to unsay it," he muttered. "You don't +know what's ahead--life's so uncertain--" + +"No, I do not know what is ahead," she told him, "but I am +free--free for whatever will come." + +The brightness of that freedom shone suddenly from her upturned +face. + +"Anything is better than that man," she vowed. "Even if my aunt, +that Madame Delcassé, should not like me--you see, I have thought of +everything, and I am not afraid." + +"Like you--? She'll love you," said Ryder bitterly. "She'll go mad +over you and give you all she has--she'll marry you to a count--" + +"Another marriage?" Aimée raised brows of mockery. "But I am through +with the marriages of convenience--" + +"You're so lovely, darling, that you'll have the world at your +feet," said the young man huskily. + +He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain. "Oh, +I--you--it's not fair--" he muttered incoherently. + +He had meant--ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the +desert--to be very fair. He would not bind her with a word, a touch. +Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he +touched her in caress. With the reverence of his deep tenderness he +had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its +revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth.... + +Nobly he had resolved.... But now parting was upon him. + +"It's not fair to you," he said desperately--and drew closer. + +For at his blurted words her look had magically changed. The +defensive lightness was fled. A breathless wonder shone out at him +... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the +gleam of a butterfly's wing. + +No glamorous moonlight was about them now. No scented shadowy +garden.... But the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty +room, with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very +flame of youth. + +"Sweet, I'll be on the ship--I'll wait till you are ready," he vowed +and at her low murmur, "Ready--?" he gave back, "Ready--for love," +with a boy's stammer over the first sound of that word between them. + +"But what is this now," she said wondering, yet with a little elfish +gleam of laughter, "but--love?" + +His last resolve went to the winds. + +And as his arms closed about her, as he held to his heart all that +young loveliness that had been his despair and his delight, there +was more than joy in the confused tumult of his youth, there was +the supreme exultation of triumphant daring. + +For he had opened the forbidden door; he had challenged the +adventure and overcome the risk. + +He had won. And he would hold his winnings. + +"Aimée," he whispered. "Aimée--Beloved." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORTIETH DOOR*** + + +******* This file should be named 13498-8.txt or 13498-8.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/4/9/13498 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: The Fortieth Door</p> +<p>Author: Mary Hastings Bradley</p> +<p>Release Date: September 19, 2004 [eBook #13498]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORTIETH DOOR***</p> +<br> +<br> +<h3>E-text prepared by Janet Kegg<br> + and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team</h3> +<br> +<br> +<hr class="full" noshade> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<h1>THE</h1> +<h1> FORTIETH DOOR +</h1> +<br> +<h3> + By MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY +</h3> +<br> +<p class="note"> + A<small>UTHOR OF</small><br> + <i>The Wine of Astonishment</i>, etc. +</p> +<a name="image-0001"><!--IMG--></a> +<center> +<img src="images/decoration.jpg" width="104" height="100" +alt="Title Page Decoration"> +</center> +<!--IMAGE END--> +<br> +<h5>1920</h5> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<br> +<p class="note"> + <small>TO</small><br><br> + ARTHUR MILLS CORWIN +</p> +<br> +<br> +<hr class="short"> +<a name="2H_TOC"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + + <h3>CONTENTS</h3> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001"> +I. A RASH PROMISE</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002"> +II. MASKS AND MASKERS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003"> +III. IN THE PASHA'S PALACE</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004"> +IV. EXPLANATIONS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005"> +V. AT THE GARDEN GATE</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0006"> +VI. A SECRET OF THE SANDS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0007"> +VII. TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0008"> +VIII. TEWFICK RECEIVES</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0009"> +IX. A WEDDING PRESENT</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0010"> +X. THE RECEPTION</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0011"> +XI. THE FORTY DOORS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0012"> +XII. THE UNINVITED GUEST</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0013"> +XIII. THE BEY RETURNS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0014"> +XIV. WITHIN THE WALLS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0015"> +XV. UNDERGROUND</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0016"> +XVI. OUT OF THE DARKNESS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0017"> +XVII. AZIZA</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0018"> +XVIII. AZIZA IS OFFENDED</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0019"> +XIX. AN INTERRUPTION</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0020"> +XX. BEYOND THE DOOR</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0021"> +XXI. MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0022"> +XXII. FROM THE BAZAARS</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0023"> +XXIII. IN THE DESERT</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0024"> +XXIV. THE TOMB OF A KING</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0025"> +XXV. IN CAIRO</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0026"> +XXVI. THE PAINTED CASE</a></p> +<br> +<hr> +<br> +<a name="2HCH0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER I +</h2> +<h3> + A RASH PROMISE +</h3> +<p> + He didn't want to go. He loathed the very thought of it. Every + flinching nerve in him protested. +</p> +<p> + A masked ball—a masked ball at a Cairo hotel! Grimacing through + peep-holes, self-conscious advances, flirtations ending in giggles! + Tourists as nuns, tourists as Turks, tourists as God-knows-what, all + preening and peacocking! +</p> +<p> + Unhappily he gazed upon the girl who was proposing this horror as a + bright delight. She was a very engaging girl—that was the mischief + of it. She stood smiling there in the bright, Egyptian sunshine, gay + confidence in her gray eyes. He hated to shatter that confidence. +</p> +<p> + And he had done little enough for her during her stay in Cairo. One + tea at the Gezireh Palace Hotel, one trip to the Sultan al Hassan + Mosque, one excursion through the bazaars—not exactly an orgy of + entertainment for a girl from home! +</p> +<p> + He had evaded climbing the Pyramids and fled from the ostrich farm. + He had withheld from inviting her to the camp on the edge of the + Libyan desert where he was excavating, although her party had shown + unmistakable signs of a willingness to be diverted from the beaten + path of its travel. +</p> +<p> + And he was not calling on her now. He had come to Cairo for supplies + and she had encountered him by chance upon a corner of the crowded + Mograby, and there promptly she had invited him to to-night's ball. +</p> +<p> + "But it's not my line, you know, Jinny," he was protesting. "I'm so + fearfully out of dancing—" +</p> +<p> + "More reason to come, Jack. You need a change from digging up ruins + all the time—it must be frightfully lonely out there on the desert. + I can't think how you stand it." +</p> +<p> + Jack Ryder smiled. There was no mortal use in explaining to Jinny + Jeffries that his life on the desert was the only life in the world, + that his ruins held more thrills than all the fevers of her tourist + crowds, and that he would rather gaze upon the mummied effigy of any + lady of the dynasty of Amenhotep than upon the freshest and fairest + of the damsels of the present day. +</p> +<p> + It would only tax Jinny's credulity and hurt her feelings. And he + liked Jinny—though not as he liked Queen Hatasu or the little + nameless creature he had dug out of a king's ante-room. +</p> +<p> + Jinny was an interfering modern. She was the incarnation of + impossible demands. +</p> +<p> + But of course there was no real reason why he should not stop over + and go to the dance. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + Ten minutes later, when she had extracted his promise and abandoned + him to the costumers, he was scourging his weakness. +</p> +<p> + He had known better! Very well, then, let him take his medicine. Let + him go as—here he disgustedly eyed the garment that the Greek was + presenting—as Little Lord Fauntleroy! He deserved it. +</p> +<p> + Shudderingly he looked away from the pretty velvet suit; he scorned + the monk's robes that were too redolent of former wearers; he + rejected the hot livery of a Russian mujik; he flouted the banality + of the Pierrot pantaloons. +</p> +<p> + Thankfully he remembered McLean. Kilts, that was the thing. Tartans, + the real Scotch plaids. Some use, now, McLean's precious + sporrans.... He'd look him up at once. +</p> +<p> + Out of the crowded Mograby he made his way on foot to the Esbekeyih + quarters where the streets were wider and emptier of Cairene + traffickers and shrill itinerates and laden camels and jostling + donkeys. +</p> +<p> + It was a glorious day, a day of Egypt's blue and gold. The sky was a + wash of water color; the streets a flood of molten amber. A little + wind from the north rustled the acacias and blew in his bronzed face + cool reminders of the widening Nile and dancing waves. +</p> +<p> + He remembered a chap he knew, who had a sailing canoe—but no, he + was going to get a costume for a fool ball! +</p> +<p> + Disgustedly he turned into the very modern and official-looking + residence that was the home of his friend, Andrew McLean, and the + offices of that far-reaching institution, the Agricultural Bank. +</p> +<p> + A white-robed, red-sashed and red-fezed houseboy led him across the + tiled entrance into the long room where McLean was concluding a + conference with two men. +</p> +<p> + "Not the least trace," McLean was saying. "We've questioned all our + native agents—" +</p> +<p> + Afterwards Ryder remembered that indefinite little pause. If the two + men had not lingered—if McLean had not remembered that he was an + excavator—if chance had not brushed the scales with lightning + wings—! +</p> +<p> + "Ever hear of a chap called Delcassé, Paul Delcassé, a French + excavator?" McLean suddenly asked of him. "Disappeared in the desert + about fifteen years ago." +</p> +<p> + "He was reported, monsieur, to have died of the fever," one of the + men explained. +</p> +<p> + McLean introduced him as a special agent from France. His companion + was one of the secretaries of the French legation. They were trying + every quarter for traces of this Delcassé. +</p> +<p> + Ryder's memory darted back to old library shelves. He saw a thin, + brown volume, almost uncut.... +</p> +<p> + "He wrote a book on the Tomb of Thi," he said suddenly. "Paul + Delcassé—I remember it very well." +</p> +<p> + Now that he thought of it, the memory was clear. It was one of those + books that had whetted his passion for the past, when his student + mind was first kindling to buried cities and forgotten tombs and all + the strange store and loot of time. +</p> +<p> + Paul Delcassé. He didn't remember a word of the book, but he + remembered that he had read it with absorption. And now the special + agent, delighted at the recognition, was talking eagerly of the + writer. +</p> +<p> + "He was a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance + to his generation—and he becomes so now through the whim of a + capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time + she has decided to make active inquiries." +</p> +<p> + "But you said that Delcassé had died—" +</p> +<p> + "He left a wife and child. Her letters of her husband's death + reached his relatives in France, then nothing more. They feared that + the same fever—but nothing, positively, was known.... A sad story, + monsieur.... This Delcassé was young and adventurous and an ardent + explorer. An ardent lover, too, for he brought a beautiful French + wife to share the hazards of his expedition—" +</p> +<p> + "An ardent idiot," thrust in McLean unfeelingly. "Knocking a woman + about the desert.... Not much chance of a clue after all these + years," he concluded with a very British air of dismissal. +</p> +<p> + But the French agent was not to be sundered from the American who + remembered the book of Delcassé. +</p> +<p> + From his pocket he brought a leather case and from the case a large + and ornate gold locket. +</p> +<p> + "His picture, monsieur." He pressed the spring and offered Ryder the + miniature. "It was done in France before he returned on that last + trip, and was left with the aunt. It is said to be a good likeness." +</p> +<p> + Ryder looked down upon the young face presented to his gaze with a + feeling of sympathy for this unlucky searcher of the past who had + left his own secret in the sands he had come to conquer—sympathy + mingled with blank wonder at the insanity which had brought a woman + with it.... +</p> +<p> + McLean couldn't understand a man's doing it. +</p> +<p> + Jack Ryder couldn't understand a man's <i>wanting</i> to do it. Love to + Ryder was incomprehensible idiocy. Woman, as far as he was + concerned, had never been created. She was still a spectacle, an + historical record, an uncomprehended motive. +</p> +<p> + "Nice looking chap," he commented briefly, fingering the curious old + case as he handed it back. +</p> +<p> + "I'll keep up the inquiries," McLean assured them, "but, as I said, + nothing will come of it.... It's been fifteen years. One more grain + lost in the desert of sand.... By luck, you know, you might just + stumble on something, some native who knew the story, but if fever + carried them off and the Arabs rifled their camp, as I fancy, + they'll jolly well keep their mouths shut. No white man will + know.... I don't advise your people to spend much money on the + search." +</p> +<p> + "Odd, the inquiries we get," he commented to Ryder when the + Frenchmen had completed their courteous farewells. "You'd think the + Bank was a Bureau of Information! Yesterday there was a stir about + two crazy lads who are supposed to have joined the Mecca pilgrims in + disguise.... Of course our clerks are Copts and <i>do</i> pick up a bit + and the Copts will talk.... I say, Jack, what are you doing?" he + broke off to demand in astonishment, for Jack Ryder had seated + himself upon a divan and was absorbedly rolling up his trouser leg. +</p> +<p> + "The dear Egyptian flea?" he added. +</p> +<p> + "Not at all. I am looking at my knees," said Ryder glumly. "I just + remembered that I have to show them to-night.... A ball—in + masquerade. At a hotel. Tourist crowd.... How do you think they'll + look with one of your Scotch plaidies atop?" he inquired feelingly. +</p> +<p> + "Fascinating, Jack, fascinating," said the promptly sardonic McLean. + "You—at a masquerade!... So that's what brought you to town." +</p> +<p> + He cocked a taunting eye at him. "Well, well, she must be a most + engaging young person—you'll be taking her out on the desert with + you now, like our friend Delcassé—a pleasant, retired spot for a + body to have his honeymoon ... no distractions of society ... + undiluted companionship, you might say.... Now what made you think + she'd like your knees?" he murmured contemplatively. "Aren't you + just a bit—previous? Apt to startle and frighten the lady?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, go on, go on," Ryder exhorted bitterly. "I like it. It's better + than I can do myself. Go on.... But while you are talking trot out + your tartans. Something clannish now—one of those ancestral rigs + that you are always cherishing ... Rich and red, to set off my dark, + handsome type." +</p> +<p> + "Set off you'll be, Jack dear," promised McLean, dragging out a huge + chest. "Set off you'll be." +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + Set off he was. +</p> +<p> + And a fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his + brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid + plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his + shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay + with big buckles. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the west," warbled McLean + merrily, as he straightened the shoulder pin of silver and Scotch + topaz. +</p> +<p> + "Out of Hades," said Ryder, rather pointlessly, for he felt it was + Hades he was going into. +</p> +<p> + Chiefly he was concerned with his knees and the striking contrast + between their sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his + face.... Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass.... Bony + hard, they flaunted their angles at every move.... He was grateful + that he was not a centipede. +</p> +<p class="poem"> + "Oh, 'twas all for my rightful king,<br> + That I gaed o'er the border;<br> + Twas all for— +</p> +<p> + "You didn't tell me her name, now, Jack." +</p> +<p> + "Where's my mask?" Ryder was muttering. "I say, aren't there any + pockets in these confounded petticoats?" +</p> +<p> + "In the sporran, man.... There!" McLean at last withheld his hand + from its handiwork. "Jock, you're a grand sight," he pronounced with + a special Scottish burr. "If ye dinna win her now—'Bonny Charley's + now awa,'" he sung as Ryder, with a last darkling look at his vivid + image, strode towards the door. +</p> +<p> + "He's awa' all right—and he'll be back again as soon as he can make + it." +</p> +<p> + With this cheerless anticipation of the evening's promise, the + departing one stalked, like an exiled Stuart, to his waiting + carriage. +</p> +<p> + For a moment more McLean kept the ironic smile alive upon his lips, + as he listened to the rattle of the wheels and the harsh gutturals + of the driver, then the smile died as he turned back into the room. +</p> +<p> + "Eh, but wouldn't you like it, though, Andy," he said to himself, + "if some girl now liked you enough to get you to go to one of those + damned things.... The lucky dog!" +</p> +<a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER II +</h2> +<h3> + MASKS AND MASKERS +</h3> +<p> + Moors and Juliets and Circassian slaves and Knights at Arms were + fast emerging from lift or cloak room, and confronting each other + through their masks in sheepish defiance and curiosity. Adventurous + spirits were circulating. Voices, lowered and guarded, began to + engage in nervous, tittering banter.... Laughter, belatedly + smothered, flared to betrayals.... +</p> +<p> + The orchestra was playing a Viennese waltz and couple after couple + slipped out upon the floor. +</p> +<p> + Lounging against the wall, Ryder glowered mockingly through his mask + holes at the motley. It was so exactly as he had foreseen. He was + bored—and he was going to be more bored. He was jostled—and he was + going to be more jostled. He was hot—and he was going to be hotter. +</p> +<p> + Where in the world was Jinny Jeffries? He deserved, he felt, + exhilaratingly kind treatment to compensate him for this insanity. + He gazed about, and encountering a plump shepherdess ogling him he + stepped hastily behind a palm. +</p> +<p> + He fairly stepped upon a very small person in black. A phantom-like + small person, with the black silk hubarah of the Mohammedan + high-caste woman drawn down to her very brows, and over the entire + face the black street veil. Not a feature visible. Not an eyebrow. + Not an eyelash, not a hint of the small person herself, except a + very small white, ringed hand, lifted as if in defense of his + clumsiness. +</p> +<p> + "Sorry," said Ryder quickly, and driven by the instinct of + reparation. "Won't you dance?" +</p> +<p> + A mute shake of the head. +</p> +<p> + Well, his duty was done. But something, the very lack of all + invitation in the black phantom, made him linger. He repeated his + request in French. +</p> +<p> + From behind the veil came a liquidly soft voice with a note of + mirth. "I understand the English, monsieur," it informed him. +</p> +<p> + "Enough, then, to say yes in it?" +</p> +<p> + The black phantom shook its head. "My education, alas! has only + proceeded to the N." Her speech was quaint, unhesitating, but oddly + inflected. "I regret—but I am not acquainted with the yes." +</p> +<p> + A gay character for a masked ball! Indifference and pique swung + Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and + he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. +</p> +<p> + He'd tell McLean just how darned captivating his outfit was, he + promised himself. +</p> +<p> + And then he caught sight of a familiar pair of gray eyes smiling + over the white veil of an odalisque. Jinny Jeffries was wearing one + of the many costumes there that passed for Oriental, a glittering + assemblage of Turkish trousers and Circassian veils, silver shawls + and necklaces and wide bracelets banding bare arms. +</p> +<p> + As an effect it was distinctly successful. +</p> +<p> + "Ten thousand dinars could not pay for the chicken she has eaten," + uttered Ryder appreciatively in the language of the old slave + market, and stepped promptly ahead of a stout Pantalon. +</p> +<p> + "Jack! You did come!" There was a note in the girl's voice as if she + had disbelieved in her good fortune. "Oh, and beautiful as Roderick + Dhu! Didn't I tell you that you could find something in that shop?" + she declared in triumph. +</p> +<p> + "Do you imagine that this came out of a costumer's?" Ryder swung her + swiftly out in the fox trot before the crowd invaded the floor. "If + Andy McLean could hear you! Why this, this is the real thing, the + Scots-wha-hae-wi'-Wallace-bled stuff." +</p> +<p> + "Who is Andy McLean?" +</p> +<p> + "Andrew is Scotch, Single, and Skeptical. He is a great pal of mine + and also an official of the Agricultural Bank which is by way of + being a Government institution. These are the togs of his Hieland + Grandsire—" +</p> +<p> + "Why didn't you bring him?" +</p> +<p> + "Too dead, unfortunately—grandsires often are—" +</p> +<p> + "I mean Andrew McLean." +</p> +<p> + "It would take you, my dear Jinny, to do that. You brought me—and + I can believe in anything after the surprise of finding myself + here." +</p> +<p> + Jinny Jeffries laughed. "If I could only believe what you say!" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, you can believe anything I say," Jack obligingly assured her. + "I'm very careful what I <i>say</i>—" +</p> +<p> + "I wish I were." +</p> +<p> + "You'd have to be careful how you look, Jinny—and you can't help + that. The Lord who gave you red hair must provide the way to elude + its consequences.... I suppose the Orient isn't exactly a manless + Sahara for you?" +</p> +<p> + She countered, her bright eyes intent, "Is it a girl-less Sahara for + you, Jack?" +</p> +<p> + "The only woman I have laid a hand on, in kindness or unkindness, + died before Ptolemy rebuilt Denderah." +</p> +<p> + "That's not right—" +</p> +<p> + "No? And I thought it such a virtuous record!" +</p> +<p> + "I mean," Jinny laughed, "that you really ought to be seeing more of + life—like to-night—" +</p> +<p> + "To-night? Do you imagine this is a place for seeing life?" +</p> +<p> + "Why not?" she retorted to the irony in his voice. "It's real + people—not just dead and gone things in cases with their lives all + lived. I don't care if you are going to be a very famous person, + Jack, you ought to see more of the world. You have just been buried + out here for two years, ever since you left college—" +</p> +<p> + Beneath his mask the young man was smiling. A quaint feminine + notion, that life was to be encountered at a masquerade! This motley + of hot, over-dressed, wrought up idiots a human contact! +</p> +<p> + Life? Living?... Thank you, he preferred the sane young English + officials ... the comradeship of his chief ... the glamor of his + desert tombs. +</p> +<p> + Of course there was a loneliness in the desert. That was part of the + big feeling of it, the still, stealing sense of immensity reaching + out its shadowy hands for you.... Loneliness and restlessness.... + These tropic nights, when the stars burned low and bright, and the + hot sands seemed breathing.... Loneliness and restlessness—but they + gave a man dreams.... And were those dreams to be realized here? +</p> +<p> + The music stopped and the ever-watchful Pantalon bore down upon + them. Abandoning Jinny to her fate, Ryder sought refuge and a + cigarette. +</p> +<p> + The hall was crowded now; the ball was a flash of color, a whirl of + satins and spangles and tulle and gauze, gold and green and rose and + sapphire, gyrating madly in vivid projection against the black and + white stripes of the Moorish walls. The color and the music had sent + their quickening reactions among the throng. Masks were lending + audacity to mischief and high spirits. +</p> +<p> + Three little Pierrettes scampered through the crowd, pelting right + and left with confetti and balloons, and two stalwart monks and a + thin Hamlet pursued them, keeping up the bombardment amid a great + combustion of balloons. A spangled Harlequin snatched his hands + full of confetti and darted behind a palm. +</p> +<p> + It was the palm of the black phantom, the palm of Ryder's rebuff. + Perhaps the Harlequin had met repulse here, too, and cherished + resentment, not a very malicious resentment but a mocking feint of + it, for when Ryder turned sharply after him—oddly, he himself was + strolling toward that nook—he found Harlequin circling with mock + entreaties about the stubbornly refusing black domino. +</p> +<p> + "Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the + dance?" chanted Harlequin, with a shower of confetti flung at the + girl's averted face. +</p> +<p> + There was such a shrinking of genuine fright in her withdrawal that + Ryder had a fine thrill of rescue. +</p> +<p> + "My dance," he declared, laying an intervening hand on her muffled + arm. +</p> +<p> + His tartan-draped shoulder crowded the Harlequin from sight. +</p> +<p> + She raised her head. The black street veil was flung back, but a + black yashmak was hiding all but her eyes. Great dark eyes they + were, deep as night and soft as shadows, arched with exquisitely + curved brows like the sweep of wild birds' wings.... The most lovely + eyes that dreams could bring. +</p> +<p> + A flash of relief shone through their childish fright. With sudden + confidence she turned to Ryder. +</p> +<p> + "Thank you.... My education, monsieur, has proceeded to the Ts," she + told him with a nervous little laugh over her chagrin, drowned in a + burst of louder laughter from the discomfited Harlequin, who turned + on his heel and then bounded after fresh prey. +</p> +<p> + "Shall we dance or promenade?" asked Ryder. +</p> +<p> + Hesitatingly her gaze met his. Red and gold and green and blue + flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black + wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her + eye-lashes. +</p> +<p> + "It is—if I have not forgotten how to dance," she murmured. "If it + is a waltz, perhaps—" +</p> +<p> + It was a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution + before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within + the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her + young form. She was no more than a child.... No child, either, at a + masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight.... She was a leaf + blowing in the breeze.... She was the very breeze and the moonlight. +</p> +<p> + And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over. Those moments had + seemed no more than one. +</p> +<p> + "We must have the next," he said quickly. "What made you think you + had forgotten?" +</p> +<p> + "It is nearly four years, monsieur, since I danced with a man." +</p> +<p> + "With a man? You have been dancing with girls, then?" +</p> +<p> + She nodded. +</p> +<p> + "At a school?" +</p> +<p> + "At a—a sort of school." The black domino laughed with ruefulness. + "At a very dull sort of school." +</p> +<p> + "To which, I hope, you are not to return?" +</p> +<p> + She made no answer to that—unless it was a sigh that slipped out. +</p> +<p> + "At any rate," he said cheerily, "you are dancing to-night." +</p> +<p> + "To-night—yes, to-night I am dancing!" There was triumph in her + young voice, triumph and faint defiance, and gayety again in her + changing eyes. +</p> +<p> + Extraordinary, those eyes. Innocent, audacious, bewildering.... To + look down into them produced the oddest of excitement. +</p> +<p> + He took off his mask. Masks were hindering things—he could see so + much better without. +</p> +<p> + She, too, could see better—could see him better. Shyly, yet + intently, her gaze took note of him, of the clean, clear-cut young + face, bronzed and rather thin, of the dark hair that looked darker + against the scarlet cap, of the deep-set eyes, hazel-brown, that met + hers so often and were so full of contradictory things ... life ... + and humor ... and frank simplicity ... and subtle eagerness. +</p> +<p> + He looked so young and confident and handsome.... +</p> +<p> + "You are—a Scotchman?" slipped out from her black yashmak. +</p> +<p> + "Only in costume. I am an American." +</p> +<p> + She repeated it a little musingly. "I do not think I ever met an + American young man." She added, "I have met old ones—yes, and + middle-aged ones and the women—but a young one, no." +</p> +<p> + "A retired spot, that school of yours," said Ryder appreciatively. + "You are French?" +</p> +<p> + "That is for your imagination!" Teasingly, she laughed. "I am, + monsieur, only a black domino!" +</p> +<p> + It was the loveliest laugh, Ryder was instantly aware, and the + loveliest voice in the world. Yes, and the loveliest eyes. +</p> +<p> + He forgot the crowd. He forgot the heat. He forgot—alas!—Jinny + Jeffries. He was aware of an intense exhilaration, a radiant sense + of well-being, and—at the music's beginning—of a small palm + pressed again to his, a light form within his arm ... of shy, + enchanting eyes out from the shrouding black. +</p> +<p> + "Do put that veil away," he youthfully entreated. "It's quite time. + The others are almost all unmasked." +</p> +<p> + Her glance about the room returned to him with mock plaintiveness. + She shook her head as they spun lightly about a corner. +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps, monsieur, I have an unfortunate nose." +</p> +<p> + "My nerves are strong." +</p> +<p> + "But why afflict them?" Prankishly her eyes sparkled up at him over + the black veil that made her a mystery. "Enjoy the present, + monsieur!" +</p> +<p> + "Are you enjoying it?" +</p> +<p> + Her lashes dropped, like black butterflies. She was a changeling of + a girl, veering from gayety to shyness.... Her gaze was now on her + wrist watch, a slender blaze of platinum and diamonds. +</p> +<p> + "The present—yes," she said in a muffled little voice. +</p> +<p> + He bent his head to hear her through the veil. +</p> +<p> + A tormenting curiosity was assailing him. It had become not enough + to know that she was young and slender, with enchanting eyes and a + teasing spirit of wit.... Vaguely he had thought her to be French, + one of the quaint <i>jeunes filles</i> so rarely taken traveling. +</p> +<p> + But who was she? A child at her first ball? But what in the world + was she doing, back in the palms, away from her chaperon? +</p> +<p> + He realized, even in the cloud of his fascination, that French + <i>jeunes filles</i> are not wonted to lurk about palms at a ball. +</p> +<p> + Was she a little Cinderella, then, slipping among the guests? Some + poor companion, stealing in for fun?... She was too young. And there + was that watch, that glitter of diamonds upon her wrist. +</p> +<p> + "Have you just come to Cairo?" +</p> +<p> + She shook her head. "For some time—I have been here." +</p> +<p> + "Up the Nile yet?" +</p> +<p> + "The Nile—no, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "But you are going?" +</p> +<p> + "That—that I do not know. Sometime, perhaps." +</p> +<p> + She sounded guarded.... He hurried into revelations. +</p> +<p> + "I am staying not far from Cairo, myself. I am an excavator—on an + expedition from an American museum." +</p> +<p> + "Ah, you dig?" +</p> +<p> + "Well, not personally.... But the expedition digs.... We've had some + bully finds." +</p> +<p> + "And you came from America—to dig in the sands?" The black domino + laughed softly. "For how long, monsieur?" +</p> +<p> + "This is my second year." +</p> +<p> + Still laughing, she shook her shrouded little head at him. "But I + cannot understand! What wonderful thing do you hope to find—what + buried secret—?" +</p> +<p> + "Nothing half as wonderful as to know who you are," he said boldly. +</p> +<p> + "That, too, is—is buried, monsieur!" +</p> +<p> + "But not beyond discovery," he told her very gayly and confidently, + and danced the music out. +</p> +<p> + As the last strains died, they paused for an instant as if the spell + still bound them, then his arms fell slowly away, and he heard the + girl draw a quick, startled breath. Her eyes sped to that tiny, + blazing watch; when she lifted them he thought he surprised a gleam + of panic. +</p> +<p> + "How fast is an hour!" she said with an excited little laugh. "Time + is a—a very sudden thing!" +</p> +<p> + Sudden, indeed! How long since he had been a badly bored, impatient + young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he + had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as + life? How long since he had looked into a pair of dark disquieting + eyes ... listened to a gay little voice.... +</p> +<p> + Many important things in life happen suddenly. Juliet happened very + suddenly to Romeo. Romeo happened as suddenly to Juliet. +</p> +<p> + But Jack Ryder was not remembering anything about Romeo and Juliet. + He was watching that glance steal to the wrist watch again. +</p> +<p> + Then, as if with a determination of the spirit, they smiled up at + him. +</p> +<p> + "Monsieur the American," said the black domino, "you have been most + kind to an—an incognita—of a masque. I hope that you dig out of + your sands all the secrets that you most desire." +</p> +<p> + "You sound as if you were saying good-bye," said Jack Ryder with + quick denial in his blood. +</p> +<p> + The smile in her eyes flickered. +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps I have kept you too long from the other guests." +</p> +<p> + He shook his head. "They don't exist." +</p> +<p> + "Ah! I will give you the chance to say such nice things to them." +</p> +<p> + "But I never say nice things—unless I mean them!" +</p> +<p> + "Never—monsieur?" +</p> +<p> + "Never. I am very careful what I say," he assured her, even as he + had assured another girl, in what different meaning, hours or + centuries before. "You can believe anything that I say." +</p> +<p> + "A young man of character! Perhaps that goes with the Scotch + costume. I have read the Scots are a noble people." +</p> +<p> + "They haven't a thing on the Americans. You must know me better and + discover—" +</p> +<p> + But again her eyes had gone, almost guiltily, to that watch. And + when she raised them again they were not smiling but very strangely + resolved. +</p> +<p> + "Monsieur, it is so hot—if you would get me a glass of sherbet?" +</p> +<p> + "Certainly." Convention brought out the assent; convention turned + him about and marched him dutifully toward the crowded table she + indicated. +</p> +<p> + But something deeper than convention, some warning born of that + too-often consulted watch and that strange look in her eyes, that + uneasy fear and swift resolve, turned him quickly about again. +</p> +<p> + Other couples had strolled between them. He hurried through and + stepped back among the palms. +</p> +<p> + The place was empty. The black domino was gone. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + He wasted one minute in assuring himself that she was not hidden in + some corner, not mingled with the crowd. But the niche was deserted + as a rifled nest. Then his eyes spied the door that the green + decorations had conspired to hide and he wrenched it open. +</p> +<p> + He found himself on a little balcony overlooking the hotel garden. + He knew the place in daytime—palms and shrubs and a graveled walk + and painted chairs where he had drunk tea with Jinny and watched a + Russian tourist beautifully smoking cigarettes. +</p> +<p> + Now the place was strange. Night and a crescent moon had wrought + their magic, and the garden was a mystery of velvet dusks and ivory + pallors. The graveled path ran glimmering beneath the magnolias. + Over the wall's blankness the eucalyptus defined its crooked lines + against the blue Egyptian sky. +</p> +<p> + No living thing was there ... nothing ... or did that shadow stir? + There, just at the path's end. +</p> +<p> + Ryder's lithe strength was swift. There was one breathless moment of + pursuit, then his hand fell with gripping fierceness upon the + huddled dark figure that had sped so frantically to the tiny door in + the garden's end.... A moment more and she would have been through. +</p> +<p> + His hand on her shoulder turned her towards him. Her eyes met his + with a dash of desperation.... He was unconscious how his own were + blazing ... how queerly white his face had gone under its desert + brown. +</p> +<p> + She was actually running away. She had meant never to see him again. + He had frustrated her, but the blow she had meant to deal him was + still felt. +</p> +<p> + His voice, when it came, sounded shaken. +</p> +<p> + "You were going to leave me?" +</p> +<p> + Strangely her eyes changed. The defiance, the panic fear, faded. A + cloud of slow despair welled up in them. +</p> +<p> + "What else?" she said very softly. +</p> +<p> + He did not lose his hold on her. He drew her back into the shadows + with involuntary caution, and he felt her slender body trembling in + his grasp. The tremors seemed to pass into his own. +</p> +<p> + A sense of urgency was pressing upon him. He was not himself, not + any self that he had known. He stood there, in the Egyptian night, + in the motley of a Scotch chieftain, grasping this mysterious + creature of the masquerade, and he heard a voice that he did not + know ask of her again and again, "But why? Why? Why were you going?" +</p> +<p> + It was not, he was telling himself, and her eyes were telling him, + as if she wanted to go. He knew what he knew.... Those had been + enchanted hours.... Yet she had deceived and fled from him. +</p> +<p> + Her eyes looked darkly back at him through the dusk. +</p> +<p> + "Because I must return to my own life." Her voice was a whisper. + "And I did not want you to know—" +</p> +<p> + "To know what? Who are you? Where were you going?" A confusion of + conjecture, fantastic, horrible, impossible, was surging in him. + Dim, vague, terrible things.... +</p> +<p> + "Who are you, anyway?" +</p> +<p> + She looked away from him, to the door which she had tried to gain. +</p> +<p> + "No masker, monsieur.... For me, there is no unveiling." +</p> +<p> + Ryder's hand stiffened. He felt his blood stop a moment, as if his + heart stood still. +</p> +<p> + And then it beat on again in a furious turmoil of contradiction of + this impossible thing that she was telling him. +</p> +<p> + "That door, monsieur, is to the lane, and in the lane another door + leads to another garden—the garden of a girl you can never know." +</p> +<p> + He was no novice to Egypt. Even while his credulity was still + battling with belief, his mind had realized this thing that had + happened ... the astounding, unbelievable thing.... He had heard + something of those Turkish girls, daughters of rich officials, whose + lives were such strange opposition of modernity and tradition. +</p> +<p> + Indulgence and luxury. French governesses and French frocks ... + freedom, travel, often,—Paris, London, perhaps—and then, as the + girl eclipses the child—the veil. Still indulgence and luxury, + still books and governesses and frocks and motors and society—but a + feminine society. +</p> +<p> + Not a man in it. Not a caller. Not a friend. Not a lover.... Not an + interview, even, with the man who is to be the husband—until the + bride is safe in the husband's home. Hidden women. Secret, secluded + lives.... Extinguished by tradition—a tradition against which their + earlier years only had won modern emancipation. +</p> +<p> + And she—this slim creature in the black domino—one of those + invisibles? +</p> +<p> + Stark amazement looked out of his eyes into hers. +</p> +<p> + "You—a Turk?" he blurted. +</p> +<p> + "I—a Turk!" Her head went suddenly high; she stiffened with + defensive pride. "I am ashamed—but for the thing I have done. That + is a shameful thing. To steal out at night—to a hotel—to a + ball—And to dance with a man! To tell him who I am—Oh, yes, I am + much ashamed. I am as bold as a Christian!" she tossed at him + suddenly, between mockery and malice. +</p> +<p> + Still his wonder and his trouble found no words and the shadow on + his face was reflected swiftly in her own. +</p> +<p> + "I beg you to believe, monsieur, that never before—never have I + done such a thing. My greatest fault was to be out in the garden + after sunset—when all Moslem women should be within. But my nurse + was indulgent." +</p> +<p> + Almost pleadingly she looked up at the young man. "Believe this of + me, monsieur. I would not have you think of me lightly. But to-night + something possessed me. I had heard of the masque, and I remembered + the balls of the Embassy where I danced when I was so young and so I + slipped away—there was a garden key that I had stolen, long ago, + and kept for another thing.... I did not mean to dance. Only to look + on at the world again." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, my good Lord," said Jack Ryder. +</p> +<p> + And then suddenly he asked, "Are you—do you—whom do you live + with?" +</p> +<p> + And when she answered in surprise, "But with whom but my father—he + is Tewfick Pasha," he drew a long breath. +</p> +<p> + "I thought you'd tell me next you were married," he said limply. +</p> +<p> + The next moment they were laughing the sudden, incredibly absorbed + laughter of youth. +</p> +<p> + "No husband. I am one of the young revoltées—the moderns—and I am + the only daughter of a most indulgent father." +</p> +<p> + "Well, that's something to the good," was Ryder's comment upon that. + He added, "But if that most indulgent father caught you—" +</p> +<p> + He looked down at her. The secret trouble of her answering look told + him more than its assumption of courage. +</p> +<p> + This was no boarding school girl lingering beyond hours.... This was + a high-born Moslem, risking more than he could well know. +</p> +<p> + The escapade was suddenly serious, tremendously menacing. +</p> +<p> + She answered faintly, "I have no idea—the thing is so impossible! + But of course," she rallied her spirit to protest, "I do not think + they would sew me in a sack with a stone and drop me in the river, + like the odalisques of yesterday!" +</p> +<p> + She added, her voice uncertain in spite of her, "I meant only to + stay a moment." +</p> +<p> + "Which is the way?" said Jack briefly. +</p> +<p> + With caution he opened the gate into the black canyon of the lane. + Silence and darkness. Not a loiterer, only one of the furtive + starved dogs, slinking back from some rubbish.... +</p> +<p> + The girl moved forward and keeping closely at her side he followed; + they crossed to the other wall, and turned towards the right, + stopping before the deeper shadow of a small, pointed door set into + the heavy brick of the high wall. From her draperies the girl drew + out a huge key. +</p> +<p> + She fitted it into the ancient lock and turned it; carefully she + pressed open the gate and stared anxiously into the gloom of the + shadowy garden that it disclosed. +</p> +<p> + Relief colored her voice as she turned to him. +</p> +<p> + "All is quiet.... I am safe, now.... And so—good-bye, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "And this is where you live?" Ryder whispered. +</p> +<p> + "There—in that wing," she murmured, slipping within the gate, and + he stole after her, and looked across the garden, through a fringe + of date palms, to the outlines of the buildings. +</p> +<p> + Dim and dark showed the high walls, black as a prison, only here and + there the pale orange oblong of a lighted window. +</p> +<p> + "Did you climb out the window?" he murmured. +</p> +<p> + From beneath the veil came a little sound of soft derision. +</p> +<p> + "But there are always bars, even in the garden windows of the + haremlik!... No, I stole down by an old stair.... That wing, there, + on the right." +</p> +<p> + Barred on the garden, and on the street the impregnable wooden + screens of the mashrubiyeh, those were the rooms where this girl + beside him was to spend her life—until that most indulgent father + wearied of her modernity and transferred her to other rooms, as + barred and screened, in the palace of some husband!... That thought + was brushing Ryder ... with other thoughts of her present risk ... + of her lovely eyes, visible again, above the veil, thoughts of the + strangeness and unreality of it all ... there in the shrubbery of a + pasha's garden, the pasha's daughter whispering at his side. +</p> +<p> + "What about your mother—?" he asked her. "Is she—?" +</p> +<p> + "She is dead," the girl told him, with a drop in her voice. +</p> +<p> + And after a long moment of silence, "When I was so little—but I + remember her, oh, indeed I do ... She was French, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "Oh! And so you—" +</p> +<p> + "I am French-Turk," she whispered back. "That is very often so—in + the harems of Cairo.... She was so lovely," said the girl wistfully. + "My father must have loved her very much ... he never brought + another wife here. Always I lived alone with my old nurse and the + governesses—" +</p> +<p> + "You had—lessons?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, nothing but lessons—all of that world which was shut away so + soon.... French and English and music and the philosophy—Oh, we + Turks are what you call blue stockings, monsieur, shut away with our + books and our dreams ... and our memories ... We are so young and + already the real world is a memory.... Sometimes," she said, with a + tremor of suppressed passion in her still little tones, "I could + wish that I had died when I was very young and so happy when my + father took me traveling in Europe.... I played games on the decks + of the ships ... I had my tea with the English children.... I went + down into the hold to play with their dogs..." +</p> +<p> + She broke off, between a laugh and a sigh, "Dogs are forbidden to + Moslems—but of course you know, if you have been here two years.... + And emancipated as we may be, there is no changing the customs. We + must live as our grandmothers lived ... though we are not as our + grandmothers are..." +</p> +<p> + "With a French mother, you must be very far from what some of your + grandmothers were!" +</p> +<p> + "My poor French mother!" Whimsically the girl sighed. "Must I blame + it on her—the spirit that took me to the ball?... To-morrow + this will be a dream to me.... I shall not believe in my + shamelessness.... And you, too, must forget—" +</p> +<p> + "Forget?" said Ryder under his breath. +</p> +<p> + "Forget—and go. Positively you must go now, monsieur. It is very + dangerous here—" +</p> +<p> + "It is." There was a light dancing in his hazel eyes. "It is more + dangerous every moment—" +</p> +<p> + "But I mean—" Her confusion betrayed itself. +</p> +<p> + "But I mean—that you are magic—black magic," he murmured bending + over the black domino. +</p> +<p> + The crescent moon had found its way through a filigree of boughs. + Faintly its exploring ray lighted the contour of that shrouded head, + touched the lovely curves of her arched brows and the tender pallor + of the skin about those great wells of dark eyes.... From his own + eyes a flame seemed to pass into hers.... Breathlessly they gazed at + each other ... like dim shadows in a garden of still enchantment. +</p> +<p> + And then, as from a palpable clasp, she tried to slip away. "Truly, + I must go! It is so late—" +</p> +<p> + Ryder's heart was pounding within him. He did not recognize this + state of affairs; it was utterly unrelated to anything that had gone + before in his merry, humorous, rather clear-sighted and wary young + life.... He felt dazed and wondering at himself ... and + irresponsible ... and appalled ... but deeper than all else, he felt + eager and exultant and strangely, furtively determined about + something that he was not owning to himself ... something that + leaped off his lips in the low murmur to her, "But to-morrow + night—I shall see you again—" +</p> +<p> + She caught her breath. "Oh, never again! To-night has no + to-morrow—" +</p> +<p> + "Outside this gate," he persisted. "I shall wait—and other nights + after that. For I must know—if you are safe—" +</p> +<p> + "See, I am very safe now. For if I were missed there would be + running and confusion—" +</p> +<p> + He only drew a little closer to her. "To-morrow night—or another—I + shall come to this door—" +</p> +<p> + "It must not open to you.... It is a forbidden door—forbidden as + that fortieth door in the old story.... There are thirty and nine + doors in your life, monsieur, that you may open, but this is the + forbidden—" +</p> +<p> + "I shall be waiting," he insisted. "To-morrow night—or another—" +</p> +<p> + She moved her head in denial. +</p> +<p> + "Neither to-morrow nor another night—" +</p> +<p> + Again their eyes met. He bent over her. He knew a gleam of sharpest + wonder at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding + drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in + the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft, + human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and + through the sheer gauze of her veil his lips pressed her lips.... +</p> +<p> + Some one was coming down the walk: Footsteps crunched the gravel. +</p> +<p> + Like a wraith the girl was out of his arms ... in anger or alarm + his whirling senses could not know, although it was their passionate + concern. But his last gleam of prudence got him through the gate he + heard her locking after. +</p> +<p> + And then, for her sake, he fled. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER III +</h2> +<h3> + IN THE PASHA'S PALACE +</h3> +<p> + Nearer sounded the footsteps on the graveled walk and in frightened + haste the girl drew out the key from the gate and slipped away into + the shrubbery, grateful for the blotting shadows. +</p> +<p> + At the foot of a rose bush she crouched to thrust the key into a + hole in the loose earth, covering the top and drawing the low + branches over it. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée," came a guarded call. "Aimée!" +</p> +<p> + Still stooping, she tried to steal through the bushes, but the + thorns held her and she stood up, pulling at her robes. +</p> +<p> + "Yes? Miriam?" she said faintly, and desperately freeing herself, + she hurried forward towards the dark, bulky figure of her old nurse, + emerging now into the moonlight. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Alhamdolillah</i>—Glory to God!" ejaculated the old woman, but + cautiously under her breath. "Come quickly—he is here—thy father! + And thou in the garden, at this hour.... But come," and urgently she + gripped the girl's wrist as if afraid that she would vanish again + into the shadows of the shrubbery. +</p> +<p> + Aimée felt her knees quake under her. "My father!" she murmured, + and her voice died in her throat. +</p> +<p> + Had he discovered? Had some one seen her slip out? Or recognized her + at the ball? +</p> +<p> + The panic-stricken conjectures surged through her in dismaying + confusion. She tried to beat down her fear, to think quickly, to + rally her force, but her swimming senses were still invaded with the + surprise of those last moments at the gate, her heart still beating + with the touch of Ryder's arms about her ... of that long, deep look + ... that kiss, beyond all else, that kiss.... +</p> +<p> + Little rivers of fire were running through her veins. Shame and + proud anger set up their swift reactions. Oh, what wings of wild, + incredible folly had brought her to this! To be kissed like—like a + dancing girl—by a man, an unknown, an American! +</p> +<p> + How could he, how could he! After all his kindness—to hold her so + lightly.... And yet there had been no lightness in his eyes, those + eager, shining young eyes, so gravely concerned.... +</p> +<p> + But she could not stop to think of this thing. Her father was + waiting. +</p> +<p> + "He came in like a fury," the old nurse was panting, as they + scurried up the walk together, "and asked for you ... and your room + empty, your bed not touched!... Oh, Allah's ruth upon me, I went + trotting through the house, mad with fear.... Up to the roofs then + down to the garden ... sending him word that you were dressing that + he should not know the only child of his house was a shameless one, + devoid of sense." +</p> +<p> + "But there is no harm in a garden," breathed the girl, her face hot + with shame. "To-night was so hot—" +</p> +<p> + "Is there no coolth upon the roof?" +</p> +<p> + "But the roses—" +</p> +<p> + "Can roses not be brought you? Have you no maids to attend you?" +</p> +<p> + "I am tired of being attended! Can I never be alone—" +</p> +<p> + "Alone in the garden!... A pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father, + I will have a stop put to this—<i>hush</i>, would you have him hear?" + she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door + at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps. +</p> +<p> + Like conspirators they fled up the staircase, and then with fumbling + haste the old nurse dragged off the girl's mantle and veil, + muttering at the pins that secured it. She shook out the + pale-flowered chiffon of her rumpled frock and gathered back a + strand of her dark, disordered hair. +</p> +<p> + "Say that you were on the roofs," she besought her. +</p> +<p> + For a moment the girl put the warm rose of her cheek against the old + woman's dark, wrinkled one. +</p> +<p> + "But you are good, Dadi," she said softly, using the Turkish word + for familiar old servants. +</p> +<p> + With a sound of mingled vexation and affection Miriam pushed her + ahead of her into the drawing-room. +</p> +<p> + It was a long, dark room, on whose soft, buff carpet the little gilt + chairs and sofas were set about with the empty expectancy of a stage + scene in a French salon. French were the shirred, silk shades upon + the electric lamps, French the music upon the chic rosewood piano. +</p> +<p> + And then, as if some careless property man had overlooked them in + changing the act, two window balconies of closely carved old wood, + of solidly screening mashrubiyeh wood, jutted out from one + cream-tinted wall, and above a gilded sofa, upholstered in the + delicate fabric of the Rue de la Paix, hung a green satin banner + embroidered in silver with a phrase from the Koran. +</p> +<p> + Tewfick Pasha was at one side of the room, filling his match case. + He was in evening dress, a ribbon of some order across a rather + swelling shirt bosom, a red fez upon his dark head. +</p> +<p> + At his daughter's entrance he turned quickly, with so sharp a gleam + from his full, somewhat protuberant black eyes that her guilty heart + fairly turned over in her. +</p> +<p> + It made matters no more comforting to have Miriam packed from the + room. +</p> +<p> + She would deny it all, she thought desperately ... No, she would + admit it, and implore his indulgence.... She would admit nothing but + the garden.... She would admit the ball.... She would <i>never</i> admit + the young man.... +</p> +<p> + With conscious eyes and flushing cheeks, woefully aware of + dew-drenched satin slippers and an upsettingly hammering heart, + Aimée presented the young image of irresolute confusion. +</p> +<p> + To her surprise there was no outburst. Her father was suddenly gay + and smiling, with a flow of pleasant phrases that invited her + affection. In his good humor—and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be + kept in good humor—he had touches of that boyish charm that had + made him the <i>enfant gâté</i> of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and + Constantinople. An <i>enfant</i> no more, in the robustly rotund forties, + his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that + smiling acquiescence that kept life soft and comfortable. +</p> +<p> + And now it suddenly struck Aimée, through her tense alarm, that his + smile was not a spontaneous smile, but was silently, uneasily asking + his daughter not to make something too unpleasant for him ... that + something that had brought him here, at an unprecedented midnight + ... that had kept him waiting until she, supposedly, should rise and + dress.... +</p> +<p> + If it were not then a knowledge of her escapade—? +</p> +<p> + The relief from that fear made everything else bearable. She was + even able to entertain, with a certain welcome, the alternative + alarm that he had decided to marry again—that nightmare from whose + realization the unknown gods (or more truly, the unknown goddesses + of the Cairene demi-monde!) had assisted to save her. +</p> +<p> + There was a furtive excitement about him that fanned the + supposition. +</p> +<p> + Then, quite suddenly, the illuminating lightning cut the clouds. +</p> +<p> + "My dear child, I have news, really important news for you. If I + have not been discussing your future," said Tewfick Pasha, staring + with stern nonchalance ahead and determinedly unaware of her instant + stiffening of attention, "I have by no means been neglectful of + it.... To-day—indeed to-night—there has been a consummation of my + plans.... It is not to every daughter that a father may hurry with + such an announcement." +</p> +<p> + Her first feeling was a merciful relief. He knew nothing then of the + ball! She could breathe again.... It was her marriage that had + brought him. +</p> +<p> + No new danger, that, but the eternal menace that she had always to + dread.... But how many times had he promised that she should have no + unknown husband, imposed by tradition! How many times had she + indulged dreams of Europe, of bright, free romance! +</p> +<p> + And now he was off on some tangent from which it would need all her + coaxing wit to divert him. With wide eyes painfully intent, her + little, jeweled fingers very still in their locked grip in her lap, + the color draining from her cheeks, she sat waiting for the + revelation. +</p> +<p> + What was it all? Had he really decided upon something? Upon some + one? +</p> +<p> + Tewfick Pasha appeared in no hurry to inform her. He wandered + rather confusedly into a rambling speech about her age and her + position and the responsibilities of life and his inabilities to + prevent their reaching her, and about his very tender affection for + her and his understanding of all those girlish reticences and + reluctances which made innocent youth so exquisite, while silently + his daughter hung her head and wondered what he would be saying if + he knew that she had broken every canon of seclusion and convention, + had talked and danced with a man.... +</p> +<p> + His astonishment would be so horrific that she flinched even from + the thought. +</p> +<p> + And if he knew, moreover, that this man had caught her and kissed + her—! +</p> +<p> + She told herself that she was disgraced for life. She had a dreamy + desire to close her eyes and lean back and dream on about that + disgrace.... +</p> +<p> + But she must listen to her father. He was talking now about the + powers of wealth, not merely the nominal riches of his somewhat + precarious political affiliations, but solid, sustaining, invested + and invulnerable wealth. +</p> +<p> + Unexpectedly Aimée laughed. "He must be very plain," she declared, + her face brightening with mockery, "if you take so long to tell me + his name!" +</p> +<p> + Not, she added to herself under her breath, that any name would + weigh a feather's difference! +</p> +<p> + "On the contrary," and the pasha's eyes met hers frankly for the + first time and he seemed delighted to indulge a laugh, "he has the + reputation of good looks. He is much <i>à la mode</i>." +</p> +<p> + "Beautiful and golden—did you meet him just to-night, my father?" + Aimée went on, in that light audacity which he had loved to indulge. +</p> +<p> + Now he smiled, but his glance went uneasily away from her. +</p> +<p> + "Not at all. This is a serious affair, you understand—the devil of + a serious affair!" and for the first time she felt she heard the + accents of his candor. +</p> +<p> + But again he was back to voluble protestation. This man was really + an old friend. He boggled over the word, then got it out resonantly. + A man he knew well. Not a young man, perhaps—certainly he was not + going to hand his only daughter to any boy, a mere novice in + life!—but a man who could give her the position she deserved. Not + only a rich man, but an influential one. +</p> +<p> + His name, he brought out at last, was Hamdi Bey. He was a general in + the armies of the sultan. +</p> +<p> + It was a long moment before she could piece any shreds of + recollection together. +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey ... A general.... Why, that was a man her father had + disliked ... more than once he had dropped resentful phrases of his + airs, his arrogance ... had recounted certain clashes with malicious + joy. +</p> +<p> + And now he was planning—no, seriously announcing— +</p> +<p> + A general ... He must be terribly old.... +</p> +<p> + Not that it made any difference. Old or young, black or white, + general or ghikar, would mean nothing in her life. She would have + none of him ... none of him.... Never would she endure the + humiliation of being handed over like a toy, an odalisque, a + slave.... +</p> +<p> + What had happened? She could only suppose that her father had been + overcome by that wealth of the general's on which he had made her + such a speech. Or perhaps his dislike of Hamdi had been founded on + nothing but resentment of Hamdi's airs of superiority, and now that + the bey was condescending to ask for her hand her father's flattered + appeasement was rushing into genial acceptance. +</p> +<p> + Anything might be possible to Tewfick Pasha's eternally youthful + enthusiasms. +</p> +<p> + She told her frightened heart that she was not afraid.... Her father + would never really fail her.... And she would never surrender to + this degradation; for all her fright and all her flinching from + defiance she divined in herself some hidden stuff of resistance, + tenacious to endure ... some strain of daring which had made her + brave that wild escapade to-night. +</p> +<p> + Was it still the same night? Were the violins still playing, the + people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?... Was that + young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back + there dancing with some other girl? +</p> +<p> + What was it he had said? To-morrow night, and another night, he + would be there in the lane.... If she would come! As if she would + demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate, + like a gardener's daughter—! +</p> +<p> + Her thoughts were so full of him. And now she had this new horror to + face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey. Did her father dream that she + would not resist? It was against such a danger that she had long ago + stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had + neither a friend nor a piaster to save her.... +</p> +<p> + "My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that + you really mean—that you really think you would like to—that you + would consider—this man—" +</p> +<p> + He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée, I have <i>arranged</i> this matter." +</p> +<p> + He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you." +</p> +<p> + In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort + to ignore her shocked dismay. He abandoned his airy pretense that + the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm. He sucked at his + cigarette like a rather sullen little boy. +</p> +<p> + "I have always indulged you, Aimée," he said at last, without + looking round at her. "I hope you are not going to make me + infernally sorry." +</p> +<p> + "I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry," said an unsteady + little voice. +</p> +<p> + He looked about. His daughter was sitting very still upon the + gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two + great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks. +</p> +<p> + With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace + up and down the room. +</p> +<p> + This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who + indulged his daughter. This is what came of French and English + governesses and modern ideas.... After all he had done—more than + any other father! To sit and weep! Weep—at such a marriage! What + did she expect of life? Was she not as other women? Did she never + look ahead? Had she no pride, no ambition—no hopes? Did she wish + never to marry, then, to become an <i>old mees</i> like her English + companion? +</p> +<p> + "I am but eighteen," she said quiveringly. "Oh, my father, do not + give me to this unknown—" +</p> +<p> + "Unknown—unknown! Do I not know him?" +</p> +<p> + "But you promised—" +</p> +<p> + Angrily he gestured with his cigarette. "Do I know what is good for + you or do I not? Have I your interest at heart—tell me! Am I a + savage, a dolt—" +</p> +<p> + "But you do not know what it is to be unhappy. I beg of you, my + father,—I should die with such a life before me, with such a man + for my husband. I am too French, too like my mother—" +</p> +<p> + "Ah, your mother!... Too French, are you?... But what would you have + in France?" he demanded with the bursting appearance of a man + making every effort to restrain himself within unreasonable bounds. + "Would not your parents there arrange your marriage? You might see + the fiancé," he caught the words out of her mouth, "but only for a + time or two—after the arrangements—and what is that? What more + would you know than what your father knows? Are you a thing to be + exhibited—given to a man to gaze at and appraise? I tell you, + no.... You are my daughter. You bear my name. And when you marry you + marry in the sanctity of the custom of your father—and you go to + your husband's house as his mother went to his father." +</p> +<p> + Timidly she protested, "But my mother—and you—" +</p> +<p> + "Do not speak of your mother! If she were here she would counsel + gratitude and obedience." He turned his back on her. "This is what + comes," he muttered, "of this modernity, this education...." +</p> +<p> + He pitched away his stub as if he were casting all that he hated + away with it. +</p> +<p> + She had never seen him so angry. Helplessly she felt that his vanity + and his word were engaged with the general more than she had + dreamed. She felt a surge of panic at the immensity of the trouble + before her. +</p> +<p> + "But, my father, if you love me—" +</p> +<p> + "No, my little one, if <i>you</i> love <i>me</i>!" +</p> +<p> + With a sudden assumption of good humor over the angry red mottling + his olive cheeks, he came and sat beside her, putting his arm about + her silently shrinking figure. +</p> +<p> + "I am a weak fool to stay and drink a woman's tears, as the saying + goes," he told her, "but this is what a man gets for being good + natured.... But, tears or not, I know what is best.... Come, Aimée, + have I not ever been fond of you—?" +</p> +<p> + He patted her hand with his own plump one where bright rings were + sparkling deep in the encroaching flesh. Aimée looked down with a + sudden wild dislike.... That soft, ingratiating hand, with its + dimples and polished nails, which thought it could pat her so easily + into submission.... +</p> +<p> + It was nothing to him, she thought, chokingly, whether she was happy + or unhappy. He had decided on the match—perhaps he had foreseen her + protests and plunged into it, so as to be committed against her + entreaties!—and he was not stopped by any thought of her feelings. +</p> +<p> + After all her hopes! After all he had promised! +</p> +<p> + But she told herself that she had never been secure. Beneath all her + trust there had always been the silent fear, slipping through the + shadows like a serpent.... Some instinct for character, more + precocious than her years, had whispered through her fond blindness, + and initiated her into foreboding. +</p> +<p> + "Come now, my dear," he said heartily, "this is a surprise, of + course, but after all you will find it is for the best—much for the + best—" +</p> +<p> + His voice died away. After a long pause, "You may make the + arrangements," she told him in a still, tenacious little voice, "but + you cannot make me marry him.... I will never put on the marriage + dress.... Never wear the diadem.... Never stir one step within his + house." +</p> +<p> + A complete silence succeeded this declaration. He got up violently + from beside her. She did not dare look at him. He was going away, + she thought. +</p> +<p> + It would be the beginning of war. She did not know what he would do + but she knew that she would endure it. +</p> +<p> + And the gossip of the harems would be her protection. Her + opposition, bruited through those feminine channels, would not be + long in reaching Hamdi Bey.... And no man could to-day be so callous + of his pride or the world's opinion that he would be willing to + receive such a revolting bride. +</p> +<p> + Did her father think of that, that poor, pale power of hers? He + stood irresolute, as if meditating a last exhortation, and then + suddenly turned on her the haggard face of a violent despair. +</p> +<p> + "Would you see me ruined?" he said passionately. +</p> +<p> + Sharply he glanced about the room, at the far, closed doors where it + was not inconceivable that old Miriam was lurking, and strode over + to her and began talking very jerkily and huskily, over her bent + head. +</p> +<p> + "I tell you that Hamdi is making this a condition—it is the price + of silence, of those papers back.... He came to me to-night. I knew + that hound of Satan had been smelling about, but I could not + imagine—as if, between gentlemen—" +</p> +<p> + At that, she lifted her stupefied head.... Her father, with the face + of a cornered fox!... She caught her breath with the shock of it. + Her lips parted, but only her mute eyes asked their startled + questions. +</p> +<p> + Hurriedly, shamefacedly, with angry resentments and + self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at + her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the + imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And + then the word <i>hasheesh</i>. +</p> +<p> + Sharply then the truth took its outlines. Her father had been + smuggling in hasheesh. Hamdi Bey had discovered this, and Hamdi Bey, + unless silenced, had threatened betrayal. +</p> +<p> + The danger was real. English laws were stringent. Vaguely the + horrors loomed—arrest, trial.... Even if he escaped the scandal was + ruin.... +</p> +<p> + Small wonder that her father had come flying upon the wings of his + danger and its deliverance, small wonder that his brow was wet and + his lips dry and his eyes hard with terror. +</p> +<p> + Thrown to the winds now his pretense of affection for Hamdi Bey! He + hated and feared him. The old fox had done this, he declared, to get + a hold upon him, for always there had been bad blood. +</p> +<p> + And the bey had heard, of course, of the beauty of the pasha's + daughter. Some cousin had babbled.... And undoubtedly the rumor of + that beauty—Tewfick Pasha received his inspiration upon the moment, + but that was not gainsaying its truth—had determined the bey to + find some vulnerable hold. +</p> +<p> + He was like that, a soft-voiced, sardonic devil! And this accursed + business of the hasheesh had served his ends. To-night, he had come + with his proofs.... +</p> +<p> + "So you see," muttered Tewfick Pasha, "what the devil of a serious + business this is. And how any talk of—of unreadiness—if you were + not amiable, for example, to his cousin when she calls upon + you—might serve to anger him.... And so—" +</p> +<p> + Significantly his glance met hers. Her eyes fell, stricken. The + color flooded her trembling face. She quivered with confused pain, + with shame for his shame, with terror and fright ... with a hot, + protective compassion that tore at her pride.... +</p> +<p> + She struggled against her dismay, trying for reassuring little words + that would not come. Her heart seemed beating thickly in her throat. +</p> +<p> + She never knew just what she said, what little broken words of pity, + of understanding, of promise, she achieved. But her father suddenly + dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the <i>enfant gâté</i> + of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their + soft, quiescent palms.... She drew one away and placed it upon his + dark head from which the fez had tumbled. +</p> +<p> + For the moment she was sorry, as one is sorry for a hurt child. And + her sorriness held her heart warm, in the glow of giving comfort. +</p> +<p> + She had need of that warmth. For a cold tide was rising in her, a + tide of chill, irresistible foreboding.... +</p> +<p> + For all the years of her life.... For all the years.... +</p> +<a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER IV +</h2> +<h3> + EXPLANATIONS +</h3> +<p> + The remaining hours of Jack Ryder's night might be divided into + three periods. There was an interval of astounding exhilaration + coupled with complete mental vacancy, during which a figure in a + Scots costume might have been observed by the astonished Egyptian + moon striding obliviously along the silent road to the Nile, past + sleeping camels and snoring <i>dhurra</i> merchants—a period during + which his sole distinguishable sensation was the memory of + enchanting eyes, of a voice, low and lovely ... of a slender figure + in a muffling tcharchaf ... of the touch of soft lips beneath a + gauzy veil.... +</p> +<p> + This period was succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he + lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean's domicile and stared + into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned high heaven and + himself. +</p> +<p> + Had he really done this? Had he actually caught and kissed this + girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never + seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a + Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and + self-preservation? +</p> +<p> + In the name of wonder, what had possessed him? The night? The moon? + The mystery of the unknown?... If he had never really kissed her he + might have convinced himself that he had never really wanted to. But + having kissed her—! +</p> +<p> + He looked upon himself as a stranger. A stranger of whom he would be + remarkably wary, in the days and nights to come ... but a stranger + for whom he entertained a sort of secret, amazed respect. There had + been an undeniable dash and daring to that stranger.... +</p> +<p> + During the third period he slept. +</p> +<p> + When he awoke, late in the morning, and descended from a cold tub to + a breakfast room from which McLean had long since departed, he + brought yet another mood with him, a mood of dark, deep disgust and + a shamed inclination to dismiss these events very speedily from + memory. For that shadowy and rather shady affair he had abandoned + the merry and delightful Jinny Jeffries and got himself involved now + in the duty of explanations and peacemaking. +</p> +<p> + What in the world was he going to say? +</p> +<p> + He meditated a note—but he hated a lie on paper. It looked so + thunderingly black and white. Besides, he could not think of any. + "Dear Jinny—Awfully sorry I was called away." +</p> +<p> + No, that wouldn't do. He could take refuge in no such vagueness. + Unfortunately, he and Jinny were on such terms of old intimacy that + a certain explicitness of detail was expected. +</p> +<p> + "Dear Jinny—I had to leave last night and take a girl home—" +</p> +<p> + No, she would ask about the girl. Jinny had a propensity for + locating people. It wouldn't do. +</p> +<p> + His masculine instinct for saying the least possible in a matter + with a woman, and his ripening experience which taught him to leave + no mystery to awaken suspicion, wrestled with the affair for some + time and then retired from the field. +</p> +<p> + He compromised by telephoning Jinny briefly—and Jinny was equally + as brief and twice as cool and cryptic—and promising to take her + out to tea. +</p> +<p> + He reflected that if he took her to tea he would really have to stay + over another night, for it would be too late to regain his desert + camp. But the circumstances seemed to call for some social amend.... + And no matter how many nights he stayed he certainly was not going + to lurk about that lane, outside garden doors! +</p> +<p> + He must have been mad, stark, staring, March-hatter mad! +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + That morning, during its remainder, he concluded his buying of + supplies and saw to their shipment upon the boat that left upon the + following morning. That noon he lunched with an assistant curator of + the Cairo museum who found him a good listener. +</p> +<p> + That afternoon he escorted Jinny Jeffries and her uncle and aunt, + the Josiah Pendletons, to tea upon the little island in the Cairo + park, where white-robed Arabs brought them tea over the tiny bridge + and violins played behind the shrubbery and white swans glided upon + the blue lake, and then he carried them off in a victoria to view + the sunset from the Citadel heights. +</p> +<p> + Not a word about the dance—except a general affirmative to Mrs. + Pendleton's question if he had enjoyed himself. The Pendletons had + not stayed to look on for long, and Jinny had apparently not worn + her bleeding heart upon her sleeve. +</p> +<p> + But this immunity could not last. He could not hug the protecting + Pendletons to him forever. +</p> +<p> + Nor did he want to. They waned upon him. Mrs. Pendleton's + conversation was a perpetual, "Do look at—!" or dissertations from + the guide books—already she had imparted a great deal of Flinders + Petrie to him about his tombs. Mr. Pendleton was neither + enthusiastic nor voluble, but he was attacking the objects of their + travels in the same thorough-going spirit that he had attacked and + surmounted the industrial obstacles of his career, and he went to a + great deal of persistent trouble to ascertain the exact dates of + passing mosques and the conformations of their arches. +</p> +<p> + The travelers had already "done" the Citadel. They had climbed its + rocky hill, they had viewed the Mahomet Ali mosque and its columns + and its carpets and had taken their guide's and their guidebook's + word that it was an inferior structure although so amazingly + effective from below; they had looked studiously down upon the city + and tried to distinguish its minarets and towers and ancient gates, + they had viewed with proper quizzicalness the imprint in the stone + parapet of the hoof of that blindfolded horse which the last of the + Mamelukes, cornered and betrayed, had spurred from the heights. +</p> +<p> + So now, no duty upon them, Ryder led them past the Citadel, up the + Mokattam hills behind it, to that hilltop on which stood the little + ancient mosque of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy, where the sunset spaces + flowed round them like a sea of light and the world dropped into + miniature at their feet. +</p> +<p> + Below them, in a golden haze, Cairo's domes and minarets were + shining like a city of dreams. To the north, toy fields, vivid + green, of rice and cotton lands, and the silver thread of the + winding Nile, and all beyond, west and southwest, the vast, + illimitable stretch of desert, shimmering in the opalescent air, + sweeping on to the farthest edge of blue horizon. +</p> +<p> + "A nice resting place," said Jack Ryder appreciatively of the tomb + of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy. +</p> +<p> + "I presume the date is given," Mr. Pendleton was murmuring, as he + began to ferret with his Baedecker. +</p> +<p> + Mrs. Pendleton sighed sentimentally. "He must have been very fond of + nature." +</p> +<p> + "He was very distrustful of his wives," said Ryder, grinning. "He + had three of them, all young and beautiful." +</p> +<p> + "I thought you said he was a saint?" murmured Jinny, to which + interpolation he responded, "Wouldn't three wives make any man a + saint?" and resumed his narrative. +</p> +<p> + "And so he had his tomb made where he could overlook the whole city + and observe the conduct of his widows." +</p> +<p> + "They could move," objected Miss Jeffries. +</p> +<p> + "The female of the Mohammedan species is not the free agent that you + imagine," Ryder retorted, beginning with a smile and ending with a + queer, reminiscent pang. He had a moment's rather complicated twinge + of amusement at her reactions if she should know that to an + encounter with a female of the Mohammedan species was to be + attributed his departure from her party last night. +</p> +<p> + And then he remembered that he hadn't decided yet what to tell her + and the time was undoubtedly at hand. +</p> +<p> + The time <i>was</i> at hand. The Pendletons were too thorough-going + Americans not to abdicate before the young. They did not saunter + self-consciously away and make any opportunity for Jack and Jinny, + as sympathetic European chaperons might have done; they sat + matter-of-factedly upon the rocks while their competent young people + betook themselves to higher heights. +</p> +<p> + Conscientiously Ryder was pointing out the pyramid fields. +</p> +<p> + "Gizeh, Abusir, Sakkara, Dahsur—and now here, if you look—that's + the Medun pyramid—that tiny, sharp prick. If we had glasses...." +</p> +<p> + "Yes; but why didn't you like the ball?" murmured Jinny the direct. +</p> +<p> + "I did like the ball. Very much." +</p> +<p> + "Then why didn't you stay?" +</p> +<p> + "I—I wasn't feeling top-hole," he murmured lamely, wondering why + girls always wanted to go back and stir up dogs that had gone + comfortably to sleep. +</p> +<p> + "Did it come on suddenly?" said Jinny, unsympathetically, her eyes + still upon the pyramids. +</p> +<p> + Something whimsical twitched at Jack Ryder's lips. "Very suddenly. + Like thunder, out of China crost the bay." +</p> +<p> + "I suppose that dancing with the same girl in succession brings on + the seizures?" +</p> +<p> + So she had noticed that!... Not for nothing were those bright, gray + eyes of hers! Not for nothing the red hair. +</p> +<p> + "Well, I rather think it did," he said deliberately. "That girl was + a child who hadn't danced in four years—so she said, and I believe + her." +</p> +<p> + And Jinny received what he intended to convey. "Stepped on your + buckled shoon and you felt a martyr?... But why bolt? There were + other girls who <i>had</i> danced within four years—" +</p> +<p> + "I went into the garden," he murmured. "The fact is, I was feeling + awfully—queer," he brought out in an odd tone. +</p> +<p> + Queer was a good word for it. He let it go at that. He couldn't do + better. +</p> +<p> + Jinny looked suddenly uncertain. Her pique was streaked with + compunction. She had been horribly angry with him for running away, + and she remembered his opposition to the idea enough to be + suspicious of any disappearance—but there was certainly an accent + of embarrassed sincerity about him. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps he <i>had</i> been ill. Sudden seizures were not unknown in + Egypt. And for all his desert brown he didn't look very rugged. +</p> +<p> + She murmured, "I hope you hadn't taken anything that disagreed with + you." +</p> +<p> + "H'm—it rather agreed with me at the time," said Jack, and then + brought himself up short. "I expect I haven't looked very sharp + after myself—" +</p> +<p> + But Jinny did not wholly renounce her idea. "Does it always take you + at dances you don't want to go to?" +</p> +<p> + "That's unfair. I came, you know." +</p> +<p> + "You came—and went." +</p> +<p> + "I'd have been all right if I hadn't come," he murmured, and Jinny + felt suddenly ashamed of herself. +</p> +<p> + "Do you suppose that you would stay all right if you came to + dinner?" she offered pacificably. "It's our last night, you know, + till we come back from the Nile." +</p> +<p> + "I wish I could." Ryder stopped short. Now, why didn't he? Certainly + he didn't intend— +</p> +<p> + But his tongue took matters promptly out of his hesitation's hands. + "Fact is, I've an engagement." He added, appeasingly, "That's why I + was so keen on getting you for tea." And Jinny told him + appreciatively that it was a lovely tea and a lovely view. +</p> +<p> + "We're going to be at the hotel, I expect," she threw out, + carelessly, "and if you get through in time—" +</p> +<p> + Rather hastily he assured her that indeed, if he got through in + time— +</p> +<p> + She was a nice girl, was Jinny. A pretty girl, with just the right + amount of red in her hair. Sanity would have sent him to the hotel + to dine with her. +</p> +<p> + Sanity would also have sent him to the Jockey Club with McLean. +</p> +<p> + Certainly sanity had nothing to do with the way that he kept himself + to himself, after his farewells at the hotel with the Pendletons, + and took him to an out-of-the-way Greek café where he dined very + badly upon stringy lamb and sodden baklava. +</p> +<p> + Later he wandered restlessly about dark, medieval streets where + squat groups were clustered about some coffee house door, intent + upon a game of checkers or some patriarchal story teller, + recounting, very probably, a bandied narration of the Thousand and + One Nights. Through other open doors drifted the exasperating nasal + twang of Cairene music, and idly pausing, Ryder could see above the + red fezes and turbans that topped the cross-legged audiences the + dark, sleek, slowly-revolving body of some desert dancing girl. +</p> +<p> + Irresolutely he drifted on to the Esbekeyih quarters, to the streets + where the withdrawn camels and donkeys had left pre-eminent the + carriages and motors of that stream of Continental night life which + sets towards Cairo in the season, Russian dukes and German + millionaires, Viennese actresses and French singers and ladies of no + avowed profession, gamblers, idlers, diplomats, drifters, vivid + flashes of color in the bizarre, kaleidoscopic spectacle. +</p> +<p> + It was quite dark now. The last pale gleam of the afterglow had + faded, and the blue of the sky, deepening and darkening, was pierced + with the thronging stars. It was very warm; no breeze, but a fitful + stirring in the tops of the feathery palms. +</p> +<p> + The streets were growing still. Only from some of the hotels came + the sound of music from lighted, open windows. +</p> +<p> + Jinny would be rather expectant at her hotel. He could, of course, + drop in for a few minutes since he was so near.... He walked past + the hotel.... Jinny would be packing—or ought to be. A pity to + disturb her.... And his dusty tweeds and traveling cap was no + calling costume.... +</p> +<p> + He walked past again. And this time he paused, on the brink of a + dark canyon of a lane, running back between walls hung with + bougainvillea. +</p> +<p> + Quite suddenly he remembered that he had told that girl, whose name + he did not know, that he would come. It was a definite promise. It + was an obligation. +</p> +<p> + He could do nothing less. It might be unwelcome, absurd, a nuisance, + but really it was an obligation. +</p> +<p> + He sauntered down the lane, keeping carefully in the shadow. He + loitered within that deep-set door—and felt a queer throb of + emotion at the sight of it—and so, sauntering and loitering, he + waited in the darkening night, promising himself disgustedly through + the dragging moments to clear out and be done with this, but still + interminably lingering, his pulses throbbing with that disowned + expectancy. +</p> +<p> + Very cautiously, the gate began to open. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER V +</h2> +<h3> + AT THE GARDEN GATE +</h3> +<p> + Inch by inch the gate edged open. Warily he presented himself. The + furtive crack gave him an instant's glimpse of a dark form within + the shadows, then, in his face, it closed. +</p> +<p> + Ryder waited. In a moment it was opened wider, and he saw the + dark-shrouded head and the veiled face of the Turkish girl, and out + from the blackness the sparkle of young eyes. +</p> +<p> + "Is it—but who is it?" whispered a doubtful voice, and at his, "Why + it is I—the American," quickly drawing off his cap, a little hand + darted out of the darkness to pluck him swiftly within and the door + was closed to within an inch of its opening. +</p> +<p> + Then the black phantom, drawing him back among the shrubbery, + against the wall, turned with a muffled note of laughter. +</p> +<p> + "But the costume! Imagine that I—I was looking again for a Scottish + chieftain with red kilts and a feather in his cap!" +</p> +<p> + "And instead—" Ryder glanced down at his tweeds with humorous + recognition of his change of figure. Then his eyes returned to her. +</p> +<p> + "But you are the same," he murmured. +</p> +<p> + She was indeed the same. The same black street mantle, down to her + very brows. The same black veil, up to her very eyes. And the + eyes—! Their soft mysterious loveliness—the little winged tilt of + the brows! +</p> +<p> + Apparently their effect was disconcertingly the same. He was + conscious of a feeling that was far from a normal calm. +</p> +<p> + "So you were all right?" he half whispered. "Those steps, last + night, you know, made me horribly afraid for you—" +</p> +<p> + "But, yes, I am all right." +</p> +<p> + As excitement gained upon him, a constraint was falling upon her. + They were both remembering that moment, overlooked in the rush of + recognition, when they had parted in this place, when he had had the + temerity to clasp and kiss her. +</p> +<p> + Aimée was standing rigid and wary, ready for flight at the first + fear. She told herself that she had only come through pride, the + pride that insisted upon humbling his presumption. She would let him + see how bitterly he had offended.... She had only come for this, she + told herself—and to see if he had come. +</p> +<p> + If he had <i>not</i> come! That would have dealt a sorrily humiliating + blow. +</p> +<p> + But he was here. And reassured and haughty, repeating that she was + mortally offended, her spirit alternating between pride and shame + and a delicious fear, she stood there in the shrubbery, fascinated, + like a wild, shy thing of another age. +</p> +<p> + "That was old Miriam," she explained constrainedly. "My father had + come in—with unexpectedness." +</p> +<p> + "Lord, it was lucky you were back!" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, it was—lucky," she assented. "If it had been half an hour + before—" +</p> +<p> + She broke off. There came to the young man a sobering perception of + the risk she ran, of the supreme folly of this escapade to which + they were entrusting themselves. +</p> +<p> + It was a realization that deserved some consideration. But, + obstinately, with young carelessness, he shook it off. After all, + this was comparatively safe for her. She was not out of bounds. At + an alarm he could slip away and no one could ever know. What risk + there might be was chiefly his own. +</p> +<p> + "When you asked who it was," he murmured, "it occurred to me that + you did not know my name—nor I yours. My own," he added, as she + stood unresponsive, "is Ryder—Jack Ryder. You can always get a + letter to me at the Agricultural Bank. That is the quickest way. My + friend, McLean there, always knows where my diggings are. When in + Cairo I stop with him; or at the Rossmore House." +</p> +<p> + "I shall not need to get a letter to you, monsieur," she told him + stiffly. +</p> +<p> + "But, if you did, how would you sign it?" +</p> +<p> + "Aimée.... That is French—after my mother." +</p> +<p> + "Aimée. That means Beloved, doesn't it?" +</p> +<p> + She was silent. +</p> +<p> + Surely, she thought with a swelling heart, if he were sorry he would + tell her now. It was the moment for contrition, for appeasement, for + whatever explanation his American ways might have. +</p> +<p> + She had thought about him all night. She had given his declaration a + hundred forms—but always it had been a declaration. +</p> +<p> + Now she waited, flagellating her sensitive pride. +</p> +<p> + Ryder was conscious of the constraint tightening about them and in + the dragging pause an uncomfortable common sense had time to put its + disconcerting questions. +</p> +<p> + What did it matter what her name meant? What in the world was he + doing here?.... And what did she think she was doing here?... Not + that he wanted her to go.... +</p> +<p> + And suddenly it didn't matter—whatever they thought. It was enough + that they were together in that still, soft, jasmine-scented dark. + He was breathing quickly; his pulses were beating; he had a feeling + of strange, heady delight. +</p> +<p> + The crescent moon was up at last, sailing clear of the house tops, + sending its bright rays through the filigree of tall shrubs. A + finger of light edged the contour of her shrouded head. +</p> +<p> + He bent a little closer. +</p> +<p> + "Won't you," he said softly, "take off your veil for me?" +</p> +<p> + Appalled, she clasped it to her. He had no idea in the world of the + shock of that request. It would be only a faint parallel of its + impropriety to suggest to Jinny Jeffries that she discard her frock. + Even Ryder's acquaintance with Egypt could not tell him how that + swift, confident eagerness of his could startle and affront. +</p> +<p> + "I want to see you so very much," he was murmuring, and met the + chill disdain of her retort, "But it is not for you to see my face, + monsieur!" +</p> +<p> + "Who is to see it?" he demanded. +</p> +<p> + "Who but the man I am to marry," she gave distinctly back. +</p> +<p> + The word hit him like stone. +</p> +<p> + He was conscious of a shock. Did she intend to rebuke—or to + imply—to question his intention? The steadiness of her low voice + suggested a certain steadiness of design.... He had heard of girls + who knew their own minds ... girls with unexpectedly far-sighted + vision.... Perhaps, poor child, she looked upon him as romantic + escape from all that was restrictive in her life. Secluded women go + fast—when they start. +</p> +<p> + The devil take him for that kiss! +</p> +<p> + A somewhat set look upon his thin face guarded the fluctuations of + his soul, but the blood rose strongly under his dark skin. +</p> +<p> + For a moment he did not venture upon a reply, and in that moment he + was suddenly aware that she had caught his meaning from him—and + that it was a horrible mistake. It was one of those instants of + highly-charged exchanges of meanings whose revelation was as useless + to be denied as powerless to be explained. +</p> +<p> + Then her words came in tumultuous, passionate refutation of his + thought. "That is what my father had come to tell me—that he had + arranged my marriage. It is a very splendid thing. To a general—a + rich general!" +</p> +<p> + She had not meant to tell him like that! But for the moment she was + savagely glad to hurl it at him. +</p> +<p> + He made no answer. His eyes were inscrutably intent. A variety of + things were rearranging themselves in his head. +</p> +<p> + "You're—you're going to marry him?" he said slowly. +</p> +<p> + "What else?" But she felt the phrase unfortunate and plunged past + it. "It is not for me to say no, monsieur. It is for my father to + arrange." +</p> +<p> + "But his indulgence—? You were telling me, you know, that he was so + fond of you. And that you were one of the moderns—the revolting + moderns—" +</p> +<p> + Jack Ryder's tone was questioningly cynical and its raillery cut + through her brief sham of pride. +</p> +<p> + "So I thought, too, last night." A tinge of infinite disillusionment + was in her young voice. "But it is not so." +</p> +<p> + "Then you accept—?" +</p> +<p> + The shrouded head nodded. +</p> +<p> + "But you can't want to," he broke out with sudden heat. "You don't + know him at all, do you—this general?" +</p> +<p> + "Know him? I have never seen his face nor heard his voice—and I + would die first," she added with bitter, helpless fierceness under + her breath. +</p> +<p> + The veil muffled that from him. "But why—why?" he repeated in an + angrily puzzled way. +</p> +<p> + She made a little gesture of weary impotence. Out of the dark + draperies her hands were like white fluttering butterflies. +</p> +<p> + "What can I do?" +</p> +<p> + "I should think you could do the Old Harry of a lot." +</p> +<p> + "Weep?" said the girl with a pale irony not lost upon him. +</p> +<p> + "Weep—or row. Or run," he added, almost reluctantly. +</p> +<p> + She turned away her head. "I know, I thought once that I could run. + For that I stole the key to this gate. But where would I run, + monsieur? I have neither friends, nor—nor the resources.... There + have been girls—two sisters—who ran away last year—but they were + already married and they had cousins in France. For me, my cousins + do not exist. I do not know my mother's family. They disowned her + for her marriage, my father says. And so—but it is not possible to + evade this.... It is not possible. This marriage is required." +</p> +<p> + "Required—rot! Can't you—don't you—" he paused, looking down upon + her in tremendous and serious uncertainty. The impulse was strong + upon him to tell her that he would help her. The accents of her + voice had seemed to tear at his very heart. +</p> +<p> + It was utter madness. Where, in the map of Africa, would he hide + her? And how would he take care of her? What would he do to her? + Make love to her? Marry her? Take home a wife from an Egyptian + harem—a surprising acquisition with which to startle and enchant + his decorous family in East Middleton! +</p> +<p> + And a pretty end to his work here, his reputation, his + responsibilities— +</p> +<p> + It was madness. And the fact that the thought had presented itself, + even for his flouting mockery, indicated that he was mad. He told + himself to be careful. Better men than he had everlastingly done for + themselves because upon a night of stars and moonshine some + dark-eyed girl had played the very devil with their common sense. +</p> +<p> + He reminded himself that he had never set eyes on her until last + night, that she might be the consummate perfection of a minx, that + there might not be a word of truth in all of this. +</p> +<p> + This general, now! Sudden. Not a word about it last night. And now— +</p> +<p> + He had an inkling that even Mohammedan fathers do not rush matters + at such a pace. +</p> +<p> + For all he knew the girl might be inventing this general—for some + artless reasons of her own. For all he knew she might be married to + him and desirous of escape. +</p> +<p> + But he didn't believe it. She was too young and shy and virginal. + The accents of her candor rebuked his skepticism. He merely told + himself these things because the last vestige of his expiring common + sense was prompting him. +</p> +<p> + And after all these creditable and excellent exhortations, to the + utter extinction of the last vestige of that common sense he heard + himself saying abruptly, "But isn't there anything in the world that + I can do—?" +</p> +<p> + "Nothing, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "But for you to submit—like this—" +</p> +<p> + "It is not to be helped." +</p> +<p> + "But it <i>is</i> to be helped—if you really dislike it," he added + jealously. +</p> +<p> + "I cannot help it, because—because my father—" She hesitated. The + honor of her father and her family pride and affection were all + involved, yet suddenly the sacrifice of these became more tolerable + than to consent to that image of herself which she saw swiftly + defining itself in his mind, that slight, weak creature, whose + acquiescent passivity submitted to this marriage. +</p> +<p> + The thought was unbearable. She was burning beneath her veil. She + would tell him.... And perhaps she was not averse, in her childish + pride, to the pitiful glory of having him see her in the beauty of + her filial sacrifice. +</p> +<p> + "My father has—has done something against the English laws," she + faltered, "and Hamdi Bey, this general, knows of it, and will inform + unless—unless my father makes this marriage. A cousin of his has + seen me," she added, her young vanity forlornly rearing its head, + "and told Hamdi that I am not—not too ill-looking a girl—" +</p> +<p> + Her essay of a laugh died. +</p> +<p> + Ryder's look deepened its sharp, defensive concentration. +</p> +<p> + "This is true—I mean your father is not just putting something + over—telling you to get your consent?" +</p> +<p> + Her thoughts flew back to her father's haggard face. "Oh, it is + true! I know." +</p> +<p> + "And he's going to hand you over—What sort is this Hamdi?" +</p> +<p> + "A general. Old. Evil enough to lay traps to obtain me." +</p> +<p> + "It's abomination." The anger in the young man surged beyond his + control. "You must not do it.... If your father is clever enough to + break a law let him be clever enough to mend it—by himself. Such a + sacrifice is not required.... You must realize what this means to + you. You must realize—Look here, I'll help you. I'll plan some + escape. There must be ways. I have friends—" +</p> +<p> + She stifled the leap of her heart. She held her head high and made + what she thought was a very noble little speech. "It is for my + father, monsieur. You do not understand. It is to save my father." +</p> +<p> + He looked at her in silence. He was afraid to answer for a moment; + he could feel the unruly blood beating even in the lips he pressed + together. +</p> +<p> + "But don't you understand—" he blurted at last and broke off. +</p> +<p> + After all, he did not know this girl. If he swayed her judgment now, + and dragged her away, what life, what compensation could he offer + her? How did he know that she would not regret it? Would she be + happier in a world unknown?.... +</p> +<p> + She had been brought up to this sort of thing. It was bred in + her.... Marriage was her inevitable game. This very charm she + exercised, this subtle, haunting invasion of his senses, what was + that but another proof of the harem existence where all influences + were forced to serve the ends of sex ... +</p> +<p> + And she was so maddeningly resigned to taking this general! +</p> +<p> + A queer hot rage was gaining possession of him. "Oh, well, if you + prefer this," he said brutally, with a youthful desire to wreak pain + in return for that strange pain which something was inflicting upon + him. +</p> +<p> + A girl who would let him kiss her one night—and on the next inform + him that she was giving herself to an unknown—an old Turk.... If + she could go like that, to some other's arms and lips ... +</p> +<p> + He wanted to take her fiercely in his arms and crush her lips + against his and then fling her away and say, "Oh, go to him now—if + you can!" +</p> +<p> + And at the same time he wanted to gather her to him as tenderly as + if she were a flower he was guarding and tell her that he would + protect her against all the world. +</p> +<p> + He was divided and confused and blindly angry. He felt baffled and + frustrated. He was both aching and raging. And yet he was capable of + reminding himself, in some corner of his uninvaded mind, that this + was undoubtedly the best thing for them both. +</p> +<p> + What else? For him? For her? +</p> +<p> + And yet his tongue went on stabbing her. +</p> +<p> + "If this is what you are determined to do—" he heard himself saying + hardly, yet with a hint of deferred finality. +</p> +<p> + It was as if he had said, "If this, then, is what you are like! If + you are the soft, submissive harem creature, the toy, the + odalisque—If you will endure undesired love rather than face the + world—" +</p> +<p> + And she knew that was what he was saying to her. The injustice + brought a lump of self-pity to her throbbing throat.... That he + should not realize and honor the courage of her sacrifice.... That + he should reproach, despise.... She had expected other entreaties + ... protestations.... +</p> +<p> + Her heart ached with a throb of steady dreariness. +</p> +<p> + But she did not stir. Not a line of her drooping draperies wavered + towards him. And swallowing that lump in her throat, she achieved a + toneless, "That is what I am going to do." +</p> +<p> + At the other end of the garden a sound came from the house. +</p> +<p> + Ryder seemed to rouse himself. "Good-bye, then," he said, + uncertainly. +</p> +<p> + "Good-bye, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + He looked oddly at her. "Good-bye," he muttered again, and turned, + and stumbled out of the gate. +</p> +<p> + A pool of moonlight lay without its arches, and he stepped into it + as if coming out of the shadows of an enchanted garden. He stood and + straightened himself as if throwing off that garden's spell. He put + back his shoulders and took a quick step down the lane. +</p> +<p> + A slight sound drew his eyes back. +</p> +<p> + She had followed him to the gate; she stood there, in the moonlight, + against the inky wells of shadow into which her black robe flowed, + and in the moonlight her face, gazing after him, was an exquisite, + ethereal apparition, like a spirit of the garden. +</p> +<p> + She had cast off her veil. He had a vision of her dark eyes shining + over rose-flushed cheeks, of deeper-rose-red lips in curves of + haunting sweetness, of the tender contour of her young face, fixed + unforgettingly in the radiant moonlight—only an instant's vision, + for while the blood stopped in his veins the darkness engulfed her, + like a magician's curtain. +</p> +<p> + But he waited while he heard the gate closed. Still he waited while + he heard her locking it. And then for all his hot young pride, he + turned back and knocked upon it. He called softly. He whispered + entreaties. +</p> +<p> + Not a sound. Not an answer. +</p> +<p> + In a revulsion of feeling he turned and made his way blindly from + the lane. +</p> +<p> + She had heard his voice. Like a creature utterly spent, she had been + leaning against the great gate from which she had withdrawn the key. + But she uttered not a breath in answer, and after she had heard his + footsteps die away she turned slowly back and groped among the rose + roots for the key's hiding place. +</p> +<p> + Mechanically she smoothed it over and moved on towards the house. + All was quiet there. That sound had been no alarm. Unobserved she + slipped within the little door, and up the spiral steps. +</p> +<p> + She had not seen the dark eyes that were watching her, from the + other side of the rose thicket. After the girl had gained the house, + the old woman came forward and stooped before the marked bush, + muttering under her breath at the thorns. After a few moments she + gave a little grunt of satisfaction and her exploring hand drew out + the key. +</p> +<p> + Smoothing again the rifled hiding place among the roses, she made + her careful way into the house. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VI +</h2> +<h3> + A SECRET OF THE SANDS +</h3> +<p> + The siesta was past. The sun was tilting towards the west and + shadows were beginning to jut out across the blazing sands. +</p> +<p> + Over the mounds of rubbish the bearers had resumed their slow + procession, a picturesque frieze of tattered, indigo-robed, ebony + figures, baskets on heads, against a cloudless cobalt sky, and again + the hot air was invaded with the monotonous rise and fall of their + labor chant. +</p> +<p> + A man with a short, pointed red beard and an academic face beneath a + pith helmet was stooping over the siftings from those baskets, + intent upon the stream of sand through the wire screens. Patiently + he discarded the unending pebbles, discovering at rare intervals + some lost bead, some splinter of old sycamore wood, some fragment of + pottery in which a Ptolemy had sipped his wine—or a kitchen wench + had soaked her lentils. +</p> +<p> + Beyond the man were traces of the native camp, a burnt-out fire, a + roll of rags, a tattered shelter cloth stuck on two tottering + sticks, and distributed indiscriminatingly were a tethered goat, a + white donkey with motionless, drooping ears, and a few supercilious + camels. +</p> +<p> + The camp was in the center of a broken line of foothills on the + desert's edge. North and south and west the wide sands swept out to + meet the sky, and to the east, shutting out the Nile valley, the + hills reared their red rock from the yellow drift. +</p> +<p> + Among the jutting rock in the foreground yawned dark mouths that + were the entrances of the discovered tombs, and within one of these + tombs was another white man. He was conducting his own siftings in + high solitude, a lean, bronzed young man, with dark hair and eyes + and, at the present moment, an unexhilarated expression. +</p> +<p> + It had been two weeks since Jack Ryder had returned to camp. Two + interminable weeks. They were the longest, the dullest, the + dreariest, the most irritatingly undelighting weeks that he had ever + lived through. +</p> +<p> + But bitterly he resented any aspersion from the long-suffering + Thatcher upon his disposition. He wanted it distinctly understood + that he was <i>not</i> low-spirited. Not in the least. A man wasn't in + the dumps just because he wasn't—well, garrulous. Just because he + didn't go about whistling like a steam siren or exult like a cheer + leader when some one dug up the effigy of a Hathor-cow.... Just + because he objected when the natives twanged their fool strings all + night and wailed at the moon. +</p> +<p> + The moon was full now. Round and white it went sailing blandly over + the eternal monotony of desert.... Round and white, it lighted up + the eternal sameness of life.... He had never noticed it before, but + a moon was a poignantly depressing phenomenon. +</p> +<p> + He couldn't help it. A man couldn't make himself be a comedian. It + wasn't as if he wanted to be a grump. He would have been glad to be + glad. He wanted Thatcher to make him glad. He defied him to. +</p> +<p> + He didn't enjoy this flat, insipid taste of things, this dull grind, + this feeling of sameness and dullness that made nothing seem worth + while.... A feeling that he had been marooned on a desert island, + far from all stir and throb of life. +</p> +<p> + Suppose he did dig up a Hathor-cow? Suppose he dug up Hathor + herself, or Cleopatra, or ten little Ptolemies? What was the good of + it? +</p> +<p> + Not Jinny Jeffries herself could have cast more aspersions upon the + personal value of excavations. +</p> +<p> + When he was tired of denying to himself that there was anything + unusual the matter with him, he shifted the inner argument and took + up the denial that anything which had happened in Cairo those two + weeks before had anything to do with it. As if that rash encounter + <i>mattered</i>! As if he were the silly, senseless sentimental sort of + idiot to go mooning about his work because of a girl—and a girl + from a harem with a taste for secret masquerades and Turkish + marriages! +</p> +<p> + As if he cared—! +</p> +<p> + Of course—he admitted this logically and coldly now to himself, as + he sat there in the ray of his excavator's lantern, on the sanded + floor at the end of the Hall of Offerings—of course, he was sorry + for the girl. It was no life for any young girl—especially a + spirited one, with her veins bubbling with French blood. +</p> +<p> + The system was wrong. If they were going to shut up those girls, + they had no business to bring them up on modern ideas. If they kept + the mashrubiyeh on the windows and the yashmak on their faces they + ought to keep the kohl on their eyes and the henna on their fingers + and education out of their hidden heads. +</p> +<p> + It was too bad.... But, of course, they were brought up to it. Look + how quickly that girl had given in. She was Turkish, through and + through. Submissive. Docile.... And a darned good thing she was, + too! Suppose she had taken him at his fool word. Suppose she had + really wanted to get away! +</p> +<p> + Lucky, that's what he'd been. And it would be a lesson to him. Never + again. No more masked young things with their stolen keys and their + harem entrances. No more whispered tales of woe in a shady garden. + No more— +</p> +<p> + Violently he wrenched himself from his No Mores. Recollection had a + way of stirring an unpleasant tumult. +</p> +<p> + But it was all over. He had forgotten it—he <i>would</i> forget it. He + would forget <i>her</i>. Work, that was the thing. Normal, sensible, + every day work. +</p> +<p> + But there was no joy in this tonic work. Somewhere, between a night + and a morning, he had lost that glow of accomplishment which had + buoyed him, which had made him fairly ecstatic over the discovery of + this very tomb. +</p> +<p> + For this tomb was his own find. It had been found long before by the + plundering Persians, and it had been found by Arabs who had + plundered the Persian remains—but between and after those findings + the oblivious sands had swept over it, blotting it from the world, + choking the entrance hall and the shafts, seeping through + half-sealed entrances and packing its dry drift over the rifled + sarcophagus of the king and over the withered mummy of the young + girl in the ante-room. The tombs had been cleared now, down almost + to the stone floors, and Ryder was busy with the drifts that had + lodged in the crevices about the entrance to the shaft. +</p> +<p> + It was really an important find. Although much plundered, the walls + were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls + were exceptional examples. And there were some very interesting + things to decipher. A scholar and an explorer could well be + enthusiastic. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder continued to look far from enthusiastic. Even when his + groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard + substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance. + Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it + off. A gleam of gold shone in his hand. But it was no ancient amulet + or necklace or breast guard—nor was it any bit of the harness of + the plundering Persians. It was a locket, very heavily and ornately + carved. +</p> +<p> + He stood a moment staring down at the thing with a curious feeling + of having stood staring down at exactly the same thing before—that + subconscious feeling of the repetition of events which supports the + theories of reincarnationists—and then, quite suddenly, memory came + to his aid. +</p> +<p> + In McLean's office. That day of the masquerade. Those visiting + Frenchmen and that locket they had shown him. Of course the thing + reminded him— +</p> +<p> + And it was remarkably alike. The same thick oval, the same ponderous + effect of the coat of arms—if it should prove the same coat of arms + that would be a clue! +</p> +<p> + With his mind still piecing the recollection and surmise together + his fingers pressed the spring. There was a miniature within, but it + was not the picture of Monsieur Delcassé. Ryder was looking down + upon the face of a girl, a beautiful, spirited face, with merry eyes + and wistful lips—dark eyes, with a lovely arch of brow, and + rose-red lips with haunting curves. +</p> +<p> + And eyes and brows and lips and curves, it was the face of the girl + who had gazed after him in the moonlight against the shadows of the + pasha's garden. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VII +</h2> +<h3> + TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT +</h3> +<p> + "It is no end of good of you, Jack, to take this trouble," Andrew + McLean remarked appreciatively, looking up from his scrutiny of the + packet which his unexpected luncheon guest had pushed over to his + plate. +</p> +<p> + "Uncommon thoughtful. It's undoubtedly a twin to that locket, the + portrait of the man's wife—whatever his name was." +</p> +<p> + "Delcassé," said Jack Ryder promptly. +</p> +<p> + Gratefully he drained the second lemon squash which the + silent-footed Mohammed had placed at his elbow. It had been a hard + morning's trip, this coming in from camp in high haste, and he was + hot and dusty. +</p> +<p> + "You might have sent the thing," McLean mentioned. "I daresay that + special agent chap has left the country, for I recollect he said he + was at the end of his search.... And, of course, this isn't much of + a clue—eh, what?" +</p> +<p> + "It's everything of a clue," insisted Ryder. "It shows where this + Frenchman was working, for the first thing—" +</p> +<p> + "Unless it had been stolen by some native who lost it in that + tomb." +</p> +<p> + "Natives don't lose gold lockets. Of course it might have been + stolen and hidden—but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely + that this was the very tomb where Delcassé was working at the time + of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous + excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern + got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of + the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcassé wrote his + book about—looks very much as if it might be by the same artist. + There's a flock of hippopotami in a marsh scene with the identical + drawing, and there's the same lovely boat in full sail—but there, + you bounder, you don't know the Tomb of Thi from a thyroid gland. + You're here to administer financial justice, the middle, the high, + and the low; your soul is with piasters, not the past. But take my + word for it, it's exactly the spot where an enthusiast of the Thi + Tomb would be grubbing away.... Lord, they could choose their find + in those days!" +</p> +<p> + "It's uncommonly likely," McLean conceded, abandoning his demolished + cherry tart and pulling out his briar. "And if the locket proves the + duplicate of the other it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame + Delcassé, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame + Delcassé.... Though in a general way," McLean deduced with Scotch + judicialness, "it supports the theory of foul play. The woman would + hardly have lost her miniature, or have sold it, except under + pressing conditions. In fact—" +</p> +<p> + Ryder was brusque with his facts. +</p> +<p> + "That doesn't matter—Madame Delcassé doesn't matter. The thing that + matters is—" +</p> +<p> + As brusquely he broke off. His tongue balked before the revelation + but he goaded it on. +</p> +<p> + "That there is a girl—the living image of that picture." +</p> +<p> + "I say!" McLean looked up at that, distinctly intrigued. "That's + getting on.... You mean you've seen her?" +</p> +<p> + Ryder nodded, suddenly busy with his cigarette. +</p> +<p> + "Where is she, now? In Cairo? That's luck, man!... And you say she's + like?" +</p> +<p> + "You'd think it her picture." +</p> +<p> + "It's an uncommon face." McLean bent over it again. "I fancied the + artist had just been making a bit of beauty, but if there's a girl + like that—! Fancy stumbling on that!... But where is she? And what + name does she go by?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, her name—she doesn't know her own, of course." Ryder paused + uncertainly. "She's in Cairo," he began again vaguely. "She'd be + just about the right age—eighteen or so. She—she's had awf'ly + hard luck." Distressfully he hesitated. +</p> +<p> + The shrewd eyes of McLean dwelt upon him in sorrowful silence. "Eh, + Jock," he said at last, with mock scandal scarcely veiling rebuke. + "I did not know that you knew any of that sort—the poor, wee lost + thing.... Tell me, now—" +</p> +<p> + "Tell you you're off your chump," said Jack rudely. "She's no lost + lamb. Fact is, she's never spoken to a man—except myself." He + rather enjoyed the start this gave McLean after his insinuations. It + helped him on with his story. +</p> +<p> + "The girl doesn't know her own name at all, I gather. She thinks + she's the daughter of Tewfick Pasha. Her mother married the Turk and + died very soon afterwards and he brought up this girl as his own. + She says she's his only child." +</p> +<p> + He paused, ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually + to enjoy McLean's astonishment. As astonishment, it was distinctly + vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into + his friend's mind. +</p> +<p> + McLean knew—slightly—Tewfick Pasha. He knew—supremely—the + inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the + utter impossibility of any man's speech with her. +</p> +<p> + Yet here was Ryder telling him— +</p> +<p> + Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the + girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He + touched lightly upon her attempted flight and his pursuit. Even more + lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate + and the exchange of confidences. +</p> +<p> + "She said that her dead mother had been French. And that her name + was her mother's—Aimée. So there is—" +</p> +<p> + "But the likeness, man—her face? She never unveiled to you?" +</p> +<p> + "Well, the next night—" +</p> +<p> + "The <i>next</i> night?" +</p> +<p> + It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of McLean's + astonishment. +</p> +<p> + "Yes, the next night," he repeated with careful carelessness.... "I + told the girl I would come and see if she got in all right—there + had been some footsteps the night before—" +</p> +<p> + "And you went? And she came?" +</p> +<p> + "Do you suppose she sent her father?" +</p> +<p> + "You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch," McLean retorted + grimly. "Well, get on with your damning story. The girl took off her + veil—" +</p> +<p> + "Nothing of the kind," said Jack a trifle testily—so soon does + conventional masculinity champion the conservatism of the other sex! + "That was just as I was going—gone, in fact. I looked back and she + had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face—I saw her + as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a + picture of her. She is Delcassé's daughter and she doesn't know it. + Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old Turk—" +</p> +<p> + "Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago Tewfick could hardly have been + thirty and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love + affair or it may have been plunder.... The girl remembers her?" +</p> +<p> + "Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that + the father was so in love that he never married again." +</p> +<p> + "H'm ... It seems to me that I've heard tales of our Tewfick and of + pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and + tattlers. However—as to this Delcassé inheritance, I'll just notify + the French legation—" +</p> +<p> + "We'll have to look sharp," said Ryder quickly. "There's no time to + lose. The girl is to be married." +</p> +<p> + "Married?... But she'll inherit the money just the same." +</p> +<p> + "But she doesn't want to be married," Ryder insisted anxiously. "Her + father—her alleged father—has just sprung this on her. Says there + are political or financial reasons. He's been caught in some dirty + work by this Hamdi Bey and he's stopping Hamdi's mouth with the + girl.... And we've got to stop that." +</p> +<p> + "I wonder if we can," said McLean thoughtfully. +</p> +<p> + "If we can? When the girl is French? When she's been lied to and + deceived?" +</p> +<p> + "She seems to have been taken jolly well care of. Brought up as his + own and all that. Keep your shirt on, Jack," McLean advised dryly + with a shrewd glance from his gray eyes at the other's unguarded + heat. +</p> +<p> + Then his eyes dropped to the miniature again. A lovely face. A + lovely unfortunate creature.... And if the daughter looked like + that, small wonder that Jack was touched.... Beauty in distress. +</p> +<p> + Some men had all the luck, McLean reflected. He had never taken Jack + for the gallivanting kind, either, yet here he was going to + masquerades with one girl and coming home with another.... +</p> +<p> + Jack was too good looking, that was the trouble with the youngster. + Good looking and gay humored. The kind that attracted women.... + Women and romance were never fluttering about lank, light-eyed, + uninteresting old Scotchmen of twenty-nine! +</p> +<p> + A mild and wistful pang, which McLean refused to name, made itself + known. +</p> +<p> + "I'll see the legation," he began. +</p> +<p> + "At once. I'll wait," urged Ryder. +</p> +<p> + And at once McLean went. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + The result was what he had foreseen. The legation was appreciative + of his interest. That special agent had returned to France but his + address was left, and undoubtedly the family of Delcassé would be + grateful for any information which Monsieur McLean could send. +</p> +<p> + "Send!" repudiated Ryder hotly. "Write to France and back—wait for + somebody to come over! Can't the legation do something now?" +</p> +<p> + "The legation has no authority. They can't take the girl away from + the man who is, at any rate, her step-father." +</p> +<p> + "They can put the fear of God into him about this marriage. They + can deny his right to hand her over to one of his pals. They can + threaten him with an inquiry into the circumstances of her mother's + marriage." +</p> +<p> + "And why should they? They may regard it as a very natural marriage. + And remember, my dear Jack, that the legation has no desire to + alienate the affections of influential Turks, or criticize + fifteen-years-ago romances. You have a totally wrong impression of + the responsibilities of foreign representatives." +</p> +<p> + "But to let him dispose of a French girl—" +</p> +<p> + "He is disposing of her, as his daughter, in honorable marriage to a + wealthy and aristocratic general. There can be no question of his + motives—" +</p> +<p> + "Of course, if you think that sort of thing is all right—" +</p> +<p> + Carefully McLean ignored the other's wrath. +</p> +<p> + Patiently he explained. "It's not what I think, my dear fellow, it's + what the legation thinks. There's not a chance in the world of + getting the marriage stopped." +</p> +<p> + "Then I'll do it myself," declared Ryder. "I'll see this Tewfick + Pasha and talk to him. Tell him the money is to come to the girl + only when she is single. Tell him the French law gives the father's + representatives full charge. Tell him that he kidnapped the mother + and the government will prosecute unless the girl is given her + liberty. Tell him anything. A man with a guilty conscience can + always be bluffed." +</p> +<p> + In silence McLean gazed upon him, perplexed and clouded, his + quizzical twinkle gone. Jack was taking this thing infernally to + heart.... And it was a bad business. +</p> +<p> + "You will let me do the telling," he stated at last, grimly. "What + can be said, I'll say. Like a fool, I will meddle." +</p> +<p> + And so it happened that within another hour two very stiff and + constrained young men were ringing the bell at the entrance door of + Tewfick Pasha. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VIII +</h2> +<h3> + TEWFICK RECEIVES +</h3> +<p> + A huge Soudanese admitted them. They found themselves in a tiled + vestibule, looking through open arches into the green of a + garden—that garden, Ryder hardly needed to remind himself, with + whose back door he had made such unconventional acquaintance. +</p> +<p> + Now he had a glimpse of a sunny fountain and fluttering pigeons, + and, on either side of the garden, of the two wings of the building, + gay white walls with green shutters more suggestive of a French + villa than an Egyptian palace, before the Soudanese marshaled them + toward the stairs upon the right. +</p> +<p> + The left, then, was the way to the haremlik. And somewhere in those + secluded rooms, to which no man but the owner of the palace ever + gained admission, was Aimée. +</p> +<p> + The Soudanese mounted the stairs before them and held open a door + into a long drawing-room from which the pasha's modernity had + stripped every charm except the color of some worn old rugs; the + windows were draped in European style, the walls exhibited paper + instead of paneling; in one corner was a Victrola and in another, + beside a lounge chair, stood a table littered with cigarette trays + and French novels with explicit titles. +</p> +<p> + The only Egyptian touch to the place was four enormous oil portraits + of pompous turbaned gentlemen, in one of whom Ryder recognized the + familiar rotundity of Mahomet Ali in his grand robes. +</p> +<p> + As a pasha's palace it was a blow, and Ryder's vague, romantic + notions of high halls and gilded arches, suffered a collapse. +</p> +<p> + Tewfick Pasha came in with haste. He had been going out when these + callers were announced and he was dressed for parade, in a very + light, very tight suit, gardenia in his button-hole, cane in his + gloved hands, fez upon his head. For all their smiling welcome, his + full, dark eyes were uneasy. +</p> +<p> + He had grown distrustful of surprises. +</p> +<p> + It was McLean's affair to reassure him. Far from fulminating any + accusations the canny Scot announced himself as the bearer of glad + tidings. A fortune, he announced, was coming to the pasha—or to the + pasha's family. A very rich old woman in France had decided to + change her will. +</p> +<p> + There he paused and the pasha continued to smile non-committally, + but the word fortune was operating. In the back of his mind he was + hastily trying to think of rich old women in France who might change + their wills. +</p> +<p> + "I am afraid that it is my stupidity which has kept you from the + knowledge of this for some weeks," McLean went on. "I had so many + other matters to look up that I did not at once consult my records. + And it has been so many years since you married Madame Delcassé that + the name had slipped general recollection.... It was twelve years + ago, I believe, that she died?" +</p> +<p> + Casually he waited and Jack Ryder held his breath. He felt the full + suspense of a pause long enough for the pasha's thoughts to dart + down several avenues and back. If the man should deny it! But why + should he? What harm in the admission, after all these years, with + Madame Delcassé dead and buried? And with a fortune involved in the + admission. +</p> +<p> + The Turk bowed and Ryder breathed again. +</p> +<p> + "Ten years," said Tewfick softly. +</p> +<p> + "Ah—ten. But there has been no communication with France for twelve + years or even longer?" +</p> +<p> + "Possibly not, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "This old aunt," pursued McLean, "was a person of prejudice as well + as fortune—hence it has taken a little time for her to adjust + herself." He paused and looked understandingly at the Turk, who + nodded amiably as one whose comprehension met him more than half + way. +</p> +<p> + "My own aunt was of a similar obstinacy," he murmured. He added, + "This fortune you speak of—it comes through my wife?" +</p> +<p> + "For her inheritors. Madame Delcassé—the former Madame Delcassé I + should say—left but one daughter?" +</p> +<p> + Again the pasha bowed and again Ryder felt the throb of triumph. He + looked upon his friend with admiration. How marvelously McLean had + worked the miracle. No accusations, no threats, no obstacles, no + blank walls of denial! Not a ruffle of discord in the establishment + of these salient facts—the marriage of Madame Delcassé to the pasha + and the existence of the daughter. +</p> +<p> + Wonderful man—McLean. He had never half appreciated him. +</p> +<p> + But the pasha was not wholly the simple assenter. +</p> +<p> + "Do I understand," he inquired, "that there is a fortune coming from + France for my daughter?" And at McLean's confirmation, "And when you + say fortune," he continued, "you intend to say—?" and his glance + now took in the silent American, considering that some cue must be + his. +</p> +<p> + But McLean responded. "The figures are not to be divulged—not until + the aunt is in communication with her niece. But they will be large, + monsieur, for this aunt is a person of great wealth." +</p> +<p> + "And yet alive to enjoy it," said Tewfick with smiling eyes. +</p> +<p> + "An aged and dying woman," thrust in Ryder in haste. "Her only care + now is to see her niece before she dies." +</p> +<p> + "Ah!... But that could be arranged," said Tewfick amiably. +</p> +<p> + "We have at once communicated with France," McLean told him, "but we + came instantly to you, to, inform you—" +</p> +<p> + "A thousand thanks and a thousand! The bearers of good tidings," + smiled their host. +</p> +<p> + "Because we understand that there is a question of the young lady's + marriage," pursued McLean, "and you would, of course, wish to defer + this until these new circumstances are complied with." +</p> +<p> + The pasha stared. "Not at all. A fortune is as pleasant to a wife as + to a maid." +</p> +<p> + "There are so many questions of law," offered McLean with purposeful + vagueness. "French wardship and trusteeship and all that. It would + be advisable, I think, to wait." +</p> +<p> + "Absurd," said the pasha easily. +</p> +<p> + "You would want no doubts cast upon the legality of the marriage," + McLean persisted thoughtfully, "and since mademoiselle is under age + and the French law has certain restrictions—" +</p> +<p> + "Pff! We are not under the French law—at least I have not heard + that England has relinquished her power," retorted Tewfick not + without malice. +</p> +<p> + "But Mademoiselle Delcassé is French," thrust in Ryder. He knew that + McLean had ventured as far as he, an official and responsible + person, could go, and that the burden of intimation must rest upon + himself. "And under her father's will his family there is + considered in trusteeship. So there would be certain technicalities + that must be considered before any marriage can be arranged, the + signature of the French guardian, the settlement of the dot—this + inheritance, for instance—all mere formalities but involving a + little delay." +</p> +<p> + Tewfick Pasha turned in his chair and cocked his eyes at this + strange young man who had dropped from the blue with this extensive + advice. He looked puzzled. This American fitted into no type of his + acquaintance. He was so very young and slim and boyish ... with not + at all the air of a legal representative.... But McLean's position + vouched for him. +</p> +<p> + "You speak for the French family, monsieur?" +</p> +<p> + Unhesitatingly Ryder declared that he did. +</p> +<p> + "Then you may inform the family," announced Tewfick, bristling, + "that my daughter has been very well cared for all these years + without advice from France." +</p> +<p> + "I haven't a doubt of it," said Ryder quickly, "but the French law + might begin to entertain doubts of it, if mademoiselle were married + off now without consultation with the authorities.... Already," he + added a little meaningly, as the other shrugged the suggestion away, + "there have been questions raised concerning the mother's marriage + and the separation of the little Mademoiselle Delcassé from her + relatives in France, and now if she were to be married without any + legal settlement of her estate—" +</p> +<p> + Steadily he sustained the other's gaze, while his unfinished thought + seemed to float significantly in the air about them. +</p> +<p> + "Have a cigarette," said the pasha hospitably, extending a gold case + monogrammed with diamonds and emeralds. "Ah, coffee!" he announced, + welcomingly, as a little black boy entered with a brass tray of + steaming cups. +</p> +<p> + "I hope, gentlemen, that you like my coffee. It is not the usual + Turkish brew. No, this comes from Aden, the finest coffee in the + world. A ship captain brings it to me, especially." +</p> +<p> + Beamingly he sipped the scalding stuff, then darted back to that + suspended sentence. "But you were saying—something of a + trusteeship?... Do I understand that it is an aunt of Madame + Delcassé—the former Madame Delcassé—who is leaving this money?" +</p> +<p> + "Not of Madame but of Monsieur Delcassé," McLean informed him. +</p> +<p> + "Ah!... That accounts ... But in that case, then, there need be no + concern in France over my daughter's marriage...." He turned his + round eyes from one to the other a moment. +</p> +<p> + "There is no Mademoiselle Delcassé." +</p> +<p> + "Sir?" said Ryder sharply. +</p> +<p> + "There is no Mademoiselle Delcassé," repeated the pasha, his eyes + frankly enlivened. +</p> +<p> + "But—we have just been speaking—you cannot mean to say—" +</p> +<p> + "We have been speaking of my daughter—the daughter of the former + Madame Delcassé." +</p> +<p> + Smilingly he looked upon them. "A pity that we did not understand + each other. But you appear to know so much—and I supposed that you + knew that, too, that the daughter of Monsieur Delcassé was dead." +</p> +<p> + Neither of the young men spoke. McLean looked politely attentive; + Ryder's face maintained that look of concentration which guarded the + fluctuations of his feelings. +</p> +<p> + "It was many years ago," the pasha murmured, putting down his coffee + cup and selecting another cigarette. "Not long after her mother's + marriage to me.... A very charming little girl—I was positively + attached to her," Tewfick added reminiscently. +</p> +<p> + "Well, well, well, what a pity now," said McLean very slowly. + "This will be a great disappointment.... And so the present + mademoiselle—" +</p> +<p> + "Is my daughter." +</p> +<p> + McLean was silent. Ryder could hardly trust himself to speak. +</p> +<p> + "What did she die of?" he asked at last, in a voice whose edged + quality brought the pasha's glance to him with a flash of hostility + behind its veil. +</p> +<p> + But he answered calmly enough. "Of the fever, monsieur.... She was + never strong." +</p> +<p> + "And her grave... I should like to make a report." +</p> +<p> + "It was in the south ... desert burial, I am afraid. You must know + that the little one was hardly a true believer for our cemetery." +</p> +<p> + "And you would say that she was only five or six years old?" Ryder + persisted. +</p> +<p> + The pasha nodded. +</p> +<p> + "I should like to get as near as possible to the date if it is not + too much trouble.... The father died about fifteen years ago and the + mother was married to you soon after?" +</p> +<p> + "Really, monsieur, you—" +</p> +<p> + Tewfick was frankly restive. +</p> +<p> + "I know nothing of the father," he said sullenly. "And as to the + child's death—how can one recall after these years? In one, two + years after she came to me—one does not grave these things upon the + eyeballs." +</p> +<p> + "But you do remember that it was long ago—when your own daughter + was very little?" +</p> +<p> + "Exactly. That is my recollection, monsieur.... And I recall," said + the pasha, suddenly obliging and sentimental, "that even my little + one cried for the child. It was afflicting.... Assure the family in + France of my sympathy in their disappointment." +</p> +<p> + "I am sorry that my news is after all of no interest to you," + observed McLean, setting the example for rising. "You will pardon my + error of information—and accept my appreciation of your courtesy." +</p> +<p> + "It is I who am indebted for your trouble," their host assured + them, all smiles again. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder was not to be led away without a parting shot. +</p> +<p> + "The name of the Delcassé child—was Aimée?" +</p> +<p> + Imperceptibly Tewfick hesitated. Then bowed in assent. +</p> +<p> + "Odd," said young Ryder thoughtfully. "And your own daughter's name, + also, is Aimée.... Two little ones with the same name." +</p> +<p> + With a slight, vexed laugh, as one despairing of understanding, the + pasha turned to McLean. "Your young friend, monsieur, is uninformed + that Turkish children have many names.... After the loss of the + elder we called the little one by the same name.... I trust I have + made everything perfectly clear to you?" +</p> +<p> + "As crystal," said McLean politely. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + "As lightning," said Jack Ryder hotly, striding down the street. "It + was a flash of invention, that yarn. When I spoke about the + questions raised by his marriage the old fox sniffed the wind and + was afraid of trouble—he decided on the instant that no future + fortune was worth interference with his plans, and he cut the ground + from under our feet.... Lord, what a lie!" +</p> +<p> + "Masterly, you must admit." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I admired the beggar, even while I choked on it. But + fever—desert burial—two Aimées! And the sentimental face he + pulled—he ought to have had a spot-light and wailing woodwinds." +</p> +<p> + McLean chuckled. +</p> +<p> + "I'll believe anything of him now," Ryder rushed on. "I'll bet he + murdered Delcassé and kidnapped the mother—and now he is selling + their daughter—" +</p> +<p> + "I fancy murder's a bit beyond our Tewfick. That's too thick. He's + probably telling the truth there—he may never have known Delcassé. + And as for the widow—she must have been in no end of trouble with a + dead man and a wrecked expedition and a baby on her hands, and + Tewfick may have offered himself as a grateful solution to her. + You'd be surprised at the things I've heard. And if she looked like + her picture Tewfick probably laid himself out to be lovely to + her.... I rather like the chap, myself." +</p> +<p> + "I love him," Ryder snorted. "The infernal liar—" +</p> +<p> + "Steady now—suppose it's all the truth? Nothing impossible to it. + Fact is, I rather believe it," said McLean imperturbably. "It hangs + together. If this girl you met thinks she's his daughter, that's + conclusive. She'd have some idea—servants' gossip or family + whisperings.... And why should he have brought her up as his own?" +</p> +<p> + "No other children. And he'd grown fond of her, of course. If you + could see her!" retorted Ryder. +</p> +<p> + "Just as well, I can't.... And I think he could hardly have kept her + in the dark.... We'd better call it a wild goose chase and say the + man's telling the truth." +</p> +<p> + "If this girl were his daughter she couldn't be more than fourteen + years old. And I've seen the girl and she's eighteen if she's a + day—you might take her for twenty. <i>Fourteen</i>!" said Ryder in + repudiating scorn. +</p> +<p> + Hesitating McLean murmured something about the early maturity of the + natives. +</p> +<p> + "Natives?" Ryder flung angrily back. "This girl's French!" +</p> +<p> + "As far as we are concerned, Jack, this girl is Turkish—and + fourteen.... We can't get around that, and you had better not forget + it," his friend quietly advised. "We've done everything that we can + and there is no use working yourself up.... If anybody's to blame in + this business, I don't think it's Tewfick—he's done the handsome + thing by her—but the fool Frenchman who took his baby and his wife + into the desert, and it's too late to rag him. Cheer up, old top, + and forget it. There's nothing more to be done." +</p> +<p> + It was sound advice, Jack Ryder knew it. They had done all that they + could. McLean had been a brick. There remained nothing now but to + notify the Delcassé aunt that Tewfick Pasha claimed the child. +</p> +<p> + "And I've a notion, Jack," said McLean thoughtfully, "that he might + not have done that if you hadn't rushed him so, trying to break off + the marriage. That was what frightened him." +</p> +<p> + "I thought you said she was his own daughter," Ryder responded + indignantly, and to that McLean merely murmured, "She will be now, + to all time." +</p> +<p> + It was a haunting thought. It left Ryder with the bitter taste of + blame in his mouth, the gall and wormwood of blame and a baffled + defeat. +</p> +<p> + But for that sense of blame he might have taken McLean's advice. He + might—but for that—have gone the way of wisdom, and accepted the + inevitable. +</p> +<p> + As it was, he did none of these things. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + He said to himself that all that he could do now—and the least that + he could do—was to let the girl know as much of the story as he + knew and draw her own conclusions. Then, if she wanted to go on and + sacrifice herself for Tewfick, very well. That was none of his + affair. +</p> +<p> + But she had a right to the truth and to the chance of choice. +</p> +<p> + He did not know what he could do, but secretly and defiantly he + promised himself that he would do something, and in the back of his + mind an idea was already taking shape. It was manifest in the + tenacity with which he refused to send the locket to the Delcassés. + He had the case and the miniature photographed very carefully by the + man who did the reproductions for museum illustrations, and he sent + that, conscious of McLean's silent thought that he was cherishing + the portrait for a sentimental memory. +</p> +<p> + But he had other plans for it. +</p> +<p> + He did not return to his diggings. He sent a message to the deserted + Thatcher, faking errands in Cairo, and he took a room at the hotel + where Jinny Jeffries—now up the Nile—had stayed. He spent a great + deal of time evenings in the hotel garden, staring over the brick + walls to the tops of distant palms beyond, and not infrequently he + slipped out the garden's back door and wandered up and down the dark + canyon of a lane. +</p> +<p> + He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepheard's + Hotel. +</p> +<p> + And yet the girl had her key. She could get away if she wanted to + and she might want to if she knew the truth. +</p> +<p> + But how to get that truth to her? That was his problem. A dozen + plans he considered and rejected. There were the mails—simple and + obvious channel—but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan + seclusion do not receive their letters directly. And now, + especially, Tewfick would be on his guard. +</p> +<p> + Then there was the chance of a message through some native's hands. + The house servants—? There were hours, one day, when Ryder + sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy-trousered + <i>sais</i> who stood holding a horse in the sun or the tattered baker's + boy, approaching the entrance with his long loaves upon his head, + but Ryder's Arabic was not of a power or subtlety to corrupt any + creature, and he stayed his tongue. +</p> +<p> + Bitterly he regretted his wasted years. If he had not misspent them + in godly living he would now be upon such terms of intimacy with + some official's pretty wife who had the entrée to a pasha's daughter + that she could be induced to make use of it for him. +</p> +<p> + Desperately he thought of remedying this defect. There were several + charming young matrons not averse to devoted young men, but the time + was short for establishing those confidential relations which were + what he required now. +</p> +<p> + Jinny Jeffries would do it for him if she could, but Jinny would not + return for another week. And if she changed her mind and took the + boat back—as he, alack! had advised—instead of the express, then + she would be longer. +</p> +<p> + And meanwhile the days were passing, four of them now since he and + McLean had heard the Soudanese locking the door behind them. +</p> +<p> + There seemed nothing for it but to trust to that idea which had been + slowly shaping in his mind. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER IX +</h2> +<h3> + A WEDDING PRESENT +</h3> +<p> + In a room high in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. + Before a tall pier glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging to + the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly + from the image in the glass. +</p> +<p> + Through the open window, banded with three bars, she looked into the + rustling tops of palms, from which the yellow date fruit hung, and + beyond the palms the hot, bright, blue sky and the far towers of a + minaret. +</p> +<p> + "A bit more to the left, h'if you please, miss," the woman entreated + through a mouthful of pins, and apathetically the young figure + moved. +</p> +<p> + "A bit of h'all right, now, that drape," the woman chirped, sitting + back on her heels to survey her work. +</p> +<p> + She was an odd gnome-like figure, with a sharp nose on one side of + her head and an outstanding knob of hair on the other. Into that + knob the thin locks were so tightly strained that her pointed + features had an effect of popping out of bondage. +</p> +<p> + She was London born, brought out by an English official's wife as + dressmaker to the children, remaining in Cairo as wife of a British + corporal. Since no children had resulted to require her care and + the corporal maintained his distaste for thrift, Mrs. Hendricks had + resumed her old trade, and had become a familiar figure to many + fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening, + sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have + graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the + family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a + vis-à-vis when the men in the family dropped in for luncheon. +</p> +<p> + As the girl did not turn her head she looked for approbation to the + third person in the room, a tall, severely handsome Frenchwoman in + black, whose face had the beauty of chiseled marble and the same + quality of cold perfection. This was Madame de Coulevain, teacher of + French and literature to the <i>jeunes filles</i> of Cairo, former + governess of Aimée, returned now to her old room in the palace for + the wedding preparations. +</p> +<p> + There was history behind madame's sculptured face. In an incredibly + impulsive youth she had fled from France with a handsome captain of + Algerian dragoons; after a certain matter at cards he had ceased to + be a captain and became petty official in a Cairo importing house; + later yet, he became an invalid. +</p> +<p> + Life, for the Frenchwoman, was a matter of paying for her husband's + illness, then for his funeral expenses, and then of continuing to + pay for the little one which the climate had required them to send + to a convent in France. +</p> +<p> + There was, at first, the hope of reunion, extinguished by each + added year. What could madame, unknown, unfriended, unaccredited, + accomplish in France? The mere getting there was impossible—the + little one required so much. Her daughter was no dependent upon + charity. And in Cairo madame had a clientèle, she commanded a price. + And so for the child's sake she taught and saved, concentrating now + upon a dot, and feeding her heart with the dutifully phrased letters + arriving each week of the years, and the occasional photographs of + an ever-growing, unknown young creature. +</p> +<p> + It was to madame's care that Aimée had been given when the + motherless girl had grown beyond old Miriam's ministrations, and for + nearly nine years in the palace madame had maintained her courteous + and tactful supervision. Indeed, it was only this last year that + madame had undertaken new relations with the world outside, + perceiving that Aimée would not longer require her. +</p> +<p> + "Excellent," she said now in her careful, unfamiliar English to Mrs. + Hendricks, and in French to Aimée she added, with a hint of + asperity, "Do give her a word. She is trying to please you." +</p> +<p> + "It is very nice, Mrs. Hendricks," said the girl dutifully, bringing + her glance back from that far sky. +</p> +<p> + The little seamstress was instantly all vivacity. "H'and now for the + sash—shall we 'ave it so—or so?" she demanded, attaching the wisp + of tulle experimentally. +</p> +<p> + "As you wish it.... It is very nice," Aimée repeated vaguely. She + picked up a bit of the shimmering stuff and spread it curiously + across her fingers. A dinner gown.... When she wore this she would + be a wife.... The wife of Hamdi Bey.... A shiver went through her + and she dropped the tulle swiftly. +</p> +<p> + In ten days more.... +</p> +<p> + Gone was her first rush of sustaining compassion. Gone was her + fear for her father and her tenderness to him. Only this numb + coldness, this dumb, helpless certainty of a destiny about to be + accomplished.... Only this hopeless, useless brooding upon that + strange brief past. +</p> +<p> + There was a stir at the door and on her shuffling, slippered feet + old Miriam entered, handing some packages to Madame de Coulevain. + Then she turned to revolve about the bright figure of her young + mistress, her eyes glistening fondly, her dark fingers touching a + soft fold of silver ribbon, while under her breath she chanted in a + croon like a lullaby, "Beautiful as the dawn ... she will walk upon + the heart of her husband with foot of rose petals ... she will + dazzle him with the beams of her eyes and with the locks of her + hair, she will bind him to her ... beautiful as the dawn...." +</p> +<p> + It was the marriage chant of Miriam's native village, an old love + song that had come down the wind of centuries. +</p> +<p> + Mrs. Hendricks, thrusting in the final pins, paid not the slightest + attention and Madame de Coulevain displayed interest only in the + packages. If she saw the stiffening of the girl's face and the rigid + aversion of her eyes from the old nurse's adulation she gave no + sign. +</p> +<p> + Towards Aimée's moods madame preserved a calm and sensible + detachment. Never had she invited confidence, and for all the young + girl's charm she had never taken her to her heart in the place of + that absent daughter. As if jealously she had held herself aloof + from such devotion. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps in Aimée's indulged and petted childhood, with a fond pasha + extolling her small triumphs, her dances, her score at tennis at the + legation, madame found a bitter contrast to the lot of that lonely + child in France. Certainly there was nothing in Aimée's life then to + invite compassion, and later, during those hard, mutinous months of + the girl's first veiling and seclusion, she had not tried to soften + the inevitable for her with a useless compassion. +</p> +<p> + So now, perceiving this marriage as one more step in the + irresistible march of destiny for her charge, she overlooked the + youthful fretting and offered the example of her own unmoved + acceptance. +</p> +<p> + "What diamonds!" she said now admiringly, holding up a pin, and, + examining the card. "From Seniha Hanum—the cousin of Hamdi Bey." +</p> +<p> + A moment more she held up the pin but the girl would not give it a + look. +</p> +<p> + "And this, from the same jeweler's," continued madame, while the + dressmaker was unfastening the frock, aided by Miriam, anxious that + no scratch should mar that milk-white skin. +</p> +<p> + "How droll—the box is wrapped in cloth, a cloth of plaid." +</p> +<p> + Aimée spun about. The dress fell, a glistening circle at her feet, + and with regardless haste she tripped over it to madame. +</p> +<p> + "How—strange!" she said breathlessly. +</p> +<p> + A plaid ... A Scotch plaid. Memories of an erect, tartan-draped + young figure, of a thin, bronzed face and dark hair where a tilted + cap sat rakishly ... memories of smiling, boyish eyes, darkening + with sudden emotion ... memories of eager lips.... +</p> +<p> + She took the box from madame. Within the cloth lay a jeweler's case + and within the case a locket of heavily ornamented gold. +</p> +<p> + Her heart beating, she opened it. For a moment she did not + understand. Her own face—her own face smiling back. Yet unfamiliar, + that oddly piled hair, that black velvet ribbon about the throat.... +</p> +<p> + Murmuring, madame shared her wonder. +</p> +<p> + It was Miriam's cry of recognition that told them. +</p> +<p> + "Thy mother—the grace of Allah upon her!—It is thy mother! Eh, + those bright eyes, that long, dark hair that I brushed the many hot + nights upon the roof!" +</p> +<p> + "But you are her image, Aimée," murmured the Frenchwoman, but half + understanding the nurse's rapid gutturals, and then, "Your father's + gift?" +</p> +<p> + With the box in her hands the girl turned from them, fearful of the + tell-tale color in her cheeks. "But whose else—his thought, of + course," she stammered. +</p> +<p> + That plaid was warning her of mystery. +</p> +<p> + The dressmaker was creating a diversion. Leaving, she wished to + consult about the purchases for to-morrow's work, and madame moved + towards the hall with her, talking in her careful English, while + Miriam bent towards the dropped finery. +</p> +<p> + Aimée slipped through another door, into the twilight of her + bedroom, whose windows upon the street were darkened by those + fine-wrought screens of wood. Swiftly she thrust the box from sight, + into the hollow in the mashrubiyeh made in old days to hold a water + bottle where it could be cooled by breezes from the street. +</p> +<p> + Leaning against the woodwork, her fingers curving through the tiny + openings, she stared toward the west. The sky was flushing. Broken + by the circles, the squares, the minute interstices of the + mashrubiyeh, she saw the city taking on the hues of sunset. +</p> +<p> + Suddenly the cry of a muezzin from a nearby minaret came rising and + falling through the streets. +</p> +<p> + "<i>La illahé illallah Mohammedun Ressoulallah</i>—" +</p> +<p> + The call swelled and died away and rose again ... There is no God + but <i>the</i> God and Mahomet is the Prophet of God ... From farther + towers it sounded, echoing and re-echoing, vibrant, insistent, + falling upon crowded streets, penetrating muffling walls. +</p> +<p> + "<i>La illahé illallah</i>—" +</p> +<p> + In the avenue beneath her two Arabs, leading their camels to market, + were removing their shoes and going through the gestures of + ceremonial washing with the dust of the street. +</p> +<p> + "<i>La illahé</i>—" +</p> +<p> + The city was ringing with it. +</p> +<p> + The seamstress and the Frenchwoman, still talking, had passed down + the hall. In the next room Miriam's lips were moving in pious + testimony. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Ech hedu en la illahé</i>—! I testify that there is no God but <i>the</i> + God." +</p> +<p> + In the street the Arabs were bowing towards the east, their heads + touching the earth. +</p> +<p> + And in the window above them a girl was reading a note. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + The last call of the muezzin, falling from the tardy towers of Kait + Bey drifted faintly through the colored air. With resounding whacks + the Arabs were urging on their beast; Miriam, her prayers concluded, + was shaking out silks and tulle with a sidelong glance for that + still figure in the next room, pressing so close against the + guarding screens. +</p> +<p> + She could not see the pallor in the young face. She could not see + the tumult in the dark eyes. She could not see the note, crushed + convulsively against the beating breast, in the fingers which so few + moments ago had drawn it from the hiding place in the box. +</p> +<p> + Ryder had not dared a personal letter. But clearly, and distinctly, + he stated the story of the Delcassés. He gave the facts which the + pasha admitted and the ingenious explanation of the two Aimées. And + for reference he gave the address of the Delcassé aunt and agent in + France and of Ryder and McLean at the Agricultural Bank. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + The pasha did not dine with his daughter that night. He had been + avoiding her of late, a natural reaction from the strain of + too-excessive gratitude. A man cannot be continually humble before + the young! And it was no pleasure to be reminded by her candid eyes + of his late misfortunes and of her absurd reluctance towards + matrimony. +</p> +<p> + As if this marriage were not the best thing for her! As if it were a + hardship! To make sad eyes and draw a mouth because one is to be the + wife of a rich general.... Irrational ... The little sweetmeat was + irritating. +</p> +<p> + To this point Tewfick's buoyancy had brought him, and all the more + hastily because of his eagerness to escape the pangs of that + uncomfortable self-reproach. To Aimée, in her new clear-sightedness + of misery, it was bitterly apparent that he was reconciled with her + lot and careless of it. +</p> +<p> + So blinded had been her young affection that it was a hard + awakening, and she was too young, too cruelly involved, to feel for + his easy humors that amused tolerance of larger acquaintance with + human nature. She had grown swiftly bitter and resentful, and deeply + cold. +</p> +<p> + And now this letter. It dazed her, like a flame of lightning before + her eyes, and then, like lightning, it lit up the world with + terrifying luridity. Fiery colored, unfamiliar, her life trembled + about her. +</p> +<p> + Truth or lies? Custom and habit stirred incredulously to reject the + supposition. The romance, the adventure of youth, dared its swift + acceptance. How could she know? Intuitively she shrank from any + question to the pasha, realizing the folly and futility of exposing + her suspicion. If he needed to lie, lie he would—and in her + understanding of that, she read her own acceptance of the + possibility of his needing to lie. +</p> +<p> + Madame de Coulevain? Madame had never known her mother. Only old + Miriam had known her mother and Miriam was the pasha's slave. But + the old woman was unsuspecting now, and full of disarming comfort in + this marriage of her wild darling. +</p> +<p> + Through dinner she planned the careless-seeming questions. And then + in her negligée, as the old nurse brushed out her hair for the + night, "Dadi," said the girl, in a faint voice, "am I truly like my + mother?" and when Miriam had finished her fond protestation that + they were as like as two roses, as two white roses, bloom and bud, + she launched that little cunning phrase on which she had spent such + eager hoping. +</p> +<p> + "And was I like her when I was little—when first she came to my + father?" +</p> +<p> + "Eh—yes. Always thou wast the tiny image which Allah—Glory to his + Name!—had made of her," came the nurse's assurance. +</p> +<p> + "I am glad," said Aimée, in a trembling voice. +</p> +<p> + She dared not press that more. Confronted with her unconscious + admission the old woman would destroy it, feigning some evasion. But + there it was, for as much as it was worth.... +</p> +<p> + Presently then, she found another question to slip into the old + woman's narrative of the pasha's grief. +</p> +<p> + "Eh, to hear a man weep," Miriam was murmuring. "Her beauty had set + its spell upon him, and—" +</p> +<p> + "And he lost her so soon. Three or four years only, was it not," + ventured Aimée, "that they had of life together?" +</p> +<p> + It seemed that Miriam's brush missed a stroke. +</p> +<p> + "Years I forget," the nurse muttered, "but tears I remember," and + she began to talk of other things. +</p> +<p> + But it seemed to Aimée that she had answered. As for that other + matter, of the dead Delcassé child, she dared not refer to it, lest + Miriam tell the pasha. But how many times, she remembered, had she + been told that she was her mother's only one! +</p> +<p> + Yet, oh, to know, to hear all the story, to learn Ryder's discovery + of it! It was all as strange and startling as a tale of Djinns. And + the life that it held out to her, the enchanted hope of freedom, of + aid—Oh, not again would she refuse his aid! +</p> +<p> + She had no plans, no purposes. But that night over her + hastily-donned frock she slipped the black street mantle and when at + last, after endless waiting, the murmuring old palace was safely + still and dark, she stole down the spiral stair and gained the + garden. And then, a phantom among its shadows, she fled to the rose + bushes by the gate. +</p> +<p> + Breathlessly she knelt and dug into the hiding place of that gate's + key. To the furthest corner her fingers explored the hole, pushing + furiously against the earth. And then she drew back her hand and + crushed it against her face to check the nervous sobs. +</p> +<p> + The hole was empty. The key was gone. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER X +</h2> +<h3> + THE RECEPTION +</h3> +<p> + In Tewfick Pasha's harem everything was astir. +</p> +<p> + It was the morning of the marriage, almost the very hour when the + wedding cortège would bear the bride from her father's home to the + house of her husband. +</p> +<p> + The invited guests were already arrived and streaming through the + reception rooms, a bright, feminine tide in evening toilettes, + surrounding the exhibited gifts or pausing about tables of cool + syrups, and their soft, low voices, the delicious musical tones of + highbred Turkish women, rose like a murmuring of somnolent bees to + the tenser regions about, tightening the excitement of haste. +</p> +<p> + The bride was not yet ready. Still and white, she was the only image + of calm in that fluttering, confusing room. Her nearer friends were + hovering about her, and her maids of honor, two charming little + Turks in rose robes, were draping her veil while old Miriam, + resplendent in green and silver, endeavored jealously to outmaneuver + them. +</p> +<p> + On her knees, the gnome-like Mrs. Hendricks was adding an orange + blossom to the laces on the train. Then she sat back on her heels, + her head a-tilt like a curious bird's, her eyes beaming + sentimentally upon the bride. +</p> +<p> + "The prettiest h'I h'ever did see," she pronounced with + satisfaction, "H'as pretty as a wax figger now—h'only a thought + <i>too</i> waxy." +</p> +<p> + And like a wax figure indeed, immobile, rigid, the bride was + standing before them, arrayed at last in the shimmering white of the + sweeping satin, overrich of lace and orange flowers, and shrouded in + the clouding waves of her veil. White as her robes, pale as death + and as still, the girl looked out at them, and only that sick pallor + of her face and the glitter of her dark eyes betrayed the tumult + within. +</p> +<p> + "Your diadem, my dear—you are keeping us attending," came Madame de + Coulevain's voice from the door. +</p> +<p> + The diadem, that heavy circlet of brilliants which crowned the + Eastern bride in place of the orange wreath of Western convention, + must not be touched by the bride's fingers but placed by one of her + friends, married and married but once, and exceptionally happy in + that marriage. +</p> +<p> + Ghul-al-Din, Aimée's selection from her friends, stepped hastily + forward now, a soft, dimpled, slow-smiling girl, her eyes drowsy + with domesticity. No question of Ghul-al-Din's happiness! She + extolled her husband, a young captain of cavalry, and she adored her + infant son, a prodigy among children. Life for her was a rosy, + unquestioning absorption. +</p> +<p> + A shaft of irony sped through Aimée, as she bent her head for its + crowning at this young wife's hands, and received the ceremonial + wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once + in her lifetime. Irony was the only salvation for the hour; without + that outlet for her tortured spirit she felt she would grow suddenly + mad, hysterical and babbling or passionate and wild. +</p> +<p> + So many moods had stormed through her since that night when she had + found all hope of rescue gone with her lost key! So many impulses + seethed frantically now beneath her quiet, as she faced for the last + time that white-misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing + to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy robe, to scatter the + ornaments and drive out all those maddening spectators, all those + interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of her + humiliation. +</p> +<p> + Arranging her veil, draping her satins, as if gauze and silk were + all that mattered to this hour! Wishing her happiness—as if + happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing! Smiling, + fluttering, complimenting, lending to the ghastly sacrifice the + familiar acceptances of every day.... +</p> +<p> + If only she could wake from this nightmare and find that it was all + a dream. If only she could brush this confusion from her senses and + from her heart its dumb terrors.... If only she had the courage for + some desperate revolt, some outburst of strength— +</p> +<p> + "I am ready," she said faintly, turning from the glass, and moved + towards the door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that + train of three yards length, which stretched so regally behind her + in her slow descent of the stairs. +</p> +<p> + In the French drawing-room below her father was waiting for the + ceremonial farewell, in which the father received the daughter's + thanks for all his care of her. +</p> +<p> + Mechanically Aimée advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her + eyes—and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless, + questioning intensity that it was like something palpable.... She + had not foreseen this, sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant + passion of her spirit.... +</p> +<p> + Her father? Was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so, + careless, callous—or was it only a father's semblance, and did + there lie in the background of those petted, childish years some + darker shadow, of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and + broken her heart—? +</p> +<p> + Like flashing light that look passed between them. It penetrated + Tewfick's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his + olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's + pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his + power,—but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in + that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul. +</p> +<p> + It was a moment in which the last cord of their relationship was + severed forever. +</p> +<p> + She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom + dictated, but to sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a + maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but + with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered. +</p> +<p> + And yet there was wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear + and supplication. +</p> +<p> + Useless to beg now. She knew it, and yet the eyes implored. +</p> +<p> + And then she smiled. And before that smile Tewfick faltered in his + paternal benediction and hastened the phrases. +</p> +<p> + Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a + hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs + for the journey to the bridegroom's house. +</p> +<p> + That day Aimée did not put on her veil. On either side of her, as + she went out her father's gate, huge negroes held up silken walls of + damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that + awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulevain and the two little + maids of honor. +</p> +<p> + It was when the carriage began to move that the panic inside of her + grew to whirlwind. The horse' hoofs, trotting, trotting, the motion + of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If + she could only stop it! If she could only cry out, tear open the + windows, scream to the passers by. She knew these were only the + impotent visions of hysteria, but she indulged them pitifully. +</p> +<p> + She saw herself, in those moments, helpless, and hopeless, passing + on into the slavery of this marriage—Aimée, no longer the daughter + of Tewfick Pasha, but Aimée Delcassé, child of a dead Frenchman, + inheritor of freedom, sold like any dancing girl.... +</p> +<p> + And her own lips had assented. In the supreme, silly uselessness of + sacrifice she had given herself for the safety of that man who had + spent such careless indulgence upon her ... that man whom perhaps + her mother had loved and perhaps had hated.... +</p> +<p> + Faster and faster the horses were trotting, leading the long file of + carriages and impatient motors that bore the relatives and guests + and trousseau, rolling on under the lebbeks and sycamores of the + wide Shubra Avenue, once the delight of fashionables before the + Gezireh Drive had drained it of its throngs and its prestige. +</p> +<p> + Now some bright-eyed urchins ran out from their games in the dust to + curious attention, and through a half open gate Aimée caught once a + glimpse of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled + greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Farther on came + glimpses of farm lands, the wheat rising in bright spears, and of + well-wooded heights and in the distance the white houses of + Demerdache against the Gibel Achmar beyond. +</p> +<p> + But where were they bearing her? Aimée had a despairing sense of + distance and desolation as the carriage turned again—Abdullah, the + coachman, having traversed unnecessary miles to gratify his pride + before the house of his parents—and made a zigzag way towards the + river, where old palaces rose from the backwaters, their faces + hidden by high walls or covered with heavy vines and moss. +</p> +<p> + Deeper and deeper grew the girl's dismay. It was a different world + from that bright, modern Cairo that she knew; this was as remote + from her daily life as the old streets of Al Raschid. Her thoughts + flew forward to that unknown lord, that Hamdi Bey, whose image she + had refused to assemble to her consciousness. Now she comforted her + terror with a sudden assumption of age and dignity and kindness, of + a courtesy that would protect her and a deference that would assuage + the horror of a life together, when unknown, fearful familiarities + would alone vibrate in the empty monotonies. +</p> +<p> + Before a high wall the carriage had stopped. A huge, repellent + Ethiopian was standing before an opened doorway, through which a + rich carpet was spread. +</p> +<p> + "Ah, but he looks like an ogre, that new eunuch of yours, Aimée," + murmured one of the little Turks. The other, more touched with + thought, gave her a disturbed glance, and laughed in nervousness. +</p> +<p> + Madame, alone serene, ignored the dismaying impression. +</p> +<p> + "The palace is of a fine, ancient beauty, I am told," she mentioned + cheerfully. +</p> +<p> + For one wild instant Aimée thought to plead with her, to implore her + to tell Abdullah to drive on, to give her the freedom of flight, if + only flight down those deserted streets. And then a mad vision of + herself in her bridal robes in flight, brought the hysterical + laughter to her throat. The time for flight had gone by ... And as + for madame's pity on her—this was not the first time that Aimée had + thought of invoking her aid, but she had always known, too well, + that thought's supreme futility. +</p> +<p> + Sympathetic as Madame de Coulevain might be in her inmost heart—and + Aimée divined in her an understanding pity for the necessities of + existence—never would that sympathy betray her to rashness. She + never would believe that in serving Aimée she would not be ruining + her; and even if assured of Aimée's safety, she could never be + brought to betray her own reputation for truthworthiness among the + harems of Cairo.... As well appeal to the rocks of the Mokattam + hills. +</p> +<p> + The carriage stopped. The negroes extended the damask walls, and one + sprang to open the carriage door and bear the bride's train. In one + moment's parting of the silken walls the girl saw a sun-flooded + cluster of staring faces, thronging for her arrival, and then the + damask intervened and through its lane, followed by her duenna and + her maids of honor, she entered the arched doorway. +</p> +<p> + She was in a garden, a great gloomy place, over-spread with ancient, + moss-encrusted trees. A broken, marble fountain flung up waters into + which no sunlight flashed, and the heavy stepping stones, leading to + it, were buried in untrodden grass. A garden in which no one + lingered. +</p> +<p> + The Ethiopian was marshaling them to the left, to an entrance in the + dark palace walls before them. Behind them the oncoming guests were + streaming out in veiled procession. +</p> +<p> + He opened a door. Ancient, beautiful arches framed a long vestibule + and against a background of profuse cut flowers a man's figure + stepped forward in the glittering uniform of the Sultan's guard. + Aimée had a confused impression of a thin, meager, dandified figure + with a waspish waist ... of a blond mustache with upstanding ends + ... of sallow cheek-bones and small, light eyes smiling at her in a + strained, eager curiosity.... +</p> +<p> + Through all her sinking dismay she had a flash of clear, + enlightening irony at that look's suspense. If she were not as + represented! If his cousin's fervor had misled his hope—! +</p> +<p> + But in that instant's encounter his eyes cleared to triumph and + gayety, and he smiled—a smile curiously feline, ironic, for all its + intended ingratiation—a conqueror's smile, winged to reassure and + melt. +</p> +<p> + He stepped forward. There were formal words of welcome to which she + returned a speechless bow, and then he offered his arm and conducted + her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its scabbard, to the + apartment which was to be her home, and the prison for the spirit + and the body. +</p> +<p> + She knew in a moment that she hated this man and that he inspired + her with fear and horror. +</p> +<p> + Across a long expanse of drawing-room he conducted her to the + ancient marriage throne upon its platform, surmounted by a pompous + crown from which old, embroidered silks hung heavily. +</p> +<p> + Then with an unheard phrase, and another bow, he left her to the + day-long ordeal of the reception while he withdrew to his own + entertainment at her father's house. She would not see him again + until night, when he would pay her a call of ceremony. +</p> +<p> + She saw his figure hesitating a moment, as he faced the oncoming + guests, such a flood of femininity, unmantled now and unveiled, + sparkling in rainbow hues of silks and tulle and gauze that he had + never before faced and never would again. Like a bright wave the + throng closed about him and then surged on towards the bride upon + the throne. +</p> +<p> + How often, in the last years, Aimée had pitied that poor puppet of a + bride, stuck there like some impaled, winged creature, helpless for + flight, to the exhibition of the long stream of passersby! How often + she had promised herself that never would this be her fate, never + would she be given to an unknown! And now— +</p> +<p> + She was smiling as she faced them, that light, fixed smile she had + seen so often on others' lips, the smile of pride trying desperately + to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious. + Satiric, cynical, or sympathetic, that light smile defied them all, + but beneath its guard she felt she was slowly bleeding to death of + some mortal hurt. +</p> +<p> + The sympathy unconsciously betrayed, was hardest. The whispers of + her young maids of honor, "Really, Aimée, he looks so young! One + would never surmise," were more galling in their intended + consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends' own + shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man than the barbed dart + of the uncaring, inquisitive, "How do you find him, my dear? He has + the reputation for conquest!" +</p> +<p> + They were all there, her friends, young, slim, modish Turkish girls + whose time had not yet come, glancing quizzically about the ancient + drawing room, with its solid side of mashrubiyeh, its old wall + panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their + glances back at her, as if to ask, "And is this our revoltée? Is + this her end, in this dim, old palace among the ghosts of the past?" +</p> +<p> + Some, the frankest, murmured, "But why did you not refuse?" and + others attempted consolation with a light, "As well the first as the + last—since we must all come to it." +</p> +<p> + Of the married women there were those who raised blank, bitter eyes + to her, and others, more mild, romantic, affectionate, tried to + infuse encouragement into their smiles as if they said, + "Come—courage—it's not so bad. And what would you? We are women, + after all; we do not need so much for happiness. +</p> +<p> + "Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your + spirit in place of a master delighting in your beauty alone, what + are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies? For other + races, perhaps—but for you, take hold of life. There are realities + yet in it to bring you joy." +</p> +<p> + It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their + pressure of her hands. +</p> +<p> + And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile + demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening + unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in + vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes + saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of + terror rose higher and higher in her soul. +</p> +<p> + Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night + when she found the key was gone. +</p> +<p> + Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen + back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the + breaking sobs of rebellion and despair—and of a longing so deep and + so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a + pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar. +</p> +<p> + Never again would she see him now.... Never would she know—never + would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe + her still aloof, incredulous.... It was finished—forever and ever. +</p> +<p> + She had told herself that before. But always there had been the key. + And now there was no key and no escape and her heart broke itself + against the iron of necessity. +</p> +<p> + She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion, + not peace but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison + gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never + again the sight of that too-remembered face and the sound of that + voice—why, then, as well one fate as another. And it was too late + now to recede. +</p> +<p> + So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its + part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half-contemptuous + pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she + would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she + would keep its own, in its unsullied dreams ... and in its + memories.... Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly borne. +</p> +<p> + But now she had seen the man. Now this wild dislike, this sickening + terror. +</p> +<p> + To be alone with him, to have only the few days grace of courtship + which the Mohammadan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be + forever at his mercy in this solitary palace, with its echoing + corridors, its blackened walla, its damp breath of age.... +</p> +<p> + She thought wildly of death. +</p> +<p> + And all the time she was smiling, bending her cheek to the kiss of a + friend, feeling the fingers of some well-wisher press upon her, + listening to praises of her beauty.... +</p> +<p> + For she was beautiful. No image of wax now. The scarlet of her + frightened blood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as + the jewels in her diadem, and beneath the thrown-back veil her dark + hair revealed its lovely wealth. +</p> +<p> + "Is she not a rose—will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard + that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared + on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal + youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated + master. +</p> +<p> + And still the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the + flickering light and shadow of the mashrubiyeh, slender young Turks + or blonde Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or + malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some + rotund matron grave and serene, her head encircled with an old + fashioned turban of gauze, her stout flesh encased in heavy silks, + bought at Damask so as not to enrich the Unbelievers at Lyons. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + And then the spectacle changed, the black street mantles appeared, + yashmaks and tcharchafs, for now the doors were opened to all the + feminine world, and there came strange, unknown women, slipping out + from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace, old-timers often, + draped and turbaned in the fashion of some far province of their + youth; women, incredibly fat, in rich stuffs of Asia, their bright, + deep-sunken eyes spying delightedly upon the scene, or furtive, poor + women, keeping courage in twos and threes. +</p> +<p> + Now, too, at four, came the women from the Embassies, a Russian girl + with whom Aimée had played tennis in ages past, rosy now with + yesterday's sun and sleepy with last night's dance, who touched the + bride's hand as if it were the hand of one half-dead, already + consigned to the tomb; other girls she did not know, who stared at + her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities; older women, + experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and smoking cigarettes + and gossiping of their own affairs, and occasionally among them a + tourist agog with wonder and exultation, storing away details for a + lifetime of talk, asking amiably the most incredible questions.... +</p> +<p> + "And is it true you have never met your husband? Listen, Jane—she + says she has never met him—" +</p> +<p> + A girl in a creamy white silk came forward a little uncertainly. She + was a pretty girl, with a curve of ruddy hair visible under her + smart straw, and very bright eyes, where shyness was at variance + with a friendly smile. +</p> +<p> + Indeed Jinny Jeffries was extraordinarily intimidated by the + occasion. She had a distinct sense of intrusion mingling with her + delight at having intruded, and she murmured her good wishes in an + almost inaudible tone. +</p> +<p> + "It is very good of you to let us come ... I wish you every + happiness," she said. +</p> +<p> + Beside her a tall slender figure, in black tcharchaf and yashmak, + made its appearance. +</p> +<p> + Aimée's eyes slipped past the pretty American; the mechanical smile + was frozen on her lips. Over the black veil she saw the hazel eyes, + bright with excitement, vivid as speech; the eyes of the masquerader + in the Scotch costume, the eyes of the man at the garden gate—Jack + Ryder's eyes ... the eyes of her dreams. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XI +</h2> +<h3> + THE FORTY DOORS +</h3> +<p> + When Ryder had despatched from the jeweler's who had polished the + locket for him, that package with its secret note, and its warning + plaid, he had no real assurance that the message would fall into + Aimée's hands. But he could think of nothing better, and he argued + very favorably for his stratagem. +</p> +<p> + That miniature should have some effect, and given the miniature, and + the bit of plaid cloth, Aimée's quick wit ought to divine a message. +</p> +<p> + She had always the key, he remembered, and the power of egress from + her prison. And surely it ought not to be difficult for her to + devise some way of getting a letter into the post. +</p> +<p> + So his hope fluctuated between the garden gate and the daily mail at + the Bank, and he rather surprised McLean by the frequency and + brevity of his visits, and by the duration of his stay in Cairo. +</p> +<p> + For that he had an excuse, both to McLean and to the deserted + Thatcher, at the excavation camp, two excuses in fact—some belated + identification work to be done at the Museum and a cracked wisdom + tooth. +</p> +<p> + Chiefly he spoke of the necessity for dentistry and accounted for + his moods with his molar. +</p> +<p> + Of moods he had many. Moods when he contemplated his behavior + lightly and brightly or darkly, in unrelieved disgust, moods when he + refused to contemplate it at all. But he stayed. That was the + conspicuous and enduring thing. He stayed. +</p> +<p> + Jinny Jeffries returned from the Nile by express to find him + ensconced at her hotel, and her bright confidence suffered no + diminution of its self respect. And it was through Jinny that chance + set another straw of circumstance dancing his way. +</p> +<p> + Jinny had a frock she wished repaired. Mrs. Heath-Brown, whom she + had met upon the Nile, recommended to her a Mrs. Hendricks, wife of + a British soldier and a most clever little needle woman. Jinny + looked up Mrs. Hendricks and found it impossible to secure her for + some days as she was busy refitting for a fashionable wedding in the + Mohammedan world. +</p> +<p> + A night later, and two nights before the wedding, Jinny made a + narrative of the circumstances for Jack Ryder's benefit. +</p> +<p> + "Such frocks h'as h'I 'ave to do—and the young lady no more + caring!" had been a saying of the Hendricks that Jinny passed + interestedly on to Jack. She had no memory of the young lady's name, + but distinctly she recalled that she was young and beautiful and to + marry a general. +</p> +<p> + It was enough to launch Jinny's eager interest in Mohammedan + marriages and foster the wish that she might attend one. She + regretted Mrs. Heath-Brown's absence and her lack of acquaintance, + and suggested that Jack ought to know some one— +</p> +<p> + "Better than that, <i>I'll</i> take you," said Jack with a promptness + that brought a light to Miss Jeffries' eyes. +</p> +<p> + There was also a light in Jack Ryder's eyes, a swift burning of + excitement and adventure. +</p> +<p> + Why not? The thing was possible. Muffled in a tcharchaf and veiled + with a heavy yashmak, armed with enough Arabic for the briefest of + encounters, he might dare the danger. Who in the world would + discover him? Who would ever know? +</p> +<p> + The thing was unthinkable. It was a desperate desecration, + comparable only, in his vague analogies, to the Mecca pilgrimage and + profanation of a Holy Tomb. But its very improbability would prevent + detection. +</p> +<p> + Only Jinny had to keep her mouth extremely shut—before and + afterwards. +</p> +<p> + He impressed this upon her so thoroughly, as they did their shopping + for the costume together the next morning, that she had compunctious + moments of solicitude when she said he really ought not to.... She + would feel responsible.... +</p> +<p> + Thereupon he laughed, and dared her to be game, and she grew all + mirthful confidence again. +</p> +<p> + But that night, sitting alone in a native café over his Turkish + coffee, Ryder was grimly serious. +</p> +<p> + He knew that it was a mad thing to do. He felt, not so much the + danger he ran from discovery, but the danger to his already + shattered peace of mind from another glimpse of that strange girl + ... that young unknown, on whom he had spent such time and thought, + of late, that she seemed a very part of his existence. +</p> +<p> + What was the good of going to her wedding reception? Feebly he told + himself that it was his only chance to inform her upon the history + of the Delcassés. There might have been reasons for her + non-appearance at the gate, for her not writing.... He could have no + glimmering of what went on behind those barred windows. This was his + only chance—he meant to say, to tell her—but his eager senses + murmured, to see her again. +</p> +<p> + That was it—to see her again. He owned the lure, at last, with a + bitter ruefulness. But—he brightened up at that—it was partly his + duty to himself. Now he had all sorts of fool imaginings about this + girl. He was remembering her as something lovelier than a Houri, + more enchanting than fairy magic, more sweet than spring. He owed it + to himself to rout these imbecile prepossessions and prove clearly + and dispassionately that the girl was just a very nice little girl, + a pretty bride, marrying into a very distinct life from his own—and + a girl with whom he would not have an idea in common. A girl, in + fact, far inferior to any American. A girl not to be compared to + Jinny Jeffries. +</p> +<p> + Besides, there was fun in the thing. It tempted him tremendously. + It was adventurous, romantic forbidden. +</p> +<p> + He heard the word echoed in Turkish behind him. +</p> +<p> + So engrossed in his thoughts had he been that he had been + inattentive to the rhythm of old Khazib, the tale teller's voice, as + he held forth, from the divan, beside his long-stemmed pipe, to his + nightly audience, of men and boys, camel drivers, small merchants, + desert men from the long caravans who were the frequenters of this + café. +</p> +<p> + To-night there were few about the old man, and Ryder had small + difficulty in drawing nearer the circle. A green-turbaned Arab, with + the profile of a Washington and the naïve eyes of youth, whispered + to him courteously that it was the tale of the Third Kaland, and the + Prince Azib was in the palace of the forty damsels who were + farewelling him, as they were to depart, according to custom, for + forty days. +</p> +<p> + Khazib, with a faint salutation of his turban towards the newcomer, + went slowly, sonorously on with his tale. +</p> +<p> + "We fear," said the damsel unto Azib, "lest thou contraire our + charge and disobey our injunctions. Here now we commit to thee the + keys of the palace which containeth forty chambers and thou mayest + open of these thirty and nine, but beware (and we conjure thee by + Allah and by the lives of us!) lest thou open the fortieth door, for + therein is that which shall separate us forever." +</p> +<p> + For a moment the café faded from Ryder's eyes. He was in the gloom + of a garden, a shadowy darkness just touched by a crescent moon, and + beside him in the shrubbery a dark-shrouded form, shaking its + shawled head at him in denial, and whispering, lightly but + tremblingly. "It is a forbidden door ... forbidden as that + fortieth.... There are thirty and nine doors in your life, monsieur, + that you may open, but this is the forbidden...." +</p> +<p> + He had meant to look up that tale. And now chance was reminding him + of it again. A superstitious man—Ryder's great grandfather, + perhaps, would have felt it an omen of warning, and a devout + man—Ryder's grandfather, perhaps—would have taken it for a sign + from Heaven to divert his steps. Ryder reflected upon coincidence. +</p> +<p> + "When I saw her weeping," Khazib was intoning, and now Ryder + attended, his scanty knowledge of the vernacular straining and + overleaping the blanks, "Prince Azib said to himself, 'By Allah, I + will never open that fortieth door, never, and in no wise!'" +</p> +<p> + "A wise bird," thought Ryder to himself, drawing on his cigarette. +</p> +<p> + "And I bade her farewell," continued the voice slipping into the + first person. "Thereupon all departed, flying like birds, leaving me + alone in the palace. When evening drew near, I opened the door of + the first chamber and found myself in a place like one of the + pleasances of Paradise. It was a garden with trees of freshest + green and ripe fruits of yellow sheen. And I walked among the trees + and I smelt the breath of the flowers and heard the birds sing their + praise to Allah, the One, the Almighty." +</p> +<p> + "<i>Allhamdollillah</i>," murmured Ryder's neighbors reverently. +</p> +<p> + "And I looked upon the apple, whose hue is parcel red and parcel + yellow ... and I looked upon the quince whose fragrance putteth to + shame musk and ambergris ... and upon the pear whose taste + surpasseth sherbet and sugar, and the apricot, whose beauty striketh + the eye as she were a polished ruby.... +</p> +<p> + "On the morrow I opened the second door and found myself in a + spacious plain set with tall date palms and watered by a running + stream whose banks were shrubbed with rose and jasmine, while privet + and eglantine, oxe-eye, violet and lily, narcissus, origane and the + winter gilliflower carpeted the borders; and the breath of the + breeze swept over those sweet-smelling growths...." +</p> +<p> + How inadequate, Ryder realized, had been the description given by + the Book of Genesis to the Garden of Eden. +</p> +<p> + "And the third door," droned on the rhythmic voice, "into an open + hall, hung with cages of sandal-wood and eagle-wood; full of birds + which made sweet music, such as the mocking bird, and the cusha, the + merle, the turtle dove—and the Nubian ring-dove." +</p> +<p> + A trifle restively Ryder stirred. He liked birds but he wanted to + be getting on to that fortieth door and this was slow progress. Not + a sign of impatience marred the bright, absorbed content of the + other listeners, intent now upon the wonders behind that the fourth + chamber revealed, stores of "pearls and jacinths and beryls, and + emeralds and corals and carbuncles and all manner of precious gems + and jewels such as the tongue of man could not describe." +</p> +<p> + The story teller proceeded, "Then, quoth Prince Azib, now verily am + I the monarch of the age, since by Allah's grace this enormous + wealth is mine; and I have forty damsels under my hand nor is there + any to claim them save myself." +</p> +<p> + The handsome Arab beside Ryder inhaled his pipe luxuriously. "By the + grace of Allah!" he said reverently. +</p> +<p> + "Then I gave not over opening place after place until nine and + thirty days were passed and in that time I had entered every chamber + except that one whose door I was charged not to open. But my + thoughts ever ran upon that forbidden fortieth and Satan urged me to + open it for my own undoing...." +</p> +<p> + "I see his finish," said Ryder interestedly to himself—and he + thought of the analogy. +</p> +<p> + "So I stood before the chamber, and after a few moments' hesitation, + opened the door which was plated with red gold and entered. I was + met by a perfume whose like I had never before smelt; and so sharp + and subtle was the odor that it made my senses drunken as with + strong wine, and I fell to the ground in a fainting fit which lasted + a full hour. When I came to myself I strengthened my heart, and + entering found myself in a chamber bespread with saffron and blazing + with light.... Presently, I spied a noble steed, black as the murks + of night when murkiest, standing ready saddled and bridled (and his + saddle was of red gold) before two mangers one of clear crystal + wherein was husked sesame, and the other, also of crystal containing + water of the rose scented with musk. When I saw this I marveled and + said to myself, 'Doubtless in this animal must be some wondrous + mystery, and Satan—'" +</p> +<p> + "Satan the Stoned!" murmured Ryder's neighbor religiously. +</p> +<p> + "Satan cozened me, so I led him without and mounted him ... and + struck him withal. When he felt the blow he neighed a neigh with a + sound like deafening thunder and opening a pair of wings flew up + with me in the firmament of heaven far beyond the eyesight of man. + After a full hour of flight he descended and shaking me off his back + lashed me on the face with his tail, and gouged out my left eye, + causing it to roll along my cheek. Then he flew away." +</p> +<p> + On rolled the voice, narrating the prince's descent to the table of + the other one-eyed youths, but Ryder was unheeding. And at the close + he inclined his head with the other listeners, murmuring "May Allah + increase thy prosperity," as he felt in his pockets for the silver + which the others were drawing from turban and sleeves and sash to + lay in the patriarch's lap, and then raised his head to question + diffidently, "Would you interpret, O Khazib, the meaning of that + door? For I hear that it hath now become a saying of a forbidden + thing." +</p> +<p> + The sage hesitated, sucking at his pipe. Then he said slowly, "To + every man, O Youth, is there a forbidden door, beyond which waits + the steed of high adventure ... with wings beyond man's riding. And + so the rider is lost and his vision is gone." +</p> +<p> + "But for him who could ride?" Ryder suggested. +</p> +<p> + "Inshallah! Who can say till he has tried his destiny—and better + are the nine and thirty chambers of safe pleasance than the lonely + sightlessness of the outcast one.... It is a tale which if it were + written upon the eye-corners with needle-gravers, were a warning to + those who would be warned." +</p> +<p> + For a moment their eyes held each other, smiling but grave. Ryder's + thoughts were of the morrow, of that forbidden entry he was planning + to make, of the risks, the wild uncertainties.... +</p> +<p> + Wisdom and counsel looked significantly out at him out of those + patriarchal eyes. Prudence and sanity clamored within him for a + hearing. +</p> +<p> + And then he smiled, the whimsical, boyish smile of young + adventuring. +</p> +<p> + "But whoever, O, my father, had opened that forbidden door + the veriest crack, and breathed its scent and glimpsed its + dazzlement—then for him there is no turning back," he confided. +</p> +<p> + He rose and Khazib's eyes followed him. +</p> +<p> + "Luck go with you, my son," he said clearly, "in Allah's name," and + smiling in faint ruefulness, "May Allah heed thee!" Ryder murmured + piously. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XII +</h2> +<h3> + THE UNINVITED GUEST +</h3> +<p> + Now as he stood before Aimée, and saw her eyes widen with + recognition, he knew that he would have need of all his luck and all + his wit. He stepped hastily forward. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Alhamdolillah</i>—Glory to God that he has permitted me to behold + you this day," he murmured, in the studiously sing-song Arabic that + might be expected from a humble Turkish woman in plain mantle and + yashmak. "May Allah continue to spread before thee the carpet of + enjoyment—" and then lower, almost muffled by the thick veil, "Can + you give me a moment—?" +</p> +<p> + Eagerly, significantly, his eyes met hers. +</p> +<p> + Half fearfully, Aimée flashed an excited look around her. The space + before the marriage throne had thinned, for there were no more + arrivals waiting to offer their congratulations and the guests were + clustering now about the tables for refreshment or drifting into the + next salon where behind firmly stretched silken walls a stringed + orchestra was playing. +</p> +<p> + Miss Jeffries alone was lingering near, but she moved off now—at a + secret look from Ryder—with an appearance of unconcern. +</p> +<p> + "I am going to try my vernacular on the bride," Ryder had told her. + "Don't linger or look alarmed. I won't give the show away." +</p> +<p> + So there was no one to overhear a low-toned colloquy between the + bride and the veiled woman, no one to note or wonder that the veiled + woman was speaking, strangely enough, in rapid English. +</p> +<p> + "When I didn't hear from you I had to come, to know if you received + the package and letter I sent—" +</p> +<p> + With a swift gesture of her little ringed hand Aimée drew from the + laces on her bosom that heavy gold locket. +</p> +<p> + "Indeed I have it—and the note, too, I found. But I could not write + you. There was no way—no one to trust to mail it. And they had + stolen my key," she whispered, and the confessing words with their + quiver of forlornness told Ryder something of the story of those + helpless days and nights. +</p> +<p> + He murmured, "I didn't dare write you more personally for fear they + would find the note." +</p> +<p> + "I understood. That plaid about the box—that was so clever a + warning. I kept the box and hunted in it." +</p> +<p> + "I wanted to tell you more about that locket. I dug it up myself + from the tomb I was excavating—do you remember how you wished that + I would dig from the sands whatever secret I most desired? And I + found that.... And it happened that at McLean's I had met the French + agent who was searching for any trace of the Delcassés, of the wife + and child of the explorer who had disappeared fifteen years before. + That miniature was your image, and I guessed at once. McLean and I + went to the pasha—Oh, I didn't tell him I'd met you!" he flung in, + his eyes twinkling, "and we pretended we knew all about his marriage + to Madame Delcassé and he owned up without a quiver. But when we + tried to claim you for the French family, he doubled like a hare. He + said the Delcassé child was dead, died when his own child was a + baby, and that you were his own. But I was sure that you were more + than fourteen, and that he was simply putting it over on us so as to + have this marriage go on without interference—and so I tried to get + the story to you. Even now I thought you ought to know," he added, + as if in palliation of his invasion here. +</p> +<p> + For he realized now how tremendous an invasion it was. +</p> +<p> + All the guests about him had not given him that feeling, all that + sea of femininity, those grave matrons whose serenely unveiled faces + would burn with shame to be beheld by this stranger, those bright, + slim girls in their extravagant frocks, their tulle, their lace, + their pearls, their diamonds, all the hidden charms that no man had + yet seen stirred in him no more than an excited and adventurous + curiosity. +</p> +<p> + But the vision of Aimée—that delicate beauty in its tragic irony + of throne and diadem! It touched him to tenderness and to an actual + sense of sacrilege at the freedom of his gaze. No moonlight vision + this, ethereal and dream-like, but a vivid, disquieting radiance of + dark, shining eyes and rose-flushed cheeks. He had never seen her + hair before, midnight hair, escaping little curls from the veil and + the diadem. And he had never really seen her mouth—wistful and gay, + like the mouth of the miniature ... nor her chin, so tender and + willful ... nor her skin, satin-soft, in its veiling from the + daylight.... +</p> +<p> + She was more than young and sweet and fair. She was beauty, beauty + with its elusive, ineluctable spell, entangled with the appeal of + her helplessness. +</p> +<p> + A bright blush flooded her now and her eyes fell in confusion, + before the prolonging of his look. +</p> +<p> + "But it is dangerous—your being here," she murmured. +</p> +<p> + "The fortieth door," he reminded her. +</p> +<p> + Under her breath, "Ah, you remember?" +</p> +<p> + "I remember. And but last night I heard Khazib, the story teller, + tell the tale, and I thought of you and your warning—of the door + that hid you, that it was forbidden for me to open." +</p> +<p> + "And so you opened it, monsieur." Faintly she smiled, with downcast + lashes. +</p> +<p> + "And I came as you first came to me—in mantle and veil." +</p> +<p> + For a moment their thoughts fled back to that masquerade, which + seemed so long ago. +</p> +<p> + "But it is too late," she said tremulously. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Is</i> it too late—for me to help you?" +</p> +<p> + At that her eyes rose to his again in a swift flash of hunted fear. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, take me away from him!" she breathed suddenly, unpremeditately. + "Somehow—somewhere—" +</p> +<p> + Another figure came towards them. Madame De Coulevain in all her + severe elegance of black. +</p> +<p> + "Come and join your friends at the supper, my dear; there is no need + for you to be pilloried here any longer," she observed with an + indifferent scrutiny of the persistent veiled woman, and Ryder moved + slowly away while Aimée came dutifully down from the throne, a huge + black bending to hold her train. +</p> +<p> + "I thought you were <i>never</i> coming! What <i>were</i> you talking about?" + demanded a voice in Ryder's ear, and he found Jinny Jeffries at his + side, her bright gray eyes pouncing upon him with curiosity. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I wished her joy—native phrases—that sort of thing," he + answered mechanically as they drew back into an embrasure of the + mashrubiyeh that formed one side of the great room. +</p> +<p> + "But you were talking forever. I saw you holding forth at a + tremendous rate. Why wouldn't you let me stay and listen—?" +</p> +<p> + "You'd have put me off my shot, I had to feel unobserved to play + up." +</p> +<p> + "You must be fearfully good at Arabic," said Jinny guilelessly. + "And what did she say?" +</p> +<p> + "Why—she didn't say anything in particular—" +</p> +<p> + "But what was that she was showing you? I saw her bend forward with + a locket or something—?" +</p> +<p> + A plague upon Jinny's bright eyes! "Oh, yes, the locket," said Ryder + with an effort. "She—ah—she showed it to me." +</p> +<p> + "But <i>why</i>? Wasn't that awfully funny—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I believe it's a custom, courtesy stunt you know, to show a + poor guest some of the presents," he explained, manufacturing under + pressure. +</p> +<p> + "I wish she'd show <i>me</i> her rings. Did you ever see so many? It was + the only thing about her you'd call really Eastern—all those + glittering diamonds on her fingers. And did you notice her hands?" + Jinny went on enthusiastically. "Jack, I never knew there was + anything so lovely as that girl in the world. She's simply + <i>exquisite</i>.... I suppose it's her whole life," Miss Jeffries + reflected, "keeping herself beautiful." Her eyes rested curiously on + the feminine groups before them. "They haven't anything else to do + or think about, have they?" +</p> +<p> + "I understand some of them are remarkably educated young women." +</p> +<p> + "What's the use of it?" said the practical daughter of an American + college. "They can't ever meet any men, but just a husband—" +</p> +<p> + "They can read for themselves, can't they? And talk to each other. + And—well, what do you girls do with your education anyway? You + don't lug anything very heavy about the golf course and the ball + room." +</p> +<p> + "Who wants us to? But we do bring something to committees and clubs + and—and welfare work," Miss Jeffries maintained stoutly. "And we + are always into arguments at dinners. While these girls, they can't + dine out, they haven't anybody but themselves to argue with, and it + doesn't matter a straw politically what they think—they can't even + change the customs that their great, great, great grandfathers + imposed. +</p> +<p> + "If I were one of these girls," she declared positively, "I wouldn't + bother about Kant and chemistry and history—I'd stuff myself full + of sweetmeats and loll around on a divan and not care what happened + outside. Or else I'd be miserable." +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps they are miserable." +</p> +<p> + "They ought to fight. Think, <i>think</i>," said Jinny dramatically, "of + marrying some man you've never seen—the way that lovely girl is + doing. Suppose she doesn't like him? Suppose he's dull and cranky + and mean and greedy? Suppose he bores her? Suppose she actually + hates him? Why, Jack, it's horrible! And yet she submits—she + <i>submits</i> to it—" +</p> +<p> + "Suppose she has to submit, that she hasn't a soul on earth to help + her? How would you fight, I wonder—" +</p> +<p> + "Well, you don't need to shout about it! That woman's looking + now—that one with the green turban and the stuffed-date eyes." +</p> +<p> + Nervously Jinny glanced around. +</p> +<p> + "It's a fearful lark," she murmured, "but I don't believe I'd ever + have had the nerve if I'd realized.... What do you suppose they + would <i>do</i>, Jack, if they found you out?... Those big blacks look + so—so uncivilized." +</p> +<p> + Her eyes rested upon the huge eunuch at the far entrance of the + salon, a huge hideous fellow, with red fez, baggy blouse and + trousers, and a knife handle sticking piratically from a sash. +</p> +<p> + "He has on English oxfords," said Ryder lightly. "That's a saving + something. But they aren't going to find out..... I have an idea we + ought to make our getaway now, and that we had better not go + together. You go first and then I'll stroll along, and whisk off + these duds in some quiet corner.... I have to meet a man to-night, + but I'll probably see you to-morrow. And <i>don't</i>," he entreated, + "don't as you love your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, + breathe a word of my being here like this to any one—any + time—anywhere. I was an unmitigated ass to link you up with it. So + be wary." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I shall!" Jinny Jeffries promised vividly and with a last look + about the old palace, the empty marriage throne and the dissolving + knots of guests, she gave a little nod to her veiled companion, + sauntered without visible trepidation past the staring eunuch at + the door, went down the long stairs where other departing guests + were drawing on mantles and veils, and so made her way across a + shadowy garden and out the gate that another black opened. +</p> +<p> + And then she drew a sudden breath of relief and glanced up at a sky + of sunset fires and felt the free airs play with her hair and face + and so shook off, lightly and gratefully, that darkening impression + of shuttered rooms and guarding blacks. +</p> +<p> + Little rivers of wine and fire were bubbling in Aimée's veins. She + was gay at supper, as a bride should be gay. It was enough, for + those first few moments, that she had seen him again, that he had + dared to come and try to help her—that he cared enough to come! +</p> +<p> + Her heart sang little pæans of joy and triumph. She sketched + impossible scenes of escape—she saw herself, in a shrouding mantle, + slipping with him past the guests at the door, she saw them speeding + away in a motor, she saw France, the unknown Delcassés—a bright, + gay world of freedom and romance. +</p> +<p> + Or, perhaps, if not to-night, then to-morrow.... They would plan ... + she would obtain permission to take a drive and there would be a + signal, a waiting car.... +</p> +<p> + But, better now. She could not endure even the call of ceremony from + that man who called himself her husband. The very memory of his eyes + on her.... +</p> +<p> + Decidedly, it must be to-night. And Ryder would think of a way. She + must get back to him ... he would be lingering. She must get away + from this hateful table, these guests and companions.... +</p> +<p> + A wild impatience tore at her. She grew uneasy, anxious, fretted at + the frightening way that time was slipping past.... +</p> +<p> + Her radiance vanished, her smile was nervous, forced, as she sat at + her table of honor, amid the circle of her friends, with a linked + wreath of candelabra sending its sparkle of lights over the young + faces and jewel-clasped throats, over the glittering silver on the + white satin cloth among the drift of pink and white rose petals. +</p> +<p> + She began to bite her lips nervously... she did not hear what her + bridesmaids were chattering about ... her eyes went often, with that + stealth that invites regard, to the tiny platinum and diamond watch + upon her wrist. +</p> +<p> + Would they never finish? Would they never be free? She wondered if + she dared feign an illness to rise and leave them; but no, that + would mean solicitude, companions.... +</p> +<p> + And now the slaves were bringing still another round of trays.... +</p> +<p> + Oh, hurry, hurry, her tightening nerves besought. +</p> +<p> + At last! The older women were going. Not even for a wedding would + they deeply infringe upon that rule which keeps the Moslem women + indoors after the sun has set. Ceremoniously each made to the bride + her adieux and good wishes, and ceremoniously a frantically + impatient Aimée returned the formal thanks due for "assistance at + the humble fête." +</p> +<p> + She did not see that black mantle anywhere. +</p> +<p> + Her heart sank. Stupid, she told herself with quivering lips, to + dream that he could dare to linger, that he had any way to get her + out. By help he meant no more than getting letters to France for + her.... And yet his eyes when they had met hers.... Surely he had + meant—but when she had disappeared from the reception room to + attend the supper, when there seemed no way of speaking again to + her, and all the outsiders, all but the invited guests were + departed, he had been, obliged to go, too. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps some one had begun to notice him.... She wondered if he had + been careful about his shoes, his hands.... How had he managed about + the dress anyway? +</p> +<p> + And then she remembered that girl, that pretty American with the + ruddy hair to whom she had seen him talking, and she conjectured + that there was feminine aid and confidence.... +</p> +<p> + A wave of bitterness swept over her. He had told that girl about + her—he knew that girl well enough to tell her! And perhaps he was + only sorry for the poor little French girl in the Turkish harem, + perhaps they were <i>both</i> sorry.... +</p> +<p> + Had he told that girl, she thought with bitter mutiny, that he had + kissed her? +</p> +<p> + That girl must have been very sure of him not to be jealous of his + interest in herself! +</p> +<p> + And now they could be somewhere together, perhaps talking her over, + while she was here ... here forever.... +</p> +<p> + She was so white now, so silent, so distrait, that all the chatter + of the younger girls who were lingering around her could not dispel + the feeling of depression. They cast covert glances of discomfort at + each other, begged for more music from the orchestra, tallied with + an effort of the size and spaciousness of the palace and the + magnificence of the feast. +</p> +<p> + She had told herself that she had ceased to hope. She did not know + how false it was until the eunuch brought his message. Then hope + really died. +</p> +<p> + The general was below and begged to be announced to madame. +</p> +<p> + "We fly!" whispered a lingerer with nervous laughter, and hastily + the young people hurried into their tcharchafs and veils, murmuring + among themselves, with sidelong glances at that white figure whose + cold hand and cheek they had just touched, hastily they sped, like + light-footed nymphs in some witches' robes, down the long room, + while Madame de Coulevain drew back a strand of the girl's dark hair + and murmured, "But smile, my dear," to the still figure and escaped + with the guests. +</p> +<p> + And then Aimée was alone in the great room, deserted of its throngs, + a darkening room, full of burned-down candles and fallen flower + petals, with here and there the traces of the revelers, a scented + handkerchief ... a fan ... a buckle from some French slipper ... or + a feather from some ancient turban clasp.... +</p> +<p> + Like the ghost of some deserted queen, with her regal satins and + glittering circlet, she waited. There was a moment of grace in which + she tried, to turn a gallant face toward the next moment. +</p> +<p> + Then he came, advancing.... It may have been her distorted fancy, + but down the long perspective, that figure looked more mincing, more + waspish, more unreal than ever. And she was conscious of that swift + rising of dislike, of antagonism touched with reasonless fear. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIII +</h2> +<h3> + THE BEY RETURNS +</h3> +<p> + He kissed her hands. She caught the murmur of compliments and the + mingled scent of musk and wine. He had been dining at his reception + for the men, but he called now for a table and more refreshment. +</p> +<p> + A small table was brought to the end of the room near the marriage + throne where all the day she had paraded; a richly embroidered cloth + of satin was flung over it, and from crowding candelabra fresh + lights shed down a little circle of brilliance. +</p> +<p> + Faintly Aimée protested that eat she could not, and then she made a + feint of eating, lingering over her sherbets, because eating was, + after all, so safe and uncomplicated a thing. +</p> +<p> + The black brought champagne in its jacket of ice and filled their + glasses. +</p> +<p> + The general rose. "<i>À notre bonheur</i>—to our happiness," he + declared, holding out his glass, and she clinked her own to it and + brought her lips to touch the brim, but not to that toast could she + swallow a single one of the bubbles that went winking up and down + the hollow stem. +</p> +<p> + The glass trembled suddenly in her hand as she set it down. An + overpowering sense of fatigue was upon her. With the death of her + poor hope, with the collapse of all those flighty, childish dreams, + the leaden weight of realities seemed to descend crushingly upon + her. She felt stricken, inert, apathetic. +</p> +<p> + It was all so unreal, so bizarre. This could not possibly be taking + place in her life, this fantastic scene, this table set with lights + and food at the end of a dark, deserted old room opposite this + grimacing, foppish stranger.... +</p> +<p> + She could barely master strength for her replies. How had it all + gone? Excellently? She was satisfied with her new home? With the + service? The appointments? +</p> +<p> + He plied her with questions and she tried to summon her spirit: she + achieved a few perfunctory phrases, the words of a frightened child + struggling for its manners. She tried to smile, unconscious of the + betrayal of her eyes. +</p> +<p> + He told her, sketchily, of his day. A bore, those affairs, those + speeches, he told her, gazing at her, his wine glass in his hand, a + flush of wine and excitement in his face. She found it unpleasant to + look at him. Her glance evaded his. +</p> +<p> + She stammered a word of praise for the palace. It must be very + ancient, she told him. Very—interesting. +</p> +<p> + He waved a hand on which an enormous ruby glittered. He could tell + her stories of it, he promised. It had been built by one of the + Mamelukes, his ancestor. Its old banqueting hall was still + untouched—the collectors would give much to rifle that, but they + would never get their sharks' noses in. Nothing had been changed, + but something added. Once the Mad Khedive had borrowed it for some + years and begun his eternal additions. +</p> +<p> + "Forty girls, they say, he kept here," smiled Hamdi Bey. "They + gulped their pleasure, in those days. It is better to sip, is it + not?" +</p> +<p> + He smiled. "But these are no stories for a bride! I only trust that + you will not find your palace dull. It is very quiet now, very much + of the old school. You may miss your pianos, your electricity, all + your pretty Parisian modernity." +</p> +<p> + She glanced at the glittering table. +</p> +<p> + "But I do not find this so—so much of the old school. Here one does + not eat rice with the fingers!" +</p> +<p> + "And I?" said the bey, leaning suddenly towards her on his outspread + arm. "Do you find me too much of the old school? Eh? eh?" +</p> +<p> + "But you, monsieur," she stammered, still looking down, "you—I do + not know you—not yet." +</p> +<p> + "Not—yet. Excellent! There will be time." +</p> +<p> + "I confess that now I am weary—" +</p> +<p> + "Ah,—and that diadem is heavy. Your head must ache with it," he + said solicitously. +</p> +<p> + Perhaps it was the diadem that gave her that leaden, constricted + sense of a band tightening about her forehead. She put up her hands + to it. +</p> +<p> + "Permit me," he said quickly, springing to his feet. "Permit me to + aid you." +</p> +<p> + He stepped behind her and bent over her. She held her head very + still, stiff with distaste, and felt the weight lifted. He surveyed + the circlet a moment then placed it upon the marriage throne behind + her. She had an ironic memory of the false omen of her crowning, of + soft, satisfied little Ghul-al-Din's bestowal of her own + happiness.... Happiness, indeed.... +</p> +<p> + "And that veil—surely that is incommoding?" suggested the suave + voice, and she felt the touch of his hands on her hair where the + misty veil was secured. +</p> +<p> + She stammered that it was quite light—she would not trouble him— +</p> +<p> + Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil + aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled + sanctities, for a Moslem, the back of her neck. +</p> +<p> + She did not stir. She sat fixed and tense. Then slowly the blood + came back to her heart, for he was moving away from her again to his + place at the table. +</p> +<p> + Laughing a little, pulling at his blond mustache in a gesture of + conquest, his kindling eyes glinting down at her, "You must forgive + the precipitateness—of a lover," he murmured. "You do not know your + own beauty. You are like a crystal in which the world has thrown no + reflections. All is pure and transparent—" +</p> +<p> + If she did not find words to answer him, to divert his admiration, + she felt that she was lost. +</p> +<p> + "You are not complimentary—a bit of glass, monsieur, instead of a + diamond! But I am too weary to be exacting.... If now, you will + permit me to bid you good evening and withdraw—" +</p> +<p> + "Little trembler," said the general facetiously, and reached out a + hand to touch her cheek, the light, reassuring caress that one might + give a petted child, but it almost brought a cry of nervous terror + from her lips. +</p> +<p> + She thought that if he touched her again she would scream. He + inspired her with a horrible fear. There was something so false, so + smiling in him... he was like an ogre sitting down to a delicate + dish of her young innocence, her childish terrors, her frank + fears.... +</p> +<p> + She could not have told why she found him so horrible, but + everything in her shrank convulsively from him. +</p> +<p> + And the need of courtesy to him, of propititation—! +</p> +<p> + The cup was bitterer than her darkest dreams.... She wondered how + many other women had drained such deadly brews... had sat in such + ghastly despair, before some other bridegroom, affable, confident, + masterful.... +</p> +<p> + She told herself that she was overwrought, hysterical. The man was + courteous. He was trying to be agreeable, to make a little expected + love. He had drank a little too much—another time she might find + him different. He was probably no worse than any other man of her + world. +</p> +<p> + It was not in her world, each young Turkish girl said in those days, + that one could find love. +</p> +<p> + But it was <i>not</i> her world! It was an alien world, enforced, + imprisoning.... That was the bitterest gall of all the deadly cup. +</p> +<p> + "There is no need for haste," he was assuring her. "In a moment I + will call your woman. Fatima, her name is, an old slave of our + house." +</p> +<p> + "I could wish," said Aimée, "that I had been permitted to bring my + old nurse, Miriam, without whom I feel strange—" +</p> +<p> + "No old nurses—I know their wiles," laughed the bey, setting down + his drained cup with a wavering hand. "They are never for the + husbands, those old nurses—we will have no old trot's tricks here!" +</p> +<p> + He laughed again. "This Fatima is a watch dog, I warn you, my little + one ... but if she does not please you, we can find another. And as + for the rooms—I have assigned this suite to you, the suite of + honor. This is the salon, and there," he pointed to a curtained door + behind them, opening into a small room that Aimée had already seen, + "there is your boudoir and beyond that, your sleeping apartment. I + have had them done over for you, but you shall choose your own + furnishings—everything shall be to your taste, I promise you. You + are too sweet to deny. You have but to ask—" +</p> +<p> + Certainly, she thought, he was drunk. He moved his head so jerkily + and his whole body swayed so queerly. Desperately she fought against + her horror. Perhaps it was better for him to be drunk. +</p> +<p> + Drunken men grow sleepy. Perhaps he would fall down and sleep. + Perhaps she ought to urge him to drink. Long ago the black had left + the bottle at his elbow and gone out of his room. +</p> +<p> + But she did not move. She sat back in her chair, withdrawn and + shrinking, watching him out of those dark, terrified eyes. +</p> +<p> + "You are beautiful as dreams," he told her, leaning towards her with + such abruptness that his sword struck clankingly against the table. + "Beyond even the words of my babbling cousin—eh, Allah reward + her!—but she did me a good turn with her talk of you!" +</p> +<p> + Fixedly he stared at her, out of those intent, inflamed eyes. +</p> +<p> + "I did not know that there was anything like you in the harems of + Cairo. You are like a vision of the old poets—but I suppose that + you do not know the ancient poetry. You little moderns are brought + up upon French and English and music and know little of the Arabic + and the Persian.... I daresay that you have never heard of the poet + Utayyah." +</p> +<p> + Still leaning towards her he began to intone the stanzas in a very + fair tenor voice, and if his movements were at all unsteady, his + speech was most precise and accurate. +</p> +<p class="poem"> + + "From her radiance the sun taketh increase when<br> + She unveileth and shameth the moonlight bright." +</p> +<p> + He chuckled.... "Ah, I shall put the triple veil upon you, my little + moon.... How Is this one? +</p> +<p class="poem"> + "'On Sun and Moon of Palace cast thy sight,<br> + Enjoy her flower-like face, her fragrant light,<br> + Thine eyes shall never see in hair so black<br> + Beauty encase a brow so purely white.'" +</p> +<p> + He got up and drew his chair closer to her. "That is the song for + you, little white rose of beauty." +</p> +<p> + Back went her own chair, and she rose to her feet. +</p> +<p> + "I thank you for the compliment, monsieur. But now have I your + permission to retire? For it has been a long day and I am indeed + fatigued—" +</p> +<p> + To her vexation her voice was trembling, but she steadied it + proudly. +</p> +<p> + "I bid you good evening." +</p> +<p> + "Nonsense, my little white rose. This is not so fatiguing—a few + words more. But you are like the flower that flies before the + wind.... But your room, yes, to be sure. Shall I show you the way?" +</p> +<p> + "I can discover it, monsieur." +</p> +<p> + "Monsieur—fie on you, my little dove.... Hamdi, I tell you, your + lover Hamdi." +</p> +<p> + He laughed unsteadily, and put a hand on her arm. "You are running + away, I know that. And I have so much to tell you ... Oh, it was + tedious in that villa of your father's! 'Yes,' I thought to myself, + 'that is a fine story, a funny story, but I have heard them all + before. And you are in no haste, you revelers—you have no little + bride waiting for you at home.'... That one glance at you—I tell you + it was the glance of which the poet sings—the glance that cost him + a thousand sighs. I was on fire with impatience.... For I am + beauty's slave, little dove.... You may have heard—but no matter. A + wife must be a pearl unspotted.... I am not as the English who take + their wives from the highways, where all men's glances have rested + upon them. Have I not been at their balls? Their women dance in + other men's arms. They marry wives whose hands other men have + pressed. Sometimes—who knows?—their lips have been kissed.... And + then a husband takes her.... Oh, many thanks!" +</p> +<p> + He laughed sardonically and waved his hands a little wildly. "Oh, I + know English—all the Europeans. I have seen their women. I have + seen them selling their wares—stripping themselves half bare in the + evenings, the shameless—For me, never! My wife is a hidden + treasure. You know what the poet says: +</p> +<p class="poem"> + "'An' there be one who shares with me her love<br> + I'd strangle Love tho' Life by Love were slain,<br> + Saying, O Soul, Death were the nobler choice,<br> + For ill is Love when shared twixt partners twain.'" +</p> +<p> + "You are fond of your poets," said Aimée with stiff lips. +</p> +<p> + "You—you kindle poetic fires, my little one. You—I—" He stammered + a moment, then forgot his fierce speech against foreign ways. "You + have the raven hair—" +</p> +<p> + His hand went out to it. He smoothed it back out of her eyes, then + tried to draw her to him. +</p> +<p> + Desperately she resisted. "Monsieur, one does not expect a + gentleman—" +</p> +<p> + "Expect! Ho—what should one expect when a man has such a little + sweetmeat, such a little syrup drop, such a rose petal—Come, come, + you would not struggle—" +</p> +<p> + But it was not the struggling hand of the frightened girl that sent + the general back. +</p> +<p> + It was a brown, sinewy hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from + a well tailored gray sleeve and lilac striped cuff, that caught + Hamdi Bey by the epauleted shoulder and sent him spinning about. +</p> +<p> + Another hand was holding a revolver very directly at him. +</p> +<p> + "Silence!" said Jack Ryder in his best Turkish and repeated it, with + amplification, in English. "Not a sound—or I'll blow your head + off." +</p> +<p> + Aimée gave a strangled gasp. +</p> +<p> + He had not gone, then! He had hidden there, in some nook of that + boudoir behind those shadowy curtains, waiting to protect her, to + rescue.... +</p> +<p> + Over one arm he had the black mantle and veil, "Better put these + on," he suggested, without taking his eyes from the rigid bey, "and + then run for it." +</p> +<p> + "But you—you—?" +</p> +<p> + "I'll take care of myself. After you are out of the way. Dare you + try that? Or what do you suggest?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, not alone. Together—" +</p> +<p> + "So—so—" said Hamdi Bey inarticulately, his head nodded, he + staggered, his knees gave way and he crumpled very completely upon + the floor, and lay like a felled log. +</p> +<p> + After a quick look down at him Ryder turned to Aimée. "Quick, then. + We'll make a run for it—" +</p> +<p> + He did not finish. Hamdi Bey, upon the floor, fallen half under the + folds of the white cloth, made a swift and very expert roll and + darted to his feet beside Aimée, whirling her about, with pinioned + elbows, for his shield. +</p> +<p> + And so screened, he gave a shrill whistle. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIV +</h2> +<h3> + WITHIN THE WALLS +</h3> +<p> + Ryder sprang forward, trying to reach the bey, but he dodged + skillfully; his holding Aimée blocked Ryder in his attack. +</p> +<p> + He knew that high, peculiar whistle had been a signal, a call for + aid, and he flung a lightning glance down that long room, tightening + his hold on the revolver—but he did not see the small door that + opened in the shadowy paneling behind him, nor the shadow that grew + into the gorilla-like shape of the black as it launched itself + through the air upon his back. +</p> +<p> + He only heard Aimée's scream, and then before the crashing weight + upon his shoulders he staggered and went down. +</p> +<p> + The bey flung Aimée aside and rushed upon the prostrate figure, + kicking the revolver from the outspread hand. The black knelt + swiftly down, unfastening his silken sash. +</p> +<p> + Giddily the room whirled about Aimée.... In the candle light, + leaping in the rush of conflict, she saw the bey and the black, and + their distorted shadows in a goblin blur.... And beneath them she + saw Ryder, helpless, his hands and feet pinioned.... With the + madness of despair she rushed forward, but the general intercepted + her. +</p> +<p> + "He is quite helpless.... You need not be alarmed for my safety, + madame!" +</p> +<p> + The cold, biting fury of his voice steadied her. She saw his face + was distorted, livid with anger. His breathing was stertorous. +</p> +<p> + She stood helplessly by the table; the general turned and looked + down upon the face of the man who had dared to violate the sanctity + of his harem and attempt to steal his bride; beyond the man's head + Yussuf, the black, was squatting with a grinning, dog-like + watchfulness. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder did not require watching. That sash had been tied strongly + about his hands and feet. He was as helpless as a baby. +</p> +<p> + But the peculiar flavor of his helplessness was not so much fear + before the fanatic fury of this man he had outraged, although he had + a clear notion that his position was not enviably secure, but a + bitter, black chagrin. +</p> +<p> + To have had the game in his hands and have bungled it! To have been + surprised by that simple strategy, taken off his guard by a feigned + collapse! The wily old Turk for all his champagne had the clearer, + quicker brain.... +</p> +<p> + To have let him get to Aimée and call in his black! To have been + thrown, disarmed.... It was crass stupidity. It was outrageous + mismanagement, abominable, maddening.... +</p> +<p> + And Aimée must pay for it. He tried to think very quickly what could + best clear her. +</p> +<p> + He fixed his eyes on those glittering eyes, staring down upon him. +</p> +<p> + "I realize I owe you an explanation," he said grimly. "If you will + let me tell you—" +</p> +<p> + The bey turned to Aimée with a smile that was the lifting of a lip + and the distention of his nostrils. +</p> +<p> + "This fool thinks he has the time to talk—his English." +</p> +<p> + Desperately Ryder grasped for his vernacular. "I want to tell + you—why I came. This—this young lady doesn't know me." +</p> +<p> + Past the general he shot a look of warning at the girl. +</p> +<p> + "I was trying to get hold of her for her family in France—She is + really a French girl. Tewfick Pasha is not her father but her—" + he could not find the word and dropped into English. "Her + step-father—do you understand? And he had no business to marry her + off, so I tried to steal her for the French family. It was a mad + attempt which has failed—but for which the young lady should not be + blamed. She had never seen me before. She had no idea I was here." +</p> +<p> + After a pause, "A remarkable story," said the general distinctly. He + turned about to the table and drank off the last of a glass of + champagne, then wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that + trembled. +</p> +<p> + He turned back to stand over his prostrate invader. "Now, you—you + dog of Satan," he snarled in a sudden snapping of restraint, "how + did you get here? Who admitted you?" +</p> +<p> + And at that, for all his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder + grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird of yours here." +</p> +<p> + "Yussuf—never!" +</p> +<p> + "The very one. But he didn't know it—I was in that black + mantle—and veil." +</p> +<p> + "Oh, the mantle, I had forgot. So you stole in, disguised, to + violate my hospitality, to outrage my harem, to gaze upon the + forbidden faces of women and to steal the bride—" +</p> +<p> + "I tell you I was trying to rescue the girl for her French family. + She <i>is</i> French and Tewfick Pasha is only—" +</p> +<p> + "And what is that to me? Do I—" the bey broke off and then turned + to the silent girl who stood leaning towards them, a trembling ghost + in white. +</p> +<p> + "And you, my little one," he murmured sardonically with a savage + irony of restraint, "you, the little dove secluded from the world, + who trembled at a kiss, the crystal vase who had never reflected the + blush of love, whose virginal praises I was chanting when I was so + oddly assaulted, do you support this idiot's story?" +</p> +<p> + Mechanically her head moved in assent, her eyes, dilated with fear, + were like the dark, fascinated eyes of some helpless bird. +</p> +<p> + "You never saw this young man?" the bey pursued. "And yet you were + ready to run off with him—a pretty character you give yourself, my + snowdrop!—and you liked his eyes and hastened to obey?" +</p> +<p> + Aimée was silent. From his ignominy upon the floor Ryder hastened to + interpose. +</p> +<p> + "It is true she had never seen me, but I had already written to her + and acquainted her with the story. I tried to reach her first + through her father but that was useless so I resorted to these + desperate means." +</p> +<p> + "Oh you wrote! And you told her you would be here, and murder her + husband—" +</p> +<p> + "I told her nothing of the kind. She didn't know that I was coming + until I spoke to her here, and then she had no idea that I was going + to wait and carry her off—" +</p> +<p> + "In the name of Allah! Do you take me for a dolt, an ass? You, with + your writing and your masquerade and your secrets! Do any families + try to recover their relatives with such means? Daughter or + step-daughter, it is nothing to me—" +</p> +<p> + "But it is true," Aimée insisted, in a trembling voice. "My father + was Paul Delcassé—" +</p> +<p> + "<i>Yahrak Kiddisak man rabbabk</i>—curse the man who brought thee up! + Delcassé or devil, it is Tewfick Pasha who is your step-father, your + guardian, who gave you to me for wife—what has your genealogy to + do with this affront upon my honor?" +</p> +<p> + "But he did not intend to affront your honor—only to aid the family + in France—" +</p> +<p> + "I ask you again, do I resemble an ass that you should put such a + burden of lies upon me? As if I did not know why young men risked + their lives, in the dead of night, in other men's rooms! If I did + not know what turns their brains to mush and their hearts to leading + strings! And you—you—you little white rose of seclusion—!" +</p> +<p> + His venom leaped out at her in his voice. It was a terrible voice, + the cold, grating menace of a madman. +</p> +<p> + "You, who had never seen this man but who fluttered to him like a + white moth to a fire, you who cowered from your husband's hand but + who turned to follow this strange dog into the streets—there will + be care taken of you later. But now—you complained of fatigue. + Surely this scene is overtaxing for your delicacy. If you will come + to your rooms—" +</p> +<p> + She drew back from the hand he laid upon her. "Do not injure him! + By Allah's truth! He is rash, mad, but a stranger. He did not + know—" +</p> +<p> + "He needs enlightenment. He needs to learn that a nobleman's harem + is not a café of dancing girls, where all may enter and stare and + fondle. <i>Bismallah</i>—he shall learn!... And now come—" +</p> +<p> + "I shall not go," she said breathlessly. +</p> +<p> + "What—struggle? But your father has been strangely remiss with his + discipline.... Permit me." +</p> +<p> + His hand tightened in a grasp of iron. +</p> +<p> + "My train is caught," she said in a tone of sudden pettishness; she + stooped to lift it with her hand that was free. +</p> +<p> + "My train—!" he mimicked her in a quivering falsetto. "Have a care + of my frock—do not crush my chiffons.... And these are the women + for whom men break their heads and hearts!" +</p> +<p> + "I tell you, sir," came urgently from Ryder, "that the girl is + innocent of all—" +</p> +<p> + "Keep your tongue from her name—and your eyes from her face!... + Come, madame." +</p> +<p> + With his iron grasp on her elbow he thrust her towards the boudoir + at the end of the drawing-room, behind whose curtains Ryder had so + long been hiding. +</p> +<p> + The chamber was in darkness, lighted only by a pale gleam from the + other room. Aimée stumbled across the rug and found herself upon a + huge divan against a window screen. +</p> +<p> + "Fatima is in the next room to come at a call. But perhaps you would + prefer to wait for me alone? I shall not be long." +</p> +<p> + Desperately she caught at his arm, imploring, "I beg you, monsieur. + He has done no real harm. Let him go. He is a stranger—he + did not know. And he will never trouble you again. I will do + anything—everything you desire—if only you will not injure him—" +</p> +<p> + "You trouble yourself strangely for a stranger." +</p> +<p> + "He is a stranger in danger for my sake. For it was in his duty to + my—my family—" her trembling lips stumbled over the ridiculous + lies, "that he has blundered into this. He has no idea how shocking + a thing he has—" +</p> +<p> + "And you had no idea, either, I suppose. You had never heard of + honor or treachery or—" +</p> +<p> + "I was wrong, oh, I was wrong! I did want to go to France—I own it. + And I was not ready for marriage. And I had heard that you—I was + afraid. But now—if you will let him go for my sake, if you will not + visit my sins upon him, oh, I should be so grateful—so grateful + that anything I can ever do—" +</p> +<p> + "But you will be grateful, anyway, my little blossom. I promise you + that you will learn to be very grateful—" +</p> +<p> + "It is easier to die than to learn to love a hated one," she + reminded him softly, leaning towards him. "I can die very willingly, + monsieur.... And you would not want a wife before whom there was + always an object of terror—" +</p> +<p> + Through the dusk her great eyes sought his. +</p> +<p> + "Be generous—and harm him not," she breathed. "I beg of you, I + implore—" +</p> +<p> + "And if I am—lenient—you will always be grateful?" +</p> +<p> + Mutely she nodded, her eyes trying pitifully to read that shadowy + mask of mockery he turned towards her. +</p> +<p> + "And how grateful could you be, little dove?" +</p> +<p> + Pitifully she smiled. +</p> +<p> + "Could you," he murmured, "could you learn to kiss?" +</p> +<p> + He leaned nearer and involuntarily she shrank back. Faintly, "At + this moment—I beg of you, monsieur—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, if it is to be an affair of moments! We shall never find the + right one. But you were so full of promises—" +</p> +<p> + "I will do anything," said Aimée, convulsively, "if you will promise + me—" +</p> +<p> + "Come, then a kiss. A peck from my little dove." +</p> +<p> + She looked at him out of wretched eyes. +</p> +<p> + "And you promise to free him, not to hurt him—" +</p> +<p> + "I promise not to hurt a hair of his head. Come, that is generous, + isn't it? As to freeing him—h'm—that is for later. Perhaps, if you + are very good. A kiss then... and later...." +</p> +<p> + He bent over her. She shut her eyes and heard the taunt of his + laugh. She kissed him, and he laughed again. +</p> +<p> + "What is it the Afghan poets say? 'Kissed lips lose no sweetness, + but renew their freshness with the moon.' Certainly if you have ever + been kissed, little bud, you have lost no dew.... Delicious.... I + shall hurry back." +</p> +<p> + He cast a hard look down at her as she sat there, her arms drooping + at her sides. He looked about the room as if consideringly, then + nodded at an unseen door at the right. +</p> +<p> + "Fatima is there if you want lights or assistance.... And Alsamit, + Yussuf's brother, is at the other door beyond. Do not stir, little + bird. I shall be back very soon." +</p> +<p> + "And he—you promised—" +</p> +<p> + "I shall not hurt a hair of his head." +</p> +<p> + But he was smiling evilly in the darkness as he drew shut the door + and returned to the bound figure by the guarding black. +</p> +<p> + For a moment he stood silent, considering, while Yussuf looked up + with glistening-eyed intentness like an eager dog ready for the word + of attack. +</p> +<p> + Then in hasty Turkish the general gave his directions and the black + nodded and strode to a portière, jerking it down, which he wrapped + about Ryder's helpless form. +</p> +<p> + Then he hoisted his burden over his huge shoulder and bore it on + after the general. +</p> +<p> + Across the great room they went and down the long stairs up which + that day a most complacent Hamdi Bey had escorted his just-glimpsed + bride. +</p> +<p> + Now at the bottom of the stairs a shadowy figure of a sleeping + eunuch was stretched. +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey spoke sharply, giving a quick order. The black scrambled + to his feet, yawned, nodded, and strode away into the main vestibule + and out into the garden to investigate a shadow which the general + had just reported, and when he was out of sight the general and + Yussuf, with his unwieldy burden, came quietly down the stairs and + turned back into a long, dark hall. +</p> +<p> + For a moment they paused outside a wide, many-columned banqueting + room, and there Hamdi Bey stood listening, straining attentive ears + for the faint sounds from the service quarters on the other side of + the room. He caught the guttural of a half inaudible voice, and the + wash of water and clink of a dish, showing that the belated work of + the reception was going draggingly on, but it was all far away and + invisible. +</p> +<p> + Satisfied he went on a few steps to a pointed door set in the heavy + stone. From a nail he took down a lantern of heavy, fretted brass + and lighted it, not without some difficulty, for his hands were + still trembling. Then he took from the black a cumbersome key which + he fitted into the lock and turned heavily. +</p> +<p> + Drawing back the door he motioned Yussuf ahead, and followed, + drawing the door shut. Down a steep, stone spiral stair they went, + and at the bottom, at the general's order, the black set Ryder down + from his shoulder and flung aside the portière. +</p> +<p> + From its muffling folds Ryder looked out bewilderedly into the + darkness about him, illumined only by the yellow flare of the + ancient lantern. The general cautioned him to silence while Yussuf + knelt and untied the strip that bound his feet, then, his arms still + bound, he was ordered to march on before them. +</p> +<p> + This, he said to himself, as he silently obeyed that order, this + really was the time to pinch himself and wake up! Of all the dark, + eerie nightmares! This slow procession through these underground + halls, the giant black on his heels, the general's lantern throwing + its flickering rays over the huge, seamed blocks of granite + foundations. +</p> +<p> + It made him think of the Catacombs. It made him think of the + Serapeum. It made him think of those damp, tortuous underground ways + of the Villa Bordoni.... +</p> +<p> + They seemed to be in the wine cellars. He saw bins and barrels and + barred vaults that would have done credit to an English squire, and + he reflected fleetly that wine bibbing was forbidden to Mohammedans + and that Hamdi Bey was a fanatic Moslem.... Then he saw open spaces + of ancient stuffs, broken tables and dismantled caiques and a broken + oar. His earlier observation of the palace had told him that it had + a water gate and he thought now that they might be near some + opening. +</p> +<p> + He wondered if they were going to throw him, pinioned, into the + river. He wouldn't put it past this livid, silent, shaking man—and + yet the thing appeared so impossible, so theatric, so utterly + unrelated to any of the ways that he, Jack Ryder, might be expected + to end his days, that it couldn't possibly send more than a shiver + of speculation down his spine. +</p> +<p> + And yet men <i>had</i> been thrown into rivers—this very river. And men + had disappeared from just such palaces as this. There was the story + about young Monkton. He knew it perfectly; he had reminded himself + of it the last evening while he reflected upon this escapade, but he + had never actually appreciated the peculiar poignancy of the thing + until now. +</p> +<p> + Monkton had met—so rumor reported—a Turkish lady of position, + flirted with her, it was said, while on horseback outside her motor + when caught in the crush at Kasr-el-Nil bridge. There had been a + meeting or two in the back of shops, and then he had boasted, + lightheartedly, of a design to take tea in her harem. +</p> +<p> + He had never boasted about the tea. No one had ever seen Monkton + again and he was generally reported, after a stifled inquiry, to + have been thrown from his horse in the desert, or spilled out of his + sailing canoe. +</p> +<p> + The government, English or Egyptian, assumed no interest in the + matter of gentlemen found in other gentlemen's harems. +</p> +<p> + There were other stories, too. There was one of a little Viennese + actress who after a dramatic escape reported a whole winter of + captivity in one of these old palaces, and there was a vaguer rumor + of a rash young American girl, detained for days.... +</p> +<p> + Ryder had always known these stories. They were part of the gossip + and thrill of Cairo. But he had never till now realized how + exquisitely possible was their occurrence. +</p> +<p> + Anything, everything might happen in these hidden, secret chambers. + These Turks were as much masters here as their old predecessors who + had reared these stones. This black upon his heels might have been + the grinning, faithful executioner of some Khedive or Caliph—he + might have been the very Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance of Al + Raschid. +</p> +<p> + He told himself that it was no time to think of the past. His + business—acutely—was the present. If only he could get his hands + untied! If only he could get those untied hands upon that demoniac + Turk! +</p> +<p> + But, strain as he could upon the knots, they held. +</p> +<p> + It seemed to him that they had been walking for an interminable + distance, in odd, roundabout ways. Once they had stopped and he had + involuntarily glanced back over his shoulder, but at a word from the + general he had kept his head forward again, while he heard the black + behind him gathering something that clinked. Later, a stolen glance + had revealed the eunuch with some tools in one hand and bag slung + over his shoulder. +</p> +<p> + The bag disquieted him. Bags filled a foreboding place in the + Eastern literature of vengeance. He wondered if he were to go into + the river in that bag, with the tools for weight. +</p> +<p> + He decided, feeling now a very odd and definite disturbance in the + region of his stomach, that he would tell that general that he was a + cousin of the late Lord Cromer and a nephew of Lord Kitchener. + Something insistent would have to be done about this. +</p> +<p> + They were passing now through a strange, open space, between old + arches that for an instant arrested his excavator's interest. He saw + in the shadows about them, a crumpled, crumbling dome and broken + shafts, with half a wall of masonry pierced with Arabesques. Traces + of old ruins, fragments of some old, forgotten mosque over which the + palace had spread its foundations in bygone days.... Buried + treasure, looted, some of it, for the palace overhead, but still + rare and lovely.... That was a gleam of lapis lazuli that winked at + him from the crumbling mortar under his feet. +</p> +<p> + Then they were between other walls, not crumbling ones, but the + solid, pillared blocks of the palace masonry with here and there + broad arches of old brick. +</p> +<p> + They stopped. Between two arches the general held his lantern high, + flashing it over the surface while Yussuf swung down his sack and + knocked with the handle of his tool. +</p> +<p> + Suddenly he stopped and looked at his master, nodding cheerfully. + The general lowered his light and stepped back and Yussuf reared the + pickaxe in his powerful arms and sent it dexterously at the wall, + between two broken bits of brick. +</p> +<p> + It caught, and sent the mortar spraying; another blow and another + loosened a hole in which the black inserted a short iron and began + nervously grinding and prying. +</p> +<p> + Ryder, watching with oppressed and helpless fury, saw the bricks at + last break and tumble faster and faster in a cloud of dust, and saw + a pocket in the wall become revealed, a long, upright niche, the + size, perhaps, of a man's coffin, on end. +</p> +<p> + He tried, very suddenly, to talk. His tongue felt thick and swollen + and there seemed no words in all the world to fit his need of + overcoming this fanatic madman,—and after all, he had no chance for + them, for Yussuf, with a huge palm upon his mouth, urged him + suddenly backwards towards that horrible niche. +</p> +<p> + "Gently, Yussuf, gently," said the general, suavely and with a slow + distinctness that was for Ryder's ears. "I gave my word that I would + not hurt a hair of his head—" +</p> +<p> + Grinning, the black lifted him over the remaining wall, and set him + down into the niche, leaving him standing in there like a helpless + statue, tasting to the full fury of his heart the bitterness of his + helplessness and the ludicrous impotence of all struggle. +</p> +<p> + "Good God, sir, you must be mad," he said in a strained sharp + voice that his ears would not have known as his own. "Do you + realize—there will be an inquiry—there is such a thing as law—" +</p> +<p> + It seemed to him that he talked, in English and stammering Arabic, + for a long time. The black was kneeling, out of sight, stooping over + a basin of water and his abominable sack, and Ryder was facing that + silent, sardonic face, with its fantastic mustache, its evil, + gloating eyes.... +</p> +<p> + He stopped for very shame. The man was mad. Mad and drunk—and there + was no appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.... Mad or drunk, he + had devised his vengeance shrewdly. +</p> +<p> + Upon Ryder's helpless body a cold sweat of incredulous horror broke + softly out. +</p> +<p> + At his feet he heard the black beginning to fit his bricks and + smooth his mortar. +</p> +<p> + "You do well to save your breath," said Hamdi Bey at last, as Ryder + still stood silent. "You will need it in this chamber I am + providing.... But it may be," he said thoughtfully, "that your + breath will last your need. Thirst may be the more impatient for her + victim; they tell me thirst is an obtrusive visitor. As you were, + this evening.... Still, why do you not cry out a little? It will + amuse my black." +</p> +<p> + Yes, this was real, Ryder reminded himself. And these things could + happen—had happened. He remembered suddenly the hideous scene, + outside the dungeons, in "Francesca da Rimini," when that bestial + brother goes in to the helpless prisoners. He remembered the sick + horror of those groans.... +</p> +<p> + He remembered also various excursions of his in the Tower of London + and the Seigniory of Florence, and the sight of old rings and stakes + and racks and the feeling of their total unrelatedness to every + actuality. +</p> +<p> + And yet they had happened. And this thing, for all its fantastic + medieval horror, was happening. Brick by brick the imprisoning wall + was rising. Brick by brick it intervened between him and sane, + sensible, happy, normal life. +</p> +<p> + Eye for eye he gave the general back his look. He had always + wondered about the poor devils in underground torture chambers. Had + wondered how they had the stuff to hold out, against such odds, for + some belief, some information.... Now he knew the stiffening stuff + of a personal hate, upholding to the very grave.... +</p> +<p> + That sardonic, devil's face.... That face which was going back + upstairs to Aimée.... But he must not think of that or he should + give way and begin to babble, to plead.... He must simply stand and + meet that glance.... +</p> +<p> + And there came the incredible, insane moment when Ryder looked out + on that face through one last breathing space, and then saw the + fitted brick, settled into place, blot the world to darkness before + his eyes. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XV +</h2> +<h3> + UNDERGROUND +</h3> +<p> + Alone in the gloom of that strange room, Aimée sat rigid. Listening. + Not a sound, beyond the closed door, from the long drawing room. Not + a sound, beyond the other door, from the room where the slave, + Fatima, waited to assist in her disrobing. +</p> +<p> + Silence everywhere—save for a low lapping of water against the + masonry beneath her windows. +</p> +<p> + The palace was on the river, then, or on some old backwater. She + remembered glimpses of dark canals on her drive that morning—had it + only been that morning? The sound of that soft, hidden water added + to her feeling of isolation and remoteness from everything that had + been her life before—she thought fleetingly, almost indifferently + of her friends, Azima, who to-day had crowned her for happiness, and + fond, foolish old Miriam and Madame de Coulevain and Tewfick Pasha, + weakly cruel, but amiable; she thought of them all, as unreal + figures from whom she had long taken leave. +</p> +<p> + The old life was over. It had died for her when she passed through + the dark doorway and met that arrogant, sardonic, fatuous man, the + master of this palace.... +</p> +<p> + Or more truly that old life had died for her when she had flung a + black mantle about her chiffon frock and a street veil across her + sparkling face and had stolen, daring and breathless, into the + lights and revelry of that hotel masquerade. There, when she had + shrunk back from the Harlequin and had looked up to meet the + kindling glance of that mask in tartans—yes, there, the old life + had died for her forever if only she had known it. +</p> +<p> + And now—she would only like to die, too, she thought miserably, + after she had been assured of Ryder's safety. She was tense with + fear for him, distrusting in every fiber the assurance of that + fanatic, outraged Turk. +</p> +<p> + She was not utterly resourceless. When Ryder's revolver had dropped + to the floor she had maneuvered, unseen by Hamdi Bey, to get her + train over it, and when she had stooped for her train her one free + hand had closed over the revolver handle beneath the satin and lace. +</p> +<p> + Now the revolver lay on the divan, and very eagerly she drew it out, + feeling it in the darkness, curling her finger about the trigger. + Never in her life had she fired a shot, for her most formidable + weapon had been the bows and arrows of the Children's Archery + Contest of the English Club, but she felt in herself now that + highstrung tensity which at all cost would carry her on. +</p> +<p> + Carefully she bestowed the small, steel thing in the bosom of her + dress, then she stared questioningly at the dress itself, hastily + unpinning the veil, and tying the long train up to her girdle. Then, + with a wary glance for the closed door behind which waited that + Fatima she dreaded, she stole to the door the general had shut and + pressed it softly ajar, peering out into the deserted throne room. +</p> +<p> + Like a great cave of darkness the room stretched before her, peopled + with goblin shadows from the dying candles upon the disordered, + abandoned table; she saw the chair pushed back where she had risen + to struggle with the bey, the long folds of white cloth, sweeping + the floor, behind which Hamdi had rolled so agilely; a stain was + still spreading about an upset glass, and from the overturned cooler + the ice water was dripping, dripping with a steady, sinister + implication. +</p> +<p> + She thought of flight.... There was another black, the general had + warned her, beyond the door, and there would be bars and bolts on + any egress from the harem, but with the revolver in her possession + some desperate escape might be achieved. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder.... No, the gun was for another purpose.... She would not + squander it yet upon herself.... +</p> +<p> + From the boudoir she moved slowly, carrying one of the gilt + candelabra from the table to light the room. She would need light + for her plan.... +</p> +<p> + For ages, long, unending ages, she sat there, waiting.... A hundred + times it seemed to her that she could stand no more, that she must + make her way out at all costs, must discover what fate they were + dealing to Ryder, but still she forced herself to sit there, her + pulses racing, her heart sick with suspense, but desperately + waiting.... +</p> +<p> + She felt a sudden wave of weakness go through her at an advancing + step from the next room. But her chin was up, her eyes fixed and + desperate as the figure of the general appeared in her opening door. +</p> +<p> + "Ah, light! This is more cheerful, little one." +</p> +<p> + She had risen, half moved towards him. "Is he safe?" +</p> +<p> + "The stranger? Safe as treasure—buried treasure, little one." +</p> +<p> + The bey laughed, and that laughter and the glittering satisfaction + of his eyes, filled her with foreboding although his next words came + with smiling reassurance. +</p> +<p> + "Not a hair of his head is hurt, I give you my word." +</p> +<p> + "But where is he—what have you done?" +</p> +<p> + "Shut him up, to be sure. Kept him as hostage for your sweet + humility—a novel way to win a bride, oh, essence of shyness!" +</p> +<p> + Malevolently he smiled down at her and in the back of her frightened + mind she realized that this man did well to be angry, that the + affront to him had been immeasurable, and that many a Turk would + have simply driven his dagger through the intruder's heart—and her + own, too. +</p> +<p> + But though she tried to tell herself that there was forbearance in + him, she felt, instinctively, that there was deeper kindness in + direct, thrusting fury than in this man's sinister mockery. +</p> +<p> + She had sunk back upon the divan on the bey's approach; now as he + stood before her with that mask of a smile upon his face, drawing a + silk handkerchief across a forehead she saw glistening in the + candlelight, she leaned towards him again, her hands involuntarily + clasping. +</p> +<p> + "Monsieur, I seem to have done you a great wrong," she said + tremblingly, "but it is not so great as you suppose. Will you listen + to me? I—" +</p> +<p> + "Useless, useless." He waved the handkerchief negligently at her. "I + have had words enough. You are not the daughter of Tewfick + Pasha—you are his step-daughter—your French family desires to + capture you—I know the rigmarole by heart, you observe. And of + course when a French family desires to obtain possession of a + charming step-daughter, on the eve of her marriage, that family + always employs a handsome young man to break into the bride's + chamber—and point a gun at the husband—" +</p> +<p> + His mustache lifted in a grimacing sneer. +</p> +<p> + "But it <i>is</i> true, and I <i>am</i> French," she interposed swiftly. +</p> +<p> + "Excellent—I do not object in the least." He shot his handkerchief + up his cuff, and turned to her with eyes that lightly mocked + the agonized appeal of the young face. "French blood is + delightful—quicksilver and champagne. You will enliven me, I + promise you." +</p> +<p> + "But the marriage—it is not legal, monsieur," she said desperately, + summoning all her courage. "Tewfick Pasha has no right to give me to + you—" +</p> +<p> + Indulgently he smiled down at her, then his narrowed eyes traveled + slowly about the room. +</p> +<p> + "But this is a strange time—and place!—to talk of legalities. Do + not distress yourself—your step-father is your guardian and your + marriage will be as binding as the oaths of the prophet. Have no + qualms.... And now, if your French blood will smile a little—" +</p> +<p> + He started to seat himself beside her, but in that instant she was + on her feet. With all the courage in her beating heart she whipped + out that revolver and pointed it at him. +</p> +<p> + "If you call—I shoot," she said breathlessly. +</p> +<p> + The round mouth of the gun shook ever so slightly in the excited + hand gripping it, but in the blazing look she turned on him was the + unshaken, imperious passion of a woman swept absolutely beyond all + fear. +</p> +<p> + Meeting that look Hamdi Bey stood extremely still and made no sound. +</p> +<p> + "There are plenty of shots—for you, at the first noise, and for + the servants, if they come," she went on in that fierce undertone, + and then, passionately, "What did you do to him? Take me to him—at + once!" +</p> +<p> + Irresolutely the man stood and looked up at her under his + half-lowered lids. He was near enough for a spring—and yet if that + excited finger should press.... The girl was capable of anything. + She was possessed.... And men had died of such accidents before + that.... +</p> +<p> + "May I speak?" he murmured, in a tone scarcely audible, yet + preserving somehow its flavor of sardonic amusement. +</p> +<p> + "Under your breath. One sound, remember—and I am a very good shot." +</p> +<p> + "But what a wife," he sighed. "All the talents—" +</p> +<p> + "I tell you that I will see him for myself. Take me to him, this + moment—" +</p> +<p> + "Shall I give orders and have him brought here? He is quite safe, I + assure you." +</p> +<p> + "Orders? If you summon a servant I will shoot. No, lead the way, and + I will follow you. And if you make one sound—one false move—" +</p> +<p> + Decidedly the girl was possessed. She stood there like a white image + of war, her hand on that infernal automatic.... He hesitated, gnawed + his mustache, then swung sullenly upon his heel. +</p> +<p> + Like some fantastic sculpture from an Amazonian triumph, they + crossed the long drawing-room, the erect, gilt-braided general + preceding, very slowly, the white-clad feminine creature, who held + one hand extended, with something boring almost into his shoulder + blades. +</p> +<p> + He did not lead her down the long stairs, past the guarding eunuch. + He took, instead, an inner way through the late supper room which + led down into the pillared hall of banquets. That way was safe of + servants now; crossing the pillared hall there were no more sounds + of late work from the service quarters beyond. Oblivious of the wild + developments of that wedding reception, the tired servants, stuffed + with the last pasty, warmed with the last surreptitious drop of + wine, were asleep at last. +</p> +<p> + Outside the door in the stone wall the bey took down the lantern + which so short a time before he had replaced upon its nail and + lighted its still smoking wick. He had not restored the key to + Yussuf, and he drew it now from his pocket and fitted it into the + lock, drawing back the door. +</p> +<p> + "These stairs are steep," he murmured. "I hardly like you to descend + them unaided, but if you insist—" +</p> +<p> + "Go on," she said imperiously. +</p> +<p> + Down he went, and after him she came, following the way he led her + down the long stone underground ways. +</p> +<p> + "We have, of course, very pleasant stairs down to our water gate," + he murmured apologetically, "but since you prefer this way—really + not the way that I would have chosen to have you first explore your + palace, madame! These, you perceive, are the cellars and old + storerooms—" +</p> +<p> + "I do not want you to talk," she said urgently. +</p> +<p> + "But you would not shoot me for it? Only for raising an alarm? And + surely you cannot be unreasonable about a few words—you must be + very careful, here, this doorway is low—" +</p> +<p> + It was not past the old ruined mosque, included in the palace's + underground world, that he was leading her, but down a narrow + branching way, between walls so low that the general's head was + bowed in caution. +</p> +<p> + "This part of the palace is very old," he murmured, over his + shoulder. "An ancestor of mine, Sharyar the Wazir, raised these + walls during the wars—for the dispensing of that sacred duty of + hospitality which Allah enjoins upon the faithful. It is reported + that he was host here to fifty of the enemy during their remaining + lifetime—although they had the delicacy not to cumber him with + overlong living. It is not, as I said, a pleasant place, but the + walls are strong and so I selected a spot here—" +</p> +<p> + Here, somewhere, then, in these grim ruins, Ryder was penned, + helpless and questioning the to-morrow. The girl trembled with + excitement when she thought of his joy, his deliverance—and at her + hands. For their escape she had no plans, only the decision to + thrust the gun into his hands and follow him unquestioningly ... + Perhaps they could leave the general in his place and he could wear + the general's uniform for disguise.... +</p> +<p> + Everything was possible now that she was nearing him and his safety + was at hand. She thrilled with a reanimating excitement that flew + its scarlet banners in her cheeks ... Only a few steps now.... +</p> +<p> + "Go on," she said breathlessly. +</p> +<p> + The bey had stopped and now flashed his lantern over a low, timbered + door, studded with ancient nail heads in a design whose artistry did + not arrest her. From a peg beside it he took down a key of brass, + fitted it to the lock and turned it with a deliberation maddening to + her tense nerves. +</p> +<p> + Her heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds. Only a moment + or two— +</p> +<p> + He had trouble with that door. It took his shoulder; at last he set + it swinging inward slowly on its creaking hinges. Then he stepped + back and with a wave of his hand invited her to enter. +</p> +<p> + "Not a chamber of luxury, you understand, but substantial, as you + will see—" +</p> +<p> + "Go first," she ordered. +</p> +<p> + He laughed. "Ever distrustful, little thorn-of-the-rose! Follow, + then," and he stepped within, into the darkness, which his failing + lantern but little illumined, calling out in a louder tone in his + halting English, "A visitor, my friend. A tourist of the + subterranean." +</p> +<p> + She had followed him to the threshold, seeing nothing in the + blackness but the seamed blocks of stone within the lantern's rays, + afraid always to turn her eyes from him or her hand from its + outstretched pointing. +</p> +<p> + He said very quickly to her in Turkish, "If you will wait by the + door. The floor is bad and there is another lantern, here on the + wall—" +</p> +<p> + At her left he fumbled along the stone wall. She heard him mutter + ... and then reach.... And then—she did not know what was + happening. For the very ground on which she stood, the solid block + of stone began to slip swiftly beneath her feet—she staggered—and + felt herself falling, falling, into some precipitately opened + abyss.... +</p> +<p> + She gave a wild scream, flinging out her arms in terror, and then + cold waters closed above her, and the scream ended in a gurgling + cry. +</p> +<p> + It was no great distance that she fell. What the dropped stone had + revealed, answering the signal of the old lever in the wall that the + general had pressed, was a stone well, narrow, deep, implanted there + by some ingenious lord of the palace in by-gone days, for the subtle + elimination of friend or foe or rival. +</p> +<p> + But it was not part of Hamdi's plan to leave the young girl there + and close the obliterating stone. Scarcely had the waters met above + her head than he was flinging down a rope ladder whose upper ends + were fastened to rings in the floor and descending this with swift + agility until the waters reached his waist. +</p> +<p> + Then he leaned out and clutched the floating satin bubbling and + ballooning yet unsubmerged above the stagnant depths and drew it + towards him. As the struggling girl came gasping within his reach, + he carried her panting up the ladder again, and laid her down in the + darkness, while he drew up the ladder and closed the stone by + pressing that hidden lever. +</p> +<p> + But the stone which had dropped so swiftly, was slow and heavy in + slipping back in place, and when he turned again to Aimée, she had + ceased her choking cough and was sitting up, thrusting back the + dripping hair from her black eyes, staring bewilderedly about the + gloom as murky as any genie's cave. +</p> +<p> + The lantern light was almost out. In its expiring gleams she saw no + more inky water, but only the damp, moss-grown stones, on which a + pool was widening from her wet garments, and the half-defined figure + of the general stooping over to squeeze the streams from his own wet + clothes. +</p> +<p> + The nightmarish horror of it overwhelmed her. For a moment she could + have screamed with horror, and then she felt a cold and terrible + despair lay its paralyzing hand upon her heart. +</p> +<p> + Somewhere, she felt, beneath those secret stones lay Ryder, drowned + ... And she was living, in her helplessness ... No revolver now. + That was gone ... in the water, perhaps.... +</p> +<p> + There was no resource, now, no refuge.... Strength went out of her, + and passive in a dream of evil darkness she felt herself being + hurried, stumblingly, back through the secret corridors and the dark + halls. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVI +</h2> +<h3> + OUT OF THE DARKNESS +</h3> +<p> + There was no measure of time for Ryder in that walled coffin of + death. The seconds seemed hours, the minutes ages. +</p> +<p> + He drew quick, short breaths as if economizing the air that was so + soon to fail him; he tugged at his bonds till the veins rose on his + forehead, but the silk held and the confines of the prison permitted + him no room for struggle; then he leaned forward, to press with all + his might upon the bricks before him; he grunted, he sweated with + the agony of his exertions, but not a brick was stirred, not a crack + was made in the mortar that gripped them tighter every instant. +</p> +<p> + He died a thousand deaths in the horror that invaded him then. + Already he felt strangling, and the painful pumping of his heart + seemed the beginning of the end. +</p> +<p> + Cold sweat stood out all over him; it ran down his face in trickling + streams and his body was drenched with that clammy dew of fear. +</p> +<p> + He tried to count the minutes, the hours, to estimate how long he + would hold out.... +</p> +<p> + And then he heard his own voice saying very distinctly and clearly + and dispassionately, "This thing is absurd." +</p> +<p> + It was absurd. It was idiotic. It was utterly irrational. It was an + impossible end for an able-bodied young American, an excavator of no + mean attainments, a young scholar and explorer of twentieth century + science, a sane, modern, harmless young man, to die immured in the + ancient walls of a Turkish palace—because he had invaded a marriage + reception and intervened between man and wife. +</p> +<p> + Violent death in any form must always appear absurd to the young and + energetic. And the fantastic horror of his death removed it + definitely from any realm of possibility. The thing simply could not + happen.... He thought of the amazement and the incredulity of his + friends.... +</p> +<p> + Dangers in plenty they had warned him against, to his youthful + amusement—sand storms and chills and raw fruit and unboiled waters, + but they had not warned him against veiled women and the resentments + of outraged lords and masters. +</p> +<p> + He thought of his mother's consternation and dismay. He thought of + his father's stern amazement.... What an awful jolt it would give + them, he reflected, with an irrational tickling of young humor. +</p> +<p> + But no, it would not. They would never know. Not a word of this fate + would percolate into the world without. Not a comment upon his true + end would enliven the daily columns of the East Middleton + <i>Monitor</i>. Never would it regret the tragic and romantic interment + of a young native son of talent, buried alive by a revengeful + general of the Sultan.... +</p> +<p> + He amused himself by writing the paragraph that would never be + written. Then he told himself that he was lightheaded and hysterical + and that he had better wonder what would actually be written. What + explanation would be found? +</p> +<p> + A desert storm perhaps, or some accident. McLean would poke + about—but for all McLean knew he might be on his way back to camp + that very moment. And sometimes he went by sailing canoe, and a + rented horse, and sometimes by the accredited steamer and a camel, + and sometimes by tram or train to the nearest station. Even McLean's + mind and McLean's Copts wouldn't make much of all the alternatives + that his unsettled habits had afforded. +</p> +<p> + Was there any possibility of his being traced, of any rescue + reaching him? He thought hard and long upon his last free moments. + Jinny Jeffries knew that he was in the palace, and Jinny had been + reiteratedly warned about the danger of betraying that knowledge. It + would take some little time for alarm before Jinny said anything. + And it would take a little time for Jinny to begin to worry. +</p> +<p> + He had not been so instant in attendance upon Jinny of late, for all + their residence in the same hotel, that she would suspect that his + absence of twenty-four hours was due to actual incarceration. +</p> +<p> + His cursed passion for freedom in which to ramble up and down that + deserted lane without Tewfick Pasha's garden! His inane love of + solitary mooning.... +</p> +<p> + No, Jinny would not soon wonder about him. She had not expected to + see him that evening, anyway—he had muttered something to her about + a man and an engagement. +</p> +<p> + She <i>would</i> rather look to see him the next day and talk about their + adventure.... But still she would feel no more than pique at his + absence; positive worry would not develop until later. +</p> +<p> + Besides, all the revelations that Jinny could make would do no good. + Jinny could only report that he had maintained a disguise at a + wedding reception, and talked a few moments, apparently undetected, + to a bride. Hamdi Bey, and Hamdi's eunuchs, would be blandly + ignorant of such a scandal. What his disappearance would indicate + would be some further frolic on his part, some tempting of a later + Providence before he had abandoned his disguise.... If he were + discovered, for instance, in some of those native quarters, behind a + woman's veil.... +</p> +<p> + Decidedly the only effect of Jinny's revelations would be an + unsavory cloud upon his character. +</p> +<p> + There was no hope to be looked for. +</p> +<p> + And yet he could not believe it. There were moments when the black + terror mastered him, but involuntarily his young strength shook it + off. He could not believe in its reality. He could not believe that + he was actually here, bricked and bound, in this infernal coffin.... +</p> +<p> + But, indisputably, the evidence was in favor of belief.... Only to + believe was to feel again that horror.... +</p> +<p> + He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter. One had to die some + time. Everybody did. One might as well go out young and strong and + still interested in life. +</p> +<p> + But that was remarkably cold comfort. He didn't want to go out at + all. He didn't want to die, not for fifty or sixty years yet, and of + all the ways of dying, he wanted least to smother and choke and + stifle like a rat walled in its hole in the wall. +</p> +<p> + He recalled, with peculiar pain, a woodchuck that he had penned up + as a boy, and he hoped with extraordinary passion that the poor + beast had made another hole. Never again, he resolved, would he pen + up a living creature, never again, if only again he could see the + light of day and breathe the free air.... +</p> +<p> + He thought of Aimée. And when he thought of her his heart seemed to + turn to water. Useless to repeat to himself now those old reminders + that he had seen her so little, known her so slightly. Useless to + measure that strange feeling that drew him by any artifice of time + and acquaintance. +</p> +<p> + She was Aimée. She was enchantment and delight. She was appeal and + tenderness. She was blind longing and mystery. She was beauty and + desire.... +</p> +<p> + Even to think of her now, in the infernal horror of this cramping + grave, was to feel his heart quicken and his blood grow hot in a + helpless passion of dread and fear. She was alone, there, helpless, + with that madman. +</p> +<p> + He tried to tell himself that she was not wholly helpless, that she + had wit and spirit and courage, and that somehow she would manage to + quell the storm; she might persuade Hamdi to their story, make him + remember that this was the twentieth century wherein one does not go + about immuring inconvenient trespassers as in the earlier years of + the Mad Khedive—years which had probably formed the general's + impulses—but in telling himself this there was no comfort for the + thought of the price that Aimée would have to pay. +</p> +<p> + It was pleasanter to pretend that Hamdi was really only joking, in a + shockingly exaggerated, practical way, and that presently, when the + suitable time had elapsed, he would present himself, smiling, to end + the ghastly, antiquated jest. +</p> +<p> + For some time he continued to tell himself that. +</p> +<p> + And then suddenly he told himself that the time for intervention had + surely come. It was very hard to breathe. +</p> +<p> + The next minute he was assuring himself that this was merely some + devil's trick of his apprehensive imagination. There must be a + great deal of air left.... But he was distressingly ignorant of the + contents of air, and his calculations were lamentably unsupported by + any sound basis of fact. +</p> +<p> + Mistake, not to have gone in for chemistry and physics. A chap who'd + done time in those subjects wouldn't now be rocking with suspense; + he'd comfortably and satisfactorily know just how many hours, + minutes and seconds were allotted before his finish and he could + think his thoughts accordingly. +</p> +<p> + Undoubtedly, so he insisted to himself, there was air enough here to + last him till morning. This gasping stuff was all imagination. He + wanted to keep cool and quiet. But for all his reassurance there + <i>was</i> something a little queer with his lungs, and his heart was + lurching sickeningly in his side, like a runaway ship's engine. +</p> +<p> + And then he heard his own voice repeating very tonelessly, "O God, O + God," and the horror of it all came blackly over him and a feeling + of profound and awful sickness.... +</p> +<p> + It <i>was</i> a sound. The faintest scraping and knocking without that + wall. It went through him like an electric current.... And then a + roar burst from him that fairly split his ears, the reaction of his + quivered nerves and racking fears of his uncertainties, his + tightening terrors. +</p> +<p> + But now—nothing. He could not hear a thing. A delusion? A torture + of his final hours?... No, it came again. More definitely now, a + little grinding and scraping. +</p> +<p> + Faster and faster, a muffled, driving thud. +</p> +<p> + A jubilant reassurance sang gayly through him. He had expected + this—this was what he had predicted. Hamdi was no foul friend. He + was a devilish uncomfortable customer with antiquated notions of + revenge, but now he had shot his wad and was going to undo his + tricks. +</p> +<p> + Ryder braced himself to present a carefree jauntiness—an air + somewhat difficult to assume when one is trussed like a spitted + bird, in a hot coffin space, with hair falling dankly over a + steaming brow, with a collar like a string, and an indescribable + pallor beneath the bronze of one's face. +</p> +<p> + Something stirred. One end of a brick was driven in against his + chest. Then he felt the blind working of some tool that caught it + and worried it free. +</p> +<p> + It seemed to him that through that dark aperture a current of cold, + delicious air came rushing in about him. The blows sounded against + the adjoining bricks and he thought of the glorious joy of seeing + out again, feeling that he would welcome even the sight of Hamdi's + blond mustache and the eunuch's hideous grin. +</p> +<p> + Now the aperture admitted a pale gleam upon his chest. Staring + steadily down he caught a glimpse of the fingers curving about a + brick, and his heart that had steadied, began to race again wildly. + For they were not the fingers of the black nor yet the wiry joints + of the general. +</p> +<p> + They were soft, white fingers, with a gleam of rings. +</p> +<p> + Aimée! Somehow, somewhere, she had managed to come to him, to + achieve this rescue.... +</p> +<p> + "Aimée!" He breathed the name. +</p> +<p> + "S-sh!" came a warning little whisper, and impatiently he waited + until that opening should be greater and permit of sight and speech. +</p> +<p> + His helplessness was maddening. If only he could raise his hands, + could get those bonds off! He twisted, he writhed, he tried to lift + his elbows and get his wrists in reach of the opening, but the + coffin was too diabolically cramped for movement until the hole was + very much larger. Then with a convulsive pressure he swung his + wrists within reach and after a moment's wait he felt a thin blade + drawn across the silk. +</p> +<p> + The relief was glorious. He swung his hands free, rubbing the chafed + wrists, then thrust an opened hand out into the opening, and with + instant comprehension a short, pointed bit of iron was put within + it. +</p> +<p> + Now he could do something! With furious strength he attacked the + bricks edging the hole and as he pried free each brick he could + again get a glimpse of those white delicate fingers lifting it + carefully away. +</p> +<p> + And now the hole was large enough. He twisted about and thrust out a + leg, and then, with a feeling of ecstasy which made the official + literary raptures of saints and conquerors but pale, dim moods, he + wormed his way out of that jagged hole and turned, erect and free, + to the shrouded figure of his rescuer. +</p> +<p> + She had drawn back a little against the wall, a gauzy veil across + her face. Beside her, upon the stone floor, a solitary candle sent + its flickering rays into the shadows, edging with light her slender + outlines. +</p> +<p> + Ryder took one quick step to her, his heart in his throat, and put + out eager arms. But in the very moment that he was gathering her to + him, even when he felt her pliant body, at first resistant, then + softly yielding, swept against his own, he felt, too, a little palm + suddenly upon his mouth. +</p> +<p> + "Hsh!" said the soft, whispering voice, cutting into his low murmur + of "Aimée!" and then, in slow emphatic caution, "Be—careful!" +</p> +<p> + He had need of that caution. For under the saffron veil was not the + face of Aimée. He was clasping a young creature that he had never + seen before, a girl with flaming henna hair and kohl darkened brows, + a vivid blazoning face that smiled enigmatically with a certain + mockery of delight at the amazement he reflected so unguardedly. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVII +</h2> +<h3> + AZIZA +</h3> +<p> + From the slackening grip of his astounded arms she stepped backward, + still smiling faintly and holding up in admonishment the palm she + had pressed against his mouth. +</p> +<p> + "But what—what the dev—" muttered Ryder. +</p> +<p> + She nodded mysteriously, and beckoned. +</p> +<p> + "Come," she whispered, catching up her candle, and after holding it + high for a moment, staring at him, she extinguished it suddenly, and + turned to lead the cautious way across the stone spaces while Ryder + closely followed. +</p> +<p> + Not Aimée, then. But some messenger, he could only suppose. Some + confidante, at need. A handmaid? The whisper of her silks, the + remembered gleam of jewels in the henna hair flouted that thought, + and not troubling his ingenuity with alternatives he was content to + follow her swift steps. +</p> +<p> + They were now in those open rubbishy spaces where he remembered the + crumbling masonry and broken arches of old, disregarded mosques; now + they were again enclosed in narrow stone walls, winding past cellars + and store rooms. +</p> +<p> + The girl's advance grew more cautious. Often she stopped and + listened, peering ahead into the darkness, and now, as she took + another turning, her care redoubled and Ryder needed no exhortation + to imitate it. Obeying a gesture of her arm, he followed at a + greater distance, prepared, at the warning of a sound, to flatten + himself against the wall or dart into some cranny of retreat. +</p> +<p> + They were now in the cellars. The corridor was widening out before + them with a pallid showing of light, crossed with many bars, at some + far end.... They stole towards it. It was a window, or barred gate, + he saw, and he heard again that lapping of restless water against + stone. +</p> +<p> + He could see, too, in the dimness the curve of a stair near the + gate. +</p> +<p> + Abruptly his guide checked him. Wary and noiseless he waited while + she stole forward to those stairs, peering up into the gloom, + attentive for any sound from above.... Apparently satisfied, she + went on towards the barred gate, and bent down over a spot of + darkness which Ryder had taken for a shadow. +</p> +<p> + He saw now that it had some semblance to a human outline. +</p> +<p> + Closely the girl bent and he caught the pallor of her hands, + searching swiftly, and then a muffled clink.... Next moment, a + wraith with soundless steps, she was back at his side again, urging + him on with her. They passed the stairs; he felt the soft yield of + carpet beneath his feet; they passed that recumbent figure and now + he heard the rhythm of a sleeper's heavy breath, escaping muffledly + from the folds of a thick mantle which the sleeper's habits had + wrapped about his head. For all the mantle he was aware of the fumes + of wine. +</p> +<p> + "I saw that Ja'afar had his drink," said the girl suddenly in softly + whispered Turkish, her head close to his. "He is my friend. I do not + neglect him," and under her breath she laughed, as she exhibited the + great bunch of keys she had taken from the imbiber. +</p> +<p> + Stooping now before the gate she fitted the key into the lock. Then + over her shoulder she looked up at the young man, and asked him a + quick question. +</p> +<p> + He did not understand. That was the trouble with his vernacular. It + would go on very well for a time, when he had a clue to the sense, + or when it was a question of every day expression, but a sudden + divergence, an unexpected word, was apt to prove a hopeless + obstacle. +</p> +<p> + Now she repeated her question again, more slowly, and again he shook + his head. +</p> +<p> + Now she stood up, frowning a little and began again in English, + "You—no, I not know—This way? You do it?" A sudden smile broke + over her face as she made a swift pushing gesture with her hands, + that, with her pointing to the water outside, sent Ryder a sudden + enlightenment. +</p> +<p> + "Swim? You mean—do I swim?" +</p> +<p> + She nodded. "Not go—" She made a swift downward movement of her + hands and then pointed again to that water just outside the gate. +</p> +<p> + "Not go down—not sink?" interpreted Ryder. "No, indeed, I can + swim," he assured her, and revisited with smiling satisfaction she + knelt again before the barred gate. +</p> +<p> + Open it swung with so sharp a crack that both glanced at the figure + behind them, and then at the shadowy gloom of the stairs. But no + alarm sounded. Outside the gate Ryder saw the darkness of fairly + wide rippling waters, visited with floating stars, and beyond a + low-lying, dun bank. +</p> +<p> + Escape was there. Freedom. Safety. He felt an exultant longing to + plunge in and strike out, but he turned, questioningly, to the + mysterious rescuer. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée?" he asked, under his breath. "Where is she?" He repeated it + in the vernacular, distrusting her English, and in the vernacular + she answered, "You want her? You want to take her away with you?" +</p> +<p> + She laughed softly at the quick flash in his eyes and hardly waited + for his speech. +</p> +<p> + "Good—what a lover! You are not afraid?" +</p> +<p> + Mendaciously he assured her that he was not. +</p> +<p> + "Good!" she said again, with a showing of white teeth between her + carmined lips. "You take her—you take her away from him. That is + what I want. You understand?" +</p> +<p> + Very suddenly he understood. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVIII +</h2> +<h3> + AZIZA IS OFFENDED +</h3> +<p> + This was no emissary from Aimée. This was no philanthropic + bystander. It was some girl of the palace, jealous and daring, + conspiring shrewdly for the removal of her rival. +</p> +<p> + "Take her away," she was saying urgently. "Out of this palace. We + want no brides here." Lowering and sullen, she turned bitter on the + word. +</p> +<p> + "To-night, I was watching," she went on swiftly. "I heard—the + noise—and then the whispering.... The darkness has ears and + eyes—and a tongue. And so I waited out there...." +</p> +<p> + He could not distinguish all the quick flow of her speech, but he + caught enough to understand how she had lurked in the halls, + jealously spying, defying the eunuchs' authority, and how she had + caught with passionate delight that stifled alarm of scandal. Later, + hanging over some banister, she had seen the Ethiopian pass with his + burden and had stolen down afterwards, stalking like a cat, and had + discovered the lantern gone, the door unlocked.... And then she had + watched until the pair emerged without the burden. +</p> +<p> + She had not been able to get hold of the key to the door. But she + had resolved to explore and so she had furnished the waterman with + his wine, drugged, Ryder gathered, and so stolen past him on the + other route to those underground foundations to which her suspicions + had been directed by the mortar and dust upon Yussuf. +</p> +<p> + Evidently she knew the possibilities of the place and the mind of + its master. And when she found the old niche freshly bricked and the + mortar at hand she had not needed more to assure her that here was + the burial place of her rival's lover. +</p> +<p> + Now, for the boon of his life, he was to relieve her of that rival. + Or try to. +</p> +<p> + "For once—he might not kill her," she whispered, "but if again—" + Her eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark. "Take her away. Make her + name a spitting and a disgrace.... Her memory a shame and a + sting.... Is she beautiful?" she broke off to demand. "They say—but + slaves lie—" +</p> +<p> + "Can you believe a lover?" he said whimsically for all his + impatience. "She is a pearl—a rose—a crescent moon—" +</p> +<p> + "They say she is very pale and thin—" +</p> +<p> + "She is an Houri from Paradise," he said distinctly. "And now, in + the name of Allah, let me get to her. Tell me the way—" +</p> +<p> + "Will she go gladly with you?" the low, insistent voice went on, and + at his quick nod, "Holy Prophet, what a bride!" +</p> +<p> + She clapped her two ringed hands to smother the impish joy of her + laugh. "A warning to those who can be warned—he will not be so + eager for another stripe from that same stick!—It was his cousin, + Seniha Hanum—Satan devour her!—who made this marriage. Always she + hated me.... But now I will tell you how to get to her. Look out, + with me." +</p> +<p> + Kneeling at the gate, over the dark flow of the water, she drew him + down beside her, and thrusting out her veiled head, she pointed + upward and to the right to a jutting balcony of mashrubiyeh, where a + pale light showed through the fretwork. +</p> +<p> + "There—you see? That is my room. And if you climb up, I can let you + in.... There... Up," she repeated in English, resolved to make + certain. +</p> +<p> + "I see. I can get there," he assured her, measuring with his eye the + dim distance. +</p> +<p> + "At once," she said. "I will be there. I cannot take you with me + through the upper hall—it is dangerous even for me to be caught. + But no eunuch wants my displeasure." +</p> +<p> + He could believe it, watching the subtle, malicious daring of her + face. Even in the gloom he caught the steady-lidded arrogance of her + kohl-darkened eyes and the bold insolence of a high cheek bone. She + had a hint of gypsy.... +</p> +<p> + "And you can get me in? You're a wonder!" he whispered. "I can't + thank you enough—" +</p> +<p> + "Rid me of her," said the girl swiftly. "But not—not him. You must + swear—what is it that Christians swear by?" she broke off to + demand. "By the grave of your father? Yes? You will swear not to + hurt him, to hurt Hamdi, by the grave of your father? Yes?" +</p> +<p> + Ryder nodded quickly. His father, to be sure, was in no grave at + all. He was, allowing hastily for the difference in time, in his + treasurer's cage at the bank in East Middleton, but he did not wait + to explain this to the girl. +</p> +<p> + "I swear it," he repeated. "I won't hurt your Hamdi, since that's + your condition. But we're wasting time—" +</p> +<p> + "Up, then. And if you fall down—do like this." +</p> +<p> + Smiling mischievously, she made the gesture of swimming. "Allah go + with thee—and with me also," he heard her murmur, as he stepped out + to the ledge of the entrance, twisted himself agilely about and + climbing up the opened gate swung himself up to the stone carving + overhead. +</p> +<p> + Below him, he heard the gate swing shut. He did not hear her lock + it. Fervently he hoped she had not, since it was a possible exit for + any one in a hurry, but at any rate, he need not worry about a way + out of the place until he had got into it again. +</p> +<p> + And the getting in was not any too simple. It was work for a + mountain goat, he reflected, after a short interval devoted to + tentative reaches and balancing and digging in of hands and feet. + The distances were far greater than the first-glimpsed, + foreshortened perspective had allowed him to guess, and there was + only the starlight to illumine the gray face of the palace. +</p> +<p> + He had no idea of the time. Somewhere about the middle of the night + or early morning, he judged vaguely by the stars, although it seemed + impossible that so few hours had passed. +</p> +<p> + The river was all silence and darkness. No nuggars with their + sleeping crews were moored below. He seemed the only living, + breathing thing clambering across the face of time and space. +</p> +<p> + Gingerly he kicked off the nondescript black shoes he had worn with + his disguise that afternoon and essayed a perilous toehold while he + reached for the interstices of a mashrubiyeh window just overhead. +</p> +<p> + Once gripping the rounds he pulled himself up, reflecting that it + was well it was night and that no lady was sitting within her + shelter to be affrighted at this intrusion of fingers and toes. +</p> +<p> + From the jutting top of this projection he surveyed his further + field of operation. The window with a light was two stories higher + yet and to the right. There were two other windows with lights on + the second story, very much farther along, and he wondered painfully + if these were the rooms of Aimée. +</p> +<p> + That boudoir in which he had hidden through the end of the long + reception had been upon the water. And there had been a door into an + adjoining room, for he had seen a sallow-faced attendant passing in + and out. +</p> +<p> + A wild longing seized him to crawl on and over into those windows. + But it was a difficult, almost an impossible distance, and even when + there he would be like a fly on the outside of a pane with no way of + getting in. +</p> +<p> + The unknown girl had promised him a way through her window and he + had confidence in her ingenuity and daring. +</p> +<p> + So he went on, worming cautiously along old gutters and ledges and + jutting balconies until at last he was clasping the lower grill of + that mashrubiyeh from which her light gleamed. +</p> +<p> + Instantly the light went out. +</p> +<p> + "Wait!" he heard her voice say sharply over his head. She was + standing by the window fumbling with the woodwork, and in a moment + he heard the click of a knob and then, just opposite his head, the + screening grill slipped aside and an aperture appeared. +</p> +<p> + "Quick!" admonished the voice, and quickly indeed he drew himself up + and in, reflecting whimsically as he did so that this girl had first + helped him out of a hole and then into one. +</p> +<p> + The next moment she had moved the grill into place and lifted the + cover she had placed over her triplet of candles on a stand. +</p> +<p> + Triumphant, her eyes dancing, her teeth a gleam of light between + those scarlet lips of hers, she looked at him for the admiration + she saw twinkling back at her in his eyes. +</p> +<p> + "But not me—no!" she protested, her supple hands gesturing towards + the magic casement. "I found it here. It is very old—you + understand? Some other, long ago, found time dull and so—" +</p> +<p> + Delightedly she shared the flavor of that secret of the vagabond + lady of long ago who had devised this cunning entrance for her + lover. +</p> +<p> + On some dark night like this, with the gatekeeper drowsy with old + wine, some other stripling had climbed that worn façade before him + and slipped through the secret space and stood triumphantly before + some daring, laughing girl who had cast aside for him her veil and + her fear of death. +</p> +<p> + What ingenuity, Ryder wondered fleetly, had smuggled in the + carpenter for the contrivance, what jewels had gone to the bribing, + what lies had been told!... And what had been the end of it all? +</p> +<p> + Evidently not the discovery of the opening.... +</p> +<p> + He hoped, with singular intensity, for the safety of the daring + young lovers, that unknown youth whose feet had foreworn the path + for his feet and that dead and gone young girl, who had dared + anything rather than endure the mortal ennui of those hours behind + the veil.... +</p> +<p> + These thoughts all went through him like one thought as he stood + there, his eyes roving about the dim, shadowy room of old divans and + Eastern hangings, and then turning back to the glimmering figure of + its mistress. +</p> +<p> + She was staring frankly at him, her eyes boldly curious and + examining. They were not dark eyes, he saw now; that had been the + impression given by the kohl about them and the black line of the + brows penciled into one line; they were yellow eyes, golden and + glowing, scornful and lazy-lidded. +</p> +<p> + As she looked at him, these eyes smiled slowly. She was seeing in + this lover of her rival a singularly delightful looking young man, + for all his dust and disarray, a slender, bronzed, hardy-looking + young man, with dark, disordered hair straying across a white brow, + and audacious, eager eyes in which the fear of death, so lately + glimpsed, had left no daunting reflection. +</p> +<p> + Slowly she lifted her hand and with deliberate softness put back + that straying hair of his. +</p> +<p> + "Poor boy," she said slowly in English, and then, smiling ruefully, + she held out her hands for his inspection. The grime of the bricks + had discolored their scented delicacy and he saw bruised finger tips + and a torn nail. +</p> +<p> + "I'm infernally sorry," he said quickly. +</p> +<p> + Her smile deepened at his look of concern, as he held, a little + helplessly, the witnesses of her work of rescue which seemed somehow + to stray into his keeping. +</p> +<p> + "It is nothing—but you—poor boy," she said again, in that English + of which she seemed naïvely proud. +</p> +<p> + "If you could give me some water," he suggested, and drank deep + with delight the last drop she brought him from an earthen jar. It + seemed to wash from his throat the taste of that dust and fear. +</p> +<p> + "I can't begin to thank you," he murmured. "I only wish that I could + do something for you—" +</p> +<p> + She looked up at him. They were standing close together, their + voices cautiously low. +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps, yes, you can—" +</p> +<p> + "It's not doing anything for you to save Aimée," he told her. + "That's what you are doing for her and for me.... But if ever you + want me for anything after this—my name is Ryder, Jack Ryder, and + you can reach me at the Agricultural Bank." +</p> +<p> + He had a vague vision of some day repaying his enormous debt by + assisting this girl, grown tired of her Hamdi, out of this aperture + and into a waiting boat. He would do it like a shot, he told himself + gladly; he would do anything on God's green earth if only she helped + him get Aimée away from that infernal villain. +</p> +<p> + "Jack," she repeated, under her breath, and then in her slow + English, "I like—Jack." +</p> +<p> + "Don't forget it. I'll always come and do anything for you. And if + you'll tell me your name—" +</p> +<p> + "Aziza." +</p> +<p> + "Aziza. I'll never forget that. And now, if you'll tell me how I can + get to her and then the best way out—" +</p> +<p> + "Why you so hurry—" +</p> +<p> + "Why?" he looked a little blank. "I can't lose a minute—he may be + with her—" +</p> +<p> + She came a little nearer to him, her head tilting back with a slow, + indolent challenge. +</p> +<p> + Gone was the silken mantle that had been about her below stairs and + he saw now that she was a vivid, exotic shimmer of gauzy green + against the saffron veil that fell from her henna hair. There was + barbaric beauty in her, in the bold, painted face, the bare, + gold-banded arms, the slender, sinuous lines, and there was barbaric + splendor in the heavy jewels that winked and flashed.... +</p> +<p> + It struck Ryder that she was gotten up regardless.... In pride, + perhaps, on her rival's wedding night?... Or had there been some + defiant, desperate design upon Hamdi—? +</p> +<p> + She did not miss that sudden prolonging of his look upon her. +</p> +<p> + "You like me—yes?" she murmured, and then slipping back into + the vernacular, "I—I am not the stupid veiled girl of the + seclusion—not forever. I come from the west, the deserts. I have + seen the world: Men—men, I know ... I danced before them, not the + dances of the Cairene cafés," she uttered with swift scorn, "but the + dance of the two swords, the dance of the serpents.... Men threw the + gold from their turbans about my feet when I had danced to them ... + And others, English, French—" +</p> +<p> + She broke off, but her eyes told many things. "Then—Hamdi," she + said slowly. "Him I ruled—and his palace.... But I have known other + things." +</p> +<p> + Closer yet she came to him. Her eyes, golden fires of eyes, were + smiling up into his, her scarlet lips gathered in soft, sensual + curves ... her whole silken scented body seemed to slip into his + embrace. A bare arm touched his neck, resting heavily. +</p> +<p> + "Sweet—heart," she said slowly, in her difficult English. +</p> +<p> + It was the deuce of a position. +</p> +<p> + No man can rudely snatch from his neck the arm of the lady who has + just saved him from a harrowing death. And a lady who was risking + more than her life in sheltering him—decidedly the situation was + delicate. +</p> +<p> + It was not the lady's fault that her impetuosity, the impetuosity + which had been his salvation, now plunged her into amorous caprice. + There were obvious handicaps, moral, social and ethical, in her + upbringing. She was a child of nature, a nature undisciplined, + unruly, tempestuous. +</p> +<p> + And even queening over Hamdi and his palace must have offered little + diversion to a wild dancing girl familiar with the excitement of + more varied conquest. +</p> +<p> + Ryder was horribly embarrassed. He was visited with a fearful + constraint, a chivalrous wish not to hurt her feelings, and a sharp + prevision of the danger of offending her. +</p> +<p> + He took the first turn of least resistance. +</p> +<p> + He did not need to bend his head; their eyes were on a level. He + simply kissed her. And she kissed him back. +</p> +<p> + He hated himself for the leap of his blood... and for the + Puritanical discomfort of his nature.... +</p> +<p> + Her arm about his neck was pressing closer. It was the moment for + action and Ryder acted. Very firmly he put his hand upon her hand, + withdrew it from its clasp about him, and raised it to his lips. +</p> +<p> + His kiss was respectful gratitude and an abdication of the delights + of dalliance. +</p> +<p> + "Good-bye, my dear," he murmured. "Now, if you will show me the way + out—" +</p> +<p> + Her eyes agleam between half-closed lids, she studied him. It + occurred to Ryder that probably never before had her hands been + detached—and kissed—and put away. He must be a phenomenon, an + enigma. +</p> +<p> + Then her lips parted in a faintly scornful smile. +</p> +<p> + "You afraid—you? You want—run?" +</p> +<p> + "I'm horribly afraid," he said earnestly. "I want to get out of here + as quick as I can." +</p> +<p> + That was putting, he considered, the very wisest construction upon + it. +</p> +<p> + Negligently her gesture reminded him of the opening in the window. + "Here you are safe." she murmured in the vernacular. "And the doors + are locked—" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, but—but Aimée isn't safe, you know—and I must get her out of + here." +</p> +<p> + "Aimée?" In those yellow eyes he caught the flash of capricious + resentment at the reminder. Then, indifferently, she brushed the + distraction away. +</p> +<p> + "There is time enough for Aimée. She is not lonely now." +</p> +<p> + "Not lonely?" he shivered at the cold carelessness of her tone. "I + must get to her quickly then." +</p> +<p> + "But that is not safe.... A little—later." +</p> +<p> + Uncomfortably he tried to infuse his glance with innate innocence + and utter lack of understanding. +</p> +<p> + "I shan't hurt him—if I have the chance," he told her. "I've given + you my word—" +</p> +<p> + "And I trust you—much." Her gaze sought his in a trifle of + impatience at such simplicity. "But it is not safe for you now.... + Later ... By and by." +</p> +<p> + "You don't want him to have a chance to make love to her, do you?" + said Ryder sharply. "I thought that was the very thing you + <i>didn't</i>—" +</p> +<p> + Her smile was a subtle, confessing caress. "I shall have my + revenge," she murmured, and pressed closer to him again, every + sensuous, sumptuous line of her a challenge and an enticement. +</p> +<p> + "I give you life," she whispered, very low in her throat. "You give + me, perhaps, an hour—?" +</p> +<p> + "I <i>haven't</i> an hour," said Ryder very desperately and unhappily. + "Not when Aimée is with that devil—" +</p> +<p> + It took every thought of Aimée to get the words out. +</p> +<p> + He felt a brute about it, a low, ungrateful dog. She <i>had</i> given him + life and every fiber in him clamored to save her pride and champion + her caprice. +</p> +<p> + It seemed so dastardly to wrench away from her now, like some + self-centered Joseph, leaving that beastly stab in her vanity.... + And she was a stunning creature, lawless, elemental, hot and cold + like the seventh wind of the inferno.... +</p> +<p> + But it was Aimée who was in his blood like a fever.... Aimée, that + frail white rose of a girl, in her bonds of terror.... +</p> +<p> + He saw the flame in Aziza's eyes. He saw the stiffening of her + defiance, of half-incredulous affront. Then, her form drawn up, her + bared arms outflung, her vivid, painted, furious face challenging + him. "I am not beautiful—like Aimée?" she said in a voice of venom, + and in the English, for double measure, "You not like me—no?" +</p> +<p> + "You <i>are</i> beautiful and I <i>do</i> like you," Ryder combated, feeling a + bungling fool. And then went on to thrust into that half-second of + suspended fury, a faint breath of appeasing. "But—don't you + see—it's my duty—" +</p> +<p> + "You go—?" she said clearly. +</p> +<p> + Even in that moment he had a sharp prescience of the unwisdom of his + rejection. A cold calculator of chance and probabilities would have + reckoned that a half hour of assuagement here would have been a + wiser investment of his mortal moments than any virtuous plunge into + single-hearted duty. +</p> +<p> + But Ryder did not calculate. He could not, with Aimée under that + beast's hand. His heart and soul were possessed with her danger and + his heart and soul carried his body instinctively back from the + dancing girl's advance, and he whispered, "I must go. There is no + time—" +</p> +<p> + She flung back her fiery-hued head with a gesture of intolerable + rage. Her eyes were lightnings. +</p> +<p> + "Dog of a Christian!" she said chokingly and flew to the doors. +</p> +<p> + Back she thrust the heavy hangings, turning a quick key in the lock + and wrenching the door wide. And before Ryder could understand, + before he could bring himself to realize that she was not simply + violently expelling him from her room, she gave a shriek that rang + wildly down the long-unseen corridors. +</p> +<p> + At the top of her lungs, with one hand out to thrust him back or + cling to him if he attempted to pass, she shrieked again and again. +</p> +<p> + Instantly there came a running of feet. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIX +</h2> +<h3> + AN INTERRUPTION +</h3> +<p> + When Hamdi Bey had taken Aimée back to her apartments he pulled + sharply upon a bellcord. In a few moments the slave woman, Fatima, + made her appearance, no kindly-eyed old crone like Miriam, but a + sallow, furtive-faced creature, with an old disfiguring scar across + a cheek. +</p> +<p> + The general pointed to the wet and fainting girl huddling weakly + upon the divan. +</p> +<p> + "Your new mistress has met with an accident, out boating—a curse + upon me for gratifying forbidden caprice!" he said crisply. "Be + silent of this and array her quickly in garments of rest. I will + return." +</p> +<p> + Very hurriedly he took himself and his own wet condition away. He + was furious, through and through. What a night—what a wedding + night! Scandal and frustration... a bride with a desperate lover... + a bride who, herself, drew revolvers and threatened. +</p> +<p> + It was beyond any old tale of the palace. For less, girls had had + his father's dagger driven through their hearts—his grandfather, at + a mere whisper from a eunuch, had given his favorite to the lion. + The whisper was found incorrect at a later—too late—date, and the + eunuch had furnished the lion another meal. +</p> +<p> + His modern leniency in this case would have outraged his ancestors. +</p> +<p> + But it was not in the bey's nature to deal the finishing stroke to + anything so soft and lovely as Aimée. He had no intention of + depriving himself of her. If she were red with guilt he would feign + belief in her, to save his face until his infatuation was gratified. +</p> +<p> + But actually he did not believe in any great guilt of hers. Tewfick + Pasha, for all his indulgent modernity, would keep too strict a + harem for that. What he rather believed had happened was that the + young American—now so happily immured in his masonry—had become + aware of the girl through the story of her French father, and in + that connection had struck up the clandestine and romantic + correspondence which had led to their mutual infatuation and his + desperate venture there that afternoon. +</p> +<p> + The young man had been dealt with—and the thought of the very + summary and competent way he had been dealt with drew the fangs from + the bite of that night's invasion. +</p> +<p> + His fury felt soothingly glutted. +</p> +<p> + He had been a match for them both. He recalled his own subtlety and + agility with a genuine smile as he exchanged his dripping uniform + for more informal trousers and a house coat. He had taught that + young man a lesson—a final and ultimate lesson. And he was + beginning to teach one to that girl. Before he was done with + her ... +</p> +<p> + He felt for her a mingled passion for her beauty and a lust for + conquest of her resistant spirit that fed every base and cruel + instinct of his nature. +</p> +<p> + A find—a rare find—even with her circumvented lover! He would have + his sport with her.... But though he promised this to himself with + feline relish, apprehension and chagrin were still working. +</p> +<p> + The fond fatuity with which he had welcomed that starry-eyed little + creature had been rudely overthrown. And his pride smarted at the + idea of the whispers that might echo and re-echo through his palace. + He was too wise an old hand to flatter himself that it would + preserve its bland and silent unawareness of this night. +</p> +<p> + So far, he believed, he had been unobserved. In Yussuf's silence he + had absolute confidence.... But of course there were a hundred other + chances—some spying, back-stairs eye, some curious, straining + ear.... +</p> +<p> + And for this matter of the boating mishap—he cursed himself now, as + he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his + thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his + malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have + done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his + dramatic itch—and now had paid for it with that idiotic story of + the boating expedition. +</p> +<p> + He had reason to trust Fatima—there was history behind the old + sword scar upon her cheek, and he had a hold over her through her + ambition for a son. But Fatima was a woman. And she—or some other + who would see that drenched satin would be curious of that boating + story.... +</p> +<p> + And of course they could find out from the boatman. +</p> +<p> + It occurred to him to go and see the boatman and order him away so + that afterward the man could say he had been sent off duty, and the + story of a nocturnal river trip would not appear too incredible. It + was a small concession to stop gossip's mouth. +</p> +<p> + So drawing on a swinging military cloak, the general stole down + through the stair of the water entrance into the lower hall, where + the pale light gleamed through the cross-barred iron of the gate and + the gatekeeper slept like a log in his muffling cloak. +</p> +<p> + The soundness of that slumber—loudly attested by the fumes of + wine—afforded the general a profound pleasure. He took the man's + keys softly, and went to the gate; it afforded him less pleasure to + observe that the gate was unlocked, but he put this down to the + keeper's muddleheadedness. +</p> +<p> + Carefully he turned the lock and pocketed the keys—for a lesson to + the man's overdeep sleep in the morning and to attest his own + presence there that night; then he went back and brought out an oar, + which he placed conspicuously beside the smallest boat, drawn up + just within the gates. +</p> +<p> + He was afraid to alter the boat's position lest the noise should + prove too wakening, but he considered he had laid an artistic + foundation for his story and with a gratifying sense of triumph he + mounted the stairs. +</p> +<p> + He was not conscious of fatigue. He had always been a wiry, + indefatigable person, and the alarms and emotions of this night had + cleared his head of its wines and drowsiness. He felt the sense of + tense, highstrung power which came to him in war, in fighting, in + any element of danger. +</p> +<p> + Youth! He snapped his fingers at it. Youth was buried in + his masonry—and helpless in its shuttered room. Power was + master—power, craft, subtlety. +</p> +<p> + But his elation ebbed as he crossed again that long drawing room + with its faded flowers about the marriage throne, and its abandoned + table with its cloth askew, its crystal disarrayed, its candles + gutted and spent. +</p> +<p> + The memory of that insolent moment when a man's hand had gripped + him, had whirled him from Aimée—when a man's voice and gun had + threatened him—that memory was too overpowering for even his + triumph over the invader to lay wholly its smart of outrage. +</p> +<p> + He felt again the tightening of his nerves, like quivering wires, as + he crossed the violated reception room and entered the boudoir. It + was empty, but on the divan the flickering candle light revealed the + damp, spreading stain where Aimée's drenched satins had been. +</p> +<p> + He thrust aside a hanging and pushed open the door into the room + beyond. +</p> +<p> + It was a small bedroom evidently very recently furnished in new and + white shining lacquer of French design, elaborately inlaid with + painted porcelains and draped with a profusion of rosy taffeta. + Among this elegance, surprisingly unrelated to the ancient paneled + walls, stood the hastily opened trunk and bags of the bride, their + raised lids and disarranged trays heaped with the confusion of + unaccustomed, swiftly searching hands. +</p> +<p> + Aimée herself, in a gay little French boudoir robe of jade and + citron, sat huddled in a chair, like a mute, terrified child, in the + hand of her dresser, who was shaking out the long, damp hair and + fanning it with a peacock fan. +</p> +<p> + At the bey's entrance Fatima suspended the fanning, but with easy + familiarity exhibited the long ringlets. +</p> +<p> + Curtly the bey nodded, and gestured in dismissal; the woman laid + down her fan, and with a last slant-eyed look at that strangely + still new mistress she went noiselessly out a small service door. +</p> +<p> + With an air of negligent assurance Hamdi Bey gazed about the room + and yawned. "Truly a fatiguing evening," he remarked in his dry, + sardonic voice. "But you look so untouched! What a thing is radiant + youth." +</p> +<p> + He sauntered over to her, who drew a little closer together at his + approach, and lifted one of the long dark curls that the serving + woman had exhibited. +</p> +<p> + "The ringlets of loveliness," he murmured. "You know the old saying + of the Sadi? 'The ringlets of the lovely are a chain on the feet of + reason and a snare for the bird of wisdom.'... How long ago he said + it—and how true to-day ... Yet such a charming chain! Suppose, + then, I forgive you, little one, since sages have forgiven beauty + before?" +</p> +<p> + She was silent, her eyes fixed on him with the silent terror with + which a trapped bird sees its captor, in their bright darkness the + same mute apprehension, the same filming of helpless despair. +</p> +<p> + Ryder was dead, she thought. This cruel, incensed old madman had + killed him, for all his oaths. Somewhere beneath those ancient + stones he was lying drowned and dead, a strange, pitiable addition + to the dark secrets of those grim walls. +</p> +<p> + He had died for her sake, and all that she asked now of life, she + thought in the utter agony of her youth, was death. And very + quickly. +</p> +<p> + "I am so soft hearted," he sighed, still with that ringlet in his + lifted hand, his hand which wanted palpably to settle upon her and + yet was withheld by some strange inhibition of those fixed, helpless + eyes. "Who knows—perhaps I may forgive you yet? You might persuade + me—" +</p> +<p> + "He is dead," she said shiveringly. +</p> +<p> + "Dead? He?... Ah, the invader, the intruder, the young man who + wanted you for a family in France!" The bey laughed gratingly. "No, + I assure you he is not dead—I have not harmed a hair of his head. + He is alive—only not with quite the widest range of liberty—" +</p> +<p> + He broke off to laugh again. "Ah, you disbelieve?" he said politely. + "Shall I send, then, for some proof—an ear, perhaps, or a little + finger, still very warm and bleeding, to convince you?... In five + minutes it will be here." +</p> +<p> + Then terror stirred again in her frozen heart. If Ryder were alive + and still in this man's power— +</p> +<p> + "You are horrible," she said to him in a voice that was suddenly + clear and unshaken. "What is it you want of me—fear and hate—and + utter loathing?" +</p> +<p> + Her unexpected spirit was briefly disconcerting. The Turk looked + down upon her in arrested irony and then he smiled beneath his + mustaches and bent nearer with kindling gaze. +</p> +<p> + "Not at all—nothing at all like that, little dove with talons. I + want sweetness and repentance—and submission. And—" +</p> +<p> + "You have a strange way to win them," she said desperately. +</p> +<p> + "You have taken a strange way with me, my love! Little did I + foresee, when I escorted you up the stairs this morning—" He broke + off. "There are men," he reminded her, "who would not consider a + cold bath as a complete recompense for your bridal plans." +</p> +<p> + She was silent. +</p> +<p> + "But I," he murmured, "I am soft hearted." He dropped on one knee + before her and tried to smile into her averted face. "I can never + resist a charming penitent.... I assure you I am pliability itself + in delicate fingers—although iron and steel to a threatening + hand.... If you should woo me very sweetly, little one—" +</p> +<p> + She could not overcome and she could not hide from his mocking eyes + the sick shrinking that drew her back from his least touch. But she + did fight down the wild hysteria of her repugnance so that her voice + was not the trembling gasp it wanted to be. +</p> +<p> + "How can I know what you are?" she told him. "You mock me—you + threaten to torture that man—it would be folly not to think that + you are deceiving me. If you would only prove to me so that I could + believe—" +</p> +<p> + "If you would but prove to <i>me</i> so that <i>I</i> could believe—! Prove + that you are mine—and not that infidel's. Prove that you bring me a + wife's devotion—not a wanton's indifference." He caught her cold + hands, trying to draw her forward to him. "Prove that you only pity + him," he whispered, "but that your love will be mine—" +</p> +<p> + She felt as if a serpent clasped her. And yet, if that were the only + way to win Ryder's safety—if it were possible for her sickened + senses to allay this madman's suspicions and undermine his revenge— +</p> +<p> + Quiveringly she thought that to save Ryder she would go through + fire. +</p> +<p> + But the hideous, mocking uncertainties! Her utter helplessness—her + lost deference.... +</p> +<p> + It was not a sudden sound that broke in upon them but rather the + perception of many sounds, muffled, half heard, but gaining upon + their consciousness. Running feet—a stifled voice—something faint + and shrill— +</p> +<p> + Aimée sprang to her feet; the general rose with her and turned his + head inquiringly in the direction. Then he jerked open the door + through which Fatima had disappeared; it led to a dark service + corridor and small anteroom, from whose bed the attendant was + absent. An outer door was ajar. +</p> +<p> + No need to question the sounds now. Faint, but piercingly shrill + shrieks were sounding from above, while the footsteps were racing, + some down, some up— +</p> +<p> + The bey flung shut the door behind him and hurried towards the + confusion. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XX +</h2> +<h3> + BEYOND THE DOOR +</h3> +<p> + Ryder had stood stock still with amazement when the girl began to + scream. She had gone mad, he thought for an instant, in masculine + bewilderment, and then her madness revealed its treacherous cunning, + for she began crying wildly for help against an invader, an infidel, + a dog of a Christian who had stolen into her rooms. +</p> +<p> + She had chucked him to the lions, Ryder perceived; one furious flash + of lightning jealousy and Oriental anger had overthrown, in that + wild and lawless head, every other design for him for which she had + risked so much. +</p> +<p> + He had scorned her.... He had flouted her caprice.... He had dared + to refuse the languors of those dangerous eyes.... +</p> +<p> + The hurrying footsteps appeared to him the tread of a legion in + action, and he had no desire to rush out upon the oncomers; he had, + indeed, distinct doubts of his ruthless ability to pass that supple, + clawing, incensed creature at the door. +</p> +<p> + He whirled and made a bolt for the window, striking at the fastened + grill. He heard the snapping of wooden bolts and the splintering of + wood and out through the hole he climbed to a precipitous, head-long + flight that fairly felt the clutching hands upon his ankle. +</p> +<p> + He had meant to make a jump for it. A three-story plunge into the + Nile appeared a gentle exercise compared to the alternative within + the palace, but in the very act of releasing his hold he changed his + mind. +</p> +<p> + Quicker than he had ever moved before, in any vicissitude of his + lithe and agile youth, he clambered up, not down, and crouching back + from sight upon the jutting top of the window, he sent his coat + sailing violently through space. +</p> +<p> + He dared not look over for its descent upon the water, for other + heads were peering from below and he could hear an excited outburst + of speech, that broke sharply off. +</p> +<p> + Evidently they were hurrying down to the water gate. Swiftly he + utilized this misdirection for his own ends. +</p> +<p> + The roofs. That was the refuge to make for. Flat, long-reaching + roofs, from which one could climb off onto a wall or a palm or a + side street. +</p> +<p> + He had only a story to ascend and he made it in record time, fearful + that the searchers whom he heard now launching a boat below would + turn their eyes skywards. +</p> +<p> + But he gained the top without an outcry being raised and found + himself upon the roof where the ladies of the harem took their air + unseen of any save the blind eyes of the muezzin in the Sultan + mosque upon the hill. There were divans and a little taboret or two + and a framework where an awning could be raised against the sun. +</p> +<p> + There was also a trap door. +</p> +<p> + And here, tempestuously he changed his mind again. He abandoned the + goal of outer walls and chances of escape. He wrenched violently at + that trap door. It was bolted but the bolt was an ancient one and + gave at his furious exertions, letting him down into a narrow spiral + staircase between walls. +</p> +<p> + Down he plunged in haste, before some confused searcher should dash + up. It was no place to meet an opposing force. Nor was the corridor + in which he found himself much better. +</p> +<p> + It was black and baffling as a labyrinth, with unexpected turnings, + and he kept gingerly close to the wall with one hand clutching a bit + of iron which he had taken into his possession and his pocket when + Aziza had led him out of the underground walls—the very bit of + pointed iron, it was, with which the volatile creature had effected + his rescue. +</p> +<p> + He considered it an invaluable souvenir and twice, in his nervous + apprehension, he almost brought it down upon shadows. +</p> +<p> + Direction he judged vaguely by the screaming which was still going + on at a tremendous rate—evidently the girl had gone off into + genuine hysterics or else she had determined not to leave her + agitation at the intrusion in any manner of question. No doubt the + outcries were a relief to her mingled emotions—remorse at her + impetuosity and chagrin that her thwarted plans might conceivably be + now among those emotions—and since the vicinity of those shrieks + must be a gathering place to be avoided by him he stole on, down the + upper hall, and finding a stair, he went down for two continuous + flights. +</p> +<p> + Aimée's rooms, he knew, had been upon the water, and recalling the + general direction of those two lighted windows that he had seen so + recently from without, his excavator's instinct led him on. Once he + saw the flitting figure of a turbaned woman in time to draw back + into a heaven-sent niche and again he flattened into a soundless + shadow against the wall as two young serving girls ran by on + slippered feet, their anklets tinkling, chattering to each other in + delighted excitement. +</p> +<p> + And then the stealthy opening of a door—it was the very door by + which Yussuf had precipitated himself upon the struggle at the + supper table some age-long hours ago—gave him a glimpse into the + far glooms of the reception room, where its long side of mashrubiyeh + windows revealed now between its fretwork tiny chinks of a paling + sky. +</p> +<p> + He could make out the dark-draped marriage throne and the pallor of + the disordered cloth upon the abandoned table below, and behind the + table the dark draperies of the remaining portières before the + doorway into the boudoir where he had hidden himself and into which + he had last seen Aimée thrust. +</p> +<p> + At the other end of the great room were the entrance stairs to the + harem, and there, he imagined, a watchman was stationed, or else + stout bolts and bars were guarding the situation. There remained an + arched doorway into other formal rooms through which he had seen + Aimée and the guests disappear for the wedding supper, and that way + led, he surmised, down into the service quarters. +</p> +<p> + A sorry choice of exits! He could form no plan in advance but trust + blindly to the amazing chances of adventure. And first, before he + rushed for escape, there was Aimée to find. +</p> +<p> + Yet for all the mad hazard of the situation he was elated with life. + He felt as if he had never fully lived until now, when every breath + was informed with the sharp prescience of danger. He was at once + cool and exultant, wary yet reckless, with the joyous recklessness + of utter desperation. +</p> +<p> + With cat-like care he surveyed the drawing-room; it appeared + deserted but as he watched his tense nerves could see the shadows + forming, taking furtive, crouching shape—and then dissolving + harmlessly into a rug, a chair, or a stirring drapery. His eyes + grown used to the dimness he identified the mantle upon the floor in + which he had come and which he had extended to Aimée in that brief + moment of fatuous triumph, and beyond it, across a chair, was the + portière which the black had torn down from the doorway to wrap + about Ryder's helpless form as he had carried him down to living + death. +</p> +<p> + That mantle, he thought, might yet be useful, and he stole forward + and recovered it, but, as he straightened, another shadow darted out + from the boudoir door and silhouetted for an instant against the + lighted, room he saw a figure in a long, swinging military cloak. +</p> +<p> + Discovery was inevitable and Ryder made a swift plunge to take the + cloaked figure by surprise, but even as one hand shot out and + gripped the throat while the other held his threatening iron aloft, + his clutch relaxed, his arm fell nervelessly at his side. +</p> +<p> + For from the figure had come the broken gasp of a soft voice, and + the face upturned to his was a pale oval under dark, disordered + hair. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée!" he breathed in exultant, still half-incredulous joy. + "Aimée!... Did I hurt you—?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, no, no!" came Aimée's shaken voice. "Oh, you are safe!" +</p> +<p> + He felt her trembling in his clasp and he swept her close to him. + For one breathless instant they clung together, in a sharp, + passionate gladness which blurred every sense of dread or danger. + They were safe—they were together—and for the moment it was + enough. Every obstacle was surmounted, every terror conquered. +</p> +<p> + They clung, obliviously, like children, her pale face against his + shoulder, her hair brushing his lips, her wild heartbeats throbbing + against his own. +</p> +<p> + Then the girl, remembering, lifted her head. +</p> +<p> + "Quick—we must go," she whispered. "For there I made a fire—" +</p> +<p> + He followed her frightened, backward glance at the boudoir door and + suddenly saw its cracks and key hole strangely radiant with light. +</p> +<p> + "He left me, to go to those screams," she was saying rapidly. "I + tried to run that way—and found that woman coming back. And I told + her to wait—in her own room—and I slipped back in there—and + suddenly it came to me to thrust the candle about. I thought I would + run out and if I met any one I would call, 'Fire', and say the + general was burning and perhaps in the confusion—" +</p> +<p> + The terrible desperation of her both stirred and wrung him. She was + so little, so helpless, so trembling in his clasp ... so made for + love and tenderness.... And to think of her in such fear and horror + that she went thrusting reckless candles into her hangings, setting + a palace on fire in the blind fury for escape.... +</p> +<p> + To such work had this night brought her.... This night, and three + men—for he and the craven Tewfick and the fanatic bey were all + linked in this night's work. Yes, and another man—and he thought + swiftly, in a lightning flash of wonder, how little that Paul + Delcassé had known when he set his eager face toward the Old World, + with his wife and baby with him, that he was setting his feet into + such a web ... that his wife would die, languishing in a pasha's + harem, and his little daughter would one night be flying in mad + terror from the cruel beast the weak pasha had sold her to! +</p> +<p> + And how little, for that matter, he had known when he had set his + own face toward those same sands what secrets he would discover + there and what forbidden ways his heart would know. +</p> +<p> + These thoughts all went through him like one thought, in some clear, + remote background of his mind, while he was swiftly drawing on the + military cloak she gave him and wrapping her in the black mantle. + There was a veil on the mantle's hood that she could fling across + her face when she wished, but Ryder had no fez to complete the + deceptive outline of his masquerade. He must trust to the dark and + to the concealment of the high, military collar of the cloak. +</p> +<p> + "Do you know a way?" he whispered and at her shaken head, "The water + gate," he said, thinking swiftly. +</p> +<p> + There would be a crowd now about the gate, but if they could only + manage to gain those cellars and hide somewhere they could steal out + later upon that waterman. +</p> +<p> + It seemed the most feasible of all the desperate plans. The roofs + might be a trap. The harem entrance led into a garden and the garden + was guarded by an impassable wall. But if he could only get to the + river he knew that he was a strong enough swimmer to save Aimée, or + he might even terrorize the watchman into furnishing a boat. +</p> +<p> + She did not question but guided him swiftly through the arch that + led down into the banqueting hall. Twice that day she had gone down + those stairs. Once in her bridal state, her eyes shining, her cheeks + glowing with the wild joy of Ryder's arrival and dreams of escape, + and again, scarcely an hour gone by, she had descended them, tense + and desperate, her revolver at the general's head, seeking vainly + Ryder's rescue. +</p> +<p> + And now a third time, a guilty, reckless fugitive in the night, she + stole down those stairs into the many-columned hall where she had + been fêted in state among her guests. Here her only knowledge was of + the stone corridor and the locked door through which the bey had led + her, but Ryder knew the way that Aziza had brought him and he turned + cautiously toward those wide, curving stairs. +</p> +<p> + Keeping Aimée a few steps behind him, he went down the soft carpet + and peered out at the bottom towards the water gate. He saw no bars; + the gate was open and against the pale square of the water were the + black silhouettes of the general and the gateman, both leaning out + at some splashing in the river. +</p> +<p> + He knew a boy's reckless impulse to shove them both in. It was an + unholy thought his better judgment rejected—unless driven to + it—yet some prankish element in his roused recklessness would not + have deplored the necessity. +</p> +<p> + If they looked about—! +</p> +<p> + But they did not stir as, with Aimée's cold hand in his, he made the + tiptoed descent and slipped softly about the corner of the steps. + Then, instead of going on down the hall to some hiding place in the + ruins, he took a suddenly revealed, sharper turn into a narrow + passage just beyond the stairs. +</p> +<p> + It might lead to another gate, some service entrance, perhaps, it + ran so straight and direct between its walls. +</p> +<p> + Intuitively that excavator's sense of his defined the direction. + They were going parallel with the river, although a little way back + from the water wall, and in the direction of the men's part of the + palace, the selamlik. +</p> +<p> + He recalled the selamlik vaguely as an irregular mass of buildings, + and though the formal entrance was of course through the garden from + the avenue, there was a narrow side street or lane leading back to + the water's edge between this part of the palace and the nest + building, and very likely there was some entrance on that lane. +</p> +<p> + Bitterly he blamed himself for his lack of complete inspection that + morning. To be sure he had told himself, then, as he strolled about + the high garden walls and peered down the narrow lane on one side of + the Nile backwaters, that he didn't need a map of the place for his + arrival at an afternoon reception; he was simply going in and out, + and clothes and speech were his only real concern. +</p> +<p> + He had even said to himself that he might not reveal himself to + Aimée—if she did not discover him. He wanted merely to see her + again, and be sure that she understood her own history—he had no + notion of attempting any further relations with her, any resumption + of their forbidden and dangerous acquaintance. +</p> +<p> + And it was true that had been the defiant and protesting surface of + his thoughts, but deep within himself there had always been that + hot, hidden spark, ready to kindle to a flame at her word—and with + it the unowned, secret longing that she would speak the word. +</p> +<p> + And when she had called on him for help, when the trembling appeal + had sprung past her stricken pride, and he had seen the terror in + her soft, child's eyes, then the spark had struck its conflagration. + He had become nothing but a hot, headstrong fury of devotion. +</p> +<p> + And he said to himself now that he might have known it was going to + happen, and that if he had not been so concerned that morning about + saving his face and preserving this fiction of indifference he would + know a little more about the labyrinth they were poking about + in—the little more that tips the scale between safety and + destruction. +</p> +<p> + But he did not know and blind Chance was his only goddess. +</p> +<p> + The passage had brought him to a wall and a narrow stairs while + another passage led off to the right, apparently to the forward + regions of the place. +</p> +<p> + He took the stairs. He had had enough of underground regions when + they did not lead to water gates and the stairs promised novelty at + least. +</p> +<p> + He wished he knew more about Turkish palaces. He supposed they had a + fairly consistent ground plan, but beyond a few main features of + inner courts and halls he was culpably ignorant of their intentions. + If it were an early Egyptian tomb or temple now! But then, perhaps + the Turks were more indefinite in their building and rebuilding. +</p> +<p> + At the head of the stairs a door stood half ajar. Through the crack + he strained his eyes, but his anxious glance met only the darkness + of utter night. Not a gleam of light. And not a sound—except the + far, hollow stamping of some stabled horse. +</p> +<p> + Softly he pushed the door open and he and Aimée slipped within. The + place, whatever it was, appeared deserted, a dark, bare, backstairs + region—for he stumbled over a bucket—from which to the right he + could just discern a hall leading into the forward part of the + palace, wanly lighted some distance on, with the pale flicker of an + old ceiling lamp. +</p> +<p> + They seemed to be at the end of the hall and the darker shadows in + the walls about them appeared to be a number of doors—closed, so + his groping hands informed him. +</p> +<p> + Oh, for his excavator's steady light, or a pocket flash! Oh, for a + light of any kind, even a temporary match! But he dared not risk the + scratch, for now he caught the thud of footfalls overhead, heavy + footfalls, and there might be stairs unexpectedly close at hand. +</p> +<p> + He turned to Aimée but the girl shook her head helplessly and + hesitant and dashed, for all their young confidence, they wavered a + moment hand in hand in the dark, fearful of what a rash move might + bring upon them. And in the beating stillness Ryder became conscious + that the muffled, monotonous stamping of a horse is a gloomy, + disheartening thing in the night, and that footsteps overhead are of + all noises the most nervous and unsettling. +</p> +<p> + What was behind those doors? Not a spark of light came from them, + that was one comfort. The rooms, kitchen, service, store rooms or + whatever they were, appeared in the same blackness and oblivion.... + But any door might open on a roomful of sleeping gardeners and + grooms.... +</p> +<p> + Life and more than life hung on the blind goddess. +</p> +<p> + It was only an instant that they hesitated there, yet it appeared an + eternity of indecision, then nearer footsteps sounded, coming down + that hall. No more wavering of the scales! +</p> +<p> + Ryder turned to the door at his left, at the very end of the wall + beyond which came that far stamping, and wrenched it open, closing + it swiftly behind him. He saw a light now, a mild, yellow ray + through an opened door ahead that vaguely illumined the strange old + vehicles of the palace, and the stables were beyond. +</p> +<p> + Some one else was beyond, too, in the stables, for that very instant + he saw a black horse backed restively into sight, its tossing head + evading the hands that were trying to bridle it. +</p> +<p> + "The Fortieth Door!" said Ryder to himself with an involuntary + thrust of humor. +</p> +<p> + The door of the horse! The door of forbidden daring! He knew now the + vague associations that had stirred in him as he had stared blindly + about that place of doors.... But he had opened so many forbidden + doors of late that this last was welcome as the supreme test. +</p> +<p> + And nothing in the world could have been more welcome than a + horse—a horse with a way out behind it! +</p> +<p> + "Stay back," he said under his breath to Aimée, and clasping his bit + of iron he moved toward the door. +</p> +<p> + He could see the attendant now, who was finishing his bridling, and + it was Yussuf, the eunuch, so busy gentling and soothing the horse + that he cast only one glance in the direction of the sounds he heard + and that one glance misled him in its glimpse of the general's + cloak. +</p> +<p> + "By your favor—but an instant," he called out, "and he is ready—" +</p> +<p> + "Stand aside," said Ryder very clearly, emerging from the shadows at + the horse's heels. "Out of the way with you. The horse is for me." +</p> +<p> + A moment Yussuf gaped. Then he dropped the bridle and his hand went + swiftly to the knife hilt in his belt. +</p> +<p> + "Fool!" said Ryder contemptuously. "Would you tempt fate? Do you + think I am such that your knife could harm me? Must I prove to you + again that walls are nothings—that I but let myself be taken to + prove my powers?" +</p> +<p> + Ethiopians are superstitious. And Yussuf knew that his brick and + mortar had been strong.... Yet they have great trust in a crooked, + short-bladed knife, and Yussuf did not relax his hold upon his and + for all that Ryder could See there was no hesitation in the grinning + ferocity of his black face. +</p> +<p> + Yet his spring was an instant delayed and in that instant Ryder + spoke again. +</p> +<p> + "Look, now at the wall behind you," he said quickly. +</p> +<p> + Yussuf looked. And as he turned his bullet head Ryder jumped close + and brought his iron down upon it with a sickening force he thought + scarcely short of murder. +</p> +<p> + To his amazement the black did not fall, but staggered only, and + Ryder had need to send the knife spinning from his grasp and strike + again before the eunuch's knees sagged and his huge bulk sank at + Ryder's feet. +</p> +<p> + This time Ryder took no chance with a shammed unconsciousness. He + snatched down bits of leather from the wall and bound the man's + hands and feet in tight security and seeing that he was breathing, + although heavily, he thrust a gagging handkerchief into his mouth. +</p> +<p> + Then he dragged the heavy body towards a pile of hay he saw + in a vacant stall and concealed it effectively but not too + smotheringly—although Yussuf, he felt, would be no grievous loss + to society. +</p> +<p> + Vaguely in the back of his consciousness he had been aware of the + excited plunge of the horse and then of a low, soothing murmur of + speech, and now he turned to find Aimée holding the bridle and + stroking the quivering creature with gentle, fearless hands. +</p> +<p> + "Is he dead?" she asked quietly of the eunuch. +</p> +<p> + "Stunned," said Ryder, meaning reassurement and was startled by the + passion of her cry, "Oh, I could kill them all—all!" +</p> +<p> + "I will—if they try to stop us," he promised grimly, forgetful of + that oath to Aziza. +</p> +<p> + Hastily he glanced about the stalls. There was no other horse there, + only a pair of mild-eyed donkeys, and though there might conceivably + be other horses behind other doors there was no instant to spare in + search. +</p> +<p> + This luck was too prodigious to risk. +</p> +<p> + The door to the street had already been unbolted and now he threw + it back with a quick look into the dark emptiness of the narrow side + street, and then, with a tight hold of the reins, he swung himself + into the saddle and Aimée up into his arms, her head on his + shoulder, her arms clasping him. +</p> +<p> + It was a huge Bedouin saddle with high-arched back and curved pummel + and the slender pair no more than filled it, making apparently no + weight at all for the spirited beast which tore out of the stalls at + the charging gallop beloved of Eastern horsemen. +</p> +<p> + For a moment Ryder felt wildly that he might meet the fate of the + rash youth in his patron story. He had never ridden a horse like + this, which, like all high-mettled Arabs, resented the authority of + any but his master, and though a good horseman Ryder had all he + could do to keep his seat and Aimée in his arms. +</p> +<p> + Around the corner of the lane the horse went racing, and down the + dark, lebbek-lined avenue his flying feet struck back their sparks + of fire. Across an open square he plunged, while irate camels + screamed at him and a harsh voice shouted back loud curses. It + seemed to Ryder that other voices joined in—that there was a + pursuit, an outcry—and then they were out down an open road, wildly + galloping, like a mad highwayman under a pale morning sky. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXI +</h2> +<h3> + MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL +</h3> +<p> + That morning Miss Jeffries ate two eggs. She ate them successively, + with increasing deliberation, and afterwards she lingered + interminably over her toast and marmalade. +</p> +<p> + Still Ryder made no appearance and since the Arab waiter had + informed her that he had not yet breakfasted she concluded that he + was not at the hotel but had spent the night with some friend of + his—probably that Andrew McLean to whom he was always running off. +</p> +<p> + Nor was he in to luncheon. That was rank extravagance because he was + paying at pension rates. His extravagance, however, was no affair of + hers. Neither, she informed herself frigidly, was his appearance or + his non-appearance. It was only rather dull of Jack to lose so many, + well, opportunities. +</p> +<p> + She was not going to be in Cairo forever. Not much longer, in fact. + There were adages about gathering rosebuds while ye may and making + hay while the sun shone that Jack Ryder would do well to observe. +</p> +<p> + Other men did, reflected Jinny Jeffries with a proud lift of her + ruddy head. Only somehow, the other men— +</p> +<p> + Well, Jack <i>was</i> provokingly attractive! Only of course, if he was + going to rely upon his attraction and not upon his attentions— +</p> +<p> + Deliberately Miss Jeffries smiled upon a stalwart tourist from New + York and promised her society for a foursome at bridge in the hotel + lounge that evening. +</p> +<p> + Later, when Jack still failed to materialize and behold her + inaccessibility, the exhibition seemed hardly to have been worth + while.... And there were difficulties getting rid of the New Yorker + the next day. He had ideas about excursions. +</p> +<p> + It was during the forenoon of the next day that the first twinge of + genuine worry shot across the sustained resentment which she was + pleased to call her complete indifference. She recalled the vigor of + Ryder's warnings about mentioning his adventure and the grave + dangers of disclosure, and she began to wonder. +</p> +<p> + She wished, rather, that he had gone safely out of the house before + she went away. +</p> +<p> + Of course nothing could happen. He had done nothing to give himself + away. He was simply a veiled shadow, moving humbly as befitted a + lowly stranger among the high and hospitable surroundings. +</p> +<p> + But still, it would have been better if he had gone.... +</p> +<p> + Those turbaned women had looked queerly at them when they were + talking so long in the window. Perhaps it was not simply at the + intimacy between a young American and a veiled Oriental. Perhaps + their voices had been unguarded or Jack's tones had awakened + suspicion. Perhaps he had given himself away in his long talk with + the bride. She remembered a Frenchwoman who had come to interrupt + that talk who had looked rather sharply at Jack.... And that + dreadful eunuch was always staring.... +</p> +<p> + She thought of a great many things now, more and more things every + minute. +</p> +<p> + And still she told herself that she was absurd, that Jack would be + the first to ridicule her alarm. He was probably enjoying himself, + staying on with his friends, forgetting all about herself.... Still + his room at the hotel had not been slept in for two nights now nor + had he called at the hotel and he certainly didn't have an extensive + supply of clothes and linen upon him beneath the mantle. +</p> +<p> + Particularly she remembered that he had exhibited some funny black + tennis shoes which he had thought would go appropriately with a + woman's robes. Absurd, to think of him as spending two days in + tennis shoes, and absurd to say that he would go to the shops and + buy more when he had plenty of footgear in his hotel room. +</p> +<p> + Unless he wore McLean's. +</p> +<p> + She had always regarded the unknown McLean as a most unnecessary + absorbent of Jack Ryder's time and attention and now that view was + deeply reinforced. +</p> +<p> + By noon she decided to do something. She would telephone that + Andrew McLean and see if Jack had been there. The Agricultural Bank, + that was the place. An obliging hotel clerk—clerks were always + obliging to Miss Jeffries—gave her the number and she slipped into + the booth feeling a ridiculous amount of excitement and suspense. +</p> +<p> + She had never telephoned in Cairo—only been telephoned to—and she + was not prepared for the fact that the telephone company was French. + At the phone girl's "<i>Numero?—Quel numero, s'il vous plait?</i>" Jinny + hastily choked back the English response and clutched violently at + French numerals. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Huit cent—no, quatre vingt—un moment!</i>" she demanded desperately + and hanging up the receiver, sat down to write out her number in + French correctly. +</p> +<p> + And then she got the Bank, and, still clinging to her French, she + requested to speak to Monsieur McLean and was informed that it was + Monsieur McLean himself. +</p> +<p> + "<i>Je suis</i>—oh, how absurd! Of course you speak English," she + exclaimed. "This French telephone upset me.... I wanted to speak to + Mr. Ryder if he is there—or else leave a message for him, if you + know when he will come in." +</p> +<p> + "Ryder?" There was a faint intonation of surprise in the voice. + "I've no idea really when he'll be in," said McLean, "but you may + leave the message if you like." +</p> +<p> + "Hasn't he—haven't you seen him for some time?" stammered Jinny, + feeling that McLean must be taking her for a pursuing adventuress. +</p> +<p> + "Well—not for some time." +</p> +<p> + Her heart sank. +</p> +<p> + "Not—not for two days?" +</p> +<p> + "It might be that," said the Scotchman cautiously. +</p> +<p> + Two days. Forty-eight hours, almost, since she had left him in that + harem! And McLean had not seen him. Of course there might be other + friends who had and McLean might know of them. +</p> +<p> + "I'm afraid I'll have to see you," she said desperately. "It's + rather important about Jack Ryder—and if I could just talk with you + a minute—this afternoon—?" +</p> +<p> + "I have no appointment for three fifteen," McLean told her + concisely. +</p> +<p> + Evidently he expected her to call at the Bank.... He was used to + being called on.... "Shall I come—?" she began. +</p> +<p> + "I can see you at three fifteen," McLean reassured her, and she + repeated "Three fifteen," with an odd vibration in her voice. +</p> +<p> + "I wonder," she murmured, "if I came at three ten—or three + twenty—?" +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + But she didn't. She was humorously careful to make it exactly a + quarter past the hour when she left her cab before McLean's + official looking residence and stepped into the tiled entrance. +</p> +<p> + She had no very clear notion of Andrew McLean except that he was, as + Jack had said, Scotch, single, and skeptical, that he was Jack's + intimate friend and an official sort of banker—and the word banker + had unconsciously prepared her for stout dignity and middle age. +</p> +<p> + She was not at all prepared for the lean, sandy-haired, rather + abrupt young man who came forward from the depths of the gratefully + cool reception room, and after a nervous hand clasp waved her to a + chair. +</p> +<p> + He was still holding her card, and as he glanced covertly at it she + recalled that she had given him no name over the telephone and that + he had known her only by the time of her appointment. Decidedly she + must have made an odd impression! +</p> +<p> + Well, he could see for himself now, she thought, a trifle defiantly. + Certainly he was taking stock of her out of those shrewd swift gray + eyes of his. He could see that she was, well—certainly a nice girl! +</p> +<p> + As a matter of fact McLean could see that she was considerably more. + Rather disconcertingly more! It was not often that such white-clad + apparitions, piquant of face and coppery of hair, teased the eyes in + his receiving room. +</p> +<p> + "You wanted to see me—?" he offered mechanically. +</p> +<p> + "Perhaps you have heard Jack Ryder speak of me—of Jinny Jeffries?" + began the girl, determined to put the affair on a sound social + footing as soon as possible. +</p> +<p> + McLean considered and, in honesty, shook his head. "He very seldom + mentioned young ladies." +</p> +<p> + "Oh—!" Jinny tried not to appear dashed. "We are very old + friends—in America—and of course I've seen a good deal of him + since I've been in Cairo. In fact, he is stopping now at the same + hotel with us—with my aunt and uncle and myself." +</p> +<p> + McLean smiled. "He said it was a tooth," he mentioned dryly. +</p> +<p> + In Jinny's eyes a little flicker answered him, but her words were + ingenuous. "Oh, of course he <i>has</i> been having a time with the + dentist. That's why he couldn't return to his camp. What I meant + was, that at the hotel we have been seeing him every day until—he + has just disappeared since day before yesterday and we—that is, + I—am very much concerned about it." +</p> +<p> + "Disappeared? You mean, he—" +</p> +<p> + "Just disappeared, that's all. He hasn't been at the hotel—he + hasn't been anywhere that I know of, and I haven't heard a word from + him—so I telephoned you and then when I found he hadn't been + here—" +</p> +<p> + McLean looked off into space. "Eh, well, he'll turn up," he said + comfortingly. "Jack's erratic, you may say, in his comings and + goings. He means nothing by it.... I've known him do the same to + me.... Any time, now; you're likely to hear—" +</p> +<p> + Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter and her cheeks burned with + brighter warmth. +</p> +<p> + "It isn't just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean," she took quietly + distinct pains to explain. "It's because I am anxious—" +</p> +<p> + "Not a need, not a need in the world. Jack knows his way about.... + He may have been called back to the diggings, you know—if they dug + up a bit porcelain there or a few grains of corn the boy would + forget the sun was shining." +</p> +<p> + Perhaps his caller's burnished hair had shaped that thought. "Jack + knows his way about," he repeated encouragingly, as one who + demolishes the absurd fears of women and children. +</p> +<p> + "You don't quite understand." Jinny's tones were silken smooth. "You + see, I left him in rather unusual circumstances. It was a place + where he had no business in the world to be—" +</p> +<p> + At McLean's unguardedly startled gaze her humor overtook her wrath. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, it was quite all right for <i>me</i>" she replied mischievously to + that look. "Only not for him. You see, he was masquerading—" +</p> +<p> + "Again?" thought McLean, involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the + lassies that lad was—and he had thought him such an aloof one! +</p> +<p> + "Masquerading as a woman—so he could take me to a reception." +</p> +<p> + Jinny began to falter. Just putting that escapade into words + portrayed its less commendable features. +</p> +<p> + "It was a woman's reception," she began again, "at a Turkish house. + A marriage reception—" +</p> +<p> + She had certainly secured McLean's whole-hearted attention. +</p> +<p> + "A marriage reception—a Turkish marriage reception?" he said very + sharply and amazedly as his caller continued to pause. "Do you mean + to say that Jack Ryder went into a Turkish house dressed as a + woman—?" +</p> +<p> + There was a pronounced angularity of feature about the young + Scotchman which now took on a chiseled sternness. +</p> +<p> + Swiftly Jinny interposed. "Oh, you mustn't blame him, Mr. McLean! + You see, I wanted very much to go to a Turkish reception and I + didn't have the courage to go alone or drag some other tourist as + inexperienced as myself, and so Jack—why, there didn't seem any + harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish + mantle and a veil up to his eyes and he was sure he'd never be found + out. I ought not to have let him, I know—it was my fault—" +</p> +<p> + She looked so flushed and innocent and distressed that McLean's + chivalry rose swiftly to her need. +</p> +<p> + "Indeed you mustn't blame yourself Miss—Miss Jeffries. You don't + know Egypt—and Jack does. He knew that if he had been discovered + there would have been no help for him—and no questions asked + afterwards. And it might have been very dangerous for you. The + blame is just his now," he said decisively, yet not without a + certain weak-kneed sympathy with the culprit. +</p> +<p> + For if the girl had looked like this ... he could see that she would + be a difficult little piece to withstand ... though any man with an + ounce of sense in his head would have behaved as a responsible + protector and not as a reckless school boy. +</p> +<p> + "What happened?" he said quickly. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, nothing happened—nothing that I know of. We got along very + well, I thought, although now I remember that some people <i>did</i> + stare.... But I wasn't worried at the time. I thought it was just + because I was an American and he was apparently a Turkish woman, but + there was no reason why an American might not get a Turkish woman to + act as a guide, was there?... And then Jack told me to go home + first—he said it would be simpler that way and that he would slip + over to some friend's or to some safe place and take his disguise + off. He wore a gray suit beneath it, and the only funny thing was + some black tennis shoes.... So I left him. And he hasn't been back + since." +</p> +<p> + She added as McLean was silent, "He told me that he had some + engagement for that evening, so I did not begin to worry until the + next day." +</p> +<p> + "Now just how long ago was this?" +</p> +<p> + "Two days ago. Day before yesterday afternoon." +</p> +<p> + She looked anxiously at McLean's face and took alarm at his careful + absence of expression. +</p> +<p> + "Oh, Mr. McLean, do you think—" +</p> +<p> + He brushed that aside. "And where was it—this reception?" +</p> +<p> + "At an old palace, forever away on the edge of the city. I don't + remember the street—we drove and I had the cab wait. But it + belonged to a Turkish general. Hamdi Bey," she brought out + triumphantly. "General Hamdi Bey." +</p> +<p> + McLean did not correct her idea of the title. His expression was + more carefully non-committal than ever, while behind its quiet guard + his thoughts were breaking out like a revolution. +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey.... A wedding reception.... The daughter of Tewfick + Pasha.... +</p> +<p> + In the secret depths of his soul he uttered profane and troubled + words. That French girl, again.... So Ryder had not forgotten that + affair, although he had kept silent about it of late. He had bided + his time and taken that rash means of seeing the girl again—and he + had involved this unknowing young American in a risk of scandal and + deceived her into believing herself responsible for this caprice + while all the time she had been a mere cloak and it had been his own + diabolical desire.... +</p> +<p> + Miss Jeffries was surprised to see a sudden sorry softness dawn in + the young man's look upon her. And she was surprised, too, at his + next question. +</p> +<p> + "I wonder, now, if you were the young lady who took him to a + masquerade ball—some time ago?" +</p> +<p> + Lightly she acknowledged it. "You'll think I'm always taking him to + things," she said brightly, but McLean's troubled gaze did not + quicken with a smile. +</p> +<p> + He was experiencing a vast compassion. She was so innocent, so + unconscious of the quicksands about her.... Probably she had never + heard a breath of that first adventure. +</p> +<p> + And it was this fair Christian creature whom Jack Ryder had + abandoned for a veiled girl from a Turk's harem! +</p> +<p> + McLean filled with cold, antagonistic wonder. He forgot the lovely + image of the French miniature, and remembering Tewfick's rounded + eyes and olive features he thought of the veiled girl—most + illogically, for he knew that Tewfick was not her father—as some + bold-eyed, warm-skinned image of base allure. +</p> +<p> + Sorrowfully he shook his head over his friend. He determined to + protect him and to protect this girl's innocence of his behavior. He + would help her to save him.... She could do it yet—if only she did + not learn the truth and turn from him. If ever she had been able to + make Jack go to a masquerade—that cursed masquerade!—she could + work other, more beneficent, miracles. +</p> +<p> + So now he asked, very cautiously, his mind on divided paths, "Do you + say there was nothing to draw suspicion—he did not talk to any + one, the guests or the bride—?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, yes, he did talk to the bride," said Miss Jeffries with such + utter unconsciousness that McLean's heart hardened against the + renegade. +</p> +<p> + "He talked quite a while to her," she said. +</p> +<p> + "Did you notice anything—?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I couldn't hear what was said. He was the last in line and he + stayed for some time. He said afterward that it was all right. She + was very nice to him," said Jinny earnestly, producing every scrap + of incident for McLean's judgment. "She showed him some of her + presents—something about her neck." +</p> +<p> + In mid-speech McLean changed a startled "God!" to "Good!" +</p> +<p> + "She wasn't suspicious, then?" he said weakly. +</p> +<p> + "Not as far as I could see. Oh, nothing <i>seemed</i> to be wrong. But I + did feel uneasy until I got away and then, Jack hasn't come back—" +</p> +<p> + Again she looked at the young Scotchman for confirmation of her fear + and again she saw that careful expressionless calm. +</p> +<p> + "It's no need for alarm," he told her slowly, "since nothing went + wrong. I see no reason why Jack couldn't have walked out of that + reception. If we only knew where he was going later—" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, something might have happened later," Jinny took up. "I + thought of that. He might have wanted some more fun and felt more + reckless—Oh, I <i>am</i> worried," she confessed, her gray eyes very + round and childlike. +</p> +<p> + And if anything had happened she would always blame herself, thought + McLean ironically.... The unthinking deviltry of the young + scoundrel!... When he found him he'd have a few things to say! +</p> +<p> + "That's why I came to you," Jinny went on. "I hesitated, for he had + warned me so against telling any one, but no one else knows—" +</p> +<p> + "And no one must know," McLean assured her crisply. "I daresay it's + a mare's nest and Jack will be found safe and sound at his diggings + or off on a lark with some friend or other, but it's well to make + sure and you did quite right in coming to me." +</p> +<p> + Jinny thought she had done quite right, too. +</p> +<p> + There was a satisfying strength about McLean. She resented a trifle + his masculine way of trying to keep the dark side from her; she was + not greatly misled by that untroubled look of his and yet she was + unconsciously reassured by it.... And although he refused to be + stampeded by alarm he was not incredulous of it, for his manner was + frankly grave. +</p> +<p> + "I'll send out at once," he said decisively, "and see if I can pick + up any gossip of that reception. I've a very clever clerk with + brothers in the bazaars who is a perfect wireless for information. + He has told me the night before a man was to be murdered." +</p> +<p> + He paused, reflecting that was not a happy suggestion. +</p> +<p> + "Then I'll send out to Jack's diggings. That express doesn't stop + to-night, but I'll find a way. And I'll let you know as soon as I + can." +</p> +<p> + "You're very kind," said Jinny gratefully. +</p> +<p> + His competent manner brought her a light-hearted sensation of + difficulties already solved. Jack was as good as found, she felt in + swift reaction. If he was in any trouble this forceful young man + would settle it. +</p> +<p> + But probably he wasn't in any trouble. Probably he was just at his + diggings—rushing off from her in the exasperating way he seemed to + do whenever they were getting on particularly well.... She + remembered how he had bolted from that masquerade which had begun so + happily. He had said he was ill, but she had never completely slain + the suspicion that his illness sprang from ennui and disinclination. +</p> +<p> + She rose. "I mustn't take any more of your time, Mr. McLean—and you + probably have a four fifteen engagement." +</p> +<p> + But her light raillery failed of its mark. +</p> +<p> + "Eh? No, I have not," seriously he assured her. "You are quite the + last one I took on—the last before tea." +</p> +<p> + He paused confused with a strange suggestion.... Tea.... His servant + did it rather well.... And it was time— +</p> +<p> + Usually he had it in the garden. It was a charming garden, full of + roses, with a nice view of the Citadel—and his strange suggestion + expanded with a rosy vision of Jinny among the roses, beside his + wicker table.... Would she possibly care to—? +</p> +<p> + He struggled with his idea—and with his shyness. And then the sense + that it wasn't quite decent, somehow, to be offering tea to this + girl whom anxiety for Ryder's unknown lot had brought to him + overcame that unwonted impulse. +</p> +<p> + He dismissed the idea. And like all shy men he was oddly relieved at + the passing of the necessity for initiative, even while he felt his + mild hope's expiring pang. +</p> +<p> + He stepped before her to open the doors to which she was now taking + herself. +</p> +<p> + In the entrance he saw his clerk—the clever one—going out, and + excusing himself he went forward to detain the man. For a moment + there ensued a low-toned colloquy. Then the clerk, a dark-browned + keen-featured fellow in European clothes with a red fez, began to + relate something. +</p> +<p> + When McLean turned back to Jinny Jeffries she saw that his look was + sharply altered. There was a transfixed air about him and when he + spoke his voice told her that he had had a shock. +</p> +<p> + "My man tells me," he said, "that Hamdi Bey's bride is dead. He + buried her yesterday." +</p> +<a name="2HCH0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXII +</h2> +<h3> + FROM THE BAZAARS +</h3> +<p> + There was a moment's pause. +</p> +<p> + "What? That lovely girl?" said Jinny in startled pity. She added + incredulously, "Yesterday?... And only the day before—why, what + <i>could</i> have happened?" +</p> +<p> + That was what McLean was asking himself very grimly. +</p> +<p> + Aloud he told her slowly. "They say that fire happened. Some + accident—a candle overturned in her apartments. And of course the + windows were screened—" +</p> +<p> + "<i>Fire</i>—how terrible! That lovely girl," said Jinny again. She was + genuinely horrified and pitiful, yet she found a moment to wonder at + the evident depths of McLean's consternation. For of course he had + never seen the girl. +</p> +<p> + Yet he looked utterly upset. +</p> +<p> + "It's one of the most dreadful things I ever heard of," Jinny + murmured. "On her wedding night.... And she was so young, Mr. + McLean, and so exquisite. She didn't look like a real girl.... She + was a fairy creature.... I never dreamed there <i>really</i> were + rose-leaf skins before but hers was just like flower petals. Jack + and I talked about it, I remember. And her face had something so + bewitching about it, something so sweet and delicate—" +</p> +<p> + She broke off revisited with that vision of Aimée's sprite-like + beauty.... How little that poor girl had thought, as she stood there + in the bright splendor of her robes and diadem, that in a few hours + more— +</p> +<p> + "Oh, I hope that fire—that it was merciful—that she didn't + suffer," she said almost inaudibly. +</p> +<p> + But speech itself was too definitive of horrors. +</p> +<p> + "It's tragic," she finished simply. +</p> +<p> + It was tragic, with a complicated tragedy, thought Andrew McLean as + he stood there, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed, his mind + invaded with a dark swarm of conjecture, surmise, suspicion, his + vision possessed by a flitting rush of pictures. +</p> +<p> + He saw Jack talking with the girl at the reception.... The girl + showing him something about her neck—that accursed locket, he + thought acutely.... Jack sending Miss Jeffries home.... Had he + arranged that purposely? Was there some mad, improvised scheme of + escape in the air? +</p> +<p> + The pictures became mere flitting wraiths of conjecture, yet touched + with horrifying possibility.... Jack lingering, hiding.... Jack + making love to the girl, attempting flight.... Jack discovered—and + the quick saber thrust—for both. +</p> +<p> + A fire?... Very likely—to screen the darker tragedy. Hamdi was + capable of it to save his pride. And it would dispose so easily of + the—evidence. +</p> +<p> + McLean's thoughts flinched from the grim outcome of his fear. He + tried to tell himself that he was inventing horrors, that the fire + might be the simple truth, that Ryder's talk with the girl might + actually have ended in farewell—at least a temporary farewell—and + that his consequent low spirits had taken him off to mope in camp. +</p> +<p> + That was undoubtedly the thing to believe, at least until there was + actual necessity to disbelieve it, and looking at the story in that + way, McLean's Scotch sense of Providence was capable of pointing out + the stern benefits of the sad visitation. +</p> +<p> + Whatever mischief might have been afoot between his friend and that + unfortunate young girl the fire had prevented. And however hard Jack + might take this now, decidedly the poor girl's death was better for + him than her life. +</p> +<p> + No more wasting himself now on sad romance and adventure. No more + desire and danger. No more lurking about barred gates and secret + doors and forbidden palaces. No more clandestine trysts. No more + fury of mind, beating against the bars of fate. +</p> +<p> + Jack was saved. +</p> +<p> + Even if he had succeeded in rescuing the girl—what then? McLean was + skeptical of felicity from such contrasting lives. Better the + finality, the sharp pain, the utter separation. And then— +</p> +<p> + His eyes returned to the young American before him. She was the + unconscious answer to that future. She would save Ryder from regret + and retrospection.... In after years, looking back from a happy and + well-ordered domesticity, this would all become to him a fantastic, + far-off adventure, sad with the remembered but unfelt sadness of + youth, yet mercifully dim and softened with young beauty. +</p> +<p> + Jack must never tell this girl the story. McLean had read somewhere + of the mistakes of too-open revelation to women and now he was very + sure of it.... She must never receive this hurt, never know that + when she had been troubling over Jack's disappearance he had been + agonizing over another girl—that the escapade she thought so + intimate a lark had been a trick to see the other—that the young + creature whose loveliness she so innocently praised had been her + rival, drawing Jack from her.... +</p> +<p> + McLean would speak clearly to Ryder about this and seal his lips.... + But first he would have to be found. +</p> +<p> + He became conscious that he had been a long time silent, following + these thoughts, while Jinny waited. +</p> +<p> + "I'll do everything I can to find out about that fire," he told her. + "I mean, about any discovery of Jack in the palace," he quickly + amended as her face was touched with instant question. "And I'll see + if any one in Cairo knows where he is. Then if nothing turns up I'll + just pop out to his diggings in the morning and make sure he's all + right.... I'll get back that night and telephone you. And until + then, not a word about it. Much better not." +</p> +<p> + "Not a word," Jinny promised. "And if you should happen to find out + anything to-night—" +</p> +<p> + "I'll let you know at once. Well, rather. But don't count on that. + The old boy is out in his tombs, dusting off his mummies. You may + get a letter, yourself, in the morning," he threw out with + heartening inspiration, "And while you are reading it, I'll be + tearing along to the infernal desert—" +</p> +<p> + He had brought the smile to her eyes as well as lips. Bright and + reassured and comfortably dependent upon his resourceful strength, + she took her leave. +</p> +<p> + But there was no smile remaining upon Andrew McLean's visage. +</p> +<p> + Twenty-four hours. Two nights and a day.... And the girl was dead + and in her grave—Moslems wasted no time before interment—and Jack + was—where? +</p> +<a name="2HCH0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIII +</h2> +<h3> + IN THE DESERT +</h3> +<p> + Clinging to that plunging horse Ryder made little attempt at first + to guide the flight. It was enough to keep himself in the saddle and + Aimée in his arms while every galloping moment flung a farther + distance between them and that palace of horror. +</p> +<p> + His heart was beating in a wild, triumphant exultation. Glorious to + be out under the free sky, the wind in his face, the open world + ahead! He felt one with that dashing creature beneath him. +</p> +<p> + And Aimée was in his arms, untouched, unhurt, out from the power of + that sinister man and the expectation of dread things. +</p> +<p> + The moment was a supreme and glorious emotion. +</p> +<p> + They were headed south. And to Ryder's exhilaration this seemed + good. Cairo offered no hiding place for that fugitive girl. Even the + harbor that McLean could give would not be proof against the legal + forces of the Turks. Law and order, power and police were all in the + hands of the husband or father. Even now the alarm might be given, + the telephones ringing. +</p> +<p> + Aimée must be hidden until she could be smuggled to France—or + until the French authorities could get out their protective + documents. The hiding place that occurred to Ryder was a wild and + desperate expedient. +</p> +<p> + The American hospital at Siut. The isolation ward—the pretense of + contagious illness. And then later travel north, in the care of + nurses— +</p> +<p> + All this, if he could win over one of the doctors. At that moment + winning over a doctor appeared a sane and simple thing to Ryder's + mind. The only difficulty he recognized was getting Aimée into that + hospital. +</p> +<p> + But they would not be looking for him in the south. He could manage + it, he felt jubilantly. He could smuggle her into his diggings at + night and then make his arrangements. Anything, everything was + possible, now that the nightmare of a palace was left behind them. +</p> +<p> + South they went then, at a quieter pace, the Arab's rhythmic + footfalls ringing through the still, gray world of before dawn. + Across the Nile they made their way, working out on sandbars to the + narrow depths, where Ryder swam beside the swimming horse while + Aimée clung to the saddle. Then south again along the river road. +</p> +<p> + The sky was light now. And the river was light. Only the palms and + the villages and the flat dhurra fields were dark. And in the east + behind the Mokattam hills a thin band of gold began to brighten. +</p> +<p> + Life was stirring. Small black boys on huge black buffaloes + splashed in the river. Veiled girls with water jars on their + high-held heads from which the shawls trailed down to the dust filed + past from the villages like a Parthenon frieze. On the high banks + the naked fellaheen were already stooping to the incessant dipping + of the shadouf, while from the fields came the plaintive creaking of + the well sweep, as some harnessed camel or bullock began its eternal + round. +</p> +<p> + A flock of sheep came down the river road, driven by their ragged + shepherds, and a string of camels, burdened beyond all semblance to + themselves, bobbed by like rhythmic haystacks, led by a black-robed, + bare-footed child, carrying a live turkey in her arms while before + her rode her father, in shining pongee robes on a white donkey + strung with beads of blue. +</p> +<p> + And by these travelers there passed in that brightening dawn two + other travelers from the north, a pair on a powerful but tired black + horse, a man in a military cloak and a green and gold turban about + his bronzed head, and behind him, on a pillion, a black-mantled, + black-veiled girl, with bare, dangling feet. +</p> +<p> + It was Aimée who had evolved the disguise, constructing the turban + from the negligee beneath her mantle, and it was Aimée who bargained + with the villagers for their breakfast, eggs and goats' milk and + bread and rice, while her lord, as befitted his dignity, stayed + aloof upon his steed, returning a courteous response of "<i>Allah + salimak</i>—God bless you" to their greetings. +</p> +<p> + Then as the day brightened and the last soft veil of mist was + burned away before a blood-red sun, that pair of travelers left the + highroad and turned west upon a byway that led past fields of corn + and yellow water and mud villages where goats and naked babies and + ragged women squatted idly in the dust, and on through low, + red-granite hills swirled about with yellow sand drift and out into + the desert beyond. +</p> +<p> + Here fresh vigor came to the Arab horse, and tossing his mane and + stretching out his nostrils to the dry air he broke into a gallop + that sent sand and pebbles flying from his hoofs. To right and left + the startled desert hares scattered, and from the clumps of spiky + helga the black vultures rose in heavy-winged flight. +</p> +<p> + Then the breeze dropped, and the swift-coming heat rushed at them + like a furnace breath, and slower and slower they made their way, + Ryder leading the jaded horse and Aimée nodding in the saddle, mere + crawling specks across the immensity of sand. +</p> +<p> + Then, in the shade of a huge clump of gray-green <i>mit minan</i> beside + a jutting boulder they stopped at last to rest. The horse sank on + his knees; Ryder spread out his cloak and Aimée dropped down upon + its folds, lost in exhausted sleep as soon as her head touched the + sands. Ryder, his back against the rock, kept watch. +</p> +<p> + It was not the exultant Ryder of that first hour of flight. The + excitement of the night had subsided and withdrawn its wild + stimulation. It was a hot and tired and immensely sobered young man + who sat there with eyes that burned from lack of sleep and a brow + knit into a taut and anxious line. +</p> +<p> + Realization flooded him with the sun. Responsibility burned in upon + him with the heat. +</p> +<p> + Alone in the Libyan desert he sat there, and at his feet there slept + the young girl whose life he had snapped utterly off from its roots. +</p> +<p> + He was overwhelmingly responsible for her. If she had never met him, + if he had never continued to thrust himself upon her, she would have + gone on her predestined way, safe, secluded, luxurious—vaguely + unhappy and mutinous at times, perhaps, in the secret stirrings of + her blood, but still an indulged and wealthy little Moslem. +</p> +<p> + And now—she lay there, like a sleeping child, the dark tendrils of + hair clinging to her moist, sun-flushed cheeks, her long lashes + mingling their shadows with the purple underlining of the night's + terrors, homeless, exhausted, resourceless but for that anxious-eyed + young man. +</p> +<p> + Desperately he hoped that she would not wake to regret. Even a + sardonic tyrant in a palace might be preferable in the merciless + daylight to a helpless young man in the Libyan desert. +</p> +<p> + And she was so slight, so delicate, so made for rich and lovely + luxury.... Looking down at her he felt a lump in his throat ... a + lump of queer, choking tenderness.... +</p> +<p> + He wanted to protect her, to save her, to spend himself for her.... + He felt for her a reverent wonder, a stirring that was at once + protective and possessive and denying of all self. +</p> +<p> + He would die to save her. He tried to tell himself reassuringly that + he <i>had</i> saved her.... If only he could keep her safe.... +</p> +<p> + He thought of the life before her. He thought of that family in + France in whose name he had urged his interference. That unknown + Delcassé aunt who had sent out her agents for her lost heirs—would + she welcome and endow this lovely girl? +</p> +<p> + He could not doubt it.... Aimée's youth and beauty would be treasure + trove to a jaded lonely woman with money to invest in futures. Aimée + would be a belle, an heiress.... +</p> +<p> + He looked down at her with a sudden darkness in his young eyes.... + And still she slept, wrapped in the sorry mantle of his masquerade, + the torn chiffons of her negligée fluttering over her slim, bare + feet. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIV +</h2> +<h3> + THE TOMB OF A KING +</h3> +<p> + There were several approaches to the American excavations. McLean, + on that morning after his visit from Jinny Jeffries, chose to borrow + a friend's motor and man and break the speed laws of Upper Egypt, + and then shift to an agile donkey at the little village from which + the gulleys ran west through the red hills into the desert. +</p> +<p> + It was a still, hot day without cloud or wind and the sun had an air + of standing permanently high in the heavens, holding the day at + noon. Shimmering heat waves quivered about the base of the farther + hills and veiled the desert reaches. It was not conducive to comfort + and Andrew McLean was not comfortable. He was hot and sticky and + sandy and abominably harassed. +</p> +<p> + Not a creature, as far as he could discover, had seen Jack Ryder in + Cairo since the afternoon of that reception at Hamdi Bey's. He had + not been seen at the Museum nor the banks, nor at Cook's, nor the + usual restaurants, nor at the clubs with his friends. And the clever + clerk—with the two brothers in the bazaar—had unearthed quite a + bit of disquieting news about that reception—disquieting, that is, + to one with secret fears. +</p> +<p> + There had been a fire in the apartments of the bride of Hamdi Bey + and the bride had been killed instantly—that much was known to all + the world. The general had been distracted. He had sat brooding + beside his bride's coffin, allowing no one, not even her father, to + look upon the poor charred remains that he had placed within. He had + been a man out of his mind with grief, gnawing his nails, beating + his slaves,—Oh, assuredly, it had been a calamity of a very high + order! +</p> +<p> + One of the brothers in the bazaar had himself talked with an old + crone whose sister's child was employed in the general's kitchen, + and the fourth-hand story had lost nothing on the route. +</p> +<p> + The bride's youth and beauty, her jewels, her robes, the general's + infatuation, and the general's grief, the reports of these ran + through the city like wildfire. And from the particular channel of + the kitchen maid and the old aunt and the brother in the bazaars + came news of the very especial means that Allah had taken to + preserve the general from destruction. +</p> +<p> + For he had been in the bride's apartments just before the fire. But + the power of Allah, the Allseeing, had sent a thief, a prowler, by + night, upon the palace roofs, and the screams of a girl in the upper + story had called the general to that direction. +</p> +<p> + And so his preservation had been accomplished. +</p> +<p> + It was that rumor of the thief upon the roofs which sent the chill + of apprehension down McLean's spine. For though the bazaars knew + nothing of the thief's identity and it was reported he had escaped + by the river yet McLean felt the sinister finger of suspicion. If + the thief had not been a thief—unless of brides!—and if he had + <i>not</i> escaped—? +</p> +<p> + Impatiently the young Scotchman clapped his heels against the + donkey's sides, enhancing the efforts of the runner with the + gesticulating stick. +</p> +<p> + Suppose, now, that he should not find Jack at the excavations? +</p> +<p> + It was encouraging, somehow, to hear the monotonous rise and fall of + the labor song proceeding as usual, although McLean immediately told + himself that the work would naturally be going on under Thatcher's + direction whether Ryder were there or not. The camp knew nothing of + Cairo. The camp would be as usual. +</p> +<p> + And yet, after his first moment's survey, he had an indefinite but + uneasy idea that the camp was not as usual. +</p> +<p> + True, the tatterdemalion frieze of basket bearers still wove its + rhythmic way over the mounds to the siftings where Thatcher was + presiding as was his wont, but in the native part of the encampment + there appeared a sly stir and excitement. +</p> +<p> + The unoccupied, of all ages and sexes, that usually were squatting + interminably about some fire or sleeping like mummies in + hermetically wrapped black mantles, now were gathered in little + whispering knots whose backward glances betrayed a sense of + uneasiness, and as McLean rode past, a young Arab who had been the + center of attention drew back with such carefulness to escape + observation that McLean's shrewd eyes marked him closely. +</p> +<p> + It might be that his nerves were deceiving him, but there did seem + to be something surreptitious in the air. +</p> +<p> + Over his shoulder he glimpsed the young Arab hurrying out of the + camp. +</p> +<p> + It might be anything or nothing, he told himself. The man might be + going shopping to the village and the others giving him their + commissions, or he might be an illicit dealer in curios trying to + pick up some dishonest treasure. In native diggings those hangers on + were thick as flies. +</p> +<p> + He dismounted and hurried forward to meet Thatcher's advance. + The men had rarely met and Thatcher's air of hesitation and + absent-mindedness made McLean proffer his name promptly with a + sense of speeding through the preliminaries. Then with a manner + he strove to make casual he put his question. +</p> +<p> + "I say, is Ryder back?" +</p> +<p> + He knew, in the moment's pause, how tight suspense was gripping him. + Then Thatcher glanced toward the black yawning mouth of a tomb + entrance. +</p> +<p> + "Why, yes—he's down there." He added. "Been a bit sick. Complains + of the sun." +</p> +<p> + For a moment his relief was so great that McLean did not believe in + it. Jack here—Jack absolutely safe— +</p> +<p> + Mechanically he put, "When did he come in?" +</p> +<p> + "When?" Thatcher hesitated, trying to recall. "Oh, night before + last—rode in after dark." He added reassuringly, as the other swung + about towards the tomb, "He says there's nothing really wrong with + him. There's no temperature." +</p> +<p> + McLean nodded. His relief now was acutely compounded with disgust. + He felt no lightning leap of thanksgiving that his friend was safe, + but rather that flash of irritated reaction which makes the + primitive parent smack a recovered child. +</p> +<p> + Not a thing in the world the matter! A mare's nest—just as he had + prophesied to Miss Jeffries. Why in heaven's name hadn't Jack the + decency to send that over-anxious young lady a card when he + abandoned town so suddenly?... Not that McLean blamed Miss Jeffries. + Given the masquerade and Jack's disappearance and a zealous feminine + interest her concern was perfectly natural. +</p> +<p> + But McLean had left a busy office and taken an anxious and + uncomfortable excursion, and his voice had no genial ring as he + shouted his friend's name down the dark entrance of the tomb shaft. +</p> +<p> + In a moment he heard a voice shouting hollowly back, then a + wavering spot of light appeared upon the inclined floor and Ryder's + figure emerged like an apparition from the gloom. +</p> +<p> + "I say! That you, Andy?" +</p> +<p> + Evidently he had been snatched from sleep. His dark hair was + rumpled, his face flushed, and he yawned with complete frankness. +</p> +<p> + McLean knew a sudden yearning to put an arm about him.... Dear old + Jack.... Dear, irresponsible scamp.... His reaction of the + irritation vanished.... It was so darned good to see the old chap + again.... +</p> +<p> + He muttered something about being in the vicinity while Ryder, + rousing to hostship, called directions to the cook boy to bring a + tray of luncheon. +</p> +<p> + "It's cool down here," he told McLean, leading the way back. +</p> +<p> + It was cool indeed, in the Hall of Offerings. It was also, McLean + thought, satisfying a recovered appetite, a trifle depressing. +</p> +<p> + They sat in a small island of light in an ocean of gloom while about + them shadowy columns towered to indistinguishable heights and + half-seen carvings projected their strange suggestions. +</p> +<p> + It seemed incongruous to be smoking cigarettes so unconcernedly at + the feet of the ancient gods. +</p> +<p> + But McLean's feeling of depression might have been due to his + renewed awareness of catastrophe. For though Jack was here, safe and + sound enough, although a bit unlike himself in manner, yet Jack + <i>had</i> been at that confounded reception in a woman's rig and Jack + had seen the girl and talked with her—apparently on terms of + understanding. +</p> +<p> + And if Jack had left Cairo that night, as he said he did—claiming + delay on the way due to a tired horse—then Jack knew nothing in the + world of the palace fire, and the girl's sudden and tragic death. +</p> +<p> + And McLean would have to tell him. He would have to tell him that + the girl he was probably dreaming of in some fool's paradise of + memory and hope was now only a little mound of dust in an Oriental + cemetery. That a shaft of temporary wood already marked the grave of + Aimée Marie Dejane, daughter of Tewfick Pasha and wife of Hamdi + Bey.... +</p> +<p> + And however much McLean's sound senses might disapprove of the whole + fantastic affair and his sober judgment commend the workings of + Providence, he loved his friend, and he feared that his friend loved + this lost girl. +</p> +<p> + He had to end love and hope and romance and implant a desperate + grief.... +</p> +<p> + He thought very steadily of Jinny Jeffries. He cleared his throat. +</p> +<p> + "Jack, old man—" +</p> +<p> + He started to tell him that there had been a fire in Cairo, a most + shocking fire in a haremlik. It seemed to him that Jack was not + listening, that he had a faraway, yet intent look upon his face, as + of one attending to other things. And then suddenly Jack seemed to + gather resolution and turned to his friend with an air of narration + of his own. +</p> +<p> + "Look here, McLean, there's something I want to tell you—" +</p> +<p> + "Wait a minute now," said McLean quietly. "I want you to hear + this.... It was a fire in the palace of your friend, Hamdi Bey." +</p> +<p> + He had Jack's attention now—he was fairly conscious of arrested + breath. Not looking about him he went grimly on, "The night of the + wedding a fire started in the haremlik.... It was a bad business, a + very bad business, Jack. For the girl—the girl Hamdi had just + married—" +</p> +<p> + He was conscious of Jack's look upon him but he did not turn to meet + it. +</p> +<p> + "She died," he said heavily. "He buried her yesterday." +</p> +<p> + He thought that Jack was never going to speak. +</p> +<p> + Then, "Died?" said Ryder in an odd voice. +</p> +<p> + "I expect she breathed in a bit of smoke," said McLean, trying for a + merciful suggestion. +</p> +<p> + "And he buried her—?" +</p> +<p> + Jack was like a child, trying to fit bewildering facts together. + McLean's sympathy hurt him like a physical pain. He wondered what it + could be like to realize that some loved one you had just talked + with, in radiant life, was now gone utterly.... +</p> +<p> + And then he heard Jack laugh. Mad, he thought quickly, turning now + to look at him. +</p> +<p> + Ryder's head was tilted back; Ryder's shoulders were shaking. "Oh, + my Aunt!" he gasped hysterically. "My Aunt Clarissa—is <i>that</i> what + Hamdi says!" +</p> +<p> + He sobered instantly and leaned towards McLean. "That looks as if + he's done with her—what? Saving his face that way? You're sure it + was Aimée—the girl he had just married? Not some other girl—some + co-wife or something?" +</p> +<p> + And as McLean bewilderedly muttered that he was sure, Ryder began to + laugh again. To laugh jubilantly, joyously, triumphantly. +</p> +<p> + "He's given her up—he's got a saving explanation to thrust in the + world's face! Oh, blessed Allah, Veiler of all that should be + veiled! The man's through. He's had enough. He isn't going to try + to—" +</p> +<p> + Across the bright oblong of the entrance a shadow appeared. +</p> +<p> + "Ryder—I say, Ryder," said a hurried voice—Thatcher's voice—and + Thatcher came hastily forward in perturbed urgency. +</p> +<p> + "There's a lot of men outside—police and natives and what not. With + warrants. They're searching the place. And they want to see you.... + Hang it all, Ryder," said Thatcher explosively but apologetically, + "they say you've made off with some sheik's daughter." +</p> +<p> + He paused, shocked at the monstrosity of the accusation. He was a + delicate-minded man—outside of his knowledge of antiquities—and he + evidently expected his young associate to fall upon him and slay him + for the slander. +</p> +<p> + "A sheik's daughter—?" said Ryder in a mildly wondering voice. From + his emphasis one might have inferred he was saying, "How odd! I + don't remember any sheik's daughter—" +</p> +<p> + A queer uncomfortable flush spread fanways from Thatcher's thin + temples and rayed across his high cheekbones. He did not look at + either of the men as he murmured, "It's most peculiar, but that Arab + horse—the sheik claims the horse is his, too. He says you rode off + on it, with his daughter." +</p> +<p> + "That's all right," said Ryder absently. "I don't want the horse.... + But you say the sheik's there? What does he look like? Thin—with + blond mustaches?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, no, no, not at all. He is quite heavy and bearded—one-eyed, if + I recollect. But there <i>is</i> a man with a blond mustache who appears + to do the directing—" +</p> +<p> + "And you mean they are searching?" said Ryder abruptly. "You've let + them in—?" +</p> +<p> + "They have warrants," Thatcher protested. "And there are proper + policemen conducting the search—" +</p> +<p> + "My good God! Where are they now? Not coming <i>here</i>? I don't have + any policemen trampling here and meddling with my finds—tell them + to clear out, Thatcher, you know there's no sheik's daughter here!" +</p> +<p> + Ryder gave a quick laugh but the impression of his laughter was not + as sharp as the impression of his alarm. +</p> +<p> + "I did tell them it was preposterous," Thatcher began, "but, you + see, after finding the horse—" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, the horse! I got him for a song—of course the beggar is + stolen. Give him back, if they claim him. But as for any sheik's + daughter—keep the crowd out, Thatcher, I won't have them here, not + in these tombs—" +</p> +<p> + "I tell you they are policemen—they are armed—you can't resist—" +</p> +<p> + "How many are they? A lot? But they'll take your word, won't they? + Look here, McLean, can't you settle this for me and keep them out?" +</p> +<p> + "The natives have been talking," murmured Thatcher, reddening still + deeper, "and they have said enough about your riding in at night + and—and keeping to this tomb all day to make the men very + suspicious. They are watching this one now—" +</p> +<p> + "Then keep them back—long as you can. For God's sake," entreated + Ryder with that strange passionate violence. "Andy—you do + something—hold them back. Give me time. I—I've got to get some + things together—I won't have them at my things—hold them back—out + here—till I come." +</p> +<p> + He was gone. Gone tearing back into the gloom and silence of his + tomb. And McLean and Thatcher, astounded witnesses of his outburst, + turned speedily to the entrance, avoiding each other's eyes. +</p> +<p> + Agitatedly Thatcher was murmuring that Ryder's finds were valuable, + immensely valuable, and it was disturbing to contemplate any + invasion, and with equal agitation but more mechanical calm McLean + was murmuring back that he understood—he quite understood— +</p> +<p> + As for understanding he was stunned and dazed. A sheik's daughter! + And the father himself claiming her—under the direction of a + blond-mustached man.... And a stolen horse.... Jack conceding the + horse.... Jack utterly upset at the search party.... +</p> +<p> + But he himself had seen that new-placed shaft with its inscription + to Aimée Marie Dejane.... What then in the name of wonders did this + mean? There couldn't be <i>another</i> girl? McLean's imagination + faltered then dashed on at a gallop. Some—some hand-maiden, + perhaps, whom Jack had rescued in mistaken chivalry? Perhaps the + French girl has sent a maid on ahead? +</p> +<p> + McLean's head was whirling now. One thing appeared quite as possible + as another. Pasha's daughters and sheik's daughters, stolen horses + and Djinns and Afrits and palaces and masquerades at wedding + receptions appeared upon the same plane of feasibility. +</p> +<p> + Outwardly he was extremely calm. Calm and cold and crisp. +</p> +<p> + At the mouth of the tomb he detained the party of native policemen + with their hangers-on of curious natives and examined, with great + show of circumspection and authority, the perfectly regular search + warrants which had been issued for them at the instigation of an + apparently bereft parent. +</p> +<p> + He conversed with the alleged parent, a stolid, taciturn native + dignitary whose accusations were confirmed by eagerly assenting + followers. He lived in a small village, not far north of the camp. + He had a young daughter, very beautiful. Three nights ago he had + surprised her with this young American and they had fled upon his + noblest horse. +</p> +<p> + It was a simple and direct story. And Jack—by his own report—had + been out upon the desert that night, had appeared, upon the next + night, with this unknown and beautiful horse, and had since kept to + the tomb, claiming illness, in a most persistent way. +</p> +<p> + The camp boys had testified that he had been vividly critical of the + food sent in to him, and that he had required extraordinary amounts + of heated water. +</p> +<p> + "All of which," McLean said sternly, in the vernacular, "amounts to + nothing—unless you can discover the girl." +</p> +<p> + "And that, monsieur," said a Turk in the uniform of the Sultan's + guards, appearing beside the desert sheik, "that is exactly what we + are here to do." +</p> +<p> + McLean found himself looking into a thin, menacing face, capped + with a red fez, a face deeply lined, marked by light, arrogant eyes + and embellished with a huge, blond mustache. +</p> +<p> + "And your interest in this, monsieur?" he questioned. +</p> +<p> + "I am a friend of Sheik Hassan's," said the Turk loftily. "I shall + see that my friend obtains his rights." +</p> +<p> + And in McLean's other ear a distraught Thatcher was murmuring "That + officer chap is Hamdi Bey—a General of the Guards. You know, Mr. + McLean, this really is—you know, it is—" +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey ... Hamdi Bey, two days after his distressing loss, + befriending this sheik and trying to involve Jack Ryder in disgrace. +</p> +<p> + Mystifying. Mystifying and disquieting—yes, disquieting, in the + face of Jack's alarm. But for that alarm McLean could have believed + the whole thing a farcical attempt of Hamdi's to revenge himself + upon Ryder—supposing that Hamdi had discovered Ryder in his + masquerade or else as the prowler by night—but Jack's furious + anxiety to keep the party out, and his dashing back, ostensibly to + preserve his things— +</p> +<p> + Was it actually possible that he <i>had</i> that sheik's daughter + concealed in some nook or cranny of the place? +</p> +<p> + McLean told himself that it was preposterous. It <i>was</i> + preposterous—but Ryder had been doing preposterous things.... And + glancing at Thatcher he perceived that that perturbed and + transparent gentleman was also telling himself that <i>his</i> + suspicions were preposterous. +</p> +<p> + The search party, tiring of parley, was moving about the hall in + businesslike inspection. +</p> +<p> + And then Ryder reappeared, a distinctly alert but self-contained + Ryder, who met the interrogations of the police with scoffing and + absolute denial. +</p> +<p> + But McLean was conscious that there was something tense and nervous + in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and + his own nerves began to tighten apprehensively. +</p> +<p> + It did not add to his composure to see Ryder salute Hamdi Bey with + an ironic and overdone politeness. +</p> +<p> + "Ah, monsieur le general! We meet as we parted—in the depths!" +</p> +<p> + The general appeared to smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but + McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip, and felt the currents of + animosity. +</p> +<p> + So those two had met! Ryder had been discovered then.... McLean + tried, in futile bewilderment, to recall just what amazing thing + Ryder had been saying when this party had appeared. +</p> +<p> + He kept very close at that young man's side as the strange party + moved on into the inner chamber. The searchers were scrupulously + careful of the excavator's finds; they did not finger a frieze nor + disturb a single small box of the tenderly packed potteries and + beads and miniature boats, but they scraped every heap of dust to + see if it concealed an entrance, they exhausted the resources of + each corner, they circled every pillar, shook out every rug of + Jack's blankets and required the opening of the large chest in which + the wax reproductions of the friezes were placed, awaiting + transportation. +</p> +<p> + "You will perceive, messieurs," declared Ryder in mocking irony, + "that no human being is within this last fold of wax—especially a + being," he added thoughtfully with a glance at the stolid sheik, "of + the proportions of her papa.... This daughter, was she a large young + lady?" he inquired politely of the Arab. +</p> +<p> + The sheik vouchsafed no reply, but from across his ample person the + general leaned forward. +</p> +<p> + "She was small, Monsieur Ryder," he said in silken tones, "but she + can raise a man as high as the gallows—or as low as the grave." +</p> +<p> + "A marvel!" returned young Ryder smoothly. "And was she also of + charm—a charm that could kindle fires—?" +</p> +<p> + It appeared to McLean that he caught the flaunting implications of + the taunt. +</p> +<p> + He wished to heaven that Ryder would hold his reckless tongue. +</p> +<p> + Ryder was turning now to the official in charge of the police. +</p> +<p> + "If you have satisfied yourselves that this place is empty—" +</p> +<p> + The man, a rather apologetic, pleasant fellow, shrugged and smiled. + "We have examined all—" +</p> +<p> + There was a moment in which the searchers regarded one another + through the gloom in the inquiring embarrassment of the + discountenanced and considered departure. But Hamdi Bey had more + insistent eyes. +</p> +<p> + He was circling the place again like a wolf for the scent, flashing + his search light over the carved walls, the dancing gleam picking + out now a relief of Osiris, now a fishing boat upon the Nile, now + the judgment hall of Maat. Suddenly he stopped and began examining a + limestone slab. +</p> +<p> + "These stones—these have been merely piled here," he cried + excitedly. "This is a hole—an entrance. Dig them out, men. There is + a door there, I tell you." +</p> +<p> + Hastily Ryder addressed the police. "It is simply the burial vault," + he told them. "The sarcophagi are there, ready for transportation. + Mr. Thatcher will tell you—" +</p> +<p> + "I assure you it is merely the actual tomb," said Thatcher + nervously. "I have myself assisted my colleague with the + preparation." +</p> +<p> + The slabs had been displaced now, disclosing the small door, with + its fine wrought stele. Hamdi flashed a look of triumph upon the man + who had obviously tried to conceal that door from them, a look which + Ryder ignored as he turned to McLean. +</p> +<p> + "That is the door which is sealed forever upon the dead, and upon + the Ka, the spiritual double," he said in a low conversational + tone. "It has some remarkable representations of the jackal + Anubis—" +</p> +<p> + It seemed to McLean a most extraordinary time for a disquisition + upon Anubis. If Ryder was attempting to prove himself at his ease he + had certainly misjudged his manner. +</p> +<p> + "Damn Anubis," McLean gave back under his breath. "He's not the only + jackal—What the devil's the meaning of this?" +</p> +<p> + Ryder made no reply. The stone had been pushed back and the + searchers were stooping beneath the narrow entrance. Then as + McLean's head bent at the door he heard his friend whispering, "I + say—you haven't a gun you could slip me—?" +</p> +<p> + Mutely he shook his head. And that agitated whisper died away with + the last vestige of belief in Ryder's innocence. Apprehensively + McLean glanced about that inner chamber he was entering, dreading to + encounter instant and damning evidence of a girl. +</p> +<p> + He found himself in the presence of the dead. The chamber was a + small, square, walled-up affair, and at one side stood the three + sarcophagi. The other halls had been in total darkness, but the + blackness of this place appeared something palpable and weighty. And + the air had the dry, acrid tang of dust which has lain waiting for + centuries. +</p> +<p> + It was hot, whereas the other chambers had been cool—or else + McLean's disturbed blood was pumping too furiously through his + pulses. Instinctively he drew close to Jack, as the party stood + flashing their lights over the bare walls and empty corners, and + then concentrated the pale illumination upon those caskets of the + dead. +</p> +<p> + "I told you that the place was empty," Ryder said with distinct + impatience in his voice. "And now, if you have satisfied + yourselves—" +</p> +<p> + "You are in haste, monsieur," said Hamdi Bey's smooth voice. "If you + will permit us to see what is within—" +</p> +<p> + He approached the first sarcophagus. +</p> +<p> + The sheik, who appeared to have committed the restoration of his + daughter into the other's hands, remained imperturbably beside the + entrance while the head of the police came forward to assist Hamdi + in raising the painted lid. +</p> +<p> + "I protest," said Ryder very sharply. He stood upon the other side + of the case, eying them combatively. "It is useless to disturb this + lid—I tell you that the Persians have been considerably before + you." +</p> +<p> + And indeed the case was empty. Hamdi moved to the next and again + Ryder took up his post opposite. +</p> +<p> + "Again I protest," he insisted. "The least jar or injury—" +</p> +<p> + But the men raised the lid, and after the briefest look, moved on. +</p> +<p> + "And now," Ryder spoke very clearly and authoritatively, addressing + the head of the police, "I must ask you to stop. Even the dust that + you are disturbing is precious. This thing has gone beyond all + reason." +</p> +<p> + The police official looked as if he agreed with him, but Hamdi Bey + had moved determinedly to the third sarcophagus. The official + hesitated, evidenced discomfort, but moved finally after the bey. +</p> +<p> + "If there is nothing here," he murmured, "surely you cannot + object—" +</p> +<p> + "There is precious dust here," Ryder repeated. "You must + understand—" +</p> +<p> + "We see for ourselves," said Hamdi Bey, and now his voice had a ring + of triumphant steel through its soft smoothness. "Stand aside. This + is in the name of the law." +</p> +<p> + It seemed to McLean that for one mad moment Ryder was tempted to + resist. In the flickering light of the torches he stood defiantly + above the painted mummy case, his eyes steadily upon the bey, his + hands pressing down upon the vivid bloom of the dead woman's + pictured face. +</p> +<p> + Then with a beaten but ironic smile he stood aside. +</p> +<p> + Slowly the men lifted the lid.... In that moment McLean became aware + that his heart was pumping thickly somewhere in his throat and that + the rest of him was a hollow, horrible void of suspense. +</p> +<p> + Hamdi Bey turned his arrogant stare from young Ryder and looked + down.... Drawing closer, fearfully McLean's eyes followed him. +</p> +<p> + He could not believe their evidence. His heart could not stop its + idiotic pumping. +</p> +<p> + But there he saw no terror-stricken girl, no pallid runaway of the + harems, but a still, dark-shrouded form, swathed in the tight + bandages of the ancient embalmer, a dry, dusty little mummy creature + blankly and inscrutably confronting this unforeseen resurrection. +</p> +<p> + Over their dumbfounded heads he heard young Ryder's mocking laugh. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXV +</h2> +<h3> + IN CAIRO +</h3> +<p> + "It's good news!" said Miss Jeffries with bright positives. +</p> +<p> + It was her response to Andrew McLean's greeting that evening. He + had made rather a tardy appearance at the hotel, for there had + been an important dinner with an important bank official passing + through Cairo to escape from, but he arrived at last, looking + extraordinarily well in his very best dinner clothes. +</p> +<p> + And Miss Jeffries, for all her harassment of suspense, was no woeful + object in a vivacious blue evening frock with silvery gleams. +</p> +<p> + "He's safe—absolutely safe," McLean confirmed. +</p> +<p> + He expected radiance. Miss Jeffries' expression was arrested + judgment. +</p> +<p> + "Safe—<i>where</i>?" +</p> +<p> + "At his camp ... I just returned—just in time to dine. I motored + out this morning." +</p> +<p> + "Oh!... It took your whole day. I am so sorry!" For a moment the + girl appeared to concentrate her sympathetic interest upon McLean. +</p> +<p> + "You must simply hate me," she told him repentantly, dropping into + one of the chairs in the drawing-room corner she had long been + guarding. "Do sit down and tell me all the horrid details....—Uncle + and Aunt are in the Lounge, and I should like you to meet them, but + they'll be there forever and I do want to hear first.... Was it + fearfully hot?" +</p> +<p> + "Oh, rather," murmured the young man, confused by this change of + interest. "I mean, that's quite the usual thing, isn't it, for + deserts? I got up a good breeze going, for I was a bit wrought up, + you know—not a soul in Cairo had seen Jack since that day." +</p> +<p> + "And he was out at his camp," said Jinny thoughtfully. "How—how + long had he been there?" +</p> +<p> + "He says he started that night," said McLean non-committally. +</p> +<p> + "Oh!... That night.... That was rather sudden, wasn't it?" +</p> +<p> + "Jack's sudden, you know," mentioned his friend uncomfortably. "And + he had a lot of finds to pack up for transport—they are taking + their stuff to the museum and Jack had been away so long, here in + the city—" +</p> +<p> + "No wonder I didn't hear then!" said the girl with a laugh in which + it would have taken an acuter ear than McLean's to detect the secret + clamor of chagrin and humiliation. +</p> +<p> + Of course she had <i>wanted</i> Jack to be safe.... But he might have + been ill—or away on some official summons— +</p> +<p> + Just back at his diggings. Gone off on an impulse, with no thought + to let her know.... +</p> +<p> + And she had rushed to McLean with her silly worries and her anxious + concern which he had probably taken for a tender interest.... +</p> +<p> + Heaven knows what disillusionizing thing Jack had said to him that + day!... Men were too hateful. +</p> +<p> + And now McLean had come dutifully to report that the man she was so + worried about was quite well and busy, thank you, only he had + overlooked any friendship for her, and so had sent no word— +</p> +<p> + In Jinny's ears was the rush of the furies' wings. But on Jinny's + lips was a proud little smile, and her bright look was a shining + shield for the wounds of the spirit. +</p> +<p> + "That <i>is</i> a comfort," she said with pleasant, friendly warmth. "You + don't know how horridly responsible I felt! Really, Jack ought to + have let me know—but that's Jack all over. He's never grown up." +</p> +<p> + "He's not had much time," returned McLean from the height of his + twenty-nine years. +</p> +<p> + "He never will," said Jinny sagely, "not until—well, not until + he meets some girl, you know, who will make him feel really + responsible." +</p> +<p> + It occurred unhappily to McLean that the girl Jack had been meeting + so assiduously of late had certainly not added to his claims to + responsibility! +</p> +<p> + Steadily he guarded silence. There are ice fields, on Mont Blanc, + where a whisper precipitates an avalanche, and McLean had no + intention of starting anything in his friend's slippery field of + affairs. +</p> +<p> + "I have spent more time," Miss Jeffries was confiding brightly, for + those imperative reasons of her own so obscure to the bewildered + young man, "introducing Jack to nice girls—but it never takes! Not + seriously. He's a perfectly dear friend, but he doesn't care + anything really about girls—and he does need somebody to get him + out of his antiquities and his dusty old diggings ... But of course + you think I am a sentimental thing!" +</p> +<p> + McLean did not tell her what he thought. He was still fascinatedly + engrossed with her revelation of the impeccable Platonic basis of + her friendship. His mood of complicated emotion lightened and + brightened and at the same time an amazed wonder unfolded its + astonishment. +</p> +<p> + He marveled at his friend. To turn to something fantastic, something + bizarre—for so he thought of that veiled girl of the harem—when he + had this Miss Jeffries for a friend—but probably the young lady + herself had never given him the least encouragement. Women are not + easily moved to romance for men they have always regarded as + brothers and he could see that her feeling for Jack was the warm, + honest, sisterly affection of utter frankness. +</p> +<p> + The worse for Jack. For now there seemed no ministering angel to + mend his troubled future. +</p> +<p> + It was not only Ryder's troubled future that troubled McLean—it + was also Ryder's troubled present. He was very far from easy in his + mind about him. After that mystifying performance in the tomb he had + not wanted to leave without a frank explanation, but there had been + no moment for revelation; Thatcher had hung about them and Hamdi + Bey, of all men, had requested a place in McLean's motor for the + return to Cairo. +</p> +<p> + And that dinner engagement had pressed. He could have abandoned it + for any real reason, but Jack had assured him that there was none. +</p> +<p> + "Get the old devil out of here," had been Jack's furious appeal, + referring to Hamdi. "Deny everything to him. Only get him out." +</p> +<p> + And McLean had got him out. +</p> +<p> + The sheik and his followers after a murmurous conference with the + bey had galloped off; the police had turned towards their post and + Hamdi had accompanied McLean to the nearest village and his waiting + motor. +</p> +<p> + Clearly he had wanted to talk to McLean and McLean was not sorry for + the opportunity to exchange implications. The bey had unfolded his + sympathetic friendship for the sheik; McLean had unfolded a cold + surprise that anything so disgraceful should be attributed to such a + prominent archaeologist. The bey had produced the evidence and + McLean had produced a skeptical wonder, and then a thoughtful wonder + if the British government had not better take the matter up and sift + it, for the benefit of all concerned. +</p> +<p> + Clearly the thing could not go on. Ryder could not accept such a + rumor against his reputation. Yes, he thought he would advise Ryder + to take the matter up. +</p> +<p> + And there he perceived that even the suave and politic Hamdi + squirmed. Doubtless to the Turk, McLean represented British prestige + and political power and all sorts of unknown influence.... And + native testimony, while voluable and unscrupulous, had a way of + offering confused discrepancies to the coldly questioning + investigators of the law. +</p> +<p> + And with no real evidence against Ryder— +</p> +<p> + The matter of the sheik's daughter, McLean perceived, would be + dropped. Unless the girl—whatever girl they sought—could be + discovered. +</p> +<p> + If Hamdi wished to pay off some score against the American he would + choose other weapons. McLean reflected upon the bey's capacity for + assassination or poisoning while he bade him farewell before the + dark wall of his palace entrance. +</p> +<p> + Between them had passed no reference to the bey's recent loss. Since + it would not have been etiquette for him to mention the bey's wife, + he judged it equally inadvisable to refer to her ashes. +</p> +<p> + The whole affair was so wrapped in darkness that he could not decide + upon any creditable explanation. It would have to wait until he saw + Ryder in the next day or two—for Ryder had told him he would try to + get in with his finds as soon as possible. +</p> +<p> + But no matter how he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind he + had found himself asking, through the courses of that important + dinner and now in the pauses of his conversation with Miss + Jeffries—Was there really some girl? Had he only dreamed that tense + anxiety of Jack's—had Jack led them on for his own young amusement? +</p> +<p> + But it was not long possible to maintain an inner communion with + Jinny Jeffries for a vis-à-vis. +</p> +<p> + A divided mind could not companion her swift flights and sudden + tangents. Deriding now her silly anxieties and deploring McLean's + unnecessary trip, she had branched into the consideration of how + busy McLean must be—and McLean found himself somehow embarked in + sketchy descriptions of the institution of which Miss Jeffries + seemed to think he was the backbone and of its very interesting work + throughout the country. +</p> +<p> + And as he had talked he found himself noticing things that he had + never noticed before about girls, the wave of bright hair against a + flushed cheek, the dimples in a rounded arm, the slim grace of + crossed ankles and silver-slippered feet. +</p> +<p> + "And you live all alone in that big house?" Jinny was murmuring. +</p> +<p> + "Not exactly alone." McLean smiled. "There's Mohammed and Hassan and + Abdullah and Alewa and Saord-el-Tawahi—" +</p> +<p> + "What <i>do</i> you call him when you are in a hurry?" laughed the girl. +</p> +<p> + It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint + and secret embarrassment and he had discovered this delightful + interest and bright vivacity. +</p> +<p> + And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever + stilled and chilled in Miss Jeffries' breast—like a poor hidden + corpse beneath bright roses—why at two and twenty expectancies + flourish so gayly that one lone bud is not long missed. And chagrin + is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all + the more delicate for a dimming cloud. +</p> +<p> + Moreover McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing. +</p> +<p> + When in startled realization of time and place he rose at last and + she murmured laughing, "And after all you never met Aunt and Uncle!" + he felt a queer blush tingle his cheek bones and a daring impulse + shape the thought aloud that in that case he must come again. +</p> +<p> + "We're here five days more," said Jinny, the explicit. +</p> +<p> + Thoughtfully he repeated, "Five days," and said farewell. +</p> +<p> + "Now if he decorously waits to the next to the last day—!" murmured + Jinny to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the + balance. +</p> +<p> + He didn't. But it was not the initiative of the Scots race which + brought him to her, late that very next afternoon, but a soiled + looking note which he held crumpled in his hand. +</p> +<p> + He found her at tea upon the veranda with her aunt and uncle and + while he made conversation with the Pendletons he gave Miss Jeffries + the note. +</p> +<p> + "From our friend Ryder," he said with forced lightness. "It explains + itself." +</p> +<p> + But it certainly did not. It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying + that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds and sending this + ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo + Museum to meet him at five and would he please stop on the way and + call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffries and borrow a woman's cloak + and hat and veil, or if she wasn't in, get them elsewhere. +</p> +<p> + "What is it—another masquerade?" said Jinny blankly. +</p> +<p> + McLean looked mutely at her and shook his head, but within him + horrific suspicion was raging like a forest fire. +</p> +<p> + He continued his converse with the Pendletons while Jinny went for + the things; she returned with a small bag containing coat and hat + and veil, and the announcement that she would go right over with + him. +</p> +<p> + "If the things aren't right I'll know what he wants," she declared, + and then, smiling, "What <i>do</i> you suppose he is up to now?" +</p> +<p> + McLean felt that he didn't want to know. And most positively he + didn't want her to know. But having lacked the instant inspiration + to deny her, he could only acquiesce and wonder why he hadn't + thought up some brilliant excuse. +</p> +<p> + He looked helplessly at the Pendletons, but they merely murmured + their adieux and their independent niece accompanied McLean to his + waiting carriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world. +</p> +<hr class="short"> +<p> + The caravan was before them. A long line of camels was just turning + in the gates and before the steps of a back entrance other camels, + kneeling with that profound and squealing resentment with which even + the camel's most exhausted moments oppose commands, were being + relieved of their huge loads by natives under the very minute and + exact direction of Thatcher. +</p> +<p> + And within the entrance a young man with rumpled dark hair and a + thin, bronzed face flushed with impatience was imperiously conveying + the Arabs who were bearing the precious sarcophagi. +</p> +<p> + Over his shoulder he caught sight of the two arrivals. +</p> +<p> + "I asked for motors—and they furnished these!" he cried + disgustedly, gesturing at the enduring camels. "It took us all day + though we half killed the brutes.... Hello, Jinny, did you bring the + things?" +</p> +<p> + With light casualness he accepted her appearance on the scene. That + glitter in his bright hazel eyes was not for that. "Come in, both + of you," he called, plunging after his men. +</p> +<p> + At the foot of the stairs McLean waited with Miss Jeffries until the + men had reached the top and deposited their burdens in the room and + in the manner which Ryder was specifying so crisply, and then they + came mechanically up. +</p> +<p> + McLean had the automatic feeling of a mere super in a well rehearsed + scene. He had no idea of plot or appearance but his rôle of dumb + subservience was clearly defined. +</p> +<p> + "You understand," Ryder was calling to the men, "nothing more goes + in this room. All else down stairs.... Come in," he said hurriedly + to his waiting friends, and shutting the door swiftly behind them, + "of course—this doesn't lock!" he muttered. "Jinny, you stand here, + do, and if any one tries to come in tell them they can't." +</p> +<p> + "Tell them you say they can't?" questioned Jinny a little + helplessly. +</p> +<p> + "No—no—not that. Tell them you are using the room; tell them," + said Ryder with very brisk and serious inspiration, "tell them your + petticoat is coming off!" +</p> +<p> + "Why Jack Ryder!" said Jinny indignantly. +</p> +<p> + "Nonsense," said he to her indignation. "Don't you remember when + your aunt's petticoat came off on the way to church? It happens." +</p> +<p> + "But it doesn't run in families!" +</p> +<p> + Her protest fell apparently upon the back of his head. He had + turned to the last sarcophagus and was slipping his fingers beneath + the lid. "Here, Andy," he said quickly. "I had it wedged so it + wasn't tight shut, but it's been so infernally hot and dusty—" +</p> +<p> + He was tremendously troubled. It was not the heat which had brought + those fine beads of moisture to his brow, white above the line of + brown, and drawn such a pale ring about his mouth. McLean saw that + the slim, wiry wrists which supported the case's top were shaking. +</p> +<p> + "Gently now," he murmured and the lid was lifted and laid aside. +</p> +<p> + The same dark, unstirring form of the tomb scene. The same dry, + dusty little mummy.... But with hands strangely reckless for an + archaeologist dealing with the priceless stuff of time Ryder tore at + those bandages; he unwrapped, he unwound, and in a lightning's + flash— +</p> +<p> + To McLean's tense, expectant nerves it was like a scene at the + pantomime. He had divined it; he had foreseen and yet there was the + shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the + supernatural in the revelation. +</p> +<p> + In a wave of an enchanter's wand the mummy was gone. And in its + place lay a Sleeping Beauty, the dark hair in sculptured closeness + to the head, the long, black lashes sweeping the still cheeks. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br><br><br><br></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXVI +</h2> +<h3> + THE PAINTED CASE +</h3> +<p> + "She's fainted," said Ryder in a voice that shook. From his pocket + he drew swiftly a thermos bottle but before the top was off those + long lashes fluttered, and from under their shadow the soft, dark + eyes looked up at him with a smile of very gallant reassurance. +</p> +<p> + "Not—faint," said the girl, in a breath of a voice. "But it was so + long—so hot—" +</p> +<p> + "Drink this." Ryder slipped an arm about her, offering the filled + top of the thermos. "It's over, all over," he murmured as she drank. + "You're safe now, safe.... You're at the museum.... Then we'll get + you to the hotel—" +</p> +<p> + "Hotel—?" the girl echoed with a faint implication of humor in that + silver bell of a voice. +</p> +<p> + She put her hands to her hair and to her face in which the hues of + life mingled with the pallor of exhaustion; on her small fingers + sparkled the gleam of diamonds and from her slender arms fell back + the gold and jade tissues of her chiffon robe. +</p> +<p> + To McLean she had increasingly the appearance of a creature of + enchantments. And to see that young loveliness in its strange gleam + of color lying against his friend's supporting tan linen arm— +</p> +<p> + Sardonically his eyes sought Ryder. +</p> +<p> + "So that was your mummy!" +</p> +<p> + "There was nothing else to do." Ryder had withdrawn his arm; the two + men faced each other across the girl. "I was in a blue funk—you + see, I was hiding her in the inner chamber until I could smuggle her + away. And when those wolves came on the scent, and not an instant to + lose—I got the bandages off the real mummy and about Aimée.... + Lord, it was a close call!" +</p> +<p> + He drew a long breath. "I hadn't a gun. I hadn't a thing—and I had + to grin and play it through ... And I was deathly afraid of + Thatcher." +</p> +<p> + "Thatcher?" +</p> +<p> + "Yes, Thatcher. You see I'd popped the mummy into a case without its + bandages and if Thatcher had glimpsed that he'd have said + something—Oh, innocently—that would have given the show away. He + knew there was only one mummy and it was wrapped. But the Lord was + with me. The men opened the empty case first and at the second they + said nothing to show it wasn't empty and Thatcher didn't look in. + Then they went on to the third." +</p> +<p> + "And me—when I heard those voices—I stopped breathing," said the + girl. "But I shook so—I thought they would think that mummy was + coming to life! And the dust—Oh, it was almost beyond my force not + to sneeze—" +</p> +<p> + "You'd have sneezed us to Kingdom Come," said Ryder, gayly now. +</p> +<p> + "But I did not," she protested. "I lay there and thought of Hamdi + looking down upon me, and my flesh crept.... Oh, it was terrible! + And yet it was funny." +</p> +<p> + Funny.... McLean gazed in sardonic astonishment upon the two young + creatures with such misguided humor that they found something funny + in this appalling business. Flying from palaces ... hiding in tombs + ... taking a mummy's place beneath the dusty bandages of the dead + ... Funny.... +</p> +<p> + And yet there was laughter in their young eyes when they looked at + each other and a curve of astounding amusement in their lips. +</p> +<p> + It touched McLean to wonder. It touched him—queerly—to an odd and + aching pain. For he saw suddenly that he was looking upon something + deathless and imperishable, yet fragile and fleeting as the breath + of time.... +</p> +<p> + They were so young, so absorbed, so oblivious.... +</p> +<p> + He had forgotten Jinny Jeffries. So too,—not for the first time, + alas!—had Ryder. Now her clear voice from the doorway made them + start. +</p> +<p> + "You might present me, Jack." +</p> +<p> + Ryder turned, so did the girl in the painted case, and her eyes + widened with a startled surprise. The doorway had not been within + her vision. +</p> +<p> + Jinny was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the + knob she was to guard, her figure still rigid with astonishment. +</p> +<p> + "I didn't know you—you dug them up—alive," she said with a quiver + of uncertain humor. +</p> +<p> + "My dear Jinny, I had for—Miss Jeffries, let me present you to + Mademoiselle Delcassé," said Jack gravely. "I know that you met her + the day of her reception—" +</p> +<p> + Only in that moment did Jinny place the haunting recollection. +</p> +<p> + "But she was burned—she was killed," she protested, shaken now with + excitement. +</p> +<p> + "She was not burned—although there was a fire. The man who called + himself her husband pretended she was killed in order to save his + pride. For she escaped from him. And he tried to get her back, + setting another man, a false father, after her with lying + witnesses—Oh, it's a long story!—so I had to hide her in this + case." +</p> +<p> + "But Jack, you—why were <i>you</i> hiding her—? Did you get her out?" + stammered Jinny. +</p> +<p> + "The night of that reception. You see, I knew she was truly a French + girl who had been stolen by Tewfick Pasha and brought up as his + daughter—Oh, that's a long story, too! But at McLean's I had + happened on the agents who were searching for her from her aunt in + France, and so I knew.... And at the reception when I found she + hated that marriage I stayed behind and—and managed to get her + away,"—thus lightly did Ryder indicate the dangers of that + night!—"so she could escape to France." +</p> +<p> + "Oh—France!" said Jinny. +</p> +<p> + She could be forgiven for the tone. She had been kept shamefully in + the dark, misled, ignored.... She had been a catspaw, a bystander. +</p> +<p> + Not that she cared. Not that she would let them think for a minute + that she cared.... +</p> +<p> + But as for this talk of France— +</p> +<p> + Her eyes met the eyes of the girl in the mummy case. And Jinny found + herself looking, not at the interloper, the enchantress, but at a + very young, frightened girl, lost in a strange world, but resolved + upon courage. She saw more than the men could see. She saw the + loveliness, the helplessness, and she saw too the sensitive dignity, + the delicate, defensive spirit.... +</p> +<p> + Really, she was a child. +</p> +<p> + And to have gone through so much, dared such danger.... She + remembered that dark, forbidding palace, the guarded doors, the + hideous blacks—and that bright, smiling figure in its misty + veil.... And now that little figure sat in its strange hiding place, + confronting her with a lost child's eyes.... +</p> +<p> + Into Jinny's bright gray eyes came a mist of tears. She was queerly + moved. It was a mingled emotion, but if some drops for her own + disconcertment were mingled with the warm prompting of pity, her + compassion was none the less true. +</p> +<p> + "I'll be so glad to do anything I can to help," she said + impulsively. "If you have no friends to trust in Cairo—" +</p> +<p> + "I have no friends to trust—beyond this room," said the girl. +</p> +<p> + "Then I'll take you to the hotel with me. You can register as one of + our party and keep your room till we leave—we are going in four + days now. And, oh, I know! You can cross on the same steamer with us + to Europe, for there's a woman at the hotel who wants to give up her + transportation and go on to the Holy Land—she was moaning about it + only this noon. It would all fit in beautifully." +</p> +<p> + It seemed to McLean that an angel from Heaven was revealing her + blessed goodness. +</p> +<p> + Ryder took the revelation delightedly for granted. +</p> +<p> + "Bully for you, Jinny," he said warmly. "I knew I could count on + you." +</p> +<p> + If for one moment a twinge of wry reminder recalled that she had + never been able exactly to count upon him it did not dim his mood. + He was alight with triumph. +</p> +<p> + "I'll see to the transportation," he said quickly, doing mental + arithmetic about present sums in the bank. "And we won't wire your + aunt until you're safely out of Egypt—better send a wireless from + the ship. I think your aunt is near Paris—" +</p> +<p> + "We are going to hurry to Paris," said Jinny, "That was our regular + plan—" +</p> +<p> + "And London?" said McLean. +</p> +<p> + "London, later, of course. Cathedrals, lakes and universities—then + London." +</p> +<p> + "I shall be in London," said McLean thoughtfully, "in June.... If + you are not too occupied—" +</p> +<p> + "With cathedrals?" said Miss Jeffries. +</p> +<p> + "Where are the things?" demanded Ryder ruthlessly, and thus + recalled, Jinny produced the bag. +</p> +<p> + McLean moved toward the door. "We might go and mount guard in the + corridor," he suggested, and he and Jinny stepped outside, back into + the everyday world of Egypt where nothing at all had been happening + but the arrival of a caravan from the excavations. +</p> +<p> + Within the room Ryder stooped and lifted the girl from the case and + set her lightly on the floor. Ruefully she shook out the torn + chiffons of that French audacity of a robe, and with a whimsical + smile surveyed the soiled little slippers that she had discarded in + her disguise when she had ridden behind the turbaned Ryder upon the + Arab horse. +</p> +<p> + So little time ago, and yet so long away— +</p> +<p> + Under her long lashes she looked up at the young man, who had set + the old life crumbling about her at a touch. Wistfulness edged the + brave smile with which she murmured, "And so it is all arranged—so + quick. I am safe—I go to the hotel with that nice girl—" +</p> +<p> + "And I won't be able to see you," he said suddenly. +</p> +<p> + "But you have seen me, monsieur, these many days—" +</p> +<p> + "Seen you? I haven't seen you. I've sat outside a tomb on guard, + I've marched beside a mummy case—and—and we've said so little—" +</p> +<p> + It was true. They had said little. The hours had been absorbed in + action. Their words had always been of explanation, of reassurance, + of anxious planning. Of the future, the future after safety had been + achieved, they had said nothing. It had all been uncertain, + nebulous, vague.... +</p> +<p> + And now it was upon them. +</p> +<p> + "And I have never said Thank you," she murmured. "I—I think I began + by saying Thank you, monsieur. I remember saying that my education + had proceeded to the Ts!" +</p> +<p> + "If—if only you never want to unsay it," he muttered. "You don't + know what's ahead—life's so uncertain—" +</p> +<p> + "No, I do not know what is ahead," she told him, "but I am + free—free for whatever will come." +</p> +<p> + The brightness of that freedom shone suddenly from her upturned + face. +</p> +<p> + "Anything is better than that man," she vowed. "Even if my aunt, + that Madame Delcassé, should not like me—you see, I have thought of + everything, and I am not afraid." +</p> +<p> + "Like you—? She'll love you," said Ryder bitterly. "She'll go mad + over you and give you all she has—she'll marry you to a count—" +</p> +<p> + "Another marriage?" Aimée raised brows of mockery. "But I am through + with the marriages of convenience—" +</p> +<p> + "You're so lovely, darling, that you'll have the world at your + feet," said the young man huskily. +</p> +<p> + He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain. "Oh, + I—you—it's not fair—" he muttered incoherently. +</p> +<p> + He had meant—ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the + desert—to be very fair. He would not bind her with a word, a touch. + Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he + touched her in caress. With the reverence of his deep tenderness he + had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its + revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth.... +</p> +<p> + Nobly he had resolved.... But now parting was upon him. +</p> +<p> + "It's not fair to you," he said desperately—and drew closer. +</p> +<p> + For at his blurted words her look had magically changed. The + defensive lightness was fled. A breathless wonder shone out at him + ... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the + gleam of a butterfly's wing. +</p> +<p> + No glamorous moonlight was about them now. No scented shadowy + garden.... But the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty + room, with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very + flame of youth. +</p> +<p> + "Sweet, I'll be on the ship—I'll wait till you are ready," he vowed + and at her low murmur, "Ready—?" he gave back, "Ready—for love," + with a boy's stammer over the first sound of that word between them. +</p> +<p> + "But what is this now," she said wondering, yet with a little elfish + gleam of laughter, "but—love?" +</p> +<p> + His last resolve went to the winds. +</p> +<p> + And as his arms closed about her, as he held to his heart all that + young loveliness that had been his despair and his delight, there + was more than joy in the confused tumult of his youth, there was + the supreme exultation of triumphant daring. +</p> +<p> + For he had opened the forbidden door; he had challenged the + adventure and overcome the risk. +</p> +<p> + He had won. And he would hold his winnings. +</p> +<p> + "Aimée," he whispered. "Aimée—Beloved." +</p> +<br> +<br> +<br> +<hr class="full" noshade> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORTIETH DOOR***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 13498-h.txt or 13498-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/4/9/13498">https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/4/9/13498</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Fortieth Door + +Author: Mary Hastings Bradley + +Release Date: September 19, 2004 [eBook #13498] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORTIETH DOOR*** + + +E-text prepared by Janet Kegg and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed +Proofreading Team + + + +THE FORTIETH DOOR + +by + +MARY HASTINGS BRADLEY + + +AUTHOR OF _The Wine of Astonishment_, etc. + +1920 + + + + + + + +TO +ARTHUR MILLS CORWIN + + + + +CONTENTS + + +CHAPTER + I. A RASH PROMISE + II. MASKS AND MASKERS + III. IN THE PASHA'S PALACE + IV. EXPLANATIONS + V. AT THE GARDEN GATE + VI. A SECRET OF THE SANDS + VII. TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT + VIII. TEWFICK RECEIVES + IX. A WEDDING PRESENT + X. THE RECEPTION + XI. THE FORTY DOORS + XII. THE UNINVITED GUEST + XIII. THE BEY RETURNS + XIV. WITHIN THE WALLS + XV. UNDERGROUND + XVI. OUT OF THE DARKNESS + XVII. AZIZA + XVIII. AZIZA IS OFFENDED + XIX. AN INTERRUPTION + XX. BEYOND THE DOOR + XXI. MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL + XXII. FROM THE BAZAARS + XXIII. IN THE DESERT + XXIV. THE TOMB OF A KING + XXV. IN CAIRO + XXVI. THE PAINTED CASE + + + + + +CHAPTER I + +A RASH PROMISE + + +He didn't want to go. He loathed the very thought of it. Every +flinching nerve in him protested. + +A masked ball--a masked ball at a Cairo hotel! Grimacing through +peep-holes, self-conscious advances, flirtations ending in giggles! +Tourists as nuns, tourists as Turks, tourists as God-knows-what, all +preening and peacocking! + +Unhappily he gazed upon the girl who was proposing this horror as a +bright delight. She was a very engaging girl--that was the mischief +of it. She stood smiling there in the bright, Egyptian sunshine, gay +confidence in her gray eyes. He hated to shatter that confidence. + +And he had done little enough for her during her stay in Cairo. One +tea at the Gezireh Palace Hotel, one trip to the Sultan al Hassan +Mosque, one excursion through the bazaars--not exactly an orgy of +entertainment for a girl from home! + +He had evaded climbing the Pyramids and fled from the ostrich farm. +He had withheld from inviting her to the camp on the edge of the +Libyan desert where he was excavating, although her party had shown +unmistakable signs of a willingness to be diverted from the beaten +path of its travel. + +And he was not calling on her now. He had come to Cairo for supplies +and she had encountered him by chance upon a corner of the crowded +Mograby, and there promptly she had invited him to to-night's ball. + +"But it's not my line, you know, Jinny," he was protesting. "I'm so +fearfully out of dancing--" + +"More reason to come, Jack. You need a change from digging up ruins +all the time--it must be frightfully lonely out there on the desert. +I can't think how you stand it." + +Jack Ryder smiled. There was no mortal use in explaining to Jinny +Jeffries that his life on the desert was the only life in the world, +that his ruins held more thrills than all the fevers of her tourist +crowds, and that he would rather gaze upon the mummied effigy of any +lady of the dynasty of Amenhotep than upon the freshest and fairest +of the damsels of the present day. + +It would only tax Jinny's credulity and hurt her feelings. And he +liked Jinny--though not as he liked Queen Hatasu or the little +nameless creature he had dug out of a king's ante-room. + +Jinny was an interfering modern. She was the incarnation of +impossible demands. + +But of course there was no real reason why he should not stop over +and go to the dance. + + * * * * * + +Ten minutes later, when she had extracted his promise and abandoned +him to the costumers, he was scourging his weakness. + +He had known better! Very well, then, let him take his medicine. Let +him go as--here he disgustedly eyed the garment that the Greek was +presenting--as Little Lord Fauntleroy! He deserved it. + +Shudderingly he looked away from the pretty velvet suit; he scorned +the monk's robes that were too redolent of former wearers; he +rejected the hot livery of a Russian mujik; he flouted the banality +of the Pierrot pantaloons. + +Thankfully he remembered McLean. Kilts, that was the thing. Tartans, +the real Scotch plaids. Some use, now, McLean's precious +sporrans.... He'd look him up at once. + +Out of the crowded Mograby he made his way on foot to the Esbekeyih +quarters where the streets were wider and emptier of Cairene +traffickers and shrill itinerates and laden camels and jostling +donkeys. + +It was a glorious day, a day of Egypt's blue and gold. The sky was a +wash of water color; the streets a flood of molten amber. A little +wind from the north rustled the acacias and blew in his bronzed face +cool reminders of the widening Nile and dancing waves. + +He remembered a chap he knew, who had a sailing canoe--but no, he +was going to get a costume for a fool ball! + +Disgustedly he turned into the very modern and official-looking +residence that was the home of his friend, Andrew McLean, and the +offices of that far-reaching institution, the Agricultural Bank. + +A white-robed, red-sashed and red-fezed houseboy led him across the +tiled entrance into the long room where McLean was concluding a +conference with two men. + +"Not the least trace," McLean was saying. "We've questioned all our +native agents--" + +Afterwards Ryder remembered that indefinite little pause. If the two +men had not lingered--if McLean had not remembered that he was an +excavator--if chance had not brushed the scales with lightning +wings--! + +"Ever hear of a chap called Delcasse, Paul Delcasse, a French +excavator?" McLean suddenly asked of him. "Disappeared in the desert +about fifteen years ago." + +"He was reported, monsieur, to have died of the fever," one of the +men explained. + +McLean introduced him as a special agent from France. His companion +was one of the secretaries of the French legation. They were trying +every quarter for traces of this Delcasse. + +Ryder's memory darted back to old library shelves. He saw a thin, +brown volume, almost uncut.... + +"He wrote a book on the Tomb of Thi," he said suddenly. "Paul +Delcasse--I remember it very well." + +Now that he thought of it, the memory was clear. It was one of those +books that had whetted his passion for the past, when his student +mind was first kindling to buried cities and forgotten tombs and all +the strange store and loot of time. + +Paul Delcasse. He didn't remember a word of the book, but he +remembered that he had read it with absorption. And now the special +agent, delighted at the recognition, was talking eagerly of the +writer. + +"He was a brilliant young man, monsieur, but he was of no importance +to his generation--and he becomes so now through the whim of a +capricious woman to disinherit her other heirs. After all this time +she has decided to make active inquiries." + +"But you said that Delcasse had died--" + +"He left a wife and child. Her letters of her husband's death +reached his relatives in France, then nothing more. They feared that +the same fever--but nothing, positively, was known.... A sad story, +monsieur.... This Delcasse was young and adventurous and an ardent +explorer. An ardent lover, too, for he brought a beautiful French +wife to share the hazards of his expedition--" + +"An ardent idiot," thrust in McLean unfeelingly. "Knocking a woman +about the desert.... Not much chance of a clue after all these +years," he concluded with a very British air of dismissal. + +But the French agent was not to be sundered from the American who +remembered the book of Delcasse. + +From his pocket he brought a leather case and from the case a large +and ornate gold locket. + +"His picture, monsieur." He pressed the spring and offered Ryder the +miniature. "It was done in France before he returned on that last +trip, and was left with the aunt. It is said to be a good likeness." + +Ryder looked down upon the young face presented to his gaze with a +feeling of sympathy for this unlucky searcher of the past who had +left his own secret in the sands he had come to conquer--sympathy +mingled with blank wonder at the insanity which had brought a woman +with it.... + +McLean couldn't understand a man's doing it. + +Jack Ryder couldn't understand a man's _wanting_ to do it. Love to +Ryder was incomprehensible idiocy. Woman, as far as he was +concerned, had never been created. She was still a spectacle, an +historical record, an uncomprehended motive. + +"Nice looking chap," he commented briefly, fingering the curious old +case as he handed it back. + +"I'll keep up the inquiries," McLean assured them, "but, as I said, +nothing will come of it.... It's been fifteen years. One more grain +lost in the desert of sand.... By luck, you know, you might just +stumble on something, some native who knew the story, but if fever +carried them off and the Arabs rifled their camp, as I fancy, +they'll jolly well keep their mouths shut. No white man will +know.... I don't advise your people to spend much money on the +search." + +"Odd, the inquiries we get," he commented to Ryder when the +Frenchmen had completed their courteous farewells. "You'd think the +Bank was a Bureau of Information! Yesterday there was a stir about +two crazy lads who are supposed to have joined the Mecca pilgrims in +disguise.... Of course our clerks are Copts and _do_ pick up a bit +and the Copts will talk.... I say, Jack, what are you doing?" he +broke off to demand in astonishment, for Jack Ryder had seated +himself upon a divan and was absorbedly rolling up his trouser leg. + +"The dear Egyptian flea?" he added. + +"Not at all. I am looking at my knees," said Ryder glumly. "I just +remembered that I have to show them to-night.... A ball--in +masquerade. At a hotel. Tourist crowd.... How do you think they'll +look with one of your Scotch plaidies atop?" he inquired feelingly. + +"Fascinating, Jack, fascinating," said the promptly sardonic McLean. +"You--at a masquerade!... So that's what brought you to town." + +He cocked a taunting eye at him. "Well, well, she must be a most +engaging young person--you'll be taking her out on the desert with +you now, like our friend Delcasse--a pleasant, retired spot for a +body to have his honeymoon ... no distractions of society ... +undiluted companionship, you might say.... Now what made you think +she'd like your knees?" he murmured contemplatively. "Aren't you +just a bit--previous? Apt to startle and frighten the lady?" + +"Oh, go on, go on," Ryder exhorted bitterly. "I like it. It's better +than I can do myself. Go on.... But while you are talking trot out +your tartans. Something clannish now--one of those ancestral rigs +that you are always cherishing ... Rich and red, to set off my dark, +handsome type." + +"Set off you'll be, Jack dear," promised McLean, dragging out a huge +chest. "Set off you'll be." + + * * * * * + +Set off he was. + +And a fool he felt himself that night, as he confronted his +brilliant image in the glass. A Scot of the Scots, kilted in vivid +plaid, a rakish cap on his black hair, a tartan draped across his +shoulder, short, heavy stockings clasping his legs and low shoes gay +with big buckles. + +"Oh, young Lochinvar has come out of the west," warbled McLean +merrily, as he straightened the shoulder pin of silver and Scotch +topaz. + +"Out of Hades," said Ryder, rather pointlessly, for he felt it was +Hades he was going into. + +Chiefly he was concerned with his knees and the striking contrast +between their sheltered whiteness and the desert brown of his +face.... Milky pale they gleamed at him from the glass.... Bony +hard, they flaunted their angles at every move.... He was grateful +that he was not a centipede. + + "Oh, 'twas all for my rightful king, + That I gaed o'er the border; + Twas all for-- + +"You didn't tell me her name, now, Jack." + +"Where's my mask?" Ryder was muttering. "I say, aren't there any +pockets in these confounded petticoats?" + +"In the sporran, man.... There!" McLean at last withheld his hand +from its handiwork. "Jock, you're a grand sight," he pronounced with +a special Scottish burr. "If ye dinna win her now--'Bonny Charley's +now awa,'" he sung as Ryder, with a last darkling look at his vivid +image, strode towards the door. + +"He's awa' all right--and he'll be back again as soon as he can make +it." + +With this cheerless anticipation of the evening's promise, the +departing one stalked, like an exiled Stuart, to his waiting +carriage. + +For a moment more McLean kept the ironic smile alive upon his lips, +as he listened to the rattle of the wheels and the harsh gutturals +of the driver, then the smile died as he turned back into the room. + +"Eh, but wouldn't you like it, though, Andy," he said to himself, +"if some girl now liked you enough to get you to go to one of those +damned things.... The lucky dog!" + + + + +CHAPTER II + +MASKS AND MASKERS + + +Moors and Juliets and Circassian slaves and Knights at Arms were +fast emerging from lift or cloak room, and confronting each other +through their masks in sheepish defiance and curiosity. Adventurous +spirits were circulating. Voices, lowered and guarded, began to +engage in nervous, tittering banter.... Laughter, belatedly +smothered, flared to betrayals.... + +The orchestra was playing a Viennese waltz and couple after couple +slipped out upon the floor. + +Lounging against the wall, Ryder glowered mockingly through his mask +holes at the motley. It was so exactly as he had foreseen. He was +bored--and he was going to be more bored. He was jostled--and he was +going to be more jostled. He was hot--and he was going to be hotter. + +Where in the world was Jinny Jeffries? He deserved, he felt, +exhilaratingly kind treatment to compensate him for this insanity. +He gazed about, and encountering a plump shepherdess ogling him he +stepped hastily behind a palm. + +He fairly stepped upon a very small person in black. A phantom-like +small person, with the black silk hubarah of the Mohammedan +high-caste woman drawn down to her very brows, and over the entire +face the black street veil. Not a feature visible. Not an eyebrow. +Not an eyelash, not a hint of the small person herself, except a +very small white, ringed hand, lifted as if in defense of his +clumsiness. + +"Sorry," said Ryder quickly, and driven by the instinct of +reparation. "Won't you dance?" + +A mute shake of the head. + +Well, his duty was done. But something, the very lack of all +invitation in the black phantom, made him linger. He repeated his +request in French. + +From behind the veil came a liquidly soft voice with a note of +mirth. "I understand the English, monsieur," it informed him. + +"Enough, then, to say yes in it?" + +The black phantom shook its head. "My education, alas! has only +proceeded to the N." Her speech was quaint, unhesitating, but oddly +inflected. "I regret--but I am not acquainted with the yes." + +A gay character for a masked ball! Indifference and pique swung +Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and +he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless. + +He'd tell McLean just how darned captivating his outfit was, he +promised himself. + +And then he caught sight of a familiar pair of gray eyes smiling +over the white veil of an odalisque. Jinny Jeffries was wearing one +of the many costumes there that passed for Oriental, a glittering +assemblage of Turkish trousers and Circassian veils, silver shawls +and necklaces and wide bracelets banding bare arms. + +As an effect it was distinctly successful. + +"Ten thousand dinars could not pay for the chicken she has eaten," +uttered Ryder appreciatively in the language of the old slave +market, and stepped promptly ahead of a stout Pantalon. + +"Jack! You did come!" There was a note in the girl's voice as if she +had disbelieved in her good fortune. "Oh, and beautiful as Roderick +Dhu! Didn't I tell you that you could find something in that shop?" +she declared in triumph. + +"Do you imagine that this came out of a costumer's?" Ryder swung her +swiftly out in the fox trot before the crowd invaded the floor. "If +Andy McLean could hear you! Why this, this is the real thing, the +Scots-wha-hae-wi'-Wallace-bled stuff." + +"Who is Andy McLean?" + +"Andrew is Scotch, Single, and Skeptical. He is a great pal of mine +and also an official of the Agricultural Bank which is by way of +being a Government institution. These are the togs of his Hieland +Grandsire--" + +"Why didn't you bring him?" + +"Too dead, unfortunately--grandsires often are--" + +"I mean Andrew McLean." + +"It would take you, my dear Jinny, to do that. You brought me--and +I can believe in anything after the surprise of finding myself +here." + +Jinny Jeffries laughed. "If I could only believe what you say!" + +"Oh, you can believe anything I say," Jack obligingly assured her. +"I'm very careful what I _say_--" + +"I wish I were." + +"You'd have to be careful how you look, Jinny--and you can't help +that. The Lord who gave you red hair must provide the way to elude +its consequences.... I suppose the Orient isn't exactly a manless +Sahara for you?" + +She countered, her bright eyes intent, "Is it a girl-less Sahara for +you, Jack?" + +"The only woman I have laid a hand on, in kindness or unkindness, +died before Ptolemy rebuilt Denderah." + +"That's not right--" + +"No? And I thought it such a virtuous record!" + +"I mean," Jinny laughed, "that you really ought to be seeing more of +life--like to-night--" + +"To-night? Do you imagine this is a place for seeing life?" + +"Why not?" she retorted to the irony in his voice. "It's real +people--not just dead and gone things in cases with their lives all +lived. I don't care if you are going to be a very famous person, +Jack, you ought to see more of the world. You have just been buried +out here for two years, ever since you left college--" + +Beneath his mask the young man was smiling. A quaint feminine +notion, that life was to be encountered at a masquerade! This motley +of hot, over-dressed, wrought up idiots a human contact! + +Life? Living?... Thank you, he preferred the sane young English +officials ... the comradeship of his chief ... the glamor of his +desert tombs. + +Of course there was a loneliness in the desert. That was part of the +big feeling of it, the still, stealing sense of immensity reaching +out its shadowy hands for you.... Loneliness and restlessness.... +These tropic nights, when the stars burned low and bright, and the +hot sands seemed breathing.... Loneliness and restlessness--but they +gave a man dreams.... And were those dreams to be realized here? + +The music stopped and the ever-watchful Pantalon bore down upon +them. Abandoning Jinny to her fate, Ryder sought refuge and a +cigarette. + +The hall was crowded now; the ball was a flash of color, a whirl of +satins and spangles and tulle and gauze, gold and green and rose and +sapphire, gyrating madly in vivid projection against the black and +white stripes of the Moorish walls. The color and the music had sent +their quickening reactions among the throng. Masks were lending +audacity to mischief and high spirits. + +Three little Pierrettes scampered through the crowd, pelting right +and left with confetti and balloons, and two stalwart monks and a +thin Hamlet pursued them, keeping up the bombardment amid a great +combustion of balloons. A spangled Harlequin snatched his hands +full of confetti and darted behind a palm. + +It was the palm of the black phantom, the palm of Ryder's rebuff. +Perhaps the Harlequin had met repulse here, too, and cherished +resentment, not a very malicious resentment but a mocking feint of +it, for when Ryder turned sharply after him--oddly, he himself was +strolling toward that nook--he found Harlequin circling with mock +entreaties about the stubbornly refusing black domino. + +"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, won't you join the +dance?" chanted Harlequin, with a shower of confetti flung at the +girl's averted face. + +There was such a shrinking of genuine fright in her withdrawal that +Ryder had a fine thrill of rescue. + +"My dance," he declared, laying an intervening hand on her muffled +arm. + +His tartan-draped shoulder crowded the Harlequin from sight. + +She raised her head. The black street veil was flung back, but a +black yashmak was hiding all but her eyes. Great dark eyes they +were, deep as night and soft as shadows, arched with exquisitely +curved brows like the sweep of wild birds' wings.... The most lovely +eyes that dreams could bring. + +A flash of relief shone through their childish fright. With sudden +confidence she turned to Ryder. + +"Thank you.... My education, monsieur, has proceeded to the Ts," she +told him with a nervous little laugh over her chagrin, drowned in a +burst of louder laughter from the discomfited Harlequin, who turned +on his heel and then bounded after fresh prey. + +"Shall we dance or promenade?" asked Ryder. + +Hesitatingly her gaze met his. Red and gold and green and blue +flecks of confetti were glimmering like fishscales over her black +wrap and were even entangled drolly in the absurd lengths of her +eye-lashes. + +"It is--if I have not forgotten how to dance," she murmured. "If it +is a waltz, perhaps--" + +It was a waltz. Ryder had an odd impression of her irresolution +before, with strange eagerness, he swept her into the music. Within +the clumsy bulk of her draperies his arm felt the slightness of her +young form. She was no more than a child.... No child, either, at a +masquerade, but a fairy, dancing in the moonlight.... She was a leaf +blowing in the breeze.... She was the very breeze and the moonlight. + +And then, to his astonishment, the dance was over. Those moments had +seemed no more than one. + +"We must have the next," he said quickly. "What made you think you +had forgotten?" + +"It is nearly four years, monsieur, since I danced with a man." + +"With a man? You have been dancing with girls, then?" + +She nodded. + +"At a school?" + +"At a--a sort of school." The black domino laughed with ruefulness. +"At a very dull sort of school." + +"To which, I hope, you are not to return?" + +She made no answer to that--unless it was a sigh that slipped out. + +"At any rate," he said cheerily, "you are dancing to-night." + +"To-night--yes, to-night I am dancing!" There was triumph in her +young voice, triumph and faint defiance, and gayety again in her +changing eyes. + +Extraordinary, those eyes. Innocent, audacious, bewildering.... To +look down into them produced the oddest of excitement. + +He took off his mask. Masks were hindering things--he could see so +much better without. + +She, too, could see better--could see him better. Shyly, yet +intently, her gaze took note of him, of the clean, clear-cut young +face, bronzed and rather thin, of the dark hair that looked darker +against the scarlet cap, of the deep-set eyes, hazel-brown, that met +hers so often and were so full of contradictory things ... life ... +and humor ... and frank simplicity ... and subtle eagerness. + +He looked so young and confident and handsome.... + +"You are--a Scotchman?" slipped out from her black yashmak. + +"Only in costume. I am an American." + +She repeated it a little musingly. "I do not think I ever met an +American young man." She added, "I have met old ones--yes, and +middle-aged ones and the women--but a young one, no." + +"A retired spot, that school of yours," said Ryder appreciatively. +"You are French?" + +"That is for your imagination!" Teasingly, she laughed. "I am, +monsieur, only a black domino!" + +It was the loveliest laugh, Ryder was instantly aware, and the +loveliest voice in the world. Yes, and the loveliest eyes. + +He forgot the crowd. He forgot the heat. He forgot--alas!--Jinny +Jeffries. He was aware of an intense exhilaration, a radiant sense +of well-being, and--at the music's beginning--of a small palm +pressed again to his, a light form within his arm ... of shy, +enchanting eyes out from the shrouding black. + +"Do put that veil away," he youthfully entreated. "It's quite time. +The others are almost all unmasked." + +Her glance about the room returned to him with mock plaintiveness. +She shook her head as they spun lightly about a corner. + +"Perhaps, monsieur, I have an unfortunate nose." + +"My nerves are strong." + +"But why afflict them?" Prankishly her eyes sparkled up at him over +the black veil that made her a mystery. "Enjoy the present, +monsieur!" + +"Are you enjoying it?" + +Her lashes dropped, like black butterflies. She was a changeling of +a girl, veering from gayety to shyness.... Her gaze was now on her +wrist watch, a slender blaze of platinum and diamonds. + +"The present--yes," she said in a muffled little voice. + +He bent his head to hear her through the veil. + +A tormenting curiosity was assailing him. It had become not enough +to know that she was young and slender, with enchanting eyes and a +teasing spirit of wit.... Vaguely he had thought her to be French, +one of the quaint _jeunes filles_ so rarely taken traveling. + +But who was she? A child at her first ball? But what in the world +was she doing, back in the palms, away from her chaperon? + +He realized, even in the cloud of his fascination, that French +_jeunes filles_ are not wonted to lurk about palms at a ball. + +Was she a little Cinderella, then, slipping among the guests? Some +poor companion, stealing in for fun?... She was too young. And there +was that watch, that glitter of diamonds upon her wrist. + +"Have you just come to Cairo?" + +She shook her head. "For some time--I have been here." + +"Up the Nile yet?" + +"The Nile--no, monsieur." + +"But you are going?" + +"That--that I do not know. Sometime, perhaps." + +She sounded guarded.... He hurried into revelations. + +"I am staying not far from Cairo, myself. I am an excavator--on an +expedition from an American museum." + +"Ah, you dig?" + +"Well, not personally.... But the expedition digs.... We've had some +bully finds." + +"And you came from America--to dig in the sands?" The black domino +laughed softly. "For how long, monsieur?" + +"This is my second year." + +Still laughing, she shook her shrouded little head at him. "But I +cannot understand! What wonderful thing do you hope to find--what +buried secret--?" + +"Nothing half as wonderful as to know who you are," he said boldly. + +"That, too, is--is buried, monsieur!" + +"But not beyond discovery," he told her very gayly and confidently, +and danced the music out. + +As the last strains died, they paused for an instant as if the spell +still bound them, then his arms fell slowly away, and he heard the +girl draw a quick, startled breath. Her eyes sped to that tiny, +blazing watch; when she lifted them he thought he surprised a gleam +of panic. + +"How fast is an hour!" she said with an excited little laugh. "Time +is a--a very sudden thing!" + +Sudden, indeed! How long since he had been a badly bored, impatient +young man, mocking the follies of the masquerade? How long since he +had danced with Jinny, flouting her notion of this sort of thing as +life? How long since he had looked into a pair of dark disquieting +eyes ... listened to a gay little voice.... + +Many important things in life happen suddenly. Juliet happened very +suddenly to Romeo. Romeo happened as suddenly to Juliet. + +But Jack Ryder was not remembering anything about Romeo and Juliet. +He was watching that glance steal to the wrist watch again. + +Then, as if with a determination of the spirit, they smiled up at +him. + +"Monsieur the American," said the black domino, "you have been most +kind to an--an incognita--of a masque. I hope that you dig out of +your sands all the secrets that you most desire." + +"You sound as if you were saying good-bye," said Jack Ryder with +quick denial in his blood. + +The smile in her eyes flickered. + +"Perhaps I have kept you too long from the other guests." + +He shook his head. "They don't exist." + +"Ah! I will give you the chance to say such nice things to them." + +"But I never say nice things--unless I mean them!" + +"Never--monsieur?" + +"Never. I am very careful what I say," he assured her, even as he +had assured another girl, in what different meaning, hours or +centuries before. "You can believe anything that I say." + +"A young man of character! Perhaps that goes with the Scotch +costume. I have read the Scots are a noble people." + +"They haven't a thing on the Americans. You must know me better and +discover--" + +But again her eyes had gone, almost guiltily, to that watch. And +when she raised them again they were not smiling but very strangely +resolved. + +"Monsieur, it is so hot--if you would get me a glass of sherbet?" + +"Certainly." Convention brought out the assent; convention turned +him about and marched him dutifully toward the crowded table she +indicated. + +But something deeper than convention, some warning born of that +too-often consulted watch and that strange look in her eyes, that +uneasy fear and swift resolve, turned him quickly about again. + +Other couples had strolled between them. He hurried through and +stepped back among the palms. + +The place was empty. The black domino was gone. + + * * * * * + +He wasted one minute in assuring himself that she was not hidden in +some corner, not mingled with the crowd. But the niche was deserted +as a rifled nest. Then his eyes spied the door that the green +decorations had conspired to hide and he wrenched it open. + +He found himself on a little balcony overlooking the hotel garden. +He knew the place in daytime--palms and shrubs and a graveled walk +and painted chairs where he had drunk tea with Jinny and watched a +Russian tourist beautifully smoking cigarettes. + +Now the place was strange. Night and a crescent moon had wrought +their magic, and the garden was a mystery of velvet dusks and ivory +pallors. The graveled path ran glimmering beneath the magnolias. +Over the wall's blankness the eucalyptus defined its crooked lines +against the blue Egyptian sky. + +No living thing was there ... nothing ... or did that shadow stir? +There, just at the path's end. + +Ryder's lithe strength was swift. There was one breathless moment of +pursuit, then his hand fell with gripping fierceness upon the +huddled dark figure that had sped so frantically to the tiny door in +the garden's end.... A moment more and she would have been through. + +His hand on her shoulder turned her towards him. Her eyes met his +with a dash of desperation.... He was unconscious how his own were +blazing ... how queerly white his face had gone under its desert +brown. + +She was actually running away. She had meant never to see him again. +He had frustrated her, but the blow she had meant to deal him was +still felt. + +His voice, when it came, sounded shaken. + +"You were going to leave me?" + +Strangely her eyes changed. The defiance, the panic fear, faded. A +cloud of slow despair welled up in them. + +"What else?" she said very softly. + +He did not lose his hold on her. He drew her back into the shadows +with involuntary caution, and he felt her slender body trembling in +his grasp. The tremors seemed to pass into his own. + +A sense of urgency was pressing upon him. He was not himself, not +any self that he had known. He stood there, in the Egyptian night, +in the motley of a Scotch chieftain, grasping this mysterious +creature of the masquerade, and he heard a voice that he did not +know ask of her again and again, "But why? Why? Why were you going?" + +It was not, he was telling himself, and her eyes were telling him, +as if she wanted to go. He knew what he knew.... Those had been +enchanted hours.... Yet she had deceived and fled from him. + +Her eyes looked darkly back at him through the dusk. + +"Because I must return to my own life." Her voice was a whisper. +"And I did not want you to know--" + +"To know what? Who are you? Where were you going?" A confusion of +conjecture, fantastic, horrible, impossible, was surging in him. +Dim, vague, terrible things.... + +"Who are you, anyway?" + +She looked away from him, to the door which she had tried to gain. + +"No masker, monsieur.... For me, there is no unveiling." + +Ryder's hand stiffened. He felt his blood stop a moment, as if his +heart stood still. + +And then it beat on again in a furious turmoil of contradiction of +this impossible thing that she was telling him. + +"That door, monsieur, is to the lane, and in the lane another door +leads to another garden--the garden of a girl you can never know." + +He was no novice to Egypt. Even while his credulity was still +battling with belief, his mind had realized this thing that had +happened ... the astounding, unbelievable thing.... He had heard +something of those Turkish girls, daughters of rich officials, whose +lives were such strange opposition of modernity and tradition. + +Indulgence and luxury. French governesses and French frocks ... +freedom, travel, often,--Paris, London, perhaps--and then, as the +girl eclipses the child--the veil. Still indulgence and luxury, +still books and governesses and frocks and motors and society--but a +feminine society. + +Not a man in it. Not a caller. Not a friend. Not a lover.... Not an +interview, even, with the man who is to be the husband--until the +bride is safe in the husband's home. Hidden women. Secret, secluded +lives.... Extinguished by tradition--a tradition against which their +earlier years only had won modern emancipation. + +And she--this slim creature in the black domino--one of those +invisibles? + +Stark amazement looked out of his eyes into hers. + +"You--a Turk?" he blurted. + +"I--a Turk!" Her head went suddenly high; she stiffened with +defensive pride. "I am ashamed--but for the thing I have done. That +is a shameful thing. To steal out at night--to a hotel--to a +ball--And to dance with a man! To tell him who I am--Oh, yes, I am +much ashamed. I am as bold as a Christian!" she tossed at him +suddenly, between mockery and malice. + +Still his wonder and his trouble found no words and the shadow on +his face was reflected swiftly in her own. + +"I beg you to believe, monsieur, that never before--never have I +done such a thing. My greatest fault was to be out in the garden +after sunset--when all Moslem women should be within. But my nurse +was indulgent." + +Almost pleadingly she looked up at the young man. "Believe this of +me, monsieur. I would not have you think of me lightly. But to-night +something possessed me. I had heard of the masque, and I remembered +the balls of the Embassy where I danced when I was so young and so I +slipped away--there was a garden key that I had stolen, long ago, +and kept for another thing.... I did not mean to dance. Only to look +on at the world again." + +"Oh, my good Lord," said Jack Ryder. + +And then suddenly he asked, "Are you--do you--whom do you live +with?" + +And when she answered in surprise, "But with whom but my father--he +is Tewfick Pasha," he drew a long breath. + +"I thought you'd tell me next you were married," he said limply. + +The next moment they were laughing the sudden, incredibly absorbed +laughter of youth. + +"No husband. I am one of the young revoltees--the moderns--and I am +the only daughter of a most indulgent father." + +"Well, that's something to the good," was Ryder's comment upon that. +He added, "But if that most indulgent father caught you--" + +He looked down at her. The secret trouble of her answering look told +him more than its assumption of courage. + +This was no boarding school girl lingering beyond hours.... This was +a high-born Moslem, risking more than he could well know. + +The escapade was suddenly serious, tremendously menacing. + +She answered faintly, "I have no idea--the thing is so impossible! +But of course," she rallied her spirit to protest, "I do not think +they would sew me in a sack with a stone and drop me in the river, +like the odalisques of yesterday!" + +She added, her voice uncertain in spite of her, "I meant only to +stay a moment." + +"Which is the way?" said Jack briefly. + +With caution he opened the gate into the black canyon of the lane. +Silence and darkness. Not a loiterer, only one of the furtive +starved dogs, slinking back from some rubbish.... + +The girl moved forward and keeping closely at her side he followed; +they crossed to the other wall, and turned towards the right, +stopping before the deeper shadow of a small, pointed door set into +the heavy brick of the high wall. From her draperies the girl drew +out a huge key. + +She fitted it into the ancient lock and turned it; carefully she +pressed open the gate and stared anxiously into the gloom of the +shadowy garden that it disclosed. + +Relief colored her voice as she turned to him. + +"All is quiet.... I am safe, now.... And so--good-bye, monsieur." + +"And this is where you live?" Ryder whispered. + +"There--in that wing," she murmured, slipping within the gate, and +he stole after her, and looked across the garden, through a fringe +of date palms, to the outlines of the buildings. + +Dim and dark showed the high walls, black as a prison, only here and +there the pale orange oblong of a lighted window. + +"Did you climb out the window?" he murmured. + +From beneath the veil came a little sound of soft derision. + +"But there are always bars, even in the garden windows of the +haremlik!... No, I stole down by an old stair.... That wing, there, +on the right." + +Barred on the garden, and on the street the impregnable wooden +screens of the mashrubiyeh, those were the rooms where this girl +beside him was to spend her life--until that most indulgent father +wearied of her modernity and transferred her to other rooms, as +barred and screened, in the palace of some husband!... That thought +was brushing Ryder ... with other thoughts of her present risk ... +of her lovely eyes, visible again, above the veil, thoughts of the +strangeness and unreality of it all ... there in the shrubbery of a +pasha's garden, the pasha's daughter whispering at his side. + +"What about your mother--?" he asked her. "Is she--?" + +"She is dead," the girl told him, with a drop in her voice. + +And after a long moment of silence, "When I was so little--but I +remember her, oh, indeed I do ... She was French, monsieur." + +"Oh! And so you--" + +"I am French-Turk," she whispered back. "That is very often so--in +the harems of Cairo.... She was so lovely," said the girl wistfully. +"My father must have loved her very much ... he never brought +another wife here. Always I lived alone with my old nurse and the +governesses--" + +"You had--lessons?" + +"Oh, nothing but lessons--all of that world which was shut away so +soon.... French and English and music and the philosophy--Oh, we +Turks are what you call blue stockings, monsieur, shut away with our +books and our dreams ... and our memories ... We are so young and +already the real world is a memory.... Sometimes," she said, with a +tremor of suppressed passion in her still little tones, "I could +wish that I had died when I was very young and so happy when my +father took me traveling in Europe.... I played games on the decks +of the ships ... I had my tea with the English children.... I went +down into the hold to play with their dogs..." + +She broke off, between a laugh and a sigh, "Dogs are forbidden to +Moslems--but of course you know, if you have been here two years.... +And emancipated as we may be, there is no changing the customs. We +must live as our grandmothers lived ... though we are not as our +grandmothers are..." + +"With a French mother, you must be very far from what some of your +grandmothers were!" + +"My poor French mother!" Whimsically the girl sighed. "Must I blame +it on her--the spirit that took me to the ball?... To-morrow +this will be a dream to me.... I shall not believe in my +shamelessness.... And you, too, must forget--" + +"Forget?" said Ryder under his breath. + +"Forget--and go. Positively you must go now, monsieur. It is very +dangerous here--" + +"It is." There was a light dancing in his hazel eyes. "It is more +dangerous every moment--" + +"But I mean--" Her confusion betrayed itself. + +"But I mean--that you are magic--black magic," he murmured bending +over the black domino. + +The crescent moon had found its way through a filigree of boughs. +Faintly its exploring ray lighted the contour of that shrouded head, +touched the lovely curves of her arched brows and the tender pallor +of the skin about those great wells of dark eyes.... From his own +eyes a flame seemed to pass into hers.... Breathlessly they gazed at +each other ... like dim shadows in a garden of still enchantment. + +And then, as from a palpable clasp, she tried to slip away. "Truly, +I must go! It is so late--" + +Ryder's heart was pounding within him. He did not recognize this +state of affairs; it was utterly unrelated to anything that had gone +before in his merry, humorous, rather clear-sighted and wary young +life.... He felt dazed and wondering at himself ... and +irresponsible ... and appalled ... but deeper than all else, he felt +eager and exultant and strangely, furtively determined about +something that he was not owning to himself ... something that +leaped off his lips in the low murmur to her, "But to-morrow +night--I shall see you again--" + +She caught her breath. "Oh, never again! To-night has no +to-morrow--" + +"Outside this gate," he persisted. "I shall wait--and other nights +after that. For I must know--if you are safe--" + +"See, I am very safe now. For if I were missed there would be +running and confusion--" + +He only drew a little closer to her. "To-morrow night--or another--I +shall come to this door--" + +"It must not open to you.... It is a forbidden door--forbidden as +that fortieth door in the old story.... There are thirty and nine +doors in your life, monsieur, that you may open, but this is the +forbidden--" + +"I shall be waiting," he insisted. "To-morrow night--or another--" + +She moved her head in denial. + +"Neither to-morrow nor another night--" + +Again their eyes met. He bent over her. He knew a gleam of sharpest +wonder at himself as his arms went swiftly round that shrouding +drapery, and then all duality of consciousness was blotted out in +the rush of his young madness. For within that drapery was the soft, +human sweetness of her; his arms tightened, his face bent close, and +through the sheer gauze of her veil his lips pressed her lips.... + +Some one was coming down the walk: Footsteps crunched the gravel. + +Like a wraith the girl was out of his arms ... in anger or alarm +his whirling senses could not know, although it was their passionate +concern. But his last gleam of prudence got him through the gate he +heard her locking after. + +And then, for her sake, he fled. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +IN THE PASHA'S PALACE + + +Nearer sounded the footsteps on the graveled walk and in frightened +haste the girl drew out the key from the gate and slipped away into +the shrubbery, grateful for the blotting shadows. + +At the foot of a rose bush she crouched to thrust the key into a +hole in the loose earth, covering the top and drawing the low +branches over it. + +"Aimee," came a guarded call. "Aimee!" + +Still stooping, she tried to steal through the bushes, but the +thorns held her and she stood up, pulling at her robes. + +"Yes? Miriam?" she said faintly, and desperately freeing herself, +she hurried forward towards the dark, bulky figure of her old nurse, +emerging now into the moonlight. + +"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God!" ejaculated the old woman, but +cautiously under her breath. "Come quickly--he is here--thy father! +And thou in the garden, at this hour.... But come," and urgently she +gripped the girl's wrist as if afraid that she would vanish again +into the shadows of the shrubbery. + +Aimee felt her knees quake under her. "My father!" she murmured, +and her voice died in her throat. + +Had he discovered? Had some one seen her slip out? Or recognized her +at the ball? + +The panic-stricken conjectures surged through her in dismaying +confusion. She tried to beat down her fear, to think quickly, to +rally her force, but her swimming senses were still invaded with the +surprise of those last moments at the gate, her heart still beating +with the touch of Ryder's arms about her ... of that long, deep look +... that kiss, beyond all else, that kiss.... + +Little rivers of fire were running through her veins. Shame and +proud anger set up their swift reactions. Oh, what wings of wild, +incredible folly had brought her to this! To be kissed like--like a +dancing girl--by a man, an unknown, an American! + +How could he, how could he! After all his kindness--to hold her so +lightly.... And yet there had been no lightness in his eyes, those +eager, shining young eyes, so gravely concerned.... + +But she could not stop to think of this thing. Her father was +waiting. + +"He came in like a fury," the old nurse was panting, as they +scurried up the walk together, "and asked for you ... and your room +empty, your bed not touched!... Oh, Allah's ruth upon me, I went +trotting through the house, mad with fear.... Up to the roofs then +down to the garden ... sending him word that you were dressing that +he should not know the only child of his house was a shameless one, +devoid of sense." + +"But there is no harm in a garden," breathed the girl, her face hot +with shame. "To-night was so hot--" + +"Is there no coolth upon the roof?" + +"But the roses--" + +"Can roses not be brought you? Have you no maids to attend you?" + +"I am tired of being attended! Can I never be alone--" + +"Alone in the garden!... A pretty talk! Eh, I will tell thy father, +I will have a stop put to this--_hush_, would you have him hear?" +she admonished, in a sudden whisper, as they opened the little door +at the foot of the dark well of spiral steps. + +Like conspirators they fled up the staircase, and then with fumbling +haste the old nurse dragged off the girl's mantle and veil, +muttering at the pins that secured it. She shook out the +pale-flowered chiffon of her rumpled frock and gathered back a +strand of her dark, disordered hair. + +"Say that you were on the roofs," she besought her. + +For a moment the girl put the warm rose of her cheek against the old +woman's dark, wrinkled one. + +"But you are good, Dadi," she said softly, using the Turkish word +for familiar old servants. + +With a sound of mingled vexation and affection Miriam pushed her +ahead of her into the drawing-room. + +It was a long, dark room, on whose soft, buff carpet the little gilt +chairs and sofas were set about with the empty expectancy of a stage +scene in a French salon. French were the shirred, silk shades upon +the electric lamps, French the music upon the chic rosewood piano. + +And then, as if some careless property man had overlooked them in +changing the act, two window balconies of closely carved old wood, +of solidly screening mashrubiyeh wood, jutted out from one +cream-tinted wall, and above a gilded sofa, upholstered in the +delicate fabric of the Rue de la Paix, hung a green satin banner +embroidered in silver with a phrase from the Koran. + +Tewfick Pasha was at one side of the room, filling his match case. +He was in evening dress, a ribbon of some order across a rather +swelling shirt bosom, a red fez upon his dark head. + +At his daughter's entrance he turned quickly, with so sharp a gleam +from his full, somewhat protuberant black eyes that her guilty heart +fairly turned over in her. + +It made matters no more comforting to have Miriam packed from the +room. + +She would deny it all, she thought desperately ... No, she would +admit it, and implore his indulgence.... She would admit nothing but +the garden.... She would admit the ball.... She would _never_ admit +the young man.... + +With conscious eyes and flushing cheeks, woefully aware of +dew-drenched satin slippers and an upsettingly hammering heart, +Aimee presented the young image of irresolute confusion. + +To her surprise there was no outburst. Her father was suddenly gay +and smiling, with a flow of pleasant phrases that invited her +affection. In his good humor--and Tewfick Pasha liked always to be +kept in good humor--he had touches of that boyish charm that had +made him the _enfant gate_ of Paris and Vienna as well as Cairo and +Constantinople. An _enfant_ no more, in the robustly rotund forties, +his cheerful self-indulgence demanded still of his environment that +smiling acquiescence that kept life soft and comfortable. + +And now it suddenly struck Aimee, through her tense alarm, that his +smile was not a spontaneous smile, but was silently, uneasily asking +his daughter not to make something too unpleasant for him ... that +something that had brought him here, at an unprecedented midnight +... that had kept him waiting until she, supposedly, should rise and +dress.... + +If it were not then a knowledge of her escapade--? + +The relief from that fear made everything else bearable. She was +even able to entertain, with a certain welcome, the alternative +alarm that he had decided to marry again--that nightmare from whose +realization the unknown gods (or more truly, the unknown goddesses +of the Cairene demi-monde!) had assisted to save her. + +There was a furtive excitement about him that fanned the +supposition. + +Then, quite suddenly, the illuminating lightning cut the clouds. + +"My dear child, I have news, really important news for you. If I +have not been discussing your future," said Tewfick Pasha, staring +with stern nonchalance ahead and determinedly unaware of her instant +stiffening of attention, "I have by no means been neglectful of +it.... To-day--indeed to-night--there has been a consummation of my +plans.... It is not to every daughter that a father may hurry with +such an announcement." + +Her first feeling was a merciful relief. He knew nothing then of the +ball! She could breathe again.... It was her marriage that had +brought him. + +No new danger, that, but the eternal menace that she had always to +dread.... But how many times had he promised that she should have no +unknown husband, imposed by tradition! How many times had she +indulged dreams of Europe, of bright, free romance! + +And now he was off on some tangent from which it would need all her +coaxing wit to divert him. With wide eyes painfully intent, her +little, jeweled fingers very still in their locked grip in her lap, +the color draining from her cheeks, she sat waiting for the +revelation. + +What was it all? Had he really decided upon something? Upon some +one? + +Tewfick Pasha appeared in no hurry to inform her. He wandered +rather confusedly into a rambling speech about her age and her +position and the responsibilities of life and his inabilities to +prevent their reaching her, and about his very tender affection for +her and his understanding of all those girlish reticences and +reluctances which made innocent youth so exquisite, while silently +his daughter hung her head and wondered what he would be saying if +he knew that she had broken every canon of seclusion and convention, +had talked and danced with a man.... + +His astonishment would be so horrific that she flinched even from +the thought. + +And if he knew, moreover, that this man had caught her and kissed +her--! + +She told herself that she was disgraced for life. She had a dreamy +desire to close her eyes and lean back and dream on about that +disgrace.... + +But she must listen to her father. He was talking now about the +powers of wealth, not merely the nominal riches of his somewhat +precarious political affiliations, but solid, sustaining, invested +and invulnerable wealth. + +Unexpectedly Aimee laughed. "He must be very plain," she declared, +her face brightening with mockery, "if you take so long to tell me +his name!" + +Not, she added to herself under her breath, that any name would +weigh a feather's difference! + +"On the contrary," and the pasha's eyes met hers frankly for the +first time and he seemed delighted to indulge a laugh, "he has the +reputation of good looks. He is much _a la mode_." + +"Beautiful and golden--did you meet him just to-night, my father?" +Aimee went on, in that light audacity which he had loved to indulge. + +Now he smiled, but his glance went uneasily away from her. + +"Not at all. This is a serious affair, you understand--the devil of +a serious affair!" and for the first time she felt she heard the +accents of his candor. + +But again he was back to voluble protestation. This man was really +an old friend. He boggled over the word, then got it out resonantly. +A man he knew well. Not a young man, perhaps--certainly he was not +going to hand his only daughter to any boy, a mere novice in +life!--but a man who could give her the position she deserved. Not +only a rich man, but an influential one. + +His name, he brought out at last, was Hamdi Bey. He was a general in +the armies of the sultan. + +It was a long moment before she could piece any shreds of +recollection together. + +Hamdi Bey ... A general.... Why, that was a man her father had +disliked ... more than once he had dropped resentful phrases of his +airs, his arrogance ... had recounted certain clashes with malicious +joy. + +And now he was planning--no, seriously announcing-- + +A general ... He must be terribly old.... + +Not that it made any difference. Old or young, black or white, +general or ghikar, would mean nothing in her life. She would have +none of him ... none of him.... Never would she endure the +humiliation of being handed over like a toy, an odalisque, a +slave.... + +What had happened? She could only suppose that her father had been +overcome by that wealth of the general's on which he had made her +such a speech. Or perhaps his dislike of Hamdi had been founded on +nothing but resentment of Hamdi's airs of superiority, and now that +the bey was condescending to ask for her hand her father's flattered +appeasement was rushing into genial acceptance. + +Anything might be possible to Tewfick Pasha's eternally youthful +enthusiasms. + +She told her frightened heart that she was not afraid.... Her father +would never really fail her.... And she would never surrender to +this degradation; for all her fright and all her flinching from +defiance she divined in herself some hidden stuff of resistance, +tenacious to endure ... some strain of daring which had made her +brave that wild escapade to-night. + +Was it still the same night? Were the violins still playing, the +people still dancing in their fairy land of freedom?... Was that +young man in the Highland dress, that unknown American, was he back +there dancing with some other girl? + +What was it he had said? To-morrow night, and another night, he +would be there in the lane.... If she would come! As if she would +demean herself, after his rude affront, to steal again to the gate, +like a gardener's daughter--! + +Her thoughts were so full of him. And now she had this new horror to +face, this marriage to Hamdi Bey. Did her father dream that she +would not resist? It was against such a danger that she had long ago +stolen a garden key, a key to the outer world in which she had +neither a friend nor a piaster to save her.... + +"My dear father," she said entreatingly, "please do not tell me that +you really mean--that you really think you would like to--that you +would consider--this man--" + +He turned on her a suddenly direct, confessing look. + +"Aimee, I have _arranged_ this matter." + +He added heavily, "To-night. That is what I came to tell you." + +In the silence that settled upon them he finally ceased his effort +to ignore her shocked dismay. He abandoned his airy pretense that +the affair could possibly evoke her enthusiasm. He sucked at his +cigarette like a rather sullen little boy. + +"I have always indulged you, Aimee," he said at last, without +looking round at her. "I hope you are not going to make me +infernally sorry." + +"I think you are m-making me inf-fernally sorry," said an unsteady +little voice. + +He looked about. His daughter was sitting very still upon the +gilded sofa beneath the banner of Mahomet; as he regarded her two +great tears formed in her dark eyes and ran slowly down her cheeks. + +With a sound of impatience he jumped to his feet and began to pace +up and down the room. + +This, he pointed out heatedly, to her, was what a man got who +indulged his daughter. This is what came of French and English +governesses and modern ideas.... After all he had done--more than +any other father! To sit and weep! Weep--at such a marriage! What +did she expect of life? Was she not as other women? Did she never +look ahead? Had she no pride, no ambition--no hopes? Did she wish +never to marry, then, to become an _old mees_ like her English +companion? + +"I am but eighteen," she said quiveringly. "Oh, my father, do not +give me to this unknown--" + +"Unknown--unknown! Do I not know him?" + +"But you promised--" + +Angrily he gestured with his cigarette. "Do I know what is good for +you or do I not? Have I your interest at heart--tell me! Am I a +savage, a dolt--" + +"But you do not know what it is to be unhappy. I beg of you, my +father,--I should die with such a life before me, with such a man +for my husband. I am too French, too like my mother--" + +"Ah, your mother!... Too French, are you?... But what would you have +in France?" he demanded with the bursting appearance of a man +making every effort to restrain himself within unreasonable bounds. +"Would not your parents there arrange your marriage? You might see +the fiance," he caught the words out of her mouth, "but only for a +time or two--after the arrangements--and what is that? What more +would you know than what your father knows? Are you a thing to be +exhibited--given to a man to gaze at and appraise? I tell you, +no.... You are my daughter. You bear my name. And when you marry you +marry in the sanctity of the custom of your father--and you go to +your husband's house as his mother went to his father." + +Timidly she protested, "But my mother--and you--" + +"Do not speak of your mother! If she were here she would counsel +gratitude and obedience." He turned his back on her. "This is what +comes," he muttered, "of this modernity, this education...." + +He pitched away his stub as if he were casting all that he hated +away with it. + +She had never seen him so angry. Helplessly she felt that his vanity +and his word were engaged with the general more than she had +dreamed. She felt a surge of panic at the immensity of the trouble +before her. + +"But, my father, if you love me--" + +"No, my little one, if _you_ love _me_!" + +With a sudden assumption of good humor over the angry red mottling +his olive cheeks, he came and sat beside her, putting his arm about +her silently shrinking figure. + +"I am a weak fool to stay and drink a woman's tears, as the saying +goes," he told her, "but this is what a man gets for being good +natured.... But, tears or not, I know what is best.... Come, Aimee, +have I not ever been fond of you--?" + +He patted her hand with his own plump one where bright rings were +sparkling deep in the encroaching flesh. Aimee looked down with a +sudden wild dislike.... That soft, ingratiating hand, with its +dimples and polished nails, which thought it could pat her so easily +into submission.... + +It was nothing to him, she thought, chokingly, whether she was happy +or unhappy. He had decided on the match--perhaps he had foreseen her +protests and plunged into it, so as to be committed against her +entreaties!--and he was not stopped by any thought of her feelings. + +After all her hopes! After all he had promised! + +But she told herself that she had never been secure. Beneath all her +trust there had always been the silent fear, slipping through the +shadows like a serpent.... Some instinct for character, more +precocious than her years, had whispered through her fond blindness, +and initiated her into foreboding. + +"Come now, my dear," he said heartily, "this is a surprise, of +course, but after all you will find it is for the best--much for the +best--" + +His voice died away. After a long pause, "You may make the +arrangements," she told him in a still, tenacious little voice, "but +you cannot make me marry him.... I will never put on the marriage +dress.... Never wear the diadem.... Never stir one step within his +house." + +A complete silence succeeded this declaration. He got up violently +from beside her. She did not dare look at him. He was going away, +she thought. + +It would be the beginning of war. She did not know what he would do +but she knew that she would endure it. + +And the gossip of the harems would be her protection. Her +opposition, bruited through those feminine channels, would not be +long in reaching Hamdi Bey.... And no man could to-day be so callous +of his pride or the world's opinion that he would be willing to +receive such a revolting bride. + +Did her father think of that, that poor, pale power of hers? He +stood irresolute, as if meditating a last exhortation, and then +suddenly turned on her the haggard face of a violent despair. + +"Would you see me ruined?" he said passionately. + +Sharply he glanced about the room, at the far, closed doors where it +was not inconceivable that old Miriam was lurking, and strode over +to her and began talking very jerkily and huskily, over her bent +head. + +"I tell you that Hamdi is making this a condition--it is the price +of silence, of those papers back.... He came to me to-night. I knew +that hound of Satan had been smelling about, but I could not +imagine--as if, between gentlemen--" + +At that, she lifted her stupefied head.... Her father, with the face +of a cornered fox!... She caught her breath with the shock of it. +Her lips parted, but only her mute eyes asked their startled +questions. + +Hurriedly, shamefacedly, with angry resentments and +self-justifications, he was pouring a flood of broken phrases at +her. She caught unintelligible references to narrow laws and the +imbecile English, to impositions binding only upon the fools.... And +then the word _hasheesh_. + +Sharply then the truth took its outlines. Her father had been +smuggling in hasheesh. Hamdi Bey had discovered this, and Hamdi Bey, +unless silenced, had threatened betrayal. + +The danger was real. English laws were stringent. Vaguely the +horrors loomed--arrest, trial.... Even if he escaped the scandal was +ruin.... + +Small wonder that her father had come flying upon the wings of his +danger and its deliverance, small wonder that his brow was wet and +his lips dry and his eyes hard with terror. + +Thrown to the winds now his pretense of affection for Hamdi Bey! He +hated and feared him. The old fox had done this, he declared, to get +a hold upon him, for always there had been bad blood. + +And the bey had heard, of course, of the beauty of the pasha's +daughter. Some cousin had babbled.... And undoubtedly the rumor of +that beauty--Tewfick Pasha received his inspiration upon the moment, +but that was not gainsaying its truth--had determined the bey to +find some vulnerable hold. + +He was like that, a soft-voiced, sardonic devil! And this accursed +business of the hasheesh had served his ends. To-night, he had come +with his proofs.... + +"So you see," muttered Tewfick Pasha, "what the devil of a serious +business this is. And how any talk of--of unreadiness--if you were +not amiable, for example, to his cousin when she calls upon +you--might serve to anger him.... And so--" + +Significantly his glance met hers. Her eyes fell, stricken. The +color flooded her trembling face. She quivered with confused pain, +with shame for his shame, with terror and fright ... with a hot, +protective compassion that tore at her pride.... + +She struggled against her dismay, trying for reassuring little words +that would not come. Her heart seemed beating thickly in her throat. + +She never knew just what she said, what little broken words of pity, +of understanding, of promise, she achieved. But her father suddenly +dropped beside her, with an abandon reminiscent of the _enfant gate_ +of his Paris days, and drew her hands to his lips, kissing their +soft, quiescent palms.... She drew one away and placed it upon his +dark head from which the fez had tumbled. + +For the moment she was sorry, as one is sorry for a hurt child. And +her sorriness held her heart warm, in the glow of giving comfort. + +She had need of that warmth. For a cold tide was rising in her, a +tide of chill, irresistible foreboding.... + +For all the years of her life.... For all the years.... + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +EXPLANATIONS + + +The remaining hours of Jack Ryder's night might be divided into +three periods. There was an interval of astounding exhilaration +coupled with complete mental vacancy, during which a figure in a +Scots costume might have been observed by the astonished Egyptian +moon striding obliviously along the silent road to the Nile, past +sleeping camels and snoring _dhurra_ merchants--a period during +which his sole distinguishable sensation was the memory of +enchanting eyes, of a voice, low and lovely ... of a slender figure +in a muffling tcharchaf ... of the touch of soft lips beneath a +gauzy veil.... + +This period was succeeded by hours of utter incredulity, in which he +lay wide-eyed on the sleeping porch of McLean's domicile and stared +into the white cloud of his fly net and questioned high heaven and +himself. + +Had he really done this? Had he actually caught and kissed this +girl, this girl whose name he did not know, whose face he had never +seen, of whom he knew nothing but that she was the daughter of a +Turk and utterly forbidden by every canon of sanity and +self-preservation? + +In the name of wonder, what had possessed him? The night? The moon? +The mystery of the unknown?... If he had never really kissed her he +might have convinced himself that he had never really wanted to. But +having kissed her--! + +He looked upon himself as a stranger. A stranger of whom he would be +remarkably wary, in the days and nights to come ... but a stranger +for whom he entertained a sort of secret, amazed respect. There had +been an undeniable dash and daring to that stranger.... + +During the third period he slept. + +When he awoke, late in the morning, and descended from a cold tub to +a breakfast room from which McLean had long since departed, he +brought yet another mood with him, a mood of dark, deep disgust and +a shamed inclination to dismiss these events very speedily from +memory. For that shadowy and rather shady affair he had abandoned +the merry and delightful Jinny Jeffries and got himself involved now +in the duty of explanations and peacemaking. + +What in the world was he going to say? + +He meditated a note--but he hated a lie on paper. It looked so +thunderingly black and white. Besides, he could not think of any. +"Dear Jinny--Awfully sorry I was called away." + +No, that wouldn't do. He could take refuge in no such vagueness. +Unfortunately, he and Jinny were on such terms of old intimacy that +a certain explicitness of detail was expected. + +"Dear Jinny--I had to leave last night and take a girl home--" + +No, she would ask about the girl. Jinny had a propensity for +locating people. It wouldn't do. + +His masculine instinct for saying the least possible in a matter +with a woman, and his ripening experience which taught him to leave +no mystery to awaken suspicion, wrestled with the affair for some +time and then retired from the field. + +He compromised by telephoning Jinny briefly--and Jinny was equally +as brief and twice as cool and cryptic--and promising to take her +out to tea. + +He reflected that if he took her to tea he would really have to stay +over another night, for it would be too late to regain his desert +camp. But the circumstances seemed to call for some social amend.... +And no matter how many nights he stayed he certainly was not going +to lurk about that lane, outside garden doors! + +He must have been mad, stark, staring, March-hatter mad! + + * * * * * + +That morning, during its remainder, he concluded his buying of +supplies and saw to their shipment upon the boat that left upon the +following morning. That noon he lunched with an assistant curator of +the Cairo museum who found him a good listener. + +That afternoon he escorted Jinny Jeffries and her uncle and aunt, +the Josiah Pendletons, to tea upon the little island in the Cairo +park, where white-robed Arabs brought them tea over the tiny bridge +and violins played behind the shrubbery and white swans glided upon +the blue lake, and then he carried them off in a victoria to view +the sunset from the Citadel heights. + +Not a word about the dance--except a general affirmative to Mrs. +Pendleton's question if he had enjoyed himself. The Pendletons had +not stayed to look on for long, and Jinny had apparently not worn +her bleeding heart upon her sleeve. + +But this immunity could not last. He could not hug the protecting +Pendletons to him forever. + +Nor did he want to. They waned upon him. Mrs. Pendleton's +conversation was a perpetual, "Do look at--!" or dissertations from +the guide books--already she had imparted a great deal of Flinders +Petrie to him about his tombs. Mr. Pendleton was neither +enthusiastic nor voluble, but he was attacking the objects of their +travels in the same thorough-going spirit that he had attacked and +surmounted the industrial obstacles of his career, and he went to a +great deal of persistent trouble to ascertain the exact dates of +passing mosques and the conformations of their arches. + +The travelers had already "done" the Citadel. They had climbed its +rocky hill, they had viewed the Mahomet Ali mosque and its columns +and its carpets and had taken their guide's and their guidebook's +word that it was an inferior structure although so amazingly +effective from below; they had looked studiously down upon the city +and tried to distinguish its minarets and towers and ancient gates, +they had viewed with proper quizzicalness the imprint in the stone +parapet of the hoof of that blindfolded horse which the last of the +Mamelukes, cornered and betrayed, had spurred from the heights. + +So now, no duty upon them, Ryder led them past the Citadel, up the +Mokattam hills behind it, to that hilltop on which stood the little +ancient mosque of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy, where the sunset spaces +flowed round them like a sea of light and the world dropped into +miniature at their feet. + +Below them, in a golden haze, Cairo's domes and minarets were +shining like a city of dreams. To the north, toy fields, vivid +green, of rice and cotton lands, and the silver thread of the +winding Nile, and all beyond, west and southwest, the vast, +illimitable stretch of desert, shimmering in the opalescent air, +sweeping on to the farthest edge of blue horizon. + +"A nice resting place," said Jack Ryder appreciatively of the tomb +of the Sheykh-el-Gauchy. + +"I presume the date is given," Mr. Pendleton was murmuring, as he +began to ferret with his Baedecker. + +Mrs. Pendleton sighed sentimentally. "He must have been very fond of +nature." + +"He was very distrustful of his wives," said Ryder, grinning. "He +had three of them, all young and beautiful." + +"I thought you said he was a saint?" murmured Jinny, to which +interpolation he responded, "Wouldn't three wives make any man a +saint?" and resumed his narrative. + +"And so he had his tomb made where he could overlook the whole city +and observe the conduct of his widows." + +"They could move," objected Miss Jeffries. + +"The female of the Mohammedan species is not the free agent that you +imagine," Ryder retorted, beginning with a smile and ending with a +queer, reminiscent pang. He had a moment's rather complicated twinge +of amusement at her reactions if she should know that to an +encounter with a female of the Mohammedan species was to be +attributed his departure from her party last night. + +And then he remembered that he hadn't decided yet what to tell her +and the time was undoubtedly at hand. + +The time _was_ at hand. The Pendletons were too thorough-going +Americans not to abdicate before the young. They did not saunter +self-consciously away and make any opportunity for Jack and Jinny, +as sympathetic European chaperons might have done; they sat +matter-of-factedly upon the rocks while their competent young people +betook themselves to higher heights. + +Conscientiously Ryder was pointing out the pyramid fields. + +"Gizeh, Abusir, Sakkara, Dahsur--and now here, if you look--that's +the Medun pyramid--that tiny, sharp prick. If we had glasses...." + +"Yes; but why didn't you like the ball?" murmured Jinny the direct. + +"I did like the ball. Very much." + +"Then why didn't you stay?" + +"I--I wasn't feeling top-hole," he murmured lamely, wondering why +girls always wanted to go back and stir up dogs that had gone +comfortably to sleep. + +"Did it come on suddenly?" said Jinny, unsympathetically, her eyes +still upon the pyramids. + +Something whimsical twitched at Jack Ryder's lips. "Very suddenly. +Like thunder, out of China crost the bay." + +"I suppose that dancing with the same girl in succession brings on +the seizures?" + +So she had noticed that!... Not for nothing were those bright, gray +eyes of hers! Not for nothing the red hair. + +"Well, I rather think it did," he said deliberately. "That girl was +a child who hadn't danced in four years--so she said, and I believe +her." + +And Jinny received what he intended to convey. "Stepped on your +buckled shoon and you felt a martyr?... But why bolt? There were +other girls who _had_ danced within four years--" + +"I went into the garden," he murmured. "The fact is, I was feeling +awfully--queer," he brought out in an odd tone. + +Queer was a good word for it. He let it go at that. He couldn't do +better. + +Jinny looked suddenly uncertain. Her pique was streaked with +compunction. She had been horribly angry with him for running away, +and she remembered his opposition to the idea enough to be +suspicious of any disappearance--but there was certainly an accent +of embarrassed sincerity about him. + +Perhaps he _had_ been ill. Sudden seizures were not unknown in +Egypt. And for all his desert brown he didn't look very rugged. + +She murmured, "I hope you hadn't taken anything that disagreed with +you." + +"H'm--it rather agreed with me at the time," said Jack, and then +brought himself up short. "I expect I haven't looked very sharp +after myself--" + +But Jinny did not wholly renounce her idea. "Does it always take you +at dances you don't want to go to?" + +"That's unfair. I came, you know." + +"You came--and went." + +"I'd have been all right if I hadn't come," he murmured, and Jinny +felt suddenly ashamed of herself. + +"Do you suppose that you would stay all right if you came to +dinner?" she offered pacificably. "It's our last night, you know, +till we come back from the Nile." + +"I wish I could." Ryder stopped short. Now, why didn't he? Certainly +he didn't intend-- + +But his tongue took matters promptly out of his hesitation's hands. +"Fact is, I've an engagement." He added, appeasingly, "That's why I +was so keen on getting you for tea." And Jinny told him +appreciatively that it was a lovely tea and a lovely view. + +"We're going to be at the hotel, I expect," she threw out, +carelessly, "and if you get through in time--" + +Rather hastily he assured her that indeed, if he got through in +time-- + +She was a nice girl, was Jinny. A pretty girl, with just the right +amount of red in her hair. Sanity would have sent him to the hotel +to dine with her. + +Sanity would also have sent him to the Jockey Club with McLean. + +Certainly sanity had nothing to do with the way that he kept himself +to himself, after his farewells at the hotel with the Pendletons, +and took him to an out-of-the-way Greek cafe where he dined very +badly upon stringy lamb and sodden baklava. + +Later he wandered restlessly about dark, medieval streets where +squat groups were clustered about some coffee house door, intent +upon a game of checkers or some patriarchal story teller, +recounting, very probably, a bandied narration of the Thousand and +One Nights. Through other open doors drifted the exasperating nasal +twang of Cairene music, and idly pausing, Ryder could see above the +red fezes and turbans that topped the cross-legged audiences the +dark, sleek, slowly-revolving body of some desert dancing girl. + +Irresolutely he drifted on to the Esbekeyih quarters, to the streets +where the withdrawn camels and donkeys had left pre-eminent the +carriages and motors of that stream of Continental night life which +sets towards Cairo in the season, Russian dukes and German +millionaires, Viennese actresses and French singers and ladies of no +avowed profession, gamblers, idlers, diplomats, drifters, vivid +flashes of color in the bizarre, kaleidoscopic spectacle. + +It was quite dark now. The last pale gleam of the afterglow had +faded, and the blue of the sky, deepening and darkening, was pierced +with the thronging stars. It was very warm; no breeze, but a fitful +stirring in the tops of the feathery palms. + +The streets were growing still. Only from some of the hotels came +the sound of music from lighted, open windows. + +Jinny would be rather expectant at her hotel. He could, of course, +drop in for a few minutes since he was so near.... He walked past +the hotel.... Jinny would be packing--or ought to be. A pity to +disturb her.... And his dusty tweeds and traveling cap was no +calling costume.... + +He walked past again. And this time he paused, on the brink of a +dark canyon of a lane, running back between walls hung with +bougainvillea. + +Quite suddenly he remembered that he had told that girl, whose name +he did not know, that he would come. It was a definite promise. It +was an obligation. + +He could do nothing less. It might be unwelcome, absurd, a nuisance, +but really it was an obligation. + +He sauntered down the lane, keeping carefully in the shadow. He +loitered within that deep-set door--and felt a queer throb of +emotion at the sight of it--and so, sauntering and loitering, he +waited in the darkening night, promising himself disgustedly through +the dragging moments to clear out and be done with this, but still +interminably lingering, his pulses throbbing with that disowned +expectancy. + +Very cautiously, the gate began to open. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +AT THE GARDEN GATE + + +Inch by inch the gate edged open. Warily he presented himself. The +furtive crack gave him an instant's glimpse of a dark form within +the shadows, then, in his face, it closed. + +Ryder waited. In a moment it was opened wider, and he saw the +dark-shrouded head and the veiled face of the Turkish girl, and out +from the blackness the sparkle of young eyes. + +"Is it--but who is it?" whispered a doubtful voice, and at his, "Why +it is I--the American," quickly drawing off his cap, a little hand +darted out of the darkness to pluck him swiftly within and the door +was closed to within an inch of its opening. + +Then the black phantom, drawing him back among the shrubbery, +against the wall, turned with a muffled note of laughter. + +"But the costume! Imagine that I--I was looking again for a Scottish +chieftain with red kilts and a feather in his cap!" + +"And instead--" Ryder glanced down at his tweeds with humorous +recognition of his change of figure. Then his eyes returned to her. + +"But you are the same," he murmured. + +She was indeed the same. The same black street mantle, down to her +very brows. The same black veil, up to her very eyes. And the +eyes--! Their soft mysterious loveliness--the little winged tilt of +the brows! + +Apparently their effect was disconcertingly the same. He was +conscious of a feeling that was far from a normal calm. + +"So you were all right?" he half whispered. "Those steps, last +night, you know, made me horribly afraid for you--" + +"But, yes, I am all right." + +As excitement gained upon him, a constraint was falling upon her. +They were both remembering that moment, overlooked in the rush of +recognition, when they had parted in this place, when he had had the +temerity to clasp and kiss her. + +Aimee was standing rigid and wary, ready for flight at the first +fear. She told herself that she had only come through pride, the +pride that insisted upon humbling his presumption. She would let him +see how bitterly he had offended.... She had only come for this, she +told herself--and to see if he had come. + +If he had _not_ come! That would have dealt a sorrily humiliating +blow. + +But he was here. And reassured and haughty, repeating that she was +mortally offended, her spirit alternating between pride and shame +and a delicious fear, she stood there in the shrubbery, fascinated, +like a wild, shy thing of another age. + +"That was old Miriam," she explained constrainedly. "My father had +come in--with unexpectedness." + +"Lord, it was lucky you were back!" + +"Yes, it was--lucky," she assented. "If it had been half an hour +before--" + +She broke off. There came to the young man a sobering perception of +the risk she ran, of the supreme folly of this escapade to which +they were entrusting themselves. + +It was a realization that deserved some consideration. But, +obstinately, with young carelessness, he shook it off. After all, +this was comparatively safe for her. She was not out of bounds. At +an alarm he could slip away and no one could ever know. What risk +there might be was chiefly his own. + +"When you asked who it was," he murmured, "it occurred to me that +you did not know my name--nor I yours. My own," he added, as she +stood unresponsive, "is Ryder--Jack Ryder. You can always get a +letter to me at the Agricultural Bank. That is the quickest way. My +friend, McLean there, always knows where my diggings are. When in +Cairo I stop with him; or at the Rossmore House." + +"I shall not need to get a letter to you, monsieur," she told him +stiffly. + +"But, if you did, how would you sign it?" + +"Aimee.... That is French--after my mother." + +"Aimee. That means Beloved, doesn't it?" + +She was silent. + +Surely, she thought with a swelling heart, if he were sorry he would +tell her now. It was the moment for contrition, for appeasement, for +whatever explanation his American ways might have. + +She had thought about him all night. She had given his declaration a +hundred forms--but always it had been a declaration. + +Now she waited, flagellating her sensitive pride. + +Ryder was conscious of the constraint tightening about them and in +the dragging pause an uncomfortable common sense had time to put its +disconcerting questions. + +What did it matter what her name meant? What in the world was he +doing here?.... And what did she think she was doing here?... Not +that he wanted her to go.... + +And suddenly it didn't matter--whatever they thought. It was enough +that they were together in that still, soft, jasmine-scented dark. +He was breathing quickly; his pulses were beating; he had a feeling +of strange, heady delight. + +The crescent moon was up at last, sailing clear of the house tops, +sending its bright rays through the filigree of tall shrubs. A +finger of light edged the contour of her shrouded head. + +He bent a little closer. + +"Won't you," he said softly, "take off your veil for me?" + +Appalled, she clasped it to her. He had no idea in the world of the +shock of that request. It would be only a faint parallel of its +impropriety to suggest to Jinny Jeffries that she discard her frock. +Even Ryder's acquaintance with Egypt could not tell him how that +swift, confident eagerness of his could startle and affront. + +"I want to see you so very much," he was murmuring, and met the +chill disdain of her retort, "But it is not for you to see my face, +monsieur!" + +"Who is to see it?" he demanded. + +"Who but the man I am to marry," she gave distinctly back. + +The word hit him like stone. + +He was conscious of a shock. Did she intend to rebuke--or to +imply--to question his intention? The steadiness of her low voice +suggested a certain steadiness of design.... He had heard of girls +who knew their own minds ... girls with unexpectedly far-sighted +vision.... Perhaps, poor child, she looked upon him as romantic +escape from all that was restrictive in her life. Secluded women go +fast--when they start. + +The devil take him for that kiss! + +A somewhat set look upon his thin face guarded the fluctuations of +his soul, but the blood rose strongly under his dark skin. + +For a moment he did not venture upon a reply, and in that moment he +was suddenly aware that she had caught his meaning from him--and +that it was a horrible mistake. It was one of those instants of +highly-charged exchanges of meanings whose revelation was as useless +to be denied as powerless to be explained. + +Then her words came in tumultuous, passionate refutation of his +thought. "That is what my father had come to tell me--that he had +arranged my marriage. It is a very splendid thing. To a general--a +rich general!" + +She had not meant to tell him like that! But for the moment she was +savagely glad to hurl it at him. + +He made no answer. His eyes were inscrutably intent. A variety of +things were rearranging themselves in his head. + +"You're--you're going to marry him?" he said slowly. + +"What else?" But she felt the phrase unfortunate and plunged past +it. "It is not for me to say no, monsieur. It is for my father to +arrange." + +"But his indulgence--? You were telling me, you know, that he was so +fond of you. And that you were one of the moderns--the revolting +moderns--" + +Jack Ryder's tone was questioningly cynical and its raillery cut +through her brief sham of pride. + +"So I thought, too, last night." A tinge of infinite disillusionment +was in her young voice. "But it is not so." + +"Then you accept--?" + +The shrouded head nodded. + +"But you can't want to," he broke out with sudden heat. "You don't +know him at all, do you--this general?" + +"Know him? I have never seen his face nor heard his voice--and I +would die first," she added with bitter, helpless fierceness under +her breath. + +The veil muffled that from him. "But why--why?" he repeated in an +angrily puzzled way. + +She made a little gesture of weary impotence. Out of the dark +draperies her hands were like white fluttering butterflies. + +"What can I do?" + +"I should think you could do the Old Harry of a lot." + +"Weep?" said the girl with a pale irony not lost upon him. + +"Weep--or row. Or run," he added, almost reluctantly. + +She turned away her head. "I know, I thought once that I could run. +For that I stole the key to this gate. But where would I run, +monsieur? I have neither friends, nor--nor the resources.... There +have been girls--two sisters--who ran away last year--but they were +already married and they had cousins in France. For me, my cousins +do not exist. I do not know my mother's family. They disowned her +for her marriage, my father says. And so--but it is not possible to +evade this.... It is not possible. This marriage is required." + +"Required--rot! Can't you--don't you--" he paused, looking down upon +her in tremendous and serious uncertainty. The impulse was strong +upon him to tell her that he would help her. The accents of her +voice had seemed to tear at his very heart. + +It was utter madness. Where, in the map of Africa, would he hide +her? And how would he take care of her? What would he do to her? +Make love to her? Marry her? Take home a wife from an Egyptian +harem--a surprising acquisition with which to startle and enchant +his decorous family in East Middleton! + +And a pretty end to his work here, his reputation, his +responsibilities-- + +It was madness. And the fact that the thought had presented itself, +even for his flouting mockery, indicated that he was mad. He told +himself to be careful. Better men than he had everlastingly done for +themselves because upon a night of stars and moonshine some +dark-eyed girl had played the very devil with their common sense. + +He reminded himself that he had never set eyes on her until last +night, that she might be the consummate perfection of a minx, that +there might not be a word of truth in all of this. + +This general, now! Sudden. Not a word about it last night. And now-- + +He had an inkling that even Mohammedan fathers do not rush matters +at such a pace. + +For all he knew the girl might be inventing this general--for some +artless reasons of her own. For all he knew she might be married to +him and desirous of escape. + +But he didn't believe it. She was too young and shy and virginal. +The accents of her candor rebuked his skepticism. He merely told +himself these things because the last vestige of his expiring common +sense was prompting him. + +And after all these creditable and excellent exhortations, to the +utter extinction of the last vestige of that common sense he heard +himself saying abruptly, "But isn't there anything in the world that +I can do--?" + +"Nothing, monsieur." + +"But for you to submit--like this--" + +"It is not to be helped." + +"But it _is_ to be helped--if you really dislike it," he added +jealously. + +"I cannot help it, because--because my father--" She hesitated. The +honor of her father and her family pride and affection were all +involved, yet suddenly the sacrifice of these became more tolerable +than to consent to that image of herself which she saw swiftly +defining itself in his mind, that slight, weak creature, whose +acquiescent passivity submitted to this marriage. + +The thought was unbearable. She was burning beneath her veil. She +would tell him.... And perhaps she was not averse, in her childish +pride, to the pitiful glory of having him see her in the beauty of +her filial sacrifice. + +"My father has--has done something against the English laws," she +faltered, "and Hamdi Bey, this general, knows of it, and will inform +unless--unless my father makes this marriage. A cousin of his has +seen me," she added, her young vanity forlornly rearing its head, +"and told Hamdi that I am not--not too ill-looking a girl--" + +Her essay of a laugh died. + +Ryder's look deepened its sharp, defensive concentration. + +"This is true--I mean your father is not just putting something +over--telling you to get your consent?" + +Her thoughts flew back to her father's haggard face. "Oh, it is +true! I know." + +"And he's going to hand you over--What sort is this Hamdi?" + +"A general. Old. Evil enough to lay traps to obtain me." + +"It's abomination." The anger in the young man surged beyond his +control. "You must not do it.... If your father is clever enough to +break a law let him be clever enough to mend it--by himself. Such a +sacrifice is not required.... You must realize what this means to +you. You must realize--Look here, I'll help you. I'll plan some +escape. There must be ways. I have friends--" + +She stifled the leap of her heart. She held her head high and made +what she thought was a very noble little speech. "It is for my +father, monsieur. You do not understand. It is to save my father." + +He looked at her in silence. He was afraid to answer for a moment; +he could feel the unruly blood beating even in the lips he pressed +together. + +"But don't you understand--" he blurted at last and broke off. + +After all, he did not know this girl. If he swayed her judgment now, +and dragged her away, what life, what compensation could he offer +her? How did he know that she would not regret it? Would she be +happier in a world unknown?.... + +She had been brought up to this sort of thing. It was bred in +her.... Marriage was her inevitable game. This very charm she +exercised, this subtle, haunting invasion of his senses, what was +that but another proof of the harem existence where all influences +were forced to serve the ends of sex ... + +And she was so maddeningly resigned to taking this general! + +A queer hot rage was gaining possession of him. "Oh, well, if you +prefer this," he said brutally, with a youthful desire to wreak pain +in return for that strange pain which something was inflicting upon +him. + +A girl who would let him kiss her one night--and on the next inform +him that she was giving herself to an unknown--an old Turk.... If +she could go like that, to some other's arms and lips ... + +He wanted to take her fiercely in his arms and crush her lips +against his and then fling her away and say, "Oh, go to him now--if +you can!" + +And at the same time he wanted to gather her to him as tenderly as +if she were a flower he was guarding and tell her that he would +protect her against all the world. + +He was divided and confused and blindly angry. He felt baffled and +frustrated. He was both aching and raging. And yet he was capable of +reminding himself, in some corner of his uninvaded mind, that this +was undoubtedly the best thing for them both. + +What else? For him? For her? + +And yet his tongue went on stabbing her. + +"If this is what you are determined to do--" he heard himself saying +hardly, yet with a hint of deferred finality. + +It was as if he had said, "If this, then, is what you are like! If +you are the soft, submissive harem creature, the toy, the +odalisque--If you will endure undesired love rather than face the +world--" + +And she knew that was what he was saying to her. The injustice +brought a lump of self-pity to her throbbing throat.... That he +should not realize and honor the courage of her sacrifice.... That +he should reproach, despise.... She had expected other entreaties +... protestations.... + +Her heart ached with a throb of steady dreariness. + +But she did not stir. Not a line of her drooping draperies wavered +towards him. And swallowing that lump in her throat, she achieved a +toneless, "That is what I am going to do." + +At the other end of the garden a sound came from the house. + +Ryder seemed to rouse himself. "Good-bye, then," he said, +uncertainly. + +"Good-bye, monsieur." + +He looked oddly at her. "Good-bye," he muttered again, and turned, +and stumbled out of the gate. + +A pool of moonlight lay without its arches, and he stepped into it +as if coming out of the shadows of an enchanted garden. He stood and +straightened himself as if throwing off that garden's spell. He put +back his shoulders and took a quick step down the lane. + +A slight sound drew his eyes back. + +She had followed him to the gate; she stood there, in the moonlight, +against the inky wells of shadow into which her black robe flowed, +and in the moonlight her face, gazing after him, was an exquisite, +ethereal apparition, like a spirit of the garden. + +She had cast off her veil. He had a vision of her dark eyes shining +over rose-flushed cheeks, of deeper-rose-red lips in curves of +haunting sweetness, of the tender contour of her young face, fixed +unforgettingly in the radiant moonlight--only an instant's vision, +for while the blood stopped in his veins the darkness engulfed her, +like a magician's curtain. + +But he waited while he heard the gate closed. Still he waited while +he heard her locking it. And then for all his hot young pride, he +turned back and knocked upon it. He called softly. He whispered +entreaties. + +Not a sound. Not an answer. + +In a revulsion of feeling he turned and made his way blindly from +the lane. + +She had heard his voice. Like a creature utterly spent, she had been +leaning against the great gate from which she had withdrawn the key. +But she uttered not a breath in answer, and after she had heard his +footsteps die away she turned slowly back and groped among the rose +roots for the key's hiding place. + +Mechanically she smoothed it over and moved on towards the house. +All was quiet there. That sound had been no alarm. Unobserved she +slipped within the little door, and up the spiral steps. + +She had not seen the dark eyes that were watching her, from the +other side of the rose thicket. After the girl had gained the house, +the old woman came forward and stooped before the marked bush, +muttering under her breath at the thorns. After a few moments she +gave a little grunt of satisfaction and her exploring hand drew out +the key. + +Smoothing again the rifled hiding place among the roses, she made +her careful way into the house. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +A SECRET OF THE SANDS + + +The siesta was past. The sun was tilting towards the west and +shadows were beginning to jut out across the blazing sands. + +Over the mounds of rubbish the bearers had resumed their slow +procession, a picturesque frieze of tattered, indigo-robed, ebony +figures, baskets on heads, against a cloudless cobalt sky, and again +the hot air was invaded with the monotonous rise and fall of their +labor chant. + +A man with a short, pointed red beard and an academic face beneath a +pith helmet was stooping over the siftings from those baskets, +intent upon the stream of sand through the wire screens. Patiently +he discarded the unending pebbles, discovering at rare intervals +some lost bead, some splinter of old sycamore wood, some fragment of +pottery in which a Ptolemy had sipped his wine--or a kitchen wench +had soaked her lentils. + +Beyond the man were traces of the native camp, a burnt-out fire, a +roll of rags, a tattered shelter cloth stuck on two tottering +sticks, and distributed indiscriminatingly were a tethered goat, a +white donkey with motionless, drooping ears, and a few supercilious +camels. + +The camp was in the center of a broken line of foothills on the +desert's edge. North and south and west the wide sands swept out to +meet the sky, and to the east, shutting out the Nile valley, the +hills reared their red rock from the yellow drift. + +Among the jutting rock in the foreground yawned dark mouths that +were the entrances of the discovered tombs, and within one of these +tombs was another white man. He was conducting his own siftings in +high solitude, a lean, bronzed young man, with dark hair and eyes +and, at the present moment, an unexhilarated expression. + +It had been two weeks since Jack Ryder had returned to camp. Two +interminable weeks. They were the longest, the dullest, the +dreariest, the most irritatingly undelighting weeks that he had ever +lived through. + +But bitterly he resented any aspersion from the long-suffering +Thatcher upon his disposition. He wanted it distinctly understood +that he was _not_ low-spirited. Not in the least. A man wasn't in +the dumps just because he wasn't--well, garrulous. Just because he +didn't go about whistling like a steam siren or exult like a cheer +leader when some one dug up the effigy of a Hathor-cow.... Just +because he objected when the natives twanged their fool strings all +night and wailed at the moon. + +The moon was full now. Round and white it went sailing blandly over +the eternal monotony of desert.... Round and white, it lighted up +the eternal sameness of life.... He had never noticed it before, but +a moon was a poignantly depressing phenomenon. + +He couldn't help it. A man couldn't make himself be a comedian. It +wasn't as if he wanted to be a grump. He would have been glad to be +glad. He wanted Thatcher to make him glad. He defied him to. + +He didn't enjoy this flat, insipid taste of things, this dull grind, +this feeling of sameness and dullness that made nothing seem worth +while.... A feeling that he had been marooned on a desert island, +far from all stir and throb of life. + +Suppose he did dig up a Hathor-cow? Suppose he dug up Hathor +herself, or Cleopatra, or ten little Ptolemies? What was the good of +it? + +Not Jinny Jeffries herself could have cast more aspersions upon the +personal value of excavations. + +When he was tired of denying to himself that there was anything +unusual the matter with him, he shifted the inner argument and took +up the denial that anything which had happened in Cairo those two +weeks before had anything to do with it. As if that rash encounter +_mattered_! As if he were the silly, senseless sentimental sort of +idiot to go mooning about his work because of a girl--and a girl +from a harem with a taste for secret masquerades and Turkish +marriages! + +As if he cared--! + +Of course--he admitted this logically and coldly now to himself, as +he sat there in the ray of his excavator's lantern, on the sanded +floor at the end of the Hall of Offerings--of course, he was sorry +for the girl. It was no life for any young girl--especially a +spirited one, with her veins bubbling with French blood. + +The system was wrong. If they were going to shut up those girls, +they had no business to bring them up on modern ideas. If they kept +the mashrubiyeh on the windows and the yashmak on their faces they +ought to keep the kohl on their eyes and the henna on their fingers +and education out of their hidden heads. + +It was too bad.... But, of course, they were brought up to it. Look +how quickly that girl had given in. She was Turkish, through and +through. Submissive. Docile.... And a darned good thing she was, +too! Suppose she had taken him at his fool word. Suppose she had +really wanted to get away! + +Lucky, that's what he'd been. And it would be a lesson to him. Never +again. No more masked young things with their stolen keys and their +harem entrances. No more whispered tales of woe in a shady garden. +No more-- + +Violently he wrenched himself from his No Mores. Recollection had a +way of stirring an unpleasant tumult. + +But it was all over. He had forgotten it--he _would_ forget it. He +would forget _her_. Work, that was the thing. Normal, sensible, +every day work. + +But there was no joy in this tonic work. Somewhere, between a night +and a morning, he had lost that glow of accomplishment which had +buoyed him, which had made him fairly ecstatic over the discovery of +this very tomb. + +For this tomb was his own find. It had been found long before by the +plundering Persians, and it had been found by Arabs who had +plundered the Persian remains--but between and after those findings +the oblivious sands had swept over it, blotting it from the world, +choking the entrance hall and the shafts, seeping through +half-sealed entrances and packing its dry drift over the rifled +sarcophagus of the king and over the withered mummy of the young +girl in the ante-room. The tombs had been cleared now, down almost +to the stone floors, and Ryder was busy with the drifts that had +lodged in the crevices about the entrance to the shaft. + +It was really an important find. Although much plundered, the walls +were intact, and the delicate carvings in the white limestone walls +were exceptional examples. And there were some very interesting +things to decipher. A scholar and an explorer could well be +enthusiastic. + +But Ryder continued to look far from enthusiastic. Even when his +groping fingers, searching a cranny, came in contact with a hard +substance his face did not change to any lightning radiance. +Unexpectantly he picked up the sand-encrusted lump and brushed it +off. A gleam of gold shone in his hand. But it was no ancient amulet +or necklace or breast guard--nor was it any bit of the harness of +the plundering Persians. It was a locket, very heavily and ornately +carved. + +He stood a moment staring down at the thing with a curious feeling +of having stood staring down at exactly the same thing before--that +subconscious feeling of the repetition of events which supports the +theories of reincarnationists--and then, quite suddenly, memory came +to his aid. + +In McLean's office. That day of the masquerade. Those visiting +Frenchmen and that locket they had shown him. Of course the thing +reminded him-- + +And it was remarkably alike. The same thick oval, the same ponderous +effect of the coat of arms--if it should prove the same coat of arms +that would be a clue! + +With his mind still piecing the recollection and surmise together +his fingers pressed the spring. There was a miniature within, but it +was not the picture of Monsieur Delcasse. Ryder was looking down +upon the face of a girl, a beautiful, spirited face, with merry eyes +and wistful lips--dark eyes, with a lovely arch of brow, and +rose-red lips with haunting curves. + +And eyes and brows and lips and curves, it was the face of the girl +who had gazed after him in the moonlight against the shadows of the +pasha's garden. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +TO McLEAN'S ASTONISHMENT + + +"It is no end of good of you, Jack, to take this trouble," Andrew +McLean remarked appreciatively, looking up from his scrutiny of the +packet which his unexpected luncheon guest had pushed over to his +plate. + +"Uncommon thoughtful. It's undoubtedly a twin to that locket, the +portrait of the man's wife--whatever his name was." + +"Delcasse," said Jack Ryder promptly. + +Gratefully he drained the second lemon squash which the +silent-footed Mohammed had placed at his elbow. It had been a hard +morning's trip, this coming in from camp in high haste, and he was +hot and dusty. + +"You might have sent the thing," McLean mentioned. "I daresay that +special agent chap has left the country, for I recollect he said he +was at the end of his search.... And, of course, this isn't much of +a clue--eh, what?" + +"It's everything of a clue," insisted Ryder. "It shows where this +Frenchman was working, for the first thing--" + +"Unless it had been stolen by some native who lost it in that +tomb." + +"Natives don't lose gold lockets. Of course it might have been +stolen and hidden--but that's far-fetched. It's much more likely +that this was the very tomb where Delcasse was working at the time +of his death. For one thing, the place showed signs of previous +excavation up to the inner corridor, and there I'll swear no modern +got ahead of me. And for another thing, it's a perfect specimen of +the limestone carving of the Tomb of Thi which Delcasse wrote his +book about--looks very much as if it might be by the same artist. +There's a flock of hippopotami in a marsh scene with the identical +drawing, and there's the same lovely boat in full sail--but there, +you bounder, you don't know the Tomb of Thi from a thyroid gland. +You're here to administer financial justice, the middle, the high, +and the low; your soul is with piasters, not the past. But take my +word for it, it's exactly the spot where an enthusiast of the Thi +Tomb would be grubbing away.... Lord, they could choose their find +in those days!" + +"It's uncommonly likely," McLean conceded, abandoning his demolished +cherry tart and pulling out his briar. "And if the locket proves the +duplicate of the other it indicates that it's a portrait of Madame +Delcasse, but it doesn't indicate what has become of Madame +Delcasse.... Though in a general way," McLean deduced with Scotch +judicialness, "it supports the theory of foul play. The woman would +hardly have lost her miniature, or have sold it, except under +pressing conditions. In fact--" + +Ryder was brusque with his facts. + +"That doesn't matter--Madame Delcasse doesn't matter. The thing that +matters is--" + +As brusquely he broke off. His tongue balked before the revelation +but he goaded it on. + +"That there is a girl--the living image of that picture." + +"I say!" McLean looked up at that, distinctly intrigued. "That's +getting on.... You mean you've seen her?" + +Ryder nodded, suddenly busy with his cigarette. + +"Where is she, now? In Cairo? That's luck, man!... And you say she's +like?" + +"You'd think it her picture." + +"It's an uncommon face." McLean bent over it again. "I fancied the +artist had just been making a bit of beauty, but if there's a girl +like that--! Fancy stumbling on that!... But where is she? And what +name does she go by?" + +"Oh, her name--she doesn't know her own, of course." Ryder paused +uncertainly. "She's in Cairo," he began again vaguely. "She'd be +just about the right age--eighteen or so. She--she's had awf'ly +hard luck." Distressfully he hesitated. + +The shrewd eyes of McLean dwelt upon him in sorrowful silence. "Eh, +Jock," he said at last, with mock scandal scarcely veiling rebuke. +"I did not know that you knew any of that sort--the poor, wee lost +thing.... Tell me, now--" + +"Tell you you're off your chump," said Jack rudely. "She's no lost +lamb. Fact is, she's never spoken to a man--except myself." He +rather enjoyed the start this gave McLean after his insinuations. It +helped him on with his story. + +"The girl doesn't know her own name at all, I gather. She thinks +she's the daughter of Tewfick Pasha. Her mother married the Turk and +died very soon afterwards and he brought up this girl as his own. +She says she's his only child." + +He paused, ostensibly to blow an elaborate smoke ring, but actually +to enjoy McLean's astonishment. As astonishment, it was distinctly +vivid. It verged upon a genuine horror as Ryder's meaning sank into +his friend's mind. + +McLean knew--slightly--Tewfick Pasha. He knew--supremely--the +inviolable seclusion of a daughter of such a household. He knew the +utter impossibility of any man's speech with her. + +Yet here was Ryder telling him-- + +Ryder's telling him was a sketchy performance. He mentioned the +girl's appearance at the masquerade and their acquaintance. He +touched lightly upon her attempted flight and his pursuit. Even more +lightly he passed over those lingering moments at her garden gate +and the exchange of confidences. + +"She said that her dead mother had been French. And that her name +was her mother's--Aimee. So there is--" + +"But the likeness, man--her face? She never unveiled to you?" + +"Well, the next night--" + +"The _next_ night?" + +It was at this point that Ryder began to lose his relish of McLean's +astonishment. + +"Yes, the next night," he repeated with careful carelessness.... "I +told the girl I would come and see if she got in all right--there +had been some footsteps the night before--" + +"And you went? And she came?" + +"Do you suppose she sent her father?" + +"You're lucky she didn't send her father's eunuch," McLean retorted +grimly. "Well, get on with your damning story. The girl took off her +veil--" + +"Nothing of the kind," said Jack a trifle testily--so soon does +conventional masculinity champion the conservatism of the other sex! +"That was just as I was going--gone, in fact. I looked back and she +had drawn her veil aside. The moon was bright on her face--I saw her +as clear as daylight, and I tell you that this miniature is a +picture of her. She is Delcasse's daughter and she doesn't know it. +Her mother was stolen by that disgusting old Turk--" + +"Hold on a bit. Fifteen years ago Tewfick could hardly have been +thirty and he has the rep of a Don Juan. It may have been a love +affair or it may have been plunder.... The girl remembers her?" + +"Very little. She was so young when her mother died. She said that +the father was so in love that he never married again." + +"H'm ... It seems to me that I've heard tales of our Tewfick and of +pretty ladies in apartments. Cairo is a city of secrets and +tattlers. However--as to this Delcasse inheritance, I'll just notify +the French legation--" + +"We'll have to look sharp," said Ryder quickly. "There's no time to +lose. The girl is to be married." + +"Married?... But she'll inherit the money just the same." + +"But she doesn't want to be married," Ryder insisted anxiously. "Her +father--her alleged father--has just sprung this on her. Says there +are political or financial reasons. He's been caught in some dirty +work by this Hamdi Bey and he's stopping Hamdi's mouth with the +girl.... And we've got to stop that." + +"I wonder if we can," said McLean thoughtfully. + +"If we can? When the girl is French? When she's been lied to and +deceived?" + +"She seems to have been taken jolly well care of. Brought up as his +own and all that. Keep your shirt on, Jack," McLean advised dryly +with a shrewd glance from his gray eyes at the other's unguarded +heat. + +Then his eyes dropped to the miniature again. A lovely face. A +lovely unfortunate creature.... And if the daughter looked like +that, small wonder that Jack was touched.... Beauty in distress. + +Some men had all the luck, McLean reflected. He had never taken Jack +for the gallivanting kind, either, yet here he was going to +masquerades with one girl and coming home with another.... + +Jack was too good looking, that was the trouble with the youngster. +Good looking and gay humored. The kind that attracted women.... +Women and romance were never fluttering about lank, light-eyed, +uninteresting old Scotchmen of twenty-nine! + +A mild and wistful pang, which McLean refused to name, made itself +known. + +"I'll see the legation," he began. + +"At once. I'll wait," urged Ryder. + +And at once McLean went. + + * * * * * + +The result was what he had foreseen. The legation was appreciative +of his interest. That special agent had returned to France but his +address was left, and undoubtedly the family of Delcasse would be +grateful for any information which Monsieur McLean could send. + +"Send!" repudiated Ryder hotly. "Write to France and back--wait for +somebody to come over! Can't the legation do something now?" + +"The legation has no authority. They can't take the girl away from +the man who is, at any rate, her step-father." + +"They can put the fear of God into him about this marriage. They +can deny his right to hand her over to one of his pals. They can +threaten him with an inquiry into the circumstances of her mother's +marriage." + +"And why should they? They may regard it as a very natural marriage. +And remember, my dear Jack, that the legation has no desire to +alienate the affections of influential Turks, or criticize +fifteen-years-ago romances. You have a totally wrong impression of +the responsibilities of foreign representatives." + +"But to let him dispose of a French girl--" + +"He is disposing of her, as his daughter, in honorable marriage to a +wealthy and aristocratic general. There can be no question of his +motives--" + +"Of course, if you think that sort of thing is all right--" + +Carefully McLean ignored the other's wrath. + +Patiently he explained. "It's not what I think, my dear fellow, it's +what the legation thinks. There's not a chance in the world of +getting the marriage stopped." + +"Then I'll do it myself," declared Ryder. "I'll see this Tewfick +Pasha and talk to him. Tell him the money is to come to the girl +only when she is single. Tell him the French law gives the father's +representatives full charge. Tell him that he kidnapped the mother +and the government will prosecute unless the girl is given her +liberty. Tell him anything. A man with a guilty conscience can +always be bluffed." + +In silence McLean gazed upon him, perplexed and clouded, his +quizzical twinkle gone. Jack was taking this thing infernally to +heart.... And it was a bad business. + +"You will let me do the telling," he stated at last, grimly. "What +can be said, I'll say. Like a fool, I will meddle." + +And so it happened that within another hour two very stiff and +constrained young men were ringing the bell at the entrance door of +Tewfick Pasha. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +TEWFICK RECEIVES + + +A huge Soudanese admitted them. They found themselves in a tiled +vestibule, looking through open arches into the green of a +garden--that garden, Ryder hardly needed to remind himself, with +whose back door he had made such unconventional acquaintance. + +Now he had a glimpse of a sunny fountain and fluttering pigeons, +and, on either side of the garden, of the two wings of the building, +gay white walls with green shutters more suggestive of a French +villa than an Egyptian palace, before the Soudanese marshaled them +toward the stairs upon the right. + +The left, then, was the way to the haremlik. And somewhere in those +secluded rooms, to which no man but the owner of the palace ever +gained admission, was Aimee. + +The Soudanese mounted the stairs before them and held open a door +into a long drawing-room from which the pasha's modernity had +stripped every charm except the color of some worn old rugs; the +windows were draped in European style, the walls exhibited paper +instead of paneling; in one corner was a Victrola and in another, +beside a lounge chair, stood a table littered with cigarette trays +and French novels with explicit titles. + +The only Egyptian touch to the place was four enormous oil portraits +of pompous turbaned gentlemen, in one of whom Ryder recognized the +familiar rotundity of Mahomet Ali in his grand robes. + +As a pasha's palace it was a blow, and Ryder's vague, romantic +notions of high halls and gilded arches, suffered a collapse. + +Tewfick Pasha came in with haste. He had been going out when these +callers were announced and he was dressed for parade, in a very +light, very tight suit, gardenia in his button-hole, cane in his +gloved hands, fez upon his head. For all their smiling welcome, his +full, dark eyes were uneasy. + +He had grown distrustful of surprises. + +It was McLean's affair to reassure him. Far from fulminating any +accusations the canny Scot announced himself as the bearer of glad +tidings. A fortune, he announced, was coming to the pasha--or to the +pasha's family. A very rich old woman in France had decided to +change her will. + +There he paused and the pasha continued to smile non-committally, +but the word fortune was operating. In the back of his mind he was +hastily trying to think of rich old women in France who might change +their wills. + +"I am afraid that it is my stupidity which has kept you from the +knowledge of this for some weeks," McLean went on. "I had so many +other matters to look up that I did not at once consult my records. +And it has been so many years since you married Madame Delcasse that +the name had slipped general recollection.... It was twelve years +ago, I believe, that she died?" + +Casually he waited and Jack Ryder held his breath. He felt the full +suspense of a pause long enough for the pasha's thoughts to dart +down several avenues and back. If the man should deny it! But why +should he? What harm in the admission, after all these years, with +Madame Delcasse dead and buried? And with a fortune involved in the +admission. + +The Turk bowed and Ryder breathed again. + +"Ten years," said Tewfick softly. + +"Ah--ten. But there has been no communication with France for twelve +years or even longer?" + +"Possibly not, monsieur." + +"This old aunt," pursued McLean, "was a person of prejudice as well +as fortune--hence it has taken a little time for her to adjust +herself." He paused and looked understandingly at the Turk, who +nodded amiably as one whose comprehension met him more than half +way. + +"My own aunt was of a similar obstinacy," he murmured. He added, +"This fortune you speak of--it comes through my wife?" + +"For her inheritors. Madame Delcasse--the former Madame Delcasse I +should say--left but one daughter?" + +Again the pasha bowed and again Ryder felt the throb of triumph. He +looked upon his friend with admiration. How marvelously McLean had +worked the miracle. No accusations, no threats, no obstacles, no +blank walls of denial! Not a ruffle of discord in the establishment +of these salient facts--the marriage of Madame Delcasse to the pasha +and the existence of the daughter. + +Wonderful man--McLean. He had never half appreciated him. + +But the pasha was not wholly the simple assenter. + +"Do I understand," he inquired, "that there is a fortune coming from +France for my daughter?" And at McLean's confirmation, "And when you +say fortune," he continued, "you intend to say--?" and his glance +now took in the silent American, considering that some cue must be +his. + +But McLean responded. "The figures are not to be divulged--not until +the aunt is in communication with her niece. But they will be large, +monsieur, for this aunt is a person of great wealth." + +"And yet alive to enjoy it," said Tewfick with smiling eyes. + +"An aged and dying woman," thrust in Ryder in haste. "Her only care +now is to see her niece before she dies." + +"Ah!... But that could be arranged," said Tewfick amiably. + +"We have at once communicated with France," McLean told him, "but we +came instantly to you, to, inform you--" + +"A thousand thanks and a thousand! The bearers of good tidings," +smiled their host. + +"Because we understand that there is a question of the young lady's +marriage," pursued McLean, "and you would, of course, wish to defer +this until these new circumstances are complied with." + +The pasha stared. "Not at all. A fortune is as pleasant to a wife as +to a maid." + +"There are so many questions of law," offered McLean with purposeful +vagueness. "French wardship and trusteeship and all that. It would +be advisable, I think, to wait." + +"Absurd," said the pasha easily. + +"You would want no doubts cast upon the legality of the marriage," +McLean persisted thoughtfully, "and since mademoiselle is under age +and the French law has certain restrictions--" + +"Pff! We are not under the French law--at least I have not heard +that England has relinquished her power," retorted Tewfick not +without malice. + +"But Mademoiselle Delcasse is French," thrust in Ryder. He knew that +McLean had ventured as far as he, an official and responsible +person, could go, and that the burden of intimation must rest upon +himself. "And under her father's will his family there is +considered in trusteeship. So there would be certain technicalities +that must be considered before any marriage can be arranged, the +signature of the French guardian, the settlement of the dot--this +inheritance, for instance--all mere formalities but involving a +little delay." + +Tewfick Pasha turned in his chair and cocked his eyes at this +strange young man who had dropped from the blue with this extensive +advice. He looked puzzled. This American fitted into no type of his +acquaintance. He was so very young and slim and boyish ... with not +at all the air of a legal representative.... But McLean's position +vouched for him. + +"You speak for the French family, monsieur?" + +Unhesitatingly Ryder declared that he did. + +"Then you may inform the family," announced Tewfick, bristling, +"that my daughter has been very well cared for all these years +without advice from France." + +"I haven't a doubt of it," said Ryder quickly, "but the French law +might begin to entertain doubts of it, if mademoiselle were married +off now without consultation with the authorities.... Already," he +added a little meaningly, as the other shrugged the suggestion away, +"there have been questions raised concerning the mother's marriage +and the separation of the little Mademoiselle Delcasse from her +relatives in France, and now if she were to be married without any +legal settlement of her estate--" + +Steadily he sustained the other's gaze, while his unfinished thought +seemed to float significantly in the air about them. + +"Have a cigarette," said the pasha hospitably, extending a gold case +monogrammed with diamonds and emeralds. "Ah, coffee!" he announced, +welcomingly, as a little black boy entered with a brass tray of +steaming cups. + +"I hope, gentlemen, that you like my coffee. It is not the usual +Turkish brew. No, this comes from Aden, the finest coffee in the +world. A ship captain brings it to me, especially." + +Beamingly he sipped the scalding stuff, then darted back to that +suspended sentence. "But you were saying--something of a +trusteeship?... Do I understand that it is an aunt of Madame +Delcasse--the former Madame Delcasse--who is leaving this money?" + +"Not of Madame but of Monsieur Delcasse," McLean informed him. + +"Ah!... That accounts ... But in that case, then, there need be no +concern in France over my daughter's marriage...." He turned his +round eyes from one to the other a moment. + +"There is no Mademoiselle Delcasse." + +"Sir?" said Ryder sharply. + +"There is no Mademoiselle Delcasse," repeated the pasha, his eyes +frankly enlivened. + +"But--we have just been speaking--you cannot mean to say--" + +"We have been speaking of my daughter--the daughter of the former +Madame Delcasse." + +Smilingly he looked upon them. "A pity that we did not understand +each other. But you appear to know so much--and I supposed that you +knew that, too, that the daughter of Monsieur Delcasse was dead." + +Neither of the young men spoke. McLean looked politely attentive; +Ryder's face maintained that look of concentration which guarded the +fluctuations of his feelings. + +"It was many years ago," the pasha murmured, putting down his coffee +cup and selecting another cigarette. "Not long after her mother's +marriage to me.... A very charming little girl--I was positively +attached to her," Tewfick added reminiscently. + +"Well, well, well, what a pity now," said McLean very slowly. +"This will be a great disappointment.... And so the present +mademoiselle--" + +"Is my daughter." + +McLean was silent. Ryder could hardly trust himself to speak. + +"What did she die of?" he asked at last, in a voice whose edged +quality brought the pasha's glance to him with a flash of hostility +behind its veil. + +But he answered calmly enough. "Of the fever, monsieur.... She was +never strong." + +"And her grave... I should like to make a report." + +"It was in the south ... desert burial, I am afraid. You must know +that the little one was hardly a true believer for our cemetery." + +"And you would say that she was only five or six years old?" Ryder +persisted. + +The pasha nodded. + +"I should like to get as near as possible to the date if it is not +too much trouble.... The father died about fifteen years ago and the +mother was married to you soon after?" + +"Really, monsieur, you--" + +Tewfick was frankly restive. + +"I know nothing of the father," he said sullenly. "And as to the +child's death--how can one recall after these years? In one, two +years after she came to me--one does not grave these things upon the +eyeballs." + +"But you do remember that it was long ago--when your own daughter +was very little?" + +"Exactly. That is my recollection, monsieur.... And I recall," said +the pasha, suddenly obliging and sentimental, "that even my little +one cried for the child. It was afflicting.... Assure the family in +France of my sympathy in their disappointment." + +"I am sorry that my news is after all of no interest to you," +observed McLean, setting the example for rising. "You will pardon my +error of information--and accept my appreciation of your courtesy." + +"It is I who am indebted for your trouble," their host assured +them, all smiles again. + +But Ryder was not to be led away without a parting shot. + +"The name of the Delcasse child--was Aimee?" + +Imperceptibly Tewfick hesitated. Then bowed in assent. + +"Odd," said young Ryder thoughtfully. "And your own daughter's name, +also, is Aimee.... Two little ones with the same name." + +With a slight, vexed laugh, as one despairing of understanding, the +pasha turned to McLean. "Your young friend, monsieur, is uninformed +that Turkish children have many names.... After the loss of the +elder we called the little one by the same name.... I trust I have +made everything perfectly clear to you?" + +"As crystal," said McLean politely. + + * * * * * + +"As lightning," said Jack Ryder hotly, striding down the street. "It +was a flash of invention, that yarn. When I spoke about the +questions raised by his marriage the old fox sniffed the wind and +was afraid of trouble--he decided on the instant that no future +fortune was worth interference with his plans, and he cut the ground +from under our feet.... Lord, what a lie!" + +"Masterly, you must admit." + +"Oh, I admired the beggar, even while I choked on it. But +fever--desert burial--two Aimees! And the sentimental face he +pulled--he ought to have had a spot-light and wailing woodwinds." + +McLean chuckled. + +"I'll believe anything of him now," Ryder rushed on. "I'll bet he +murdered Delcasse and kidnapped the mother--and now he is selling +their daughter--" + +"I fancy murder's a bit beyond our Tewfick. That's too thick. He's +probably telling the truth there--he may never have known Delcasse. +And as for the widow--she must have been in no end of trouble with a +dead man and a wrecked expedition and a baby on her hands, and +Tewfick may have offered himself as a grateful solution to her. +You'd be surprised at the things I've heard. And if she looked like +her picture Tewfick probably laid himself out to be lovely to +her.... I rather like the chap, myself." + +"I love him," Ryder snorted. "The infernal liar--" + +"Steady now--suppose it's all the truth? Nothing impossible to it. +Fact is, I rather believe it," said McLean imperturbably. "It hangs +together. If this girl you met thinks she's his daughter, that's +conclusive. She'd have some idea--servants' gossip or family +whisperings.... And why should he have brought her up as his own?" + +"No other children. And he'd grown fond of her, of course. If you +could see her!" retorted Ryder. + +"Just as well, I can't.... And I think he could hardly have kept her +in the dark.... We'd better call it a wild goose chase and say the +man's telling the truth." + +"If this girl were his daughter she couldn't be more than fourteen +years old. And I've seen the girl and she's eighteen if she's a +day--you might take her for twenty. _Fourteen_!" said Ryder in +repudiating scorn. + +Hesitating McLean murmured something about the early maturity of the +natives. + +"Natives?" Ryder flung angrily back. "This girl's French!" + +"As far as we are concerned, Jack, this girl is Turkish--and +fourteen.... We can't get around that, and you had better not forget +it," his friend quietly advised. "We've done everything that we can +and there is no use working yourself up.... If anybody's to blame in +this business, I don't think it's Tewfick--he's done the handsome +thing by her--but the fool Frenchman who took his baby and his wife +into the desert, and it's too late to rag him. Cheer up, old top, +and forget it. There's nothing more to be done." + +It was sound advice, Jack Ryder knew it. They had done all that they +could. McLean had been a brick. There remained nothing now but to +notify the Delcasse aunt that Tewfick Pasha claimed the child. + +"And I've a notion, Jack," said McLean thoughtfully, "that he might +not have done that if you hadn't rushed him so, trying to break off +the marriage. That was what frightened him." + +"I thought you said she was his own daughter," Ryder responded +indignantly, and to that McLean merely murmured, "She will be now, +to all time." + +It was a haunting thought. It left Ryder with the bitter taste of +blame in his mouth, the gall and wormwood of blame and a baffled +defeat. + +But for that sense of blame he might have taken McLean's advice. He +might--but for that--have gone the way of wisdom, and accepted the +inevitable. + +As it was, he did none of these things. + + * * * * * + +He said to himself that all that he could do now--and the least that +he could do--was to let the girl know as much of the story as he +knew and draw her own conclusions. Then, if she wanted to go on and +sacrifice herself for Tewfick, very well. That was none of his +affair. + +But she had a right to the truth and to the chance of choice. + +He did not know what he could do, but secretly and defiantly he +promised himself that he would do something, and in the back of his +mind an idea was already taking shape. It was manifest in the +tenacity with which he refused to send the locket to the Delcasses. +He had the case and the miniature photographed very carefully by the +man who did the reproductions for museum illustrations, and he sent +that, conscious of McLean's silent thought that he was cherishing +the portrait for a sentimental memory. + +But he had other plans for it. + +He did not return to his diggings. He sent a message to the deserted +Thatcher, faking errands in Cairo, and he took a room at the hotel +where Jinny Jeffries--now up the Nile--had stayed. He spent a great +deal of time evenings in the hotel garden, staring over the brick +walls to the tops of distant palms beyond, and not infrequently he +slipped out the garden's back door and wandered up and down the dark +canyon of a lane. + +He might as well have walked up and down the veranda of Shepheard's +Hotel. + +And yet the girl had her key. She could get away if she wanted to +and she might want to if she knew the truth. + +But how to get that truth to her? That was his problem. A dozen +plans he considered and rejected. There were the mails--simple and +obvious channel--but he had a strong idea that maidens in Mohammedan +seclusion do not receive their letters directly. And now, +especially, Tewfick would be on his guard. + +Then there was the chance of a message through some native's hands. +The house servants--? There were hours, one day, when Ryder +sauntered about the streets, covertly eyeing the baggy-trousered +_sais_ who stood holding a horse in the sun or the tattered baker's +boy, approaching the entrance with his long loaves upon his head, +but Ryder's Arabic was not of a power or subtlety to corrupt any +creature, and he stayed his tongue. + +Bitterly he regretted his wasted years. If he had not misspent them +in godly living he would now be upon such terms of intimacy with +some official's pretty wife who had the entree to a pasha's daughter +that she could be induced to make use of it for him. + +Desperately he thought of remedying this defect. There were several +charming young matrons not averse to devoted young men, but the time +was short for establishing those confidential relations which were +what he required now. + +Jinny Jeffries would do it for him if she could, but Jinny would not +return for another week. And if she changed her mind and took the +boat back--as he, alack! had advised--instead of the express, then +she would be longer. + +And meanwhile the days were passing, four of them now since he and +McLean had heard the Soudanese locking the door behind them. + +There seemed nothing for it but to trust to that idea which had been +slowly shaping in his mind. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +A WEDDING PRESENT + + +In a room high in the palace a young girl was trying on a frock. +Before a tall pier glass she stood indifferently, one hip sagging to +the despair of the kneeling seamstress, her face turned listlessly +from the image in the glass. + +Through the open window, banded with three bars, she looked into the +rustling tops of palms, from which the yellow date fruit hung, and +beyond the palms the hot, bright, blue sky and the far towers of a +minaret. + +"A bit more to the left, h'if you please, miss," the woman entreated +through a mouthful of pins, and apathetically the young figure +moved. + +"A bit of h'all right, now, that drape," the woman chirped, sitting +back on her heels to survey her work. + +She was an odd gnome-like figure, with a sharp nose on one side of +her head and an outstanding knob of hair on the other. Into that +knob the thin locks were so tightly strained that her pointed +features had an effect of popping out of bondage. + +She was London born, brought out by an English official's wife as +dressmaker to the children, remaining in Cairo as wife of a British +corporal. Since no children had resulted to require her care and +the corporal maintained his distaste for thrift, Mrs. Hendricks had +resumed her old trade, and had become a familiar figure to many +fashionable Turkish harems, slipping in and out morning and evening, +sewing busily away behind the bars upon frocks that would have +graced a court ball, and lunching in familiar sociability with the +family, sometimes having a bey or a captain or a pasha for a +vis-a-vis when the men in the family dropped in for luncheon. + +As the girl did not turn her head she looked for approbation to the +third person in the room, a tall, severely handsome Frenchwoman in +black, whose face had the beauty of chiseled marble and the same +quality of cold perfection. This was Madame de Coulevain, teacher of +French and literature to the _jeunes filles_ of Cairo, former +governess of Aimee, returned now to her old room in the palace for +the wedding preparations. + +There was history behind madame's sculptured face. In an incredibly +impulsive youth she had fled from France with a handsome captain of +Algerian dragoons; after a certain matter at cards he had ceased to +be a captain and became petty official in a Cairo importing house; +later yet, he became an invalid. + +Life, for the Frenchwoman, was a matter of paying for her husband's +illness, then for his funeral expenses, and then of continuing to +pay for the little one which the climate had required them to send +to a convent in France. + +There was, at first, the hope of reunion, extinguished by each +added year. What could madame, unknown, unfriended, unaccredited, +accomplish in France? The mere getting there was impossible--the +little one required so much. Her daughter was no dependent upon +charity. And in Cairo madame had a clientele, she commanded a price. +And so for the child's sake she taught and saved, concentrating now +upon a dot, and feeding her heart with the dutifully phrased letters +arriving each week of the years, and the occasional photographs of +an ever-growing, unknown young creature. + +It was to madame's care that Aimee had been given when the +motherless girl had grown beyond old Miriam's ministrations, and for +nearly nine years in the palace madame had maintained her courteous +and tactful supervision. Indeed, it was only this last year that +madame had undertaken new relations with the world outside, +perceiving that Aimee would not longer require her. + +"Excellent," she said now in her careful, unfamiliar English to Mrs. +Hendricks, and in French to Aimee she added, with a hint of +asperity, "Do give her a word. She is trying to please you." + +"It is very nice, Mrs. Hendricks," said the girl dutifully, bringing +her glance back from that far sky. + +The little seamstress was instantly all vivacity. "H'and now for the +sash--shall we 'ave it so--or so?" she demanded, attaching the wisp +of tulle experimentally. + +"As you wish it.... It is very nice," Aimee repeated vaguely. She +picked up a bit of the shimmering stuff and spread it curiously +across her fingers. A dinner gown.... When she wore this she would +be a wife.... The wife of Hamdi Bey.... A shiver went through her +and she dropped the tulle swiftly. + +In ten days more.... + +Gone was her first rush of sustaining compassion. Gone was her +fear for her father and her tenderness to him. Only this numb +coldness, this dumb, helpless certainty of a destiny about to be +accomplished.... Only this hopeless, useless brooding upon that +strange brief past. + +There was a stir at the door and on her shuffling, slippered feet +old Miriam entered, handing some packages to Madame de Coulevain. +Then she turned to revolve about the bright figure of her young +mistress, her eyes glistening fondly, her dark fingers touching a +soft fold of silver ribbon, while under her breath she chanted in a +croon like a lullaby, "Beautiful as the dawn ... she will walk upon +the heart of her husband with foot of rose petals ... she will +dazzle him with the beams of her eyes and with the locks of her +hair, she will bind him to her ... beautiful as the dawn...." + +It was the marriage chant of Miriam's native village, an old love +song that had come down the wind of centuries. + +Mrs. Hendricks, thrusting in the final pins, paid not the slightest +attention and Madame de Coulevain displayed interest only in the +packages. If she saw the stiffening of the girl's face and the rigid +aversion of her eyes from the old nurse's adulation she gave no +sign. + +Towards Aimee's moods madame preserved a calm and sensible +detachment. Never had she invited confidence, and for all the young +girl's charm she had never taken her to her heart in the place of +that absent daughter. As if jealously she had held herself aloof +from such devotion. + +Perhaps in Aimee's indulged and petted childhood, with a fond pasha +extolling her small triumphs, her dances, her score at tennis at the +legation, madame found a bitter contrast to the lot of that lonely +child in France. Certainly there was nothing in Aimee's life then to +invite compassion, and later, during those hard, mutinous months of +the girl's first veiling and seclusion, she had not tried to soften +the inevitable for her with a useless compassion. + +So now, perceiving this marriage as one more step in the +irresistible march of destiny for her charge, she overlooked the +youthful fretting and offered the example of her own unmoved +acceptance. + +"What diamonds!" she said now admiringly, holding up a pin, and, +examining the card. "From Seniha Hanum--the cousin of Hamdi Bey." + +A moment more she held up the pin but the girl would not give it a +look. + +"And this, from the same jeweler's," continued madame, while the +dressmaker was unfastening the frock, aided by Miriam, anxious that +no scratch should mar that milk-white skin. + +"How droll--the box is wrapped in cloth, a cloth of plaid." + +Aimee spun about. The dress fell, a glistening circle at her feet, +and with regardless haste she tripped over it to madame. + +"How--strange!" she said breathlessly. + +A plaid ... A Scotch plaid. Memories of an erect, tartan-draped +young figure, of a thin, bronzed face and dark hair where a tilted +cap sat rakishly ... memories of smiling, boyish eyes, darkening +with sudden emotion ... memories of eager lips.... + +She took the box from madame. Within the cloth lay a jeweler's case +and within the case a locket of heavily ornamented gold. + +Her heart beating, she opened it. For a moment she did not +understand. Her own face--her own face smiling back. Yet unfamiliar, +that oddly piled hair, that black velvet ribbon about the throat.... + +Murmuring, madame shared her wonder. + +It was Miriam's cry of recognition that told them. + +"Thy mother--the grace of Allah upon her!--It is thy mother! Eh, +those bright eyes, that long, dark hair that I brushed the many hot +nights upon the roof!" + +"But you are her image, Aimee," murmured the Frenchwoman, but half +understanding the nurse's rapid gutturals, and then, "Your father's +gift?" + +With the box in her hands the girl turned from them, fearful of the +tell-tale color in her cheeks. "But whose else--his thought, of +course," she stammered. + +That plaid was warning her of mystery. + +The dressmaker was creating a diversion. Leaving, she wished to +consult about the purchases for to-morrow's work, and madame moved +towards the hall with her, talking in her careful English, while +Miriam bent towards the dropped finery. + +Aimee slipped through another door, into the twilight of her +bedroom, whose windows upon the street were darkened by those +fine-wrought screens of wood. Swiftly she thrust the box from sight, +into the hollow in the mashrubiyeh made in old days to hold a water +bottle where it could be cooled by breezes from the street. + +Leaning against the woodwork, her fingers curving through the tiny +openings, she stared toward the west. The sky was flushing. Broken +by the circles, the squares, the minute interstices of the +mashrubiyeh, she saw the city taking on the hues of sunset. + +Suddenly the cry of a muezzin from a nearby minaret came rising and +falling through the streets. + +"_La illahe illallah Mohammedun Ressoulallah_--" + +The call swelled and died away and rose again ... There is no God +but _the_ God and Mahomet is the Prophet of God ... From farther +towers it sounded, echoing and re-echoing, vibrant, insistent, +falling upon crowded streets, penetrating muffling walls. + +"_La illahe illallah_--" + +In the avenue beneath her two Arabs, leading their camels to market, +were removing their shoes and going through the gestures of +ceremonial washing with the dust of the street. + +"_La illahe_--" + +The city was ringing with it. + +The seamstress and the Frenchwoman, still talking, had passed down +the hall. In the next room Miriam's lips were moving in pious +testimony. + +"_Ech hedu en la illahe_--! I testify that there is no God but _the_ +God." + +In the street the Arabs were bowing towards the east, their heads +touching the earth. + +And in the window above them a girl was reading a note. + + * * * * * + +The last call of the muezzin, falling from the tardy towers of Kait +Bey drifted faintly through the colored air. With resounding whacks +the Arabs were urging on their beast; Miriam, her prayers concluded, +was shaking out silks and tulle with a sidelong glance for that +still figure in the next room, pressing so close against the +guarding screens. + +She could not see the pallor in the young face. She could not see +the tumult in the dark eyes. She could not see the note, crushed +convulsively against the beating breast, in the fingers which so few +moments ago had drawn it from the hiding place in the box. + +Ryder had not dared a personal letter. But clearly, and distinctly, +he stated the story of the Delcasses. He gave the facts which the +pasha admitted and the ingenious explanation of the two Aimees. And +for reference he gave the address of the Delcasse aunt and agent in +France and of Ryder and McLean at the Agricultural Bank. + + * * * * * + +The pasha did not dine with his daughter that night. He had been +avoiding her of late, a natural reaction from the strain of +too-excessive gratitude. A man cannot be continually humble before +the young! And it was no pleasure to be reminded by her candid eyes +of his late misfortunes and of her absurd reluctance towards +matrimony. + +As if this marriage were not the best thing for her! As if it were a +hardship! To make sad eyes and draw a mouth because one is to be the +wife of a rich general.... Irrational ... The little sweetmeat was +irritating. + +To this point Tewfick's buoyancy had brought him, and all the more +hastily because of his eagerness to escape the pangs of that +uncomfortable self-reproach. To Aimee, in her new clear-sightedness +of misery, it was bitterly apparent that he was reconciled with her +lot and careless of it. + +So blinded had been her young affection that it was a hard +awakening, and she was too young, too cruelly involved, to feel for +his easy humors that amused tolerance of larger acquaintance with +human nature. She had grown swiftly bitter and resentful, and deeply +cold. + +And now this letter. It dazed her, like a flame of lightning before +her eyes, and then, like lightning, it lit up the world with +terrifying luridity. Fiery colored, unfamiliar, her life trembled +about her. + +Truth or lies? Custom and habit stirred incredulously to reject the +supposition. The romance, the adventure of youth, dared its swift +acceptance. How could she know? Intuitively she shrank from any +question to the pasha, realizing the folly and futility of exposing +her suspicion. If he needed to lie, lie he would--and in her +understanding of that, she read her own acceptance of the +possibility of his needing to lie. + +Madame de Coulevain? Madame had never known her mother. Only old +Miriam had known her mother and Miriam was the pasha's slave. But +the old woman was unsuspecting now, and full of disarming comfort in +this marriage of her wild darling. + +Through dinner she planned the careless-seeming questions. And then +in her negligee, as the old nurse brushed out her hair for the +night, "Dadi," said the girl, in a faint voice, "am I truly like my +mother?" and when Miriam had finished her fond protestation that +they were as like as two roses, as two white roses, bloom and bud, +she launched that little cunning phrase on which she had spent such +eager hoping. + +"And was I like her when I was little--when first she came to my +father?" + +"Eh--yes. Always thou wast the tiny image which Allah--Glory to his +Name!--had made of her," came the nurse's assurance. + +"I am glad," said Aimee, in a trembling voice. + +She dared not press that more. Confronted with her unconscious +admission the old woman would destroy it, feigning some evasion. But +there it was, for as much as it was worth.... + +Presently then, she found another question to slip into the old +woman's narrative of the pasha's grief. + +"Eh, to hear a man weep," Miriam was murmuring. "Her beauty had set +its spell upon him, and--" + +"And he lost her so soon. Three or four years only, was it not," +ventured Aimee, "that they had of life together?" + +It seemed that Miriam's brush missed a stroke. + +"Years I forget," the nurse muttered, "but tears I remember," and +she began to talk of other things. + +But it seemed to Aimee that she had answered. As for that other +matter, of the dead Delcasse child, she dared not refer to it, lest +Miriam tell the pasha. But how many times, she remembered, had she +been told that she was her mother's only one! + +Yet, oh, to know, to hear all the story, to learn Ryder's discovery +of it! It was all as strange and startling as a tale of Djinns. And +the life that it held out to her, the enchanted hope of freedom, of +aid--Oh, not again would she refuse his aid! + +She had no plans, no purposes. But that night over her +hastily-donned frock she slipped the black street mantle and when at +last, after endless waiting, the murmuring old palace was safely +still and dark, she stole down the spiral stair and gained the +garden. And then, a phantom among its shadows, she fled to the rose +bushes by the gate. + +Breathlessly she knelt and dug into the hiding place of that gate's +key. To the furthest corner her fingers explored the hole, pushing +furiously against the earth. And then she drew back her hand and +crushed it against her face to check the nervous sobs. + +The hole was empty. The key was gone. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE RECEPTION + + +In Tewfick Pasha's harem everything was astir. + +It was the morning of the marriage, almost the very hour when the +wedding cortege would bear the bride from her father's home to the +house of her husband. + +The invited guests were already arrived and streaming through the +reception rooms, a bright, feminine tide in evening toilettes, +surrounding the exhibited gifts or pausing about tables of cool +syrups, and their soft, low voices, the delicious musical tones of +highbred Turkish women, rose like a murmuring of somnolent bees to +the tenser regions about, tightening the excitement of haste. + +The bride was not yet ready. Still and white, she was the only image +of calm in that fluttering, confusing room. Her nearer friends were +hovering about her, and her maids of honor, two charming little +Turks in rose robes, were draping her veil while old Miriam, +resplendent in green and silver, endeavored jealously to outmaneuver +them. + +On her knees, the gnome-like Mrs. Hendricks was adding an orange +blossom to the laces on the train. Then she sat back on her heels, +her head a-tilt like a curious bird's, her eyes beaming +sentimentally upon the bride. + +"The prettiest h'I h'ever did see," she pronounced with +satisfaction, "H'as pretty as a wax figger now--h'only a thought +_too_ waxy." + +And like a wax figure indeed, immobile, rigid, the bride was +standing before them, arrayed at last in the shimmering white of the +sweeping satin, overrich of lace and orange flowers, and shrouded in +the clouding waves of her veil. White as her robes, pale as death +and as still, the girl looked out at them, and only that sick pallor +of her face and the glitter of her dark eyes betrayed the tumult +within. + +"Your diadem, my dear--you are keeping us attending," came Madame de +Coulevain's voice from the door. + +The diadem, that heavy circlet of brilliants which crowned the +Eastern bride in place of the orange wreath of Western convention, +must not be touched by the bride's fingers but placed by one of her +friends, married and married but once, and exceptionally happy in +that marriage. + +Ghul-al-Din, Aimee's selection from her friends, stepped hastily +forward now, a soft, dimpled, slow-smiling girl, her eyes drowsy +with domesticity. No question of Ghul-al-Din's happiness! She +extolled her husband, a young captain of cavalry, and she adored her +infant son, a prodigy among children. Life for her was a rosy, +unquestioning absorption. + +A shaft of irony sped through Aimee, as she bent her head for its +crowning at this young wife's hands, and received the ceremonial +wishes for her crowning of happiness, a crowning occurring but once +in her lifetime. Irony was the only salvation for the hour; without +that outlet for her tortured spirit she felt she would grow suddenly +mad, hysterical and babbling or passionate and wild. + +So many moods had stormed through her since that night when she had +found all hope of rescue gone with her lost key! So many impulses +seethed frantically now beneath her quiet, as she faced for the last +time that white-misted image in the glass. She had a furious longing +to tear off that diadem and veil and heavy robe, to scatter the +ornaments and drive out all those maddening spectators, all those +interested, eager, unknowing, uncaring spectators of her +humiliation. + +Arranging her veil, draping her satins, as if gauze and silk were +all that mattered to this hour! Wishing her happiness--as if +happiness could ever be hers now for the wishing! Smiling, +fluttering, complimenting, lending to the ghastly sacrifice the +familiar acceptances of every day.... + +If only she could wake from this nightmare and find that it was all +a dream. If only she could brush this confusion from her senses and +from her heart its dumb terrors.... If only she had the courage for +some desperate revolt, some outburst of strength-- + +"I am ready," she said faintly, turning from the glass, and moved +towards the door, while a young eunuch bent for her train, that +train of three yards length, which stretched so regally behind her +in her slow descent of the stairs. + +In the French drawing-room below her father was waiting for the +ceremonial farewell, in which the father received the daughter's +thanks for all his care of her. + +Mechanically Aimee advanced. She stood before him, she lifted her +eyes--and there passed from them a look of such strange, breathless, +questioning intensity that it was like something palpable.... She +had not foreseen this, sudden crisping of her nerves, this defiant +passion of her spirit.... + +Her father? Was he her father? Was it a father who had sold her so, +careless, callous--or was it only a father's semblance, and did +there lie in the background of those petted, childish years some +darker shadow, of a tragedy that had wrecked her mother's life and +broken her heart--? + +Like flashing light that look passed between them. It penetrated +Tewfick's nonchalant guard and brought the unaccustomed color to his +olive cheeks. His handsome eyes turned uneasily aside. A girl's +pique perhaps, at the situation, her last defiance of his +power,--but for all his reassurance there was something deeper in +that look, something tenable, accusing, which went into his soul. + +It was a moment in which the last cord of their relationship was +severed forever. + +She did not speak a word. She bent, not to kiss his hand as custom +dictated, but to sweep a long, slow courtesy, that salutation of a +maid of spirit to a conqueror, a bending of the pliant back, but +with the head held high and the spirit unsurrendered. + +And yet there was wretchedness in those proud eyes and a blind fear +and supplication. + +Useless to beg now. She knew it, and yet the eyes implored. + +And then she smiled. And before that smile Tewfick faltered in his +paternal benediction and hastened the phrases. + +Little murmurs flew back and forth as she turned away, and then a +hasty chatter sprang up as the guests hurried into their tcharchafs +for the journey to the bridegroom's house. + +That day Aimee did not put on her veil. On either side of her, as +she went out her father's gate, huge negroes held up silken walls of +damask, and between those walls she walked into the carriage that +awaited her, followed by Madame de Coulevain and the two little +maids of honor. + +It was when the carriage began to move that the panic inside of her +grew to whirlwind. The horse' hoofs, trotting, trotting, the motion +of the wheels, seemed to be the onbearing rush of fate itself. If +she could only stop it! If she could only cry out, tear open the +windows, scream to the passers by. She knew these were only the +impotent visions of hysteria, but she indulged them pitifully. + +She saw herself, in those moments, helpless, and hopeless, passing +on into the slavery of this marriage--Aimee, no longer the daughter +of Tewfick Pasha, but Aimee Delcasse, child of a dead Frenchman, +inheritor of freedom, sold like any dancing girl.... + +And her own lips had assented. In the supreme, silly uselessness of +sacrifice she had given herself for the safety of that man who had +spent such careless indulgence upon her ... that man whom perhaps +her mother had loved and perhaps had hated.... + +Faster and faster the horses were trotting, leading the long file of +carriages and impatient motors that bore the relatives and guests +and trousseau, rolling on under the lebbeks and sycamores of the +wide Shubra Avenue, once the delight of fashionables before the +Gezireh Drive had drained it of its throngs and its prestige. + +Now some bright-eyed urchins ran out from their games in the dust to +curious attention, and through a half open gate Aimee caught once a +glimpse of a young, unveiled girl watching eagerly from the tangled +greens and ruined statuary of an old garden. Farther on came +glimpses of farm lands, the wheat rising in bright spears, and of +well-wooded heights and in the distance the white houses of +Demerdache against the Gibel Achmar beyond. + +But where were they bearing her? Aimee had a despairing sense of +distance and desolation as the carriage turned again--Abdullah, the +coachman, having traversed unnecessary miles to gratify his pride +before the house of his parents--and made a zigzag way towards the +river, where old palaces rose from the backwaters, their faces +hidden by high walls or covered with heavy vines and moss. + +Deeper and deeper grew the girl's dismay. It was a different world +from that bright, modern Cairo that she knew; this was as remote +from her daily life as the old streets of Al Raschid. Her thoughts +flew forward to that unknown lord, that Hamdi Bey, whose image she +had refused to assemble to her consciousness. Now she comforted her +terror with a sudden assumption of age and dignity and kindness, of +a courtesy that would protect her and a deference that would assuage +the horror of a life together, when unknown, fearful familiarities +would alone vibrate in the empty monotonies. + +Before a high wall the carriage had stopped. A huge, repellent +Ethiopian was standing before an opened doorway, through which a +rich carpet was spread. + +"Ah, but he looks like an ogre, that new eunuch of yours, Aimee," +murmured one of the little Turks. The other, more touched with +thought, gave her a disturbed glance, and laughed in nervousness. + +Madame, alone serene, ignored the dismaying impression. + +"The palace is of a fine, ancient beauty, I am told," she mentioned +cheerfully. + +For one wild instant Aimee thought to plead with her, to implore her +to tell Abdullah to drive on, to give her the freedom of flight, if +only flight down those deserted streets. And then a mad vision of +herself in her bridal robes in flight, brought the hysterical +laughter to her throat. The time for flight had gone by ... And as +for madame's pity on her--this was not the first time that Aimee had +thought of invoking her aid, but she had always known, too well, +that thought's supreme futility. + +Sympathetic as Madame de Coulevain might be in her inmost heart--and +Aimee divined in her an understanding pity for the necessities of +existence--never would that sympathy betray her to rashness. She +never would believe that in serving Aimee she would not be ruining +her; and even if assured of Aimee's safety, she could never be +brought to betray her own reputation for truthworthiness among the +harems of Cairo.... As well appeal to the rocks of the Mokattam +hills. + +The carriage stopped. The negroes extended the damask walls, and one +sprang to open the carriage door and bear the bride's train. In one +moment's parting of the silken walls the girl saw a sun-flooded +cluster of staring faces, thronging for her arrival, and then the +damask intervened and through its lane, followed by her duenna and +her maids of honor, she entered the arched doorway. + +She was in a garden, a great gloomy place, over-spread with ancient, +moss-encrusted trees. A broken, marble fountain flung up waters into +which no sunlight flashed, and the heavy stepping stones, leading to +it, were buried in untrodden grass. A garden in which no one +lingered. + +The Ethiopian was marshaling them to the left, to an entrance in the +dark palace walls before them. Behind them the oncoming guests were +streaming out in veiled procession. + +He opened a door. Ancient, beautiful arches framed a long vestibule +and against a background of profuse cut flowers a man's figure +stepped forward in the glittering uniform of the Sultan's guard. +Aimee had a confused impression of a thin, meager, dandified figure +with a waspish waist ... of a blond mustache with upstanding ends +... of sallow cheek-bones and small, light eyes smiling at her in a +strained, eager curiosity.... + +Through all her sinking dismay she had a flash of clear, +enlightening irony at that look's suspense. If she were not as +represented! If his cousin's fervor had misled his hope--! + +But in that instant's encounter his eyes cleared to triumph and +gayety, and he smiled--a smile curiously feline, ironic, for all its +intended ingratiation--a conqueror's smile, winged to reassure and +melt. + +He stepped forward. There were formal words of welcome to which she +returned a speechless bow, and then he offered his arm and conducted +her slowly up the stairs, his sword rattling in its scabbard, to the +apartment which was to be her home, and the prison for the spirit +and the body. + +She knew in a moment that she hated this man and that he inspired +her with fear and horror. + +Across a long expanse of drawing-room he conducted her to the +ancient marriage throne upon its platform, surmounted by a pompous +crown from which old, embroidered silks hung heavily. + +Then with an unheard phrase, and another bow, he left her to the +day-long ordeal of the reception while he withdrew to his own +entertainment at her father's house. She would not see him again +until night, when he would pay her a call of ceremony. + +She saw his figure hesitating a moment, as he faced the oncoming +guests, such a flood of femininity, unmantled now and unveiled, +sparkling in rainbow hues of silks and tulle and gauze that he had +never before faced and never would again. Like a bright wave the +throng closed about him and then surged on towards the bride upon +the throne. + +How often, in the last years, Aimee had pitied that poor puppet of a +bride, stuck there like some impaled, winged creature, helpless for +flight, to the exhibition of the long stream of passersby! How often +she had promised herself that never would this be her fate, never +would she be given to an unknown! And now-- + +She was smiling as she faced them, that light, fixed smile she had +seen so often on others' lips, the smile of pride trying desperately +to hide its wounds from the penetrating glances of the curious. +Satiric, cynical, or sympathetic, that light smile defied them all, +but beneath its guard she felt she was slowly bleeding to death of +some mortal hurt. + +The sympathy unconsciously betrayed, was hardest. The whispers of +her young maids of honor, "Really, Aimee, he looks so young! One +would never surmise," were more galling in their intended +consolation, more revealing in their betrayal of her friends' own +shrinking from that arrogant, dandified old man than the barbed dart +of the uncaring, inquisitive, "How do you find him, my dear? He has +the reputation for conquest!" + +They were all there, her friends, young, slim, modish Turkish girls +whose time had not yet come, glancing quizzically about the ancient +drawing room, with its solid side of mashrubiyeh, its old wall +panelings of carvings and rare inlay, and then pointing their +glances back at her, as if to ask, "And is this our revoltee? Is +this her end, in this dim, old palace among the ghosts of the past?" + +Some, the frankest, murmured, "But why did you not refuse?" and +others attempted consolation with a light, "As well the first as the +last--since we must all come to it." + +Of the married women there were those who raised blank, bitter eyes +to her, and others, more mild, romantic, affectionate, tried to +infuse encouragement into their smiles as if they said, +"Come--courage--it's not so bad. And what would you? We are women, +after all; we do not need so much for happiness. + +"Those dreams of yours for love, for a spirit to delight in your +spirit in place of a master delighting in your beauty alone, what +are they, those dreams, but the childish stuff of fancies? For other +races, perhaps--but for you, take hold of life. There are realities +yet in it to bring you joy." + +It was all in their eyes, their voices, their intonations, their +pressure of her hands. + +And she stood there among them all, smiling always that smile +demanded of the bride, looking unseeingly into their eyes, listening +unhearingly to the sea of voices breaking on her ears, responding in +vague monosyllables and a wider smile, while all the time her eyes +saw only that face, that smirking, cynical old face, and the tide of +terror rose higher and higher in her soul. + +Never had she given way to her fear, never since the black night +when she found the key was gone. + +Then, after frenzied searching in impossible places she had stolen +back to her room and buried her face in her pillow to stifle the +breaking sobs of rebellion and despair--and of a longing so deep and +so terrible that it seemed to rend her with a physical anguish, a +pain so fiery that her heart would forever bear the scar. + +Never again would she see him now.... Never would she know--never +would she know all. She had refused his aid. And he might believe +her still aloof, incredulous.... It was finished--forever and ever. + +She had told herself that before. But always there had been the key. +And now there was no key and no escape and her heart broke itself +against the iron of necessity. + +She had cried the night through. Morning had brought her exhaustion, +not peace but a despairing submission. Why struggle when the prison +gate is shut? And if there was never to be freedom for her ... never +again the sight of that too-remembered face and the sound of that +voice--why, then, as well one fate as another. And it was too late +now to recede. + +So she had called upon her pride and summoned her spirit to play its +part to protect her from whispers, and surmise and half-contemptuous +pity. She would surrender to this man because she must, and she +would win his respect by her dignity and worth, but her soul she +would keep its own, in its unsullied dreams ... and in its +memories.... Life would be nothing but a hardship, nobly borne. + +But now she had seen the man. Now this wild dislike, this sickening +terror. + +To be alone with him, to have only the few days grace of courtship +which the Mohammadan custom imposes upon the bridegroom, to be +forever at his mercy in this solitary palace, with its echoing +corridors, its blackened walla, its damp breath of age.... + +She thought wildly of death. + +And all the time she was smiling, bending her cheek to the kiss of a +friend, feeling the fingers of some well-wisher press upon her, +listening to praises of her beauty.... + +For she was beautiful. No image of wax now. The scarlet of her +frightened blood was staining her cheeks, her eyes were bright as +the jewels in her diadem, and beneath the thrown-back veil her dark +hair revealed its lovely wealth. + +"Is she not a rose--will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard +that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared +on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal +youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated +master. + +And still the throng filed by, a strange throng beneath the +flickering light and shadow of the mashrubiyeh, slender young Turks +or blonde Circassians in their Paris frocks, their eyes tormented or +malicious, and here and there, like a green island of calm, some +rotund matron grave and serene, her head encircled with an old +fashioned turban of gauze, her stout flesh encased in heavy silks, +bought at Damask so as not to enrich the Unbelievers at Lyons. + + * * * * * + +And then the spectacle changed, the black street mantles appeared, +yashmaks and tcharchafs, for now the doors were opened to all the +feminine world, and there came strange, unknown women, slipping out +from their grills for this pleasuring in a palace, old-timers often, +draped and turbaned in the fashion of some far province of their +youth; women, incredibly fat, in rich stuffs of Asia, their bright, +deep-sunken eyes spying delightedly upon the scene, or furtive, poor +women, keeping courage in twos and threes. + +Now, too, at four, came the women from the Embassies, a Russian girl +with whom Aimee had played tennis in ages past, rosy now with +yesterday's sun and sleepy with last night's dance, who touched the +bride's hand as if it were the hand of one half-dead, already +consigned to the tomb; other girls she did not know, who stared at +her with the avid eyes of their young curiosities; older women, +experienced, unstirred, drinking their tea and smoking cigarettes +and gossiping of their own affairs, and occasionally among them a +tourist agog with wonder and exultation, storing away details for a +lifetime of talk, asking amiably the most incredible questions.... + +"And is it true you have never met your husband? Listen, Jane--she +says she has never met him--" + +A girl in a creamy white silk came forward a little uncertainly. She +was a pretty girl, with a curve of ruddy hair visible under her +smart straw, and very bright eyes, where shyness was at variance +with a friendly smile. + +Indeed Jinny Jeffries was extraordinarily intimidated by the +occasion. She had a distinct sense of intrusion mingling with her +delight at having intruded, and she murmured her good wishes in an +almost inaudible tone. + +"It is very good of you to let us come ... I wish you every +happiness," she said. + +Beside her a tall slender figure, in black tcharchaf and yashmak, +made its appearance. + +Aimee's eyes slipped past the pretty American; the mechanical smile +was frozen on her lips. Over the black veil she saw the hazel eyes, +bright with excitement, vivid as speech; the eyes of the masquerader +in the Scotch costume, the eyes of the man at the garden gate--Jack +Ryder's eyes ... the eyes of her dreams. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +THE FORTY DOORS + + +When Ryder had despatched from the jeweler's who had polished the +locket for him, that package with its secret note, and its warning +plaid, he had no real assurance that the message would fall into +Aimee's hands. But he could think of nothing better, and he argued +very favorably for his stratagem. + +That miniature should have some effect, and given the miniature, and +the bit of plaid cloth, Aimee's quick wit ought to divine a message. + +She had always the key, he remembered, and the power of egress from +her prison. And surely it ought not to be difficult for her to +devise some way of getting a letter into the post. + +So his hope fluctuated between the garden gate and the daily mail at +the Bank, and he rather surprised McLean by the frequency and +brevity of his visits, and by the duration of his stay in Cairo. + +For that he had an excuse, both to McLean and to the deserted +Thatcher, at the excavation camp, two excuses in fact--some belated +identification work to be done at the Museum and a cracked wisdom +tooth. + +Chiefly he spoke of the necessity for dentistry and accounted for +his moods with his molar. + +Of moods he had many. Moods when he contemplated his behavior +lightly and brightly or darkly, in unrelieved disgust, moods when he +refused to contemplate it at all. But he stayed. That was the +conspicuous and enduring thing. He stayed. + +Jinny Jeffries returned from the Nile by express to find him +ensconced at her hotel, and her bright confidence suffered no +diminution of its self respect. And it was through Jinny that chance +set another straw of circumstance dancing his way. + +Jinny had a frock she wished repaired. Mrs. Heath-Brown, whom she +had met upon the Nile, recommended to her a Mrs. Hendricks, wife of +a British soldier and a most clever little needle woman. Jinny +looked up Mrs. Hendricks and found it impossible to secure her for +some days as she was busy refitting for a fashionable wedding in the +Mohammedan world. + +A night later, and two nights before the wedding, Jinny made a +narrative of the circumstances for Jack Ryder's benefit. + +"Such frocks h'as h'I 'ave to do--and the young lady no more +caring!" had been a saying of the Hendricks that Jinny passed +interestedly on to Jack. She had no memory of the young lady's name, +but distinctly she recalled that she was young and beautiful and to +marry a general. + +It was enough to launch Jinny's eager interest in Mohammedan +marriages and foster the wish that she might attend one. She +regretted Mrs. Heath-Brown's absence and her lack of acquaintance, +and suggested that Jack ought to know some one-- + +"Better than that, _I'll_ take you," said Jack with a promptness +that brought a light to Miss Jeffries' eyes. + +There was also a light in Jack Ryder's eyes, a swift burning of +excitement and adventure. + +Why not? The thing was possible. Muffled in a tcharchaf and veiled +with a heavy yashmak, armed with enough Arabic for the briefest of +encounters, he might dare the danger. Who in the world would +discover him? Who would ever know? + +The thing was unthinkable. It was a desperate desecration, +comparable only, in his vague analogies, to the Mecca pilgrimage and +profanation of a Holy Tomb. But its very improbability would prevent +detection. + +Only Jinny had to keep her mouth extremely shut--before and +afterwards. + +He impressed this upon her so thoroughly, as they did their shopping +for the costume together the next morning, that she had compunctious +moments of solicitude when she said he really ought not to.... She +would feel responsible.... + +Thereupon he laughed, and dared her to be game, and she grew all +mirthful confidence again. + +But that night, sitting alone in a native cafe over his Turkish +coffee, Ryder was grimly serious. + +He knew that it was a mad thing to do. He felt, not so much the +danger he ran from discovery, but the danger to his already +shattered peace of mind from another glimpse of that strange girl +... that young unknown, on whom he had spent such time and thought, +of late, that she seemed a very part of his existence. + +What was the good of going to her wedding reception? Feebly he told +himself that it was his only chance to inform her upon the history +of the Delcasses. There might have been reasons for her +non-appearance at the gate, for her not writing.... He could have no +glimmering of what went on behind those barred windows. This was his +only chance--he meant to say, to tell her--but his eager senses +murmured, to see her again. + +That was it--to see her again. He owned the lure, at last, with a +bitter ruefulness. But--he brightened up at that--it was partly his +duty to himself. Now he had all sorts of fool imaginings about this +girl. He was remembering her as something lovelier than a Houri, +more enchanting than fairy magic, more sweet than spring. He owed it +to himself to rout these imbecile prepossessions and prove clearly +and dispassionately that the girl was just a very nice little girl, +a pretty bride, marrying into a very distinct life from his own--and +a girl with whom he would not have an idea in common. A girl, in +fact, far inferior to any American. A girl not to be compared to +Jinny Jeffries. + +Besides, there was fun in the thing. It tempted him tremendously. +It was adventurous, romantic forbidden. + +He heard the word echoed in Turkish behind him. + +So engrossed in his thoughts had he been that he had been +inattentive to the rhythm of old Khazib, the tale teller's voice, as +he held forth, from the divan, beside his long-stemmed pipe, to his +nightly audience, of men and boys, camel drivers, small merchants, +desert men from the long caravans who were the frequenters of this +cafe. + +To-night there were few about the old man, and Ryder had small +difficulty in drawing nearer the circle. A green-turbaned Arab, with +the profile of a Washington and the naive eyes of youth, whispered +to him courteously that it was the tale of the Third Kaland, and the +Prince Azib was in the palace of the forty damsels who were +farewelling him, as they were to depart, according to custom, for +forty days. + +Khazib, with a faint salutation of his turban towards the newcomer, +went slowly, sonorously on with his tale. + +"We fear," said the damsel unto Azib, "lest thou contraire our +charge and disobey our injunctions. Here now we commit to thee the +keys of the palace which containeth forty chambers and thou mayest +open of these thirty and nine, but beware (and we conjure thee by +Allah and by the lives of us!) lest thou open the fortieth door, for +therein is that which shall separate us forever." + +For a moment the cafe faded from Ryder's eyes. He was in the gloom +of a garden, a shadowy darkness just touched by a crescent moon, and +beside him in the shrubbery a dark-shrouded form, shaking its +shawled head at him in denial, and whispering, lightly but +tremblingly. "It is a forbidden door ... forbidden as that +fortieth.... There are thirty and nine doors in your life, monsieur, +that you may open, but this is the forbidden...." + +He had meant to look up that tale. And now chance was reminding him +of it again. A superstitious man--Ryder's great grandfather, +perhaps, would have felt it an omen of warning, and a devout +man--Ryder's grandfather, perhaps--would have taken it for a sign +from Heaven to divert his steps. Ryder reflected upon coincidence. + +"When I saw her weeping," Khazib was intoning, and now Ryder +attended, his scanty knowledge of the vernacular straining and +overleaping the blanks, "Prince Azib said to himself, 'By Allah, I +will never open that fortieth door, never, and in no wise!'" + +"A wise bird," thought Ryder to himself, drawing on his cigarette. + +"And I bade her farewell," continued the voice slipping into the +first person. "Thereupon all departed, flying like birds, leaving me +alone in the palace. When evening drew near, I opened the door of +the first chamber and found myself in a place like one of the +pleasances of Paradise. It was a garden with trees of freshest +green and ripe fruits of yellow sheen. And I walked among the trees +and I smelt the breath of the flowers and heard the birds sing their +praise to Allah, the One, the Almighty." + +"_Allhamdollillah_," murmured Ryder's neighbors reverently. + +"And I looked upon the apple, whose hue is parcel red and parcel +yellow ... and I looked upon the quince whose fragrance putteth to +shame musk and ambergris ... and upon the pear whose taste +surpasseth sherbet and sugar, and the apricot, whose beauty striketh +the eye as she were a polished ruby.... + +"On the morrow I opened the second door and found myself in a +spacious plain set with tall date palms and watered by a running +stream whose banks were shrubbed with rose and jasmine, while privet +and eglantine, oxe-eye, violet and lily, narcissus, origane and the +winter gilliflower carpeted the borders; and the breath of the +breeze swept over those sweet-smelling growths...." + +How inadequate, Ryder realized, had been the description given by +the Book of Genesis to the Garden of Eden. + +"And the third door," droned on the rhythmic voice, "into an open +hall, hung with cages of sandal-wood and eagle-wood; full of birds +which made sweet music, such as the mocking bird, and the cusha, the +merle, the turtle dove--and the Nubian ring-dove." + +A trifle restively Ryder stirred. He liked birds but he wanted to +be getting on to that fortieth door and this was slow progress. Not +a sign of impatience marred the bright, absorbed content of the +other listeners, intent now upon the wonders behind that the fourth +chamber revealed, stores of "pearls and jacinths and beryls, and +emeralds and corals and carbuncles and all manner of precious gems +and jewels such as the tongue of man could not describe." + +The story teller proceeded, "Then, quoth Prince Azib, now verily am +I the monarch of the age, since by Allah's grace this enormous +wealth is mine; and I have forty damsels under my hand nor is there +any to claim them save myself." + +The handsome Arab beside Ryder inhaled his pipe luxuriously. "By the +grace of Allah!" he said reverently. + +"Then I gave not over opening place after place until nine and +thirty days were passed and in that time I had entered every chamber +except that one whose door I was charged not to open. But my +thoughts ever ran upon that forbidden fortieth and Satan urged me to +open it for my own undoing...." + +"I see his finish," said Ryder interestedly to himself--and he +thought of the analogy. + +"So I stood before the chamber, and after a few moments' hesitation, +opened the door which was plated with red gold and entered. I was +met by a perfume whose like I had never before smelt; and so sharp +and subtle was the odor that it made my senses drunken as with +strong wine, and I fell to the ground in a fainting fit which lasted +a full hour. When I came to myself I strengthened my heart, and +entering found myself in a chamber bespread with saffron and blazing +with light.... Presently, I spied a noble steed, black as the murks +of night when murkiest, standing ready saddled and bridled (and his +saddle was of red gold) before two mangers one of clear crystal +wherein was husked sesame, and the other, also of crystal containing +water of the rose scented with musk. When I saw this I marveled and +said to myself, 'Doubtless in this animal must be some wondrous +mystery, and Satan--'" + +"Satan the Stoned!" murmured Ryder's neighbor religiously. + +"Satan cozened me, so I led him without and mounted him ... and +struck him withal. When he felt the blow he neighed a neigh with a +sound like deafening thunder and opening a pair of wings flew up +with me in the firmament of heaven far beyond the eyesight of man. +After a full hour of flight he descended and shaking me off his back +lashed me on the face with his tail, and gouged out my left eye, +causing it to roll along my cheek. Then he flew away." + +On rolled the voice, narrating the prince's descent to the table of +the other one-eyed youths, but Ryder was unheeding. And at the close +he inclined his head with the other listeners, murmuring "May Allah +increase thy prosperity," as he felt in his pockets for the silver +which the others were drawing from turban and sleeves and sash to +lay in the patriarch's lap, and then raised his head to question +diffidently, "Would you interpret, O Khazib, the meaning of that +door? For I hear that it hath now become a saying of a forbidden +thing." + +The sage hesitated, sucking at his pipe. Then he said slowly, "To +every man, O Youth, is there a forbidden door, beyond which waits +the steed of high adventure ... with wings beyond man's riding. And +so the rider is lost and his vision is gone." + +"But for him who could ride?" Ryder suggested. + +"Inshallah! Who can say till he has tried his destiny--and better +are the nine and thirty chambers of safe pleasance than the lonely +sightlessness of the outcast one.... It is a tale which if it were +written upon the eye-corners with needle-gravers, were a warning to +those who would be warned." + +For a moment their eyes held each other, smiling but grave. Ryder's +thoughts were of the morrow, of that forbidden entry he was planning +to make, of the risks, the wild uncertainties.... + +Wisdom and counsel looked significantly out at him out of those +patriarchal eyes. Prudence and sanity clamored within him for a +hearing. + +And then he smiled, the whimsical, boyish smile of young +adventuring. + +"But whoever, O, my father, had opened that forbidden door +the veriest crack, and breathed its scent and glimpsed its +dazzlement--then for him there is no turning back," he confided. + +He rose and Khazib's eyes followed him. + +"Luck go with you, my son," he said clearly, "in Allah's name," and +smiling in faint ruefulness, "May Allah heed thee!" Ryder murmured +piously. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +THE UNINVITED GUEST + + +Now as he stood before Aimee, and saw her eyes widen with +recognition, he knew that he would have need of all his luck and all +his wit. He stepped hastily forward. + +"_Alhamdolillah_--Glory to God that he has permitted me to behold +you this day," he murmured, in the studiously sing-song Arabic that +might be expected from a humble Turkish woman in plain mantle and +yashmak. "May Allah continue to spread before thee the carpet of +enjoyment--" and then lower, almost muffled by the thick veil, "Can +you give me a moment--?" + +Eagerly, significantly, his eyes met hers. + +Half fearfully, Aimee flashed an excited look around her. The space +before the marriage throne had thinned, for there were no more +arrivals waiting to offer their congratulations and the guests were +clustering now about the tables for refreshment or drifting into the +next salon where behind firmly stretched silken walls a stringed +orchestra was playing. + +Miss Jeffries alone was lingering near, but she moved off now--at a +secret look from Ryder--with an appearance of unconcern. + +"I am going to try my vernacular on the bride," Ryder had told her. +"Don't linger or look alarmed. I won't give the show away." + +So there was no one to overhear a low-toned colloquy between the +bride and the veiled woman, no one to note or wonder that the veiled +woman was speaking, strangely enough, in rapid English. + +"When I didn't hear from you I had to come, to know if you received +the package and letter I sent--" + +With a swift gesture of her little ringed hand Aimee drew from the +laces on her bosom that heavy gold locket. + +"Indeed I have it--and the note, too, I found. But I could not write +you. There was no way--no one to trust to mail it. And they had +stolen my key," she whispered, and the confessing words with their +quiver of forlornness told Ryder something of the story of those +helpless days and nights. + +He murmured, "I didn't dare write you more personally for fear they +would find the note." + +"I understood. That plaid about the box--that was so clever a +warning. I kept the box and hunted in it." + +"I wanted to tell you more about that locket. I dug it up myself +from the tomb I was excavating--do you remember how you wished that +I would dig from the sands whatever secret I most desired? And I +found that.... And it happened that at McLean's I had met the French +agent who was searching for any trace of the Delcasses, of the wife +and child of the explorer who had disappeared fifteen years before. +That miniature was your image, and I guessed at once. McLean and I +went to the pasha--Oh, I didn't tell him I'd met you!" he flung in, +his eyes twinkling, "and we pretended we knew all about his marriage +to Madame Delcasse and he owned up without a quiver. But when we +tried to claim you for the French family, he doubled like a hare. He +said the Delcasse child was dead, died when his own child was a +baby, and that you were his own. But I was sure that you were more +than fourteen, and that he was simply putting it over on us so as to +have this marriage go on without interference--and so I tried to get +the story to you. Even now I thought you ought to know," he added, +as if in palliation of his invasion here. + +For he realized now how tremendous an invasion it was. + +All the guests about him had not given him that feeling, all that +sea of femininity, those grave matrons whose serenely unveiled faces +would burn with shame to be beheld by this stranger, those bright, +slim girls in their extravagant frocks, their tulle, their lace, +their pearls, their diamonds, all the hidden charms that no man had +yet seen stirred in him no more than an excited and adventurous +curiosity. + +But the vision of Aimee--that delicate beauty in its tragic irony +of throne and diadem! It touched him to tenderness and to an actual +sense of sacrilege at the freedom of his gaze. No moonlight vision +this, ethereal and dream-like, but a vivid, disquieting radiance of +dark, shining eyes and rose-flushed cheeks. He had never seen her +hair before, midnight hair, escaping little curls from the veil and +the diadem. And he had never really seen her mouth--wistful and gay, +like the mouth of the miniature ... nor her chin, so tender and +willful ... nor her skin, satin-soft, in its veiling from the +daylight.... + +She was more than young and sweet and fair. She was beauty, beauty +with its elusive, ineluctable spell, entangled with the appeal of +her helplessness. + +A bright blush flooded her now and her eyes fell in confusion, +before the prolonging of his look. + +"But it is dangerous--your being here," she murmured. + +"The fortieth door," he reminded her. + +Under her breath, "Ah, you remember?" + +"I remember. And but last night I heard Khazib, the story teller, +tell the tale, and I thought of you and your warning--of the door +that hid you, that it was forbidden for me to open." + +"And so you opened it, monsieur." Faintly she smiled, with downcast +lashes. + +"And I came as you first came to me--in mantle and veil." + +For a moment their thoughts fled back to that masquerade, which +seemed so long ago. + +"But it is too late," she said tremulously. + +"_Is_ it too late--for me to help you?" + +At that her eyes rose to his again in a swift flash of hunted fear. + +"Oh, take me away from him!" she breathed suddenly, unpremeditately. +"Somehow--somewhere--" + +Another figure came towards them. Madame De Coulevain in all her +severe elegance of black. + +"Come and join your friends at the supper, my dear; there is no need +for you to be pilloried here any longer," she observed with an +indifferent scrutiny of the persistent veiled woman, and Ryder moved +slowly away while Aimee came dutifully down from the throne, a huge +black bending to hold her train. + +"I thought you were _never_ coming! What _were_ you talking about?" +demanded a voice in Ryder's ear, and he found Jinny Jeffries at his +side, her bright gray eyes pouncing upon him with curiosity. + +"Oh, I wished her joy--native phrases--that sort of thing," he +answered mechanically as they drew back into an embrasure of the +mashrubiyeh that formed one side of the great room. + +"But you were talking forever. I saw you holding forth at a +tremendous rate. Why wouldn't you let me stay and listen--?" + +"You'd have put me off my shot, I had to feel unobserved to play +up." + +"You must be fearfully good at Arabic," said Jinny guilelessly. +"And what did she say?" + +"Why--she didn't say anything in particular--" + +"But what was that she was showing you? I saw her bend forward with +a locket or something--?" + +A plague upon Jinny's bright eyes! "Oh, yes, the locket," said Ryder +with an effort. "She--ah--she showed it to me." + +"But _why_? Wasn't that awfully funny--" + +"Oh, I believe it's a custom, courtesy stunt you know, to show a +poor guest some of the presents," he explained, manufacturing under +pressure. + +"I wish she'd show _me_ her rings. Did you ever see so many? It was +the only thing about her you'd call really Eastern--all those +glittering diamonds on her fingers. And did you notice her hands?" +Jinny went on enthusiastically. "Jack, I never knew there was +anything so lovely as that girl in the world. She's simply +_exquisite_.... I suppose it's her whole life," Miss Jeffries +reflected, "keeping herself beautiful." Her eyes rested curiously on +the feminine groups before them. "They haven't anything else to do +or think about, have they?" + +"I understand some of them are remarkably educated young women." + +"What's the use of it?" said the practical daughter of an American +college. "They can't ever meet any men, but just a husband--" + +"They can read for themselves, can't they? And talk to each other. +And--well, what do you girls do with your education anyway? You +don't lug anything very heavy about the golf course and the ball +room." + +"Who wants us to? But we do bring something to committees and clubs +and--and welfare work," Miss Jeffries maintained stoutly. "And we +are always into arguments at dinners. While these girls, they can't +dine out, they haven't anybody but themselves to argue with, and it +doesn't matter a straw politically what they think--they can't even +change the customs that their great, great, great grandfathers +imposed. + +"If I were one of these girls," she declared positively, "I wouldn't +bother about Kant and chemistry and history--I'd stuff myself full +of sweetmeats and loll around on a divan and not care what happened +outside. Or else I'd be miserable." + +"Perhaps they are miserable." + +"They ought to fight. Think, _think_," said Jinny dramatically, "of +marrying some man you've never seen--the way that lovely girl is +doing. Suppose she doesn't like him? Suppose he's dull and cranky +and mean and greedy? Suppose he bores her? Suppose she actually +hates him? Why, Jack, it's horrible! And yet she submits--she +_submits_ to it--" + +"Suppose she has to submit, that she hasn't a soul on earth to help +her? How would you fight, I wonder--" + +"Well, you don't need to shout about it! That woman's looking +now--that one with the green turban and the stuffed-date eyes." + +Nervously Jinny glanced around. + +"It's a fearful lark," she murmured, "but I don't believe I'd ever +have had the nerve if I'd realized.... What do you suppose they +would _do_, Jack, if they found you out?... Those big blacks look +so--so uncivilized." + +Her eyes rested upon the huge eunuch at the far entrance of the +salon, a huge hideous fellow, with red fez, baggy blouse and +trousers, and a knife handle sticking piratically from a sash. + +"He has on English oxfords," said Ryder lightly. "That's a saving +something. But they aren't going to find out..... I have an idea we +ought to make our getaway now, and that we had better not go +together. You go first and then I'll stroll along, and whisk off +these duds in some quiet corner.... I have to meet a man to-night, +but I'll probably see you to-morrow. And _don't_," he entreated, +"don't as you love your life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, +breathe a word of my being here like this to any one--any +time--anywhere. I was an unmitigated ass to link you up with it. So +be wary." + +"Oh, I shall!" Jinny Jeffries promised vividly and with a last look +about the old palace, the empty marriage throne and the dissolving +knots of guests, she gave a little nod to her veiled companion, +sauntered without visible trepidation past the staring eunuch at +the door, went down the long stairs where other departing guests +were drawing on mantles and veils, and so made her way across a +shadowy garden and out the gate that another black opened. + +And then she drew a sudden breath of relief and glanced up at a sky +of sunset fires and felt the free airs play with her hair and face +and so shook off, lightly and gratefully, that darkening impression +of shuttered rooms and guarding blacks. + +Little rivers of wine and fire were bubbling in Aimee's veins. She +was gay at supper, as a bride should be gay. It was enough, for +those first few moments, that she had seen him again, that he had +dared to come and try to help her--that he cared enough to come! + +Her heart sang little paeans of joy and triumph. She sketched +impossible scenes of escape--she saw herself, in a shrouding mantle, +slipping with him past the guests at the door, she saw them speeding +away in a motor, she saw France, the unknown Delcasses--a bright, +gay world of freedom and romance. + +Or, perhaps, if not to-night, then to-morrow.... They would plan ... +she would obtain permission to take a drive and there would be a +signal, a waiting car.... + +But, better now. She could not endure even the call of ceremony from +that man who called himself her husband. The very memory of his eyes +on her.... + +Decidedly, it must be to-night. And Ryder would think of a way. She +must get back to him ... he would be lingering. She must get away +from this hateful table, these guests and companions.... + +A wild impatience tore at her. She grew uneasy, anxious, fretted at +the frightening way that time was slipping past.... + +Her radiance vanished, her smile was nervous, forced, as she sat at +her table of honor, amid the circle of her friends, with a linked +wreath of candelabra sending its sparkle of lights over the young +faces and jewel-clasped throats, over the glittering silver on the +white satin cloth among the drift of pink and white rose petals. + +She began to bite her lips nervously... she did not hear what her +bridesmaids were chattering about ... her eyes went often, with that +stealth that invites regard, to the tiny platinum and diamond watch +upon her wrist. + +Would they never finish? Would they never be free? She wondered if +she dared feign an illness to rise and leave them; but no, that +would mean solicitude, companions.... + +And now the slaves were bringing still another round of trays.... + +Oh, hurry, hurry, her tightening nerves besought. + +At last! The older women were going. Not even for a wedding would +they deeply infringe upon that rule which keeps the Moslem women +indoors after the sun has set. Ceremoniously each made to the bride +her adieux and good wishes, and ceremoniously a frantically +impatient Aimee returned the formal thanks due for "assistance at +the humble fete." + +She did not see that black mantle anywhere. + +Her heart sank. Stupid, she told herself with quivering lips, to +dream that he could dare to linger, that he had any way to get her +out. By help he meant no more than getting letters to France for +her.... And yet his eyes when they had met hers.... Surely he had +meant--but when she had disappeared from the reception room to +attend the supper, when there seemed no way of speaking again to +her, and all the outsiders, all but the invited guests were +departed, he had been, obliged to go, too. + +Perhaps some one had begun to notice him.... She wondered if he had +been careful about his shoes, his hands.... How had he managed about +the dress anyway? + +And then she remembered that girl, that pretty American with the +ruddy hair to whom she had seen him talking, and she conjectured +that there was feminine aid and confidence.... + +A wave of bitterness swept over her. He had told that girl about +her--he knew that girl well enough to tell her! And perhaps he was +only sorry for the poor little French girl in the Turkish harem, +perhaps they were _both_ sorry.... + +Had he told that girl, she thought with bitter mutiny, that he had +kissed her? + +That girl must have been very sure of him not to be jealous of his +interest in herself! + +And now they could be somewhere together, perhaps talking her over, +while she was here ... here forever.... + +She was so white now, so silent, so distrait, that all the chatter +of the younger girls who were lingering around her could not dispel +the feeling of depression. They cast covert glances of discomfort at +each other, begged for more music from the orchestra, tallied with +an effort of the size and spaciousness of the palace and the +magnificence of the feast. + +She had told herself that she had ceased to hope. She did not know +how false it was until the eunuch brought his message. Then hope +really died. + +The general was below and begged to be announced to madame. + +"We fly!" whispered a lingerer with nervous laughter, and hastily +the young people hurried into their tcharchafs and veils, murmuring +among themselves, with sidelong glances at that white figure whose +cold hand and cheek they had just touched, hastily they sped, like +light-footed nymphs in some witches' robes, down the long room, +while Madame de Coulevain drew back a strand of the girl's dark hair +and murmured, "But smile, my dear," to the still figure and escaped +with the guests. + +And then Aimee was alone in the great room, deserted of its throngs, +a darkening room, full of burned-down candles and fallen flower +petals, with here and there the traces of the revelers, a scented +handkerchief ... a fan ... a buckle from some French slipper ... or +a feather from some ancient turban clasp.... + +Like the ghost of some deserted queen, with her regal satins and +glittering circlet, she waited. There was a moment of grace in which +she tried, to turn a gallant face toward the next moment. + +Then he came, advancing.... It may have been her distorted fancy, +but down the long perspective, that figure looked more mincing, more +waspish, more unreal than ever. And she was conscious of that swift +rising of dislike, of antagonism touched with reasonless fear. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +THE BEY RETURNS + + +He kissed her hands. She caught the murmur of compliments and the +mingled scent of musk and wine. He had been dining at his reception +for the men, but he called now for a table and more refreshment. + +A small table was brought to the end of the room near the marriage +throne where all the day she had paraded; a richly embroidered cloth +of satin was flung over it, and from crowding candelabra fresh +lights shed down a little circle of brilliance. + +Faintly Aimee protested that eat she could not, and then she made a +feint of eating, lingering over her sherbets, because eating was, +after all, so safe and uncomplicated a thing. + +The black brought champagne in its jacket of ice and filled their +glasses. + +The general rose. "_A notre bonheur_--to our happiness," he +declared, holding out his glass, and she clinked her own to it and +brought her lips to touch the brim, but not to that toast could she +swallow a single one of the bubbles that went winking up and down +the hollow stem. + +The glass trembled suddenly in her hand as she set it down. An +overpowering sense of fatigue was upon her. With the death of her +poor hope, with the collapse of all those flighty, childish dreams, +the leaden weight of realities seemed to descend crushingly upon +her. She felt stricken, inert, apathetic. + +It was all so unreal, so bizarre. This could not possibly be taking +place in her life, this fantastic scene, this table set with lights +and food at the end of a dark, deserted old room opposite this +grimacing, foppish stranger.... + +She could barely master strength for her replies. How had it all +gone? Excellently? She was satisfied with her new home? With the +service? The appointments? + +He plied her with questions and she tried to summon her spirit: she +achieved a few perfunctory phrases, the words of a frightened child +struggling for its manners. She tried to smile, unconscious of the +betrayal of her eyes. + +He told her, sketchily, of his day. A bore, those affairs, those +speeches, he told her, gazing at her, his wine glass in his hand, a +flush of wine and excitement in his face. She found it unpleasant to +look at him. Her glance evaded his. + +She stammered a word of praise for the palace. It must be very +ancient, she told him. Very--interesting. + +He waved a hand on which an enormous ruby glittered. He could tell +her stories of it, he promised. It had been built by one of the +Mamelukes, his ancestor. Its old banqueting hall was still +untouched--the collectors would give much to rifle that, but they +would never get their sharks' noses in. Nothing had been changed, +but something added. Once the Mad Khedive had borrowed it for some +years and begun his eternal additions. + +"Forty girls, they say, he kept here," smiled Hamdi Bey. "They +gulped their pleasure, in those days. It is better to sip, is it +not?" + +He smiled. "But these are no stories for a bride! I only trust that +you will not find your palace dull. It is very quiet now, very much +of the old school. You may miss your pianos, your electricity, all +your pretty Parisian modernity." + +She glanced at the glittering table. + +"But I do not find this so--so much of the old school. Here one does +not eat rice with the fingers!" + +"And I?" said the bey, leaning suddenly towards her on his outspread +arm. "Do you find me too much of the old school? Eh? eh?" + +"But you, monsieur," she stammered, still looking down, "you--I do +not know you--not yet." + +"Not--yet. Excellent! There will be time." + +"I confess that now I am weary--" + +"Ah,--and that diadem is heavy. Your head must ache with it," he +said solicitously. + +Perhaps it was the diadem that gave her that leaden, constricted +sense of a band tightening about her forehead. She put up her hands +to it. + +"Permit me," he said quickly, springing to his feet. "Permit me to +aid you." + +He stepped behind her and bent over her. She held her head very +still, stiff with distaste, and felt the weight lifted. He surveyed +the circlet a moment then placed it upon the marriage throne behind +her. She had an ironic memory of the false omen of her crowning, of +soft, satisfied little Ghul-al-Din's bestowal of her own +happiness.... Happiness, indeed.... + +"And that veil--surely that is incommoding?" suggested the suave +voice, and she felt the touch of his hands on her hair where the +misty veil was secured. + +She stammered that it was quite light--she would not trouble him-- + +Then she held herself rigid, for suddenly he had swept the veil +aside and bent to press his lips to that most hidden of all veiled +sanctities, for a Moslem, the back of her neck. + +She did not stir. She sat fixed and tense. Then slowly the blood +came back to her heart, for he was moving away from her again to his +place at the table. + +Laughing a little, pulling at his blond mustache in a gesture of +conquest, his kindling eyes glinting down at her, "You must forgive +the precipitateness--of a lover," he murmured. "You do not know your +own beauty. You are like a crystal in which the world has thrown no +reflections. All is pure and transparent--" + +If she did not find words to answer him, to divert his admiration, +she felt that she was lost. + +"You are not complimentary--a bit of glass, monsieur, instead of a +diamond! But I am too weary to be exacting.... If now, you will +permit me to bid you good evening and withdraw--" + +"Little trembler," said the general facetiously, and reached out a +hand to touch her cheek, the light, reassuring caress that one might +give a petted child, but it almost brought a cry of nervous terror +from her lips. + +She thought that if he touched her again she would scream. He +inspired her with a horrible fear. There was something so false, so +smiling in him... he was like an ogre sitting down to a delicate +dish of her young innocence, her childish terrors, her frank +fears.... + +She could not have told why she found him so horrible, but +everything in her shrank convulsively from him. + +And the need of courtesy to him, of propititation--! + +The cup was bitterer than her darkest dreams.... She wondered how +many other women had drained such deadly brews... had sat in such +ghastly despair, before some other bridegroom, affable, confident, +masterful.... + +She told herself that she was overwrought, hysterical. The man was +courteous. He was trying to be agreeable, to make a little expected +love. He had drank a little too much--another time she might find +him different. He was probably no worse than any other man of her +world. + +It was not in her world, each young Turkish girl said in those days, +that one could find love. + +But it was _not_ her world! It was an alien world, enforced, +imprisoning.... That was the bitterest gall of all the deadly cup. + +"There is no need for haste," he was assuring her. "In a moment I +will call your woman. Fatima, her name is, an old slave of our +house." + +"I could wish," said Aimee, "that I had been permitted to bring my +old nurse, Miriam, without whom I feel strange--" + +"No old nurses--I know their wiles," laughed the bey, setting down +his drained cup with a wavering hand. "They are never for the +husbands, those old nurses--we will have no old trot's tricks here!" + +He laughed again. "This Fatima is a watch dog, I warn you, my little +one ... but if she does not please you, we can find another. And as +for the rooms--I have assigned this suite to you, the suite of +honor. This is the salon, and there," he pointed to a curtained door +behind them, opening into a small room that Aimee had already seen, +"there is your boudoir and beyond that, your sleeping apartment. I +have had them done over for you, but you shall choose your own +furnishings--everything shall be to your taste, I promise you. You +are too sweet to deny. You have but to ask--" + +Certainly, she thought, he was drunk. He moved his head so jerkily +and his whole body swayed so queerly. Desperately she fought against +her horror. Perhaps it was better for him to be drunk. + +Drunken men grow sleepy. Perhaps he would fall down and sleep. +Perhaps she ought to urge him to drink. Long ago the black had left +the bottle at his elbow and gone out of his room. + +But she did not move. She sat back in her chair, withdrawn and +shrinking, watching him out of those dark, terrified eyes. + +"You are beautiful as dreams," he told her, leaning towards her with +such abruptness that his sword struck clankingly against the table. +"Beyond even the words of my babbling cousin--eh, Allah reward +her!--but she did me a good turn with her talk of you!" + +Fixedly he stared at her, out of those intent, inflamed eyes. + +"I did not know that there was anything like you in the harems of +Cairo. You are like a vision of the old poets--but I suppose that +you do not know the ancient poetry. You little moderns are brought +up upon French and English and music and know little of the Arabic +and the Persian.... I daresay that you have never heard of the poet +Utayyah." + +Still leaning towards her he began to intone the stanzas in a very +fair tenor voice, and if his movements were at all unsteady, his +speech was most precise and accurate. + + "From her radiance the sun taketh increase when + She unveileth and shameth the moonlight bright." + +He chuckled.... "Ah, I shall put the triple veil upon you, my little +moon.... How Is this one? + + "'On Sun and Moon of Palace cast thy sight, + Enjoy her flower-like face, her fragrant light, + Thine eyes shall never see in hair so black + Beauty encase a brow so purely white.'" + +He got up and drew his chair closer to her. "That is the song for +you, little white rose of beauty." + +Back went her own chair, and she rose to her feet. + +"I thank you for the compliment, monsieur. But now have I your +permission to retire? For it has been a long day and I am indeed +fatigued--" + +To her vexation her voice was trembling, but she steadied it +proudly. + +"I bid you good evening." + +"Nonsense, my little white rose. This is not so fatiguing--a few +words more. But you are like the flower that flies before the +wind.... But your room, yes, to be sure. Shall I show you the way?" + +"I can discover it, monsieur." + +"Monsieur--fie on you, my little dove.... Hamdi, I tell you, your +lover Hamdi." + +He laughed unsteadily, and put a hand on her arm. "You are running +away, I know that. And I have so much to tell you ... Oh, it was +tedious in that villa of your father's! 'Yes,' I thought to myself, +'that is a fine story, a funny story, but I have heard them all +before. And you are in no haste, you revelers--you have no little +bride waiting for you at home.'... That one glance at you--I tell you +it was the glance of which the poet sings--the glance that cost him +a thousand sighs. I was on fire with impatience.... For I am +beauty's slave, little dove.... You may have heard--but no matter. A +wife must be a pearl unspotted.... I am not as the English who take +their wives from the highways, where all men's glances have rested +upon them. Have I not been at their balls? Their women dance in +other men's arms. They marry wives whose hands other men have +pressed. Sometimes--who knows?--their lips have been kissed.... And +then a husband takes her.... Oh, many thanks!" + +He laughed sardonically and waved his hands a little wildly. "Oh, I +know English--all the Europeans. I have seen their women. I have +seen them selling their wares--stripping themselves half bare in the +evenings, the shameless--For me, never! My wife is a hidden +treasure. You know what the poet says: + + "'An' there be one who shares with me her love + I'd strangle Love tho' Life by Love were slain, + Saying, O Soul, Death were the nobler choice, + For ill is Love when shared twixt partners twain.'" + +"You are fond of your poets," said Aimee with stiff lips. + +"You--you kindle poetic fires, my little one. You--I--" He stammered +a moment, then forgot his fierce speech against foreign ways. "You +have the raven hair--" + +His hand went out to it. He smoothed it back out of her eyes, then +tried to draw her to him. + +Desperately she resisted. "Monsieur, one does not expect a +gentleman--" + +"Expect! Ho--what should one expect when a man has such a little +sweetmeat, such a little syrup drop, such a rose petal--Come, come, +you would not struggle--" + +But it was not the struggling hand of the frightened girl that sent +the general back. + +It was a brown, sinewy hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from +a well tailored gray sleeve and lilac striped cuff, that caught +Hamdi Bey by the epauleted shoulder and sent him spinning about. + +Another hand was holding a revolver very directly at him. + +"Silence!" said Jack Ryder in his best Turkish and repeated it, with +amplification, in English. "Not a sound--or I'll blow your head +off." + +Aimee gave a strangled gasp. + +He had not gone, then! He had hidden there, in some nook of that +boudoir behind those shadowy curtains, waiting to protect her, to +rescue.... + +Over one arm he had the black mantle and veil, "Better put these +on," he suggested, without taking his eyes from the rigid bey, "and +then run for it." + +"But you--you--?" + +"I'll take care of myself. After you are out of the way. Dare you +try that? Or what do you suggest?" + +"Oh, not alone. Together--" + +"So--so--" said Hamdi Bey inarticulately, his head nodded, he +staggered, his knees gave way and he crumpled very completely upon +the floor, and lay like a felled log. + +After a quick look down at him Ryder turned to Aimee. "Quick, then. +We'll make a run for it--" + +He did not finish. Hamdi Bey, upon the floor, fallen half under the +folds of the white cloth, made a swift and very expert roll and +darted to his feet beside Aimee, whirling her about, with pinioned +elbows, for his shield. + +And so screened, he gave a shrill whistle. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +WITHIN THE WALLS + + +Ryder sprang forward, trying to reach the bey, but he dodged +skillfully; his holding Aimee blocked Ryder in his attack. + +He knew that high, peculiar whistle had been a signal, a call for +aid, and he flung a lightning glance down that long room, tightening +his hold on the revolver--but he did not see the small door that +opened in the shadowy paneling behind him, nor the shadow that grew +into the gorilla-like shape of the black as it launched itself +through the air upon his back. + +He only heard Aimee's scream, and then before the crashing weight +upon his shoulders he staggered and went down. + +The bey flung Aimee aside and rushed upon the prostrate figure, +kicking the revolver from the outspread hand. The black knelt +swiftly down, unfastening his silken sash. + +Giddily the room whirled about Aimee.... In the candle light, +leaping in the rush of conflict, she saw the bey and the black, and +their distorted shadows in a goblin blur.... And beneath them she +saw Ryder, helpless, his hands and feet pinioned.... With the +madness of despair she rushed forward, but the general intercepted +her. + +"He is quite helpless.... You need not be alarmed for my safety, +madame!" + +The cold, biting fury of his voice steadied her. She saw his face +was distorted, livid with anger. His breathing was stertorous. + +She stood helplessly by the table; the general turned and looked +down upon the face of the man who had dared to violate the sanctity +of his harem and attempt to steal his bride; beyond the man's head +Yussuf, the black, was squatting with a grinning, dog-like +watchfulness. + +But Ryder did not require watching. That sash had been tied strongly +about his hands and feet. He was as helpless as a baby. + +But the peculiar flavor of his helplessness was not so much fear +before the fanatic fury of this man he had outraged, although he had +a clear notion that his position was not enviably secure, but a +bitter, black chagrin. + +To have had the game in his hands and have bungled it! To have been +surprised by that simple strategy, taken off his guard by a feigned +collapse! The wily old Turk for all his champagne had the clearer, +quicker brain.... + +To have let him get to Aimee and call in his black! To have been +thrown, disarmed.... It was crass stupidity. It was outrageous +mismanagement, abominable, maddening.... + +And Aimee must pay for it. He tried to think very quickly what could +best clear her. + +He fixed his eyes on those glittering eyes, staring down upon him. + +"I realize I owe you an explanation," he said grimly. "If you will +let me tell you--" + +The bey turned to Aimee with a smile that was the lifting of a lip +and the distention of his nostrils. + +"This fool thinks he has the time to talk--his English." + +Desperately Ryder grasped for his vernacular. "I want to tell +you--why I came. This--this young lady doesn't know me." + +Past the general he shot a look of warning at the girl. + +"I was trying to get hold of her for her family in France--She is +really a French girl. Tewfick Pasha is not her father but her--" +he could not find the word and dropped into English. "Her +step-father--do you understand? And he had no business to marry her +off, so I tried to steal her for the French family. It was a mad +attempt which has failed--but for which the young lady should not be +blamed. She had never seen me before. She had no idea I was here." + +After a pause, "A remarkable story," said the general distinctly. He +turned about to the table and drank off the last of a glass of +champagne, then wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that +trembled. + +He turned back to stand over his prostrate invader. "Now, you--you +dog of Satan," he snarled in a sudden snapping of restraint, "how +did you get here? Who admitted you?" + +And at that, for all his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder +grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird of yours here." + +"Yussuf--never!" + +"The very one. But he didn't know it--I was in that black +mantle--and veil." + +"Oh, the mantle, I had forgot. So you stole in, disguised, to +violate my hospitality, to outrage my harem, to gaze upon the +forbidden faces of women and to steal the bride--" + +"I tell you I was trying to rescue the girl for her French family. +She _is_ French and Tewfick Pasha is only--" + +"And what is that to me? Do I--" the bey broke off and then turned +to the silent girl who stood leaning towards them, a trembling ghost +in white. + +"And you, my little one," he murmured sardonically with a savage +irony of restraint, "you, the little dove secluded from the world, +who trembled at a kiss, the crystal vase who had never reflected the +blush of love, whose virginal praises I was chanting when I was so +oddly assaulted, do you support this idiot's story?" + +Mechanically her head moved in assent, her eyes, dilated with fear, +were like the dark, fascinated eyes of some helpless bird. + +"You never saw this young man?" the bey pursued. "And yet you were +ready to run off with him--a pretty character you give yourself, my +snowdrop!--and you liked his eyes and hastened to obey?" + +Aimee was silent. From his ignominy upon the floor Ryder hastened to +interpose. + +"It is true she had never seen me, but I had already written to her +and acquainted her with the story. I tried to reach her first +through her father but that was useless so I resorted to these +desperate means." + +"Oh you wrote! And you told her you would be here, and murder her +husband--" + +"I told her nothing of the kind. She didn't know that I was coming +until I spoke to her here, and then she had no idea that I was going +to wait and carry her off--" + +"In the name of Allah! Do you take me for a dolt, an ass? You, with +your writing and your masquerade and your secrets! Do any families +try to recover their relatives with such means? Daughter or +step-daughter, it is nothing to me--" + +"But it is true," Aimee insisted, in a trembling voice. "My father +was Paul Delcasse--" + +"_Yahrak Kiddisak man rabbabk_--curse the man who brought thee up! +Delcasse or devil, it is Tewfick Pasha who is your step-father, your +guardian, who gave you to me for wife--what has your genealogy to +do with this affront upon my honor?" + +"But he did not intend to affront your honor--only to aid the family +in France--" + +"I ask you again, do I resemble an ass that you should put such a +burden of lies upon me? As if I did not know why young men risked +their lives, in the dead of night, in other men's rooms! If I did +not know what turns their brains to mush and their hearts to leading +strings! And you--you--you little white rose of seclusion--!" + +His venom leaped out at her in his voice. It was a terrible voice, +the cold, grating menace of a madman. + +"You, who had never seen this man but who fluttered to him like a +white moth to a fire, you who cowered from your husband's hand but +who turned to follow this strange dog into the streets--there will +be care taken of you later. But now--you complained of fatigue. +Surely this scene is overtaxing for your delicacy. If you will come +to your rooms--" + +She drew back from the hand he laid upon her. "Do not injure him! +By Allah's truth! He is rash, mad, but a stranger. He did not +know--" + +"He needs enlightenment. He needs to learn that a nobleman's harem +is not a cafe of dancing girls, where all may enter and stare and +fondle. _Bismallah_--he shall learn!... And now come--" + +"I shall not go," she said breathlessly. + +"What--struggle? But your father has been strangely remiss with his +discipline.... Permit me." + +His hand tightened in a grasp of iron. + +"My train is caught," she said in a tone of sudden pettishness; she +stooped to lift it with her hand that was free. + +"My train--!" he mimicked her in a quivering falsetto. "Have a care +of my frock--do not crush my chiffons.... And these are the women +for whom men break their heads and hearts!" + +"I tell you, sir," came urgently from Ryder, "that the girl is +innocent of all--" + +"Keep your tongue from her name--and your eyes from her face!... +Come, madame." + +With his iron grasp on her elbow he thrust her towards the boudoir +at the end of the drawing-room, behind whose curtains Ryder had so +long been hiding. + +The chamber was in darkness, lighted only by a pale gleam from the +other room. Aimee stumbled across the rug and found herself upon a +huge divan against a window screen. + +"Fatima is in the next room to come at a call. But perhaps you would +prefer to wait for me alone? I shall not be long." + +Desperately she caught at his arm, imploring, "I beg you, monsieur. +He has done no real harm. Let him go. He is a stranger--he +did not know. And he will never trouble you again. I will do +anything--everything you desire--if only you will not injure him--" + +"You trouble yourself strangely for a stranger." + +"He is a stranger in danger for my sake. For it was in his duty to +my--my family--" her trembling lips stumbled over the ridiculous +lies, "that he has blundered into this. He has no idea how shocking +a thing he has--" + +"And you had no idea, either, I suppose. You had never heard of +honor or treachery or--" + +"I was wrong, oh, I was wrong! I did want to go to France--I own it. +And I was not ready for marriage. And I had heard that you--I was +afraid. But now--if you will let him go for my sake, if you will not +visit my sins upon him, oh, I should be so grateful--so grateful +that anything I can ever do--" + +"But you will be grateful, anyway, my little blossom. I promise you +that you will learn to be very grateful--" + +"It is easier to die than to learn to love a hated one," she +reminded him softly, leaning towards him. "I can die very willingly, +monsieur.... And you would not want a wife before whom there was +always an object of terror--" + +Through the dusk her great eyes sought his. + +"Be generous--and harm him not," she breathed. "I beg of you, I +implore--" + +"And if I am--lenient--you will always be grateful?" + +Mutely she nodded, her eyes trying pitifully to read that shadowy +mask of mockery he turned towards her. + +"And how grateful could you be, little dove?" + +Pitifully she smiled. + +"Could you," he murmured, "could you learn to kiss?" + +He leaned nearer and involuntarily she shrank back. Faintly, "At +this moment--I beg of you, monsieur--" + +"Oh, if it is to be an affair of moments! We shall never find the +right one. But you were so full of promises--" + +"I will do anything," said Aimee, convulsively, "if you will promise +me--" + +"Come, then a kiss. A peck from my little dove." + +She looked at him out of wretched eyes. + +"And you promise to free him, not to hurt him--" + +"I promise not to hurt a hair of his head. Come, that is generous, +isn't it? As to freeing him--h'm--that is for later. Perhaps, if you +are very good. A kiss then... and later...." + +He bent over her. She shut her eyes and heard the taunt of his +laugh. She kissed him, and he laughed again. + +"What is it the Afghan poets say? 'Kissed lips lose no sweetness, +but renew their freshness with the moon.' Certainly if you have ever +been kissed, little bud, you have lost no dew.... Delicious.... I +shall hurry back." + +He cast a hard look down at her as she sat there, her arms drooping +at her sides. He looked about the room as if consideringly, then +nodded at an unseen door at the right. + +"Fatima is there if you want lights or assistance.... And Alsamit, +Yussuf's brother, is at the other door beyond. Do not stir, little +bird. I shall be back very soon." + +"And he--you promised--" + +"I shall not hurt a hair of his head." + +But he was smiling evilly in the darkness as he drew shut the door +and returned to the bound figure by the guarding black. + +For a moment he stood silent, considering, while Yussuf looked up +with glistening-eyed intentness like an eager dog ready for the word +of attack. + +Then in hasty Turkish the general gave his directions and the black +nodded and strode to a portiere, jerking it down, which he wrapped +about Ryder's helpless form. + +Then he hoisted his burden over his huge shoulder and bore it on +after the general. + +Across the great room they went and down the long stairs up which +that day a most complacent Hamdi Bey had escorted his just-glimpsed +bride. + +Now at the bottom of the stairs a shadowy figure of a sleeping +eunuch was stretched. + +Hamdi Bey spoke sharply, giving a quick order. The black scrambled +to his feet, yawned, nodded, and strode away into the main vestibule +and out into the garden to investigate a shadow which the general +had just reported, and when he was out of sight the general and +Yussuf, with his unwieldy burden, came quietly down the stairs and +turned back into a long, dark hall. + +For a moment they paused outside a wide, many-columned banqueting +room, and there Hamdi Bey stood listening, straining attentive ears +for the faint sounds from the service quarters on the other side of +the room. He caught the guttural of a half inaudible voice, and the +wash of water and clink of a dish, showing that the belated work of +the reception was going draggingly on, but it was all far away and +invisible. + +Satisfied he went on a few steps to a pointed door set in the heavy +stone. From a nail he took down a lantern of heavy, fretted brass +and lighted it, not without some difficulty, for his hands were +still trembling. Then he took from the black a cumbersome key which +he fitted into the lock and turned heavily. + +Drawing back the door he motioned Yussuf ahead, and followed, +drawing the door shut. Down a steep, stone spiral stair they went, +and at the bottom, at the general's order, the black set Ryder down +from his shoulder and flung aside the portiere. + +From its muffling folds Ryder looked out bewilderedly into the +darkness about him, illumined only by the yellow flare of the +ancient lantern. The general cautioned him to silence while Yussuf +knelt and untied the strip that bound his feet, then, his arms still +bound, he was ordered to march on before them. + +This, he said to himself, as he silently obeyed that order, this +really was the time to pinch himself and wake up! Of all the dark, +eerie nightmares! This slow procession through these underground +halls, the giant black on his heels, the general's lantern throwing +its flickering rays over the huge, seamed blocks of granite +foundations. + +It made him think of the Catacombs. It made him think of the +Serapeum. It made him think of those damp, tortuous underground ways +of the Villa Bordoni.... + +They seemed to be in the wine cellars. He saw bins and barrels and +barred vaults that would have done credit to an English squire, and +he reflected fleetly that wine bibbing was forbidden to Mohammedans +and that Hamdi Bey was a fanatic Moslem.... Then he saw open spaces +of ancient stuffs, broken tables and dismantled caiques and a broken +oar. His earlier observation of the palace had told him that it had +a water gate and he thought now that they might be near some +opening. + +He wondered if they were going to throw him, pinioned, into the +river. He wouldn't put it past this livid, silent, shaking man--and +yet the thing appeared so impossible, so theatric, so utterly +unrelated to any of the ways that he, Jack Ryder, might be expected +to end his days, that it couldn't possibly send more than a shiver +of speculation down his spine. + +And yet men _had_ been thrown into rivers--this very river. And men +had disappeared from just such palaces as this. There was the story +about young Monkton. He knew it perfectly; he had reminded himself +of it the last evening while he reflected upon this escapade, but he +had never actually appreciated the peculiar poignancy of the thing +until now. + +Monkton had met--so rumor reported--a Turkish lady of position, +flirted with her, it was said, while on horseback outside her motor +when caught in the crush at Kasr-el-Nil bridge. There had been a +meeting or two in the back of shops, and then he had boasted, +lightheartedly, of a design to take tea in her harem. + +He had never boasted about the tea. No one had ever seen Monkton +again and he was generally reported, after a stifled inquiry, to +have been thrown from his horse in the desert, or spilled out of his +sailing canoe. + +The government, English or Egyptian, assumed no interest in the +matter of gentlemen found in other gentlemen's harems. + +There were other stories, too. There was one of a little Viennese +actress who after a dramatic escape reported a whole winter of +captivity in one of these old palaces, and there was a vaguer rumor +of a rash young American girl, detained for days.... + +Ryder had always known these stories. They were part of the gossip +and thrill of Cairo. But he had never till now realized how +exquisitely possible was their occurrence. + +Anything, everything might happen in these hidden, secret chambers. +These Turks were as much masters here as their old predecessors who +had reared these stones. This black upon his heels might have been +the grinning, faithful executioner of some Khedive or Caliph--he +might have been the very Masrur, the Sworder of Vengeance of Al +Raschid. + +He told himself that it was no time to think of the past. His +business--acutely--was the present. If only he could get his hands +untied! If only he could get those untied hands upon that demoniac +Turk! + +But, strain as he could upon the knots, they held. + +It seemed to him that they had been walking for an interminable +distance, in odd, roundabout ways. Once they had stopped and he had +involuntarily glanced back over his shoulder, but at a word from the +general he had kept his head forward again, while he heard the black +behind him gathering something that clinked. Later, a stolen glance +had revealed the eunuch with some tools in one hand and bag slung +over his shoulder. + +The bag disquieted him. Bags filled a foreboding place in the +Eastern literature of vengeance. He wondered if he were to go into +the river in that bag, with the tools for weight. + +He decided, feeling now a very odd and definite disturbance in the +region of his stomach, that he would tell that general that he was a +cousin of the late Lord Cromer and a nephew of Lord Kitchener. +Something insistent would have to be done about this. + +They were passing now through a strange, open space, between old +arches that for an instant arrested his excavator's interest. He saw +in the shadows about them, a crumpled, crumbling dome and broken +shafts, with half a wall of masonry pierced with Arabesques. Traces +of old ruins, fragments of some old, forgotten mosque over which the +palace had spread its foundations in bygone days.... Buried +treasure, looted, some of it, for the palace overhead, but still +rare and lovely.... That was a gleam of lapis lazuli that winked at +him from the crumbling mortar under his feet. + +Then they were between other walls, not crumbling ones, but the +solid, pillared blocks of the palace masonry with here and there +broad arches of old brick. + +They stopped. Between two arches the general held his lantern high, +flashing it over the surface while Yussuf swung down his sack and +knocked with the handle of his tool. + +Suddenly he stopped and looked at his master, nodding cheerfully. +The general lowered his light and stepped back and Yussuf reared the +pickaxe in his powerful arms and sent it dexterously at the wall, +between two broken bits of brick. + +It caught, and sent the mortar spraying; another blow and another +loosened a hole in which the black inserted a short iron and began +nervously grinding and prying. + +Ryder, watching with oppressed and helpless fury, saw the bricks at +last break and tumble faster and faster in a cloud of dust, and saw +a pocket in the wall become revealed, a long, upright niche, the +size, perhaps, of a man's coffin, on end. + +He tried, very suddenly, to talk. His tongue felt thick and swollen +and there seemed no words in all the world to fit his need of +overcoming this fanatic madman,--and after all, he had no chance for +them, for Yussuf, with a huge palm upon his mouth, urged him +suddenly backwards towards that horrible niche. + +"Gently, Yussuf, gently," said the general, suavely and with a slow +distinctness that was for Ryder's ears. "I gave my word that I would +not hurt a hair of his head--" + +Grinning, the black lifted him over the remaining wall, and set him +down into the niche, leaving him standing in there like a helpless +statue, tasting to the full fury of his heart the bitterness of his +helplessness and the ludicrous impotence of all struggle. + +"Good God, sir, you must be mad," he said in a strained sharp +voice that his ears would not have known as his own. "Do you +realize--there will be an inquiry--there is such a thing as law--" + +It seemed to him that he talked, in English and stammering Arabic, +for a long time. The black was kneeling, out of sight, stooping over +a basin of water and his abominable sack, and Ryder was facing that +silent, sardonic face, with its fantastic mustache, its evil, +gloating eyes.... + +He stopped for very shame. The man was mad. Mad and drunk--and there +was no appeal from Philip drunk to Philip sober.... Mad or drunk, he +had devised his vengeance shrewdly. + +Upon Ryder's helpless body a cold sweat of incredulous horror broke +softly out. + +At his feet he heard the black beginning to fit his bricks and +smooth his mortar. + +"You do well to save your breath," said Hamdi Bey at last, as Ryder +still stood silent. "You will need it in this chamber I am +providing.... But it may be," he said thoughtfully, "that your +breath will last your need. Thirst may be the more impatient for her +victim; they tell me thirst is an obtrusive visitor. As you were, +this evening.... Still, why do you not cry out a little? It will +amuse my black." + +Yes, this was real, Ryder reminded himself. And these things could +happen--had happened. He remembered suddenly the hideous scene, +outside the dungeons, in "Francesca da Rimini," when that bestial +brother goes in to the helpless prisoners. He remembered the sick +horror of those groans.... + +He remembered also various excursions of his in the Tower of London +and the Seigniory of Florence, and the sight of old rings and stakes +and racks and the feeling of their total unrelatedness to every +actuality. + +And yet they had happened. And this thing, for all its fantastic +medieval horror, was happening. Brick by brick the imprisoning wall +was rising. Brick by brick it intervened between him and sane, +sensible, happy, normal life. + +Eye for eye he gave the general back his look. He had always +wondered about the poor devils in underground torture chambers. Had +wondered how they had the stuff to hold out, against such odds, for +some belief, some information.... Now he knew the stiffening stuff +of a personal hate, upholding to the very grave.... + +That sardonic, devil's face.... That face which was going back +upstairs to Aimee.... But he must not think of that or he should +give way and begin to babble, to plead.... He must simply stand and +meet that glance.... + +And there came the incredible, insane moment when Ryder looked out +on that face through one last breathing space, and then saw the +fitted brick, settled into place, blot the world to darkness before +his eyes. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +UNDERGROUND + + +Alone in the gloom of that strange room, Aimee sat rigid. Listening. +Not a sound, beyond the closed door, from the long drawing room. Not +a sound, beyond the other door, from the room where the slave, +Fatima, waited to assist in her disrobing. + +Silence everywhere--save for a low lapping of water against the +masonry beneath her windows. + +The palace was on the river, then, or on some old backwater. She +remembered glimpses of dark canals on her drive that morning--had it +only been that morning? The sound of that soft, hidden water added +to her feeling of isolation and remoteness from everything that had +been her life before--she thought fleetingly, almost indifferently +of her friends, Azima, who to-day had crowned her for happiness, and +fond, foolish old Miriam and Madame de Coulevain and Tewfick Pasha, +weakly cruel, but amiable; she thought of them all, as unreal +figures from whom she had long taken leave. + +The old life was over. It had died for her when she passed through +the dark doorway and met that arrogant, sardonic, fatuous man, the +master of this palace.... + +Or more truly that old life had died for her when she had flung a +black mantle about her chiffon frock and a street veil across her +sparkling face and had stolen, daring and breathless, into the +lights and revelry of that hotel masquerade. There, when she had +shrunk back from the Harlequin and had looked up to meet the +kindling glance of that mask in tartans--yes, there, the old life +had died for her forever if only she had known it. + +And now--she would only like to die, too, she thought miserably, +after she had been assured of Ryder's safety. She was tense with +fear for him, distrusting in every fiber the assurance of that +fanatic, outraged Turk. + +She was not utterly resourceless. When Ryder's revolver had dropped +to the floor she had maneuvered, unseen by Hamdi Bey, to get her +train over it, and when she had stooped for her train her one free +hand had closed over the revolver handle beneath the satin and lace. + +Now the revolver lay on the divan, and very eagerly she drew it out, +feeling it in the darkness, curling her finger about the trigger. +Never in her life had she fired a shot, for her most formidable +weapon had been the bows and arrows of the Children's Archery +Contest of the English Club, but she felt in herself now that +highstrung tensity which at all cost would carry her on. + +Carefully she bestowed the small, steel thing in the bosom of her +dress, then she stared questioningly at the dress itself, hastily +unpinning the veil, and tying the long train up to her girdle. Then, +with a wary glance for the closed door behind which waited that +Fatima she dreaded, she stole to the door the general had shut and +pressed it softly ajar, peering out into the deserted throne room. + +Like a great cave of darkness the room stretched before her, peopled +with goblin shadows from the dying candles upon the disordered, +abandoned table; she saw the chair pushed back where she had risen +to struggle with the bey, the long folds of white cloth, sweeping +the floor, behind which Hamdi had rolled so agilely; a stain was +still spreading about an upset glass, and from the overturned cooler +the ice water was dripping, dripping with a steady, sinister +implication. + +She thought of flight.... There was another black, the general had +warned her, beyond the door, and there would be bars and bolts on +any egress from the harem, but with the revolver in her possession +some desperate escape might be achieved. + +But Ryder.... No, the gun was for another purpose.... She would not +squander it yet upon herself.... + +From the boudoir she moved slowly, carrying one of the gilt +candelabra from the table to light the room. She would need light +for her plan.... + +For ages, long, unending ages, she sat there, waiting.... A hundred +times it seemed to her that she could stand no more, that she must +make her way out at all costs, must discover what fate they were +dealing to Ryder, but still she forced herself to sit there, her +pulses racing, her heart sick with suspense, but desperately +waiting.... + +She felt a sudden wave of weakness go through her at an advancing +step from the next room. But her chin was up, her eyes fixed and +desperate as the figure of the general appeared in her opening door. + +"Ah, light! This is more cheerful, little one." + +She had risen, half moved towards him. "Is he safe?" + +"The stranger? Safe as treasure--buried treasure, little one." + +The bey laughed, and that laughter and the glittering satisfaction +of his eyes, filled her with foreboding although his next words came +with smiling reassurance. + +"Not a hair of his head is hurt, I give you my word." + +"But where is he--what have you done?" + +"Shut him up, to be sure. Kept him as hostage for your sweet +humility--a novel way to win a bride, oh, essence of shyness!" + +Malevolently he smiled down at her and in the back of her frightened +mind she realized that this man did well to be angry, that the +affront to him had been immeasurable, and that many a Turk would +have simply driven his dagger through the intruder's heart--and her +own, too. + +But though she tried to tell herself that there was forbearance in +him, she felt, instinctively, that there was deeper kindness in +direct, thrusting fury than in this man's sinister mockery. + +She had sunk back upon the divan on the bey's approach; now as he +stood before her with that mask of a smile upon his face, drawing a +silk handkerchief across a forehead she saw glistening in the +candlelight, she leaned towards him again, her hands involuntarily +clasping. + +"Monsieur, I seem to have done you a great wrong," she said +tremblingly, "but it is not so great as you suppose. Will you listen +to me? I--" + +"Useless, useless." He waved the handkerchief negligently at her. "I +have had words enough. You are not the daughter of Tewfick +Pasha--you are his step-daughter--your French family desires to +capture you--I know the rigmarole by heart, you observe. And of +course when a French family desires to obtain possession of a +charming step-daughter, on the eve of her marriage, that family +always employs a handsome young man to break into the bride's +chamber--and point a gun at the husband--" + +His mustache lifted in a grimacing sneer. + +"But it _is_ true, and I _am_ French," she interposed swiftly. + +"Excellent--I do not object in the least." He shot his handkerchief +up his cuff, and turned to her with eyes that lightly mocked +the agonized appeal of the young face. "French blood is +delightful--quicksilver and champagne. You will enliven me, I +promise you." + +"But the marriage--it is not legal, monsieur," she said desperately, +summoning all her courage. "Tewfick Pasha has no right to give me to +you--" + +Indulgently he smiled down at her, then his narrowed eyes traveled +slowly about the room. + +"But this is a strange time--and place!--to talk of legalities. Do +not distress yourself--your step-father is your guardian and your +marriage will be as binding as the oaths of the prophet. Have no +qualms.... And now, if your French blood will smile a little--" + +He started to seat himself beside her, but in that instant she was +on her feet. With all the courage in her beating heart she whipped +out that revolver and pointed it at him. + +"If you call--I shoot," she said breathlessly. + +The round mouth of the gun shook ever so slightly in the excited +hand gripping it, but in the blazing look she turned on him was the +unshaken, imperious passion of a woman swept absolutely beyond all +fear. + +Meeting that look Hamdi Bey stood extremely still and made no sound. + +"There are plenty of shots--for you, at the first noise, and for +the servants, if they come," she went on in that fierce undertone, +and then, passionately, "What did you do to him? Take me to him--at +once!" + +Irresolutely the man stood and looked up at her under his +half-lowered lids. He was near enough for a spring--and yet if that +excited finger should press.... The girl was capable of anything. +She was possessed.... And men had died of such accidents before +that.... + +"May I speak?" he murmured, in a tone scarcely audible, yet +preserving somehow its flavor of sardonic amusement. + +"Under your breath. One sound, remember--and I am a very good shot." + +"But what a wife," he sighed. "All the talents--" + +"I tell you that I will see him for myself. Take me to him, this +moment--" + +"Shall I give orders and have him brought here? He is quite safe, I +assure you." + +"Orders? If you summon a servant I will shoot. No, lead the way, and +I will follow you. And if you make one sound--one false move--" + +Decidedly the girl was possessed. She stood there like a white image +of war, her hand on that infernal automatic.... He hesitated, gnawed +his mustache, then swung sullenly upon his heel. + +Like some fantastic sculpture from an Amazonian triumph, they +crossed the long drawing-room, the erect, gilt-braided general +preceding, very slowly, the white-clad feminine creature, who held +one hand extended, with something boring almost into his shoulder +blades. + +He did not lead her down the long stairs, past the guarding eunuch. +He took, instead, an inner way through the late supper room which +led down into the pillared hall of banquets. That way was safe of +servants now; crossing the pillared hall there were no more sounds +of late work from the service quarters beyond. Oblivious of the wild +developments of that wedding reception, the tired servants, stuffed +with the last pasty, warmed with the last surreptitious drop of +wine, were asleep at last. + +Outside the door in the stone wall the bey took down the lantern +which so short a time before he had replaced upon its nail and +lighted its still smoking wick. He had not restored the key to +Yussuf, and he drew it now from his pocket and fitted it into the +lock, drawing back the door. + +"These stairs are steep," he murmured. "I hardly like you to descend +them unaided, but if you insist--" + +"Go on," she said imperiously. + +Down he went, and after him she came, following the way he led her +down the long stone underground ways. + +"We have, of course, very pleasant stairs down to our water gate," +he murmured apologetically, "but since you prefer this way--really +not the way that I would have chosen to have you first explore your +palace, madame! These, you perceive, are the cellars and old +storerooms--" + +"I do not want you to talk," she said urgently. + +"But you would not shoot me for it? Only for raising an alarm? And +surely you cannot be unreasonable about a few words--you must be +very careful, here, this doorway is low--" + +It was not past the old ruined mosque, included in the palace's +underground world, that he was leading her, but down a narrow +branching way, between walls so low that the general's head was +bowed in caution. + +"This part of the palace is very old," he murmured, over his +shoulder. "An ancestor of mine, Sharyar the Wazir, raised these +walls during the wars--for the dispensing of that sacred duty of +hospitality which Allah enjoins upon the faithful. It is reported +that he was host here to fifty of the enemy during their remaining +lifetime--although they had the delicacy not to cumber him with +overlong living. It is not, as I said, a pleasant place, but the +walls are strong and so I selected a spot here--" + +Here, somewhere, then, in these grim ruins, Ryder was penned, +helpless and questioning the to-morrow. The girl trembled with +excitement when she thought of his joy, his deliverance--and at her +hands. For their escape she had no plans, only the decision to +thrust the gun into his hands and follow him unquestioningly ... +Perhaps they could leave the general in his place and he could wear +the general's uniform for disguise.... + +Everything was possible now that she was nearing him and his safety +was at hand. She thrilled with a reanimating excitement that flew +its scarlet banners in her cheeks ... Only a few steps now.... + +"Go on," she said breathlessly. + +The bey had stopped and now flashed his lantern over a low, timbered +door, studded with ancient nail heads in a design whose artistry did +not arrest her. From a peg beside it he took down a key of brass, +fitted it to the lock and turned it with a deliberation maddening to +her tense nerves. + +Her heart was beating as if it would burst its bounds. Only a moment +or two-- + +He had trouble with that door. It took his shoulder; at last he set +it swinging inward slowly on its creaking hinges. Then he stepped +back and with a wave of his hand invited her to enter. + +"Not a chamber of luxury, you understand, but substantial, as you +will see--" + +"Go first," she ordered. + +He laughed. "Ever distrustful, little thorn-of-the-rose! Follow, +then," and he stepped within, into the darkness, which his failing +lantern but little illumined, calling out in a louder tone in his +halting English, "A visitor, my friend. A tourist of the +subterranean." + +She had followed him to the threshold, seeing nothing in the +blackness but the seamed blocks of stone within the lantern's rays, +afraid always to turn her eyes from him or her hand from its +outstretched pointing. + +He said very quickly to her in Turkish, "If you will wait by the +door. The floor is bad and there is another lantern, here on the +wall--" + +At her left he fumbled along the stone wall. She heard him mutter +... and then reach.... And then--she did not know what was +happening. For the very ground on which she stood, the solid block +of stone began to slip swiftly beneath her feet--she staggered--and +felt herself falling, falling, into some precipitately opened +abyss.... + +She gave a wild scream, flinging out her arms in terror, and then +cold waters closed above her, and the scream ended in a gurgling +cry. + +It was no great distance that she fell. What the dropped stone had +revealed, answering the signal of the old lever in the wall that the +general had pressed, was a stone well, narrow, deep, implanted there +by some ingenious lord of the palace in by-gone days, for the subtle +elimination of friend or foe or rival. + +But it was not part of Hamdi's plan to leave the young girl there +and close the obliterating stone. Scarcely had the waters met above +her head than he was flinging down a rope ladder whose upper ends +were fastened to rings in the floor and descending this with swift +agility until the waters reached his waist. + +Then he leaned out and clutched the floating satin bubbling and +ballooning yet unsubmerged above the stagnant depths and drew it +towards him. As the struggling girl came gasping within his reach, +he carried her panting up the ladder again, and laid her down in the +darkness, while he drew up the ladder and closed the stone by +pressing that hidden lever. + +But the stone which had dropped so swiftly, was slow and heavy in +slipping back in place, and when he turned again to Aimee, she had +ceased her choking cough and was sitting up, thrusting back the +dripping hair from her black eyes, staring bewilderedly about the +gloom as murky as any genie's cave. + +The lantern light was almost out. In its expiring gleams she saw no +more inky water, but only the damp, moss-grown stones, on which a +pool was widening from her wet garments, and the half-defined figure +of the general stooping over to squeeze the streams from his own wet +clothes. + +The nightmarish horror of it overwhelmed her. For a moment she could +have screamed with horror, and then she felt a cold and terrible +despair lay its paralyzing hand upon her heart. + +Somewhere, she felt, beneath those secret stones lay Ryder, drowned +... And she was living, in her helplessness ... No revolver now. +That was gone ... in the water, perhaps.... + +There was no resource, now, no refuge.... Strength went out of her, +and passive in a dream of evil darkness she felt herself being +hurried, stumblingly, back through the secret corridors and the dark +halls. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +OUT OF THE DARKNESS + + +There was no measure of time for Ryder in that walled coffin of +death. The seconds seemed hours, the minutes ages. + +He drew quick, short breaths as if economizing the air that was so +soon to fail him; he tugged at his bonds till the veins rose on his +forehead, but the silk held and the confines of the prison permitted +him no room for struggle; then he leaned forward, to press with all +his might upon the bricks before him; he grunted, he sweated with +the agony of his exertions, but not a brick was stirred, not a crack +was made in the mortar that gripped them tighter every instant. + +He died a thousand deaths in the horror that invaded him then. +Already he felt strangling, and the painful pumping of his heart +seemed the beginning of the end. + +Cold sweat stood out all over him; it ran down his face in trickling +streams and his body was drenched with that clammy dew of fear. + +He tried to count the minutes, the hours, to estimate how long he +would hold out.... + +And then he heard his own voice saying very distinctly and clearly +and dispassionately, "This thing is absurd." + +It was absurd. It was idiotic. It was utterly irrational. It was an +impossible end for an able-bodied young American, an excavator of no +mean attainments, a young scholar and explorer of twentieth century +science, a sane, modern, harmless young man, to die immured in the +ancient walls of a Turkish palace--because he had invaded a marriage +reception and intervened between man and wife. + +Violent death in any form must always appear absurd to the young and +energetic. And the fantastic horror of his death removed it +definitely from any realm of possibility. The thing simply could not +happen.... He thought of the amazement and the incredulity of his +friends.... + +Dangers in plenty they had warned him against, to his youthful +amusement--sand storms and chills and raw fruit and unboiled waters, +but they had not warned him against veiled women and the resentments +of outraged lords and masters. + +He thought of his mother's consternation and dismay. He thought of +his father's stern amazement.... What an awful jolt it would give +them, he reflected, with an irrational tickling of young humor. + +But no, it would not. They would never know. Not a word of this fate +would percolate into the world without. Not a comment upon his true +end would enliven the daily columns of the East Middleton +_Monitor_. Never would it regret the tragic and romantic interment +of a young native son of talent, buried alive by a revengeful +general of the Sultan.... + +He amused himself by writing the paragraph that would never be +written. Then he told himself that he was lightheaded and hysterical +and that he had better wonder what would actually be written. What +explanation would be found? + +A desert storm perhaps, or some accident. McLean would poke +about--but for all McLean knew he might be on his way back to camp +that very moment. And sometimes he went by sailing canoe, and a +rented horse, and sometimes by the accredited steamer and a camel, +and sometimes by tram or train to the nearest station. Even McLean's +mind and McLean's Copts wouldn't make much of all the alternatives +that his unsettled habits had afforded. + +Was there any possibility of his being traced, of any rescue +reaching him? He thought hard and long upon his last free moments. +Jinny Jeffries knew that he was in the palace, and Jinny had been +reiteratedly warned about the danger of betraying that knowledge. It +would take some little time for alarm before Jinny said anything. +And it would take a little time for Jinny to begin to worry. + +He had not been so instant in attendance upon Jinny of late, for all +their residence in the same hotel, that she would suspect that his +absence of twenty-four hours was due to actual incarceration. + +His cursed passion for freedom in which to ramble up and down that +deserted lane without Tewfick Pasha's garden! His inane love of +solitary mooning.... + +No, Jinny would not soon wonder about him. She had not expected to +see him that evening, anyway--he had muttered something to her about +a man and an engagement. + +She _would_ rather look to see him the next day and talk about their +adventure.... But still she would feel no more than pique at his +absence; positive worry would not develop until later. + +Besides, all the revelations that Jinny could make would do no good. +Jinny could only report that he had maintained a disguise at a +wedding reception, and talked a few moments, apparently undetected, +to a bride. Hamdi Bey, and Hamdi's eunuchs, would be blandly +ignorant of such a scandal. What his disappearance would indicate +would be some further frolic on his part, some tempting of a later +Providence before he had abandoned his disguise.... If he were +discovered, for instance, in some of those native quarters, behind a +woman's veil.... + +Decidedly the only effect of Jinny's revelations would be an +unsavory cloud upon his character. + +There was no hope to be looked for. + +And yet he could not believe it. There were moments when the black +terror mastered him, but involuntarily his young strength shook it +off. He could not believe in its reality. He could not believe that +he was actually here, bricked and bound, in this infernal coffin.... + +But, indisputably, the evidence was in favor of belief.... Only to +believe was to feel again that horror.... + +He tried to tell himself that it didn't matter. One had to die some +time. Everybody did. One might as well go out young and strong and +still interested in life. + +But that was remarkably cold comfort. He didn't want to go out at +all. He didn't want to die, not for fifty or sixty years yet, and of +all the ways of dying, he wanted least to smother and choke and +stifle like a rat walled in its hole in the wall. + +He recalled, with peculiar pain, a woodchuck that he had penned up +as a boy, and he hoped with extraordinary passion that the poor +beast had made another hole. Never again, he resolved, would he pen +up a living creature, never again, if only again he could see the +light of day and breathe the free air.... + +He thought of Aimee. And when he thought of her his heart seemed to +turn to water. Useless to repeat to himself now those old reminders +that he had seen her so little, known her so slightly. Useless to +measure that strange feeling that drew him by any artifice of time +and acquaintance. + +She was Aimee. She was enchantment and delight. She was appeal and +tenderness. She was blind longing and mystery. She was beauty and +desire.... + +Even to think of her now, in the infernal horror of this cramping +grave, was to feel his heart quicken and his blood grow hot in a +helpless passion of dread and fear. She was alone, there, helpless, +with that madman. + +He tried to tell himself that she was not wholly helpless, that she +had wit and spirit and courage, and that somehow she would manage to +quell the storm; she might persuade Hamdi to their story, make him +remember that this was the twentieth century wherein one does not go +about immuring inconvenient trespassers as in the earlier years of +the Mad Khedive--years which had probably formed the general's +impulses--but in telling himself this there was no comfort for the +thought of the price that Aimee would have to pay. + +It was pleasanter to pretend that Hamdi was really only joking, in a +shockingly exaggerated, practical way, and that presently, when the +suitable time had elapsed, he would present himself, smiling, to end +the ghastly, antiquated jest. + +For some time he continued to tell himself that. + +And then suddenly he told himself that the time for intervention had +surely come. It was very hard to breathe. + +The next minute he was assuring himself that this was merely some +devil's trick of his apprehensive imagination. There must be a +great deal of air left.... But he was distressingly ignorant of the +contents of air, and his calculations were lamentably unsupported by +any sound basis of fact. + +Mistake, not to have gone in for chemistry and physics. A chap who'd +done time in those subjects wouldn't now be rocking with suspense; +he'd comfortably and satisfactorily know just how many hours, +minutes and seconds were allotted before his finish and he could +think his thoughts accordingly. + +Undoubtedly, so he insisted to himself, there was air enough here to +last him till morning. This gasping stuff was all imagination. He +wanted to keep cool and quiet. But for all his reassurance there +_was_ something a little queer with his lungs, and his heart was +lurching sickeningly in his side, like a runaway ship's engine. + +And then he heard his own voice repeating very tonelessly, "O God, O +God," and the horror of it all came blackly over him and a feeling +of profound and awful sickness.... + +It _was_ a sound. The faintest scraping and knocking without that +wall. It went through him like an electric current.... And then a +roar burst from him that fairly split his ears, the reaction of his +quivered nerves and racking fears of his uncertainties, his +tightening terrors. + +But now--nothing. He could not hear a thing. A delusion? A torture +of his final hours?... No, it came again. More definitely now, a +little grinding and scraping. + +Faster and faster, a muffled, driving thud. + +A jubilant reassurance sang gayly through him. He had expected +this--this was what he had predicted. Hamdi was no foul friend. He +was a devilish uncomfortable customer with antiquated notions of +revenge, but now he had shot his wad and was going to undo his +tricks. + +Ryder braced himself to present a carefree jauntiness--an air +somewhat difficult to assume when one is trussed like a spitted +bird, in a hot coffin space, with hair falling dankly over a +steaming brow, with a collar like a string, and an indescribable +pallor beneath the bronze of one's face. + +Something stirred. One end of a brick was driven in against his +chest. Then he felt the blind working of some tool that caught it +and worried it free. + +It seemed to him that through that dark aperture a current of cold, +delicious air came rushing in about him. The blows sounded against +the adjoining bricks and he thought of the glorious joy of seeing +out again, feeling that he would welcome even the sight of Hamdi's +blond mustache and the eunuch's hideous grin. + +Now the aperture admitted a pale gleam upon his chest. Staring +steadily down he caught a glimpse of the fingers curving about a +brick, and his heart that had steadied, began to race again wildly. +For they were not the fingers of the black nor yet the wiry joints +of the general. + +They were soft, white fingers, with a gleam of rings. + +Aimee! Somehow, somewhere, she had managed to come to him, to +achieve this rescue.... + +"Aimee!" He breathed the name. + +"S-sh!" came a warning little whisper, and impatiently he waited +until that opening should be greater and permit of sight and speech. + +His helplessness was maddening. If only he could raise his hands, +could get those bonds off! He twisted, he writhed, he tried to lift +his elbows and get his wrists in reach of the opening, but the +coffin was too diabolically cramped for movement until the hole was +very much larger. Then with a convulsive pressure he swung his +wrists within reach and after a moment's wait he felt a thin blade +drawn across the silk. + +The relief was glorious. He swung his hands free, rubbing the chafed +wrists, then thrust an opened hand out into the opening, and with +instant comprehension a short, pointed bit of iron was put within +it. + +Now he could do something! With furious strength he attacked the +bricks edging the hole and as he pried free each brick he could +again get a glimpse of those white delicate fingers lifting it +carefully away. + +And now the hole was large enough. He twisted about and thrust out a +leg, and then, with a feeling of ecstasy which made the official +literary raptures of saints and conquerors but pale, dim moods, he +wormed his way out of that jagged hole and turned, erect and free, +to the shrouded figure of his rescuer. + +She had drawn back a little against the wall, a gauzy veil across +her face. Beside her, upon the stone floor, a solitary candle sent +its flickering rays into the shadows, edging with light her slender +outlines. + +Ryder took one quick step to her, his heart in his throat, and put +out eager arms. But in the very moment that he was gathering her to +him, even when he felt her pliant body, at first resistant, then +softly yielding, swept against his own, he felt, too, a little palm +suddenly upon his mouth. + +"Hsh!" said the soft, whispering voice, cutting into his low murmur +of "Aimee!" and then, in slow emphatic caution, "Be--careful!" + +He had need of that caution. For under the saffron veil was not the +face of Aimee. He was clasping a young creature that he had never +seen before, a girl with flaming henna hair and kohl darkened brows, +a vivid blazoning face that smiled enigmatically with a certain +mockery of delight at the amazement he reflected so unguardedly. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +AZIZA + + +From the slackening grip of his astounded arms she stepped backward, +still smiling faintly and holding up in admonishment the palm she +had pressed against his mouth. + +"But what--what the dev--" muttered Ryder. + +She nodded mysteriously, and beckoned. + +"Come," she whispered, catching up her candle, and after holding it +high for a moment, staring at him, she extinguished it suddenly, and +turned to lead the cautious way across the stone spaces while Ryder +closely followed. + +Not Aimee, then. But some messenger, he could only suppose. Some +confidante, at need. A handmaid? The whisper of her silks, the +remembered gleam of jewels in the henna hair flouted that thought, +and not troubling his ingenuity with alternatives he was content to +follow her swift steps. + +They were now in those open rubbishy spaces where he remembered the +crumbling masonry and broken arches of old, disregarded mosques; now +they were again enclosed in narrow stone walls, winding past cellars +and store rooms. + +The girl's advance grew more cautious. Often she stopped and +listened, peering ahead into the darkness, and now, as she took +another turning, her care redoubled and Ryder needed no exhortation +to imitate it. Obeying a gesture of her arm, he followed at a +greater distance, prepared, at the warning of a sound, to flatten +himself against the wall or dart into some cranny of retreat. + +They were now in the cellars. The corridor was widening out before +them with a pallid showing of light, crossed with many bars, at some +far end.... They stole towards it. It was a window, or barred gate, +he saw, and he heard again that lapping of restless water against +stone. + +He could see, too, in the dimness the curve of a stair near the +gate. + +Abruptly his guide checked him. Wary and noiseless he waited while +she stole forward to those stairs, peering up into the gloom, +attentive for any sound from above.... Apparently satisfied, she +went on towards the barred gate, and bent down over a spot of +darkness which Ryder had taken for a shadow. + +He saw now that it had some semblance to a human outline. + +Closely the girl bent and he caught the pallor of her hands, +searching swiftly, and then a muffled clink.... Next moment, a +wraith with soundless steps, she was back at his side again, urging +him on with her. They passed the stairs; he felt the soft yield of +carpet beneath his feet; they passed that recumbent figure and now +he heard the rhythm of a sleeper's heavy breath, escaping muffledly +from the folds of a thick mantle which the sleeper's habits had +wrapped about his head. For all the mantle he was aware of the fumes +of wine. + +"I saw that Ja'afar had his drink," said the girl suddenly in softly +whispered Turkish, her head close to his. "He is my friend. I do not +neglect him," and under her breath she laughed, as she exhibited the +great bunch of keys she had taken from the imbiber. + +Stooping now before the gate she fitted the key into the lock. Then +over her shoulder she looked up at the young man, and asked him a +quick question. + +He did not understand. That was the trouble with his vernacular. It +would go on very well for a time, when he had a clue to the sense, +or when it was a question of every day expression, but a sudden +divergence, an unexpected word, was apt to prove a hopeless +obstacle. + +Now she repeated her question again, more slowly, and again he shook +his head. + +Now she stood up, frowning a little and began again in English, +"You--no, I not know--This way? You do it?" A sudden smile broke +over her face as she made a swift pushing gesture with her hands, +that, with her pointing to the water outside, sent Ryder a sudden +enlightenment. + +"Swim? You mean--do I swim?" + +She nodded. "Not go--" She made a swift downward movement of her +hands and then pointed again to that water just outside the gate. + +"Not go down--not sink?" interpreted Ryder. "No, indeed, I can +swim," he assured her, and revisited with smiling satisfaction she +knelt again before the barred gate. + +Open it swung with so sharp a crack that both glanced at the figure +behind them, and then at the shadowy gloom of the stairs. But no +alarm sounded. Outside the gate Ryder saw the darkness of fairly +wide rippling waters, visited with floating stars, and beyond a +low-lying, dun bank. + +Escape was there. Freedom. Safety. He felt an exultant longing to +plunge in and strike out, but he turned, questioningly, to the +mysterious rescuer. + +"Aimee?" he asked, under his breath. "Where is she?" He repeated it +in the vernacular, distrusting her English, and in the vernacular +she answered, "You want her? You want to take her away with you?" + +She laughed softly at the quick flash in his eyes and hardly waited +for his speech. + +"Good--what a lover! You are not afraid?" + +Mendaciously he assured her that he was not. + +"Good!" she said again, with a showing of white teeth between her +carmined lips. "You take her--you take her away from him. That is +what I want. You understand?" + +Very suddenly he understood. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +AZIZA IS OFFENDED + + +This was no emissary from Aimee. This was no philanthropic +bystander. It was some girl of the palace, jealous and daring, +conspiring shrewdly for the removal of her rival. + +"Take her away," she was saying urgently. "Out of this palace. We +want no brides here." Lowering and sullen, she turned bitter on the +word. + +"To-night, I was watching," she went on swiftly. "I heard--the +noise--and then the whispering.... The darkness has ears and +eyes--and a tongue. And so I waited out there...." + +He could not distinguish all the quick flow of her speech, but he +caught enough to understand how she had lurked in the halls, +jealously spying, defying the eunuchs' authority, and how she had +caught with passionate delight that stifled alarm of scandal. Later, +hanging over some banister, she had seen the Ethiopian pass with his +burden and had stolen down afterwards, stalking like a cat, and had +discovered the lantern gone, the door unlocked.... And then she had +watched until the pair emerged without the burden. + +She had not been able to get hold of the key to the door. But she +had resolved to explore and so she had furnished the waterman with +his wine, drugged, Ryder gathered, and so stolen past him on the +other route to those underground foundations to which her suspicions +had been directed by the mortar and dust upon Yussuf. + +Evidently she knew the possibilities of the place and the mind of +its master. And when she found the old niche freshly bricked and the +mortar at hand she had not needed more to assure her that here was +the burial place of her rival's lover. + +Now, for the boon of his life, he was to relieve her of that rival. +Or try to. + +"For once--he might not kill her," she whispered, "but if again--" +Her eyes glowed like a cat's in the dark. "Take her away. Make her +name a spitting and a disgrace.... Her memory a shame and a +sting.... Is she beautiful?" she broke off to demand. "They say--but +slaves lie--" + +"Can you believe a lover?" he said whimsically for all his +impatience. "She is a pearl--a rose--a crescent moon--" + +"They say she is very pale and thin--" + +"She is an Houri from Paradise," he said distinctly. "And now, in +the name of Allah, let me get to her. Tell me the way--" + +"Will she go gladly with you?" the low, insistent voice went on, and +at his quick nod, "Holy Prophet, what a bride!" + +She clapped her two ringed hands to smother the impish joy of her +laugh. "A warning to those who can be warned--he will not be so +eager for another stripe from that same stick!--It was his cousin, +Seniha Hanum--Satan devour her!--who made this marriage. Always she +hated me.... But now I will tell you how to get to her. Look out, +with me." + +Kneeling at the gate, over the dark flow of the water, she drew him +down beside her, and thrusting out her veiled head, she pointed +upward and to the right to a jutting balcony of mashrubiyeh, where a +pale light showed through the fretwork. + +"There--you see? That is my room. And if you climb up, I can let you +in.... There... Up," she repeated in English, resolved to make +certain. + +"I see. I can get there," he assured her, measuring with his eye the +dim distance. + +"At once," she said. "I will be there. I cannot take you with me +through the upper hall--it is dangerous even for me to be caught. +But no eunuch wants my displeasure." + +He could believe it, watching the subtle, malicious daring of her +face. Even in the gloom he caught the steady-lidded arrogance of her +kohl-darkened eyes and the bold insolence of a high cheek bone. She +had a hint of gypsy.... + +"And you can get me in? You're a wonder!" he whispered. "I can't +thank you enough--" + +"Rid me of her," said the girl swiftly. "But not--not him. You must +swear--what is it that Christians swear by?" she broke off to +demand. "By the grave of your father? Yes? You will swear not to +hurt him, to hurt Hamdi, by the grave of your father? Yes?" + +Ryder nodded quickly. His father, to be sure, was in no grave at +all. He was, allowing hastily for the difference in time, in his +treasurer's cage at the bank in East Middleton, but he did not wait +to explain this to the girl. + +"I swear it," he repeated. "I won't hurt your Hamdi, since that's +your condition. But we're wasting time--" + +"Up, then. And if you fall down--do like this." + +Smiling mischievously, she made the gesture of swimming. "Allah go +with thee--and with me also," he heard her murmur, as he stepped out +to the ledge of the entrance, twisted himself agilely about and +climbing up the opened gate swung himself up to the stone carving +overhead. + +Below him, he heard the gate swing shut. He did not hear her lock +it. Fervently he hoped she had not, since it was a possible exit for +any one in a hurry, but at any rate, he need not worry about a way +out of the place until he had got into it again. + +And the getting in was not any too simple. It was work for a +mountain goat, he reflected, after a short interval devoted to +tentative reaches and balancing and digging in of hands and feet. +The distances were far greater than the first-glimpsed, +foreshortened perspective had allowed him to guess, and there was +only the starlight to illumine the gray face of the palace. + +He had no idea of the time. Somewhere about the middle of the night +or early morning, he judged vaguely by the stars, although it seemed +impossible that so few hours had passed. + +The river was all silence and darkness. No nuggars with their +sleeping crews were moored below. He seemed the only living, +breathing thing clambering across the face of time and space. + +Gingerly he kicked off the nondescript black shoes he had worn with +his disguise that afternoon and essayed a perilous toehold while he +reached for the interstices of a mashrubiyeh window just overhead. + +Once gripping the rounds he pulled himself up, reflecting that it +was well it was night and that no lady was sitting within her +shelter to be affrighted at this intrusion of fingers and toes. + +From the jutting top of this projection he surveyed his further +field of operation. The window with a light was two stories higher +yet and to the right. There were two other windows with lights on +the second story, very much farther along, and he wondered painfully +if these were the rooms of Aimee. + +That boudoir in which he had hidden through the end of the long +reception had been upon the water. And there had been a door into an +adjoining room, for he had seen a sallow-faced attendant passing in +and out. + +A wild longing seized him to crawl on and over into those windows. +But it was a difficult, almost an impossible distance, and even when +there he would be like a fly on the outside of a pane with no way of +getting in. + +The unknown girl had promised him a way through her window and he +had confidence in her ingenuity and daring. + +So he went on, worming cautiously along old gutters and ledges and +jutting balconies until at last he was clasping the lower grill of +that mashrubiyeh from which her light gleamed. + +Instantly the light went out. + +"Wait!" he heard her voice say sharply over his head. She was +standing by the window fumbling with the woodwork, and in a moment +he heard the click of a knob and then, just opposite his head, the +screening grill slipped aside and an aperture appeared. + +"Quick!" admonished the voice, and quickly indeed he drew himself up +and in, reflecting whimsically as he did so that this girl had first +helped him out of a hole and then into one. + +The next moment she had moved the grill into place and lifted the +cover she had placed over her triplet of candles on a stand. + +Triumphant, her eyes dancing, her teeth a gleam of light between +those scarlet lips of hers, she looked at him for the admiration +she saw twinkling back at her in his eyes. + +"But not me--no!" she protested, her supple hands gesturing towards +the magic casement. "I found it here. It is very old--you +understand? Some other, long ago, found time dull and so--" + +Delightedly she shared the flavor of that secret of the vagabond +lady of long ago who had devised this cunning entrance for her +lover. + +On some dark night like this, with the gatekeeper drowsy with old +wine, some other stripling had climbed that worn facade before him +and slipped through the secret space and stood triumphantly before +some daring, laughing girl who had cast aside for him her veil and +her fear of death. + +What ingenuity, Ryder wondered fleetly, had smuggled in the +carpenter for the contrivance, what jewels had gone to the bribing, +what lies had been told!... And what had been the end of it all? + +Evidently not the discovery of the opening.... + +He hoped, with singular intensity, for the safety of the daring +young lovers, that unknown youth whose feet had foreworn the path +for his feet and that dead and gone young girl, who had dared +anything rather than endure the mortal ennui of those hours behind +the veil.... + +These thoughts all went through him like one thought as he stood +there, his eyes roving about the dim, shadowy room of old divans and +Eastern hangings, and then turning back to the glimmering figure of +its mistress. + +She was staring frankly at him, her eyes boldly curious and +examining. They were not dark eyes, he saw now; that had been the +impression given by the kohl about them and the black line of the +brows penciled into one line; they were yellow eyes, golden and +glowing, scornful and lazy-lidded. + +As she looked at him, these eyes smiled slowly. She was seeing in +this lover of her rival a singularly delightful looking young man, +for all his dust and disarray, a slender, bronzed, hardy-looking +young man, with dark, disordered hair straying across a white brow, +and audacious, eager eyes in which the fear of death, so lately +glimpsed, had left no daunting reflection. + +Slowly she lifted her hand and with deliberate softness put back +that straying hair of his. + +"Poor boy," she said slowly in English, and then, smiling ruefully, +she held out her hands for his inspection. The grime of the bricks +had discolored their scented delicacy and he saw bruised finger tips +and a torn nail. + +"I'm infernally sorry," he said quickly. + +Her smile deepened at his look of concern, as he held, a little +helplessly, the witnesses of her work of rescue which seemed somehow +to stray into his keeping. + +"It is nothing--but you--poor boy," she said again, in that English +of which she seemed naively proud. + +"If you could give me some water," he suggested, and drank deep +with delight the last drop she brought him from an earthen jar. It +seemed to wash from his throat the taste of that dust and fear. + +"I can't begin to thank you," he murmured. "I only wish that I could +do something for you--" + +She looked up at him. They were standing close together, their +voices cautiously low. + +"Perhaps, yes, you can--" + +"It's not doing anything for you to save Aimee," he told her. +"That's what you are doing for her and for me.... But if ever you +want me for anything after this--my name is Ryder, Jack Ryder, and +you can reach me at the Agricultural Bank." + +He had a vague vision of some day repaying his enormous debt by +assisting this girl, grown tired of her Hamdi, out of this aperture +and into a waiting boat. He would do it like a shot, he told himself +gladly; he would do anything on God's green earth if only she helped +him get Aimee away from that infernal villain. + +"Jack," she repeated, under her breath, and then in her slow +English, "I like--Jack." + +"Don't forget it. I'll always come and do anything for you. And if +you'll tell me your name--" + +"Aziza." + +"Aziza. I'll never forget that. And now, if you'll tell me how I can +get to her and then the best way out--" + +"Why you so hurry--" + +"Why?" he looked a little blank. "I can't lose a minute--he may be +with her--" + +She came a little nearer to him, her head tilting back with a slow, +indolent challenge. + +Gone was the silken mantle that had been about her below stairs and +he saw now that she was a vivid, exotic shimmer of gauzy green +against the saffron veil that fell from her henna hair. There was +barbaric beauty in her, in the bold, painted face, the bare, +gold-banded arms, the slender, sinuous lines, and there was barbaric +splendor in the heavy jewels that winked and flashed.... + +It struck Ryder that she was gotten up regardless.... In pride, +perhaps, on her rival's wedding night?... Or had there been some +defiant, desperate design upon Hamdi--? + +She did not miss that sudden prolonging of his look upon her. + +"You like me--yes?" she murmured, and then slipping back into +the vernacular, "I--I am not the stupid veiled girl of the +seclusion--not forever. I come from the west, the deserts. I have +seen the world: Men--men, I know ... I danced before them, not the +dances of the Cairene cafes," she uttered with swift scorn, "but the +dance of the two swords, the dance of the serpents.... Men threw the +gold from their turbans about my feet when I had danced to them ... +And others, English, French--" + +She broke off, but her eyes told many things. "Then--Hamdi," she +said slowly. "Him I ruled--and his palace.... But I have known other +things." + +Closer yet she came to him. Her eyes, golden fires of eyes, were +smiling up into his, her scarlet lips gathered in soft, sensual +curves ... her whole silken scented body seemed to slip into his +embrace. A bare arm touched his neck, resting heavily. + +"Sweet--heart," she said slowly, in her difficult English. + +It was the deuce of a position. + +No man can rudely snatch from his neck the arm of the lady who has +just saved him from a harrowing death. And a lady who was risking +more than her life in sheltering him--decidedly the situation was +delicate. + +It was not the lady's fault that her impetuosity, the impetuosity +which had been his salvation, now plunged her into amorous caprice. +There were obvious handicaps, moral, social and ethical, in her +upbringing. She was a child of nature, a nature undisciplined, +unruly, tempestuous. + +And even queening over Hamdi and his palace must have offered little +diversion to a wild dancing girl familiar with the excitement of +more varied conquest. + +Ryder was horribly embarrassed. He was visited with a fearful +constraint, a chivalrous wish not to hurt her feelings, and a sharp +prevision of the danger of offending her. + +He took the first turn of least resistance. + +He did not need to bend his head; their eyes were on a level. He +simply kissed her. And she kissed him back. + +He hated himself for the leap of his blood... and for the +Puritanical discomfort of his nature.... + +Her arm about his neck was pressing closer. It was the moment for +action and Ryder acted. Very firmly he put his hand upon her hand, +withdrew it from its clasp about him, and raised it to his lips. + +His kiss was respectful gratitude and an abdication of the delights +of dalliance. + +"Good-bye, my dear," he murmured. "Now, if you will show me the way +out--" + +Her eyes agleam between half-closed lids, she studied him. It +occurred to Ryder that probably never before had her hands been +detached--and kissed--and put away. He must be a phenomenon, an +enigma. + +Then her lips parted in a faintly scornful smile. + +"You afraid--you? You want--run?" + +"I'm horribly afraid," he said earnestly. "I want to get out of here +as quick as I can." + +That was putting, he considered, the very wisest construction upon +it. + +Negligently her gesture reminded him of the opening in the window. +"Here you are safe." she murmured in the vernacular. "And the doors +are locked--" + +"Yes, but--but Aimee isn't safe, you know--and I must get her out of +here." + +"Aimee?" In those yellow eyes he caught the flash of capricious +resentment at the reminder. Then, indifferently, she brushed the +distraction away. + +"There is time enough for Aimee. She is not lonely now." + +"Not lonely?" he shivered at the cold carelessness of her tone. "I +must get to her quickly then." + +"But that is not safe.... A little--later." + +Uncomfortably he tried to infuse his glance with innate innocence +and utter lack of understanding. + +"I shan't hurt him--if I have the chance," he told her. "I've given +you my word--" + +"And I trust you--much." Her gaze sought his in a trifle of +impatience at such simplicity. "But it is not safe for you now.... +Later ... By and by." + +"You don't want him to have a chance to make love to her, do you?" +said Ryder sharply. "I thought that was the very thing you +_didn't_--" + +Her smile was a subtle, confessing caress. "I shall have my +revenge," she murmured, and pressed closer to him again, every +sensuous, sumptuous line of her a challenge and an enticement. + +"I give you life," she whispered, very low in her throat. "You give +me, perhaps, an hour--?" + +"I _haven't_ an hour," said Ryder very desperately and unhappily. +"Not when Aimee is with that devil--" + +It took every thought of Aimee to get the words out. + +He felt a brute about it, a low, ungrateful dog. She _had_ given him +life and every fiber in him clamored to save her pride and champion +her caprice. + +It seemed so dastardly to wrench away from her now, like some +self-centered Joseph, leaving that beastly stab in her vanity.... +And she was a stunning creature, lawless, elemental, hot and cold +like the seventh wind of the inferno.... + +But it was Aimee who was in his blood like a fever.... Aimee, that +frail white rose of a girl, in her bonds of terror.... + +He saw the flame in Aziza's eyes. He saw the stiffening of her +defiance, of half-incredulous affront. Then, her form drawn up, her +bared arms outflung, her vivid, painted, furious face challenging +him. "I am not beautiful--like Aimee?" she said in a voice of venom, +and in the English, for double measure, "You not like me--no?" + +"You _are_ beautiful and I _do_ like you," Ryder combated, feeling a +bungling fool. And then went on to thrust into that half-second of +suspended fury, a faint breath of appeasing. "But--don't you +see--it's my duty--" + +"You go--?" she said clearly. + +Even in that moment he had a sharp prescience of the unwisdom of his +rejection. A cold calculator of chance and probabilities would have +reckoned that a half hour of assuagement here would have been a +wiser investment of his mortal moments than any virtuous plunge into +single-hearted duty. + +But Ryder did not calculate. He could not, with Aimee under that +beast's hand. His heart and soul were possessed with her danger and +his heart and soul carried his body instinctively back from the +dancing girl's advance, and he whispered, "I must go. There is no +time--" + +She flung back her fiery-hued head with a gesture of intolerable +rage. Her eyes were lightnings. + +"Dog of a Christian!" she said chokingly and flew to the doors. + +Back she thrust the heavy hangings, turning a quick key in the lock +and wrenching the door wide. And before Ryder could understand, +before he could bring himself to realize that she was not simply +violently expelling him from her room, she gave a shriek that rang +wildly down the long-unseen corridors. + +At the top of her lungs, with one hand out to thrust him back or +cling to him if he attempted to pass, she shrieked again and again. + +Instantly there came a running of feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +AN INTERRUPTION + + +When Hamdi Bey had taken Aimee back to her apartments he pulled +sharply upon a bellcord. In a few moments the slave woman, Fatima, +made her appearance, no kindly-eyed old crone like Miriam, but a +sallow, furtive-faced creature, with an old disfiguring scar across +a cheek. + +The general pointed to the wet and fainting girl huddling weakly +upon the divan. + +"Your new mistress has met with an accident, out boating--a curse +upon me for gratifying forbidden caprice!" he said crisply. "Be +silent of this and array her quickly in garments of rest. I will +return." + +Very hurriedly he took himself and his own wet condition away. He +was furious, through and through. What a night--what a wedding +night! Scandal and frustration... a bride with a desperate lover... +a bride who, herself, drew revolvers and threatened. + +It was beyond any old tale of the palace. For less, girls had had +his father's dagger driven through their hearts--his grandfather, at +a mere whisper from a eunuch, had given his favorite to the lion. +The whisper was found incorrect at a later--too late--date, and the +eunuch had furnished the lion another meal. + +His modern leniency in this case would have outraged his ancestors. + +But it was not in the bey's nature to deal the finishing stroke to +anything so soft and lovely as Aimee. He had no intention of +depriving himself of her. If she were red with guilt he would feign +belief in her, to save his face until his infatuation was gratified. + +But actually he did not believe in any great guilt of hers. Tewfick +Pasha, for all his indulgent modernity, would keep too strict a +harem for that. What he rather believed had happened was that the +young American--now so happily immured in his masonry--had become +aware of the girl through the story of her French father, and in +that connection had struck up the clandestine and romantic +correspondence which had led to their mutual infatuation and his +desperate venture there that afternoon. + +The young man had been dealt with--and the thought of the very +summary and competent way he had been dealt with drew the fangs from +the bite of that night's invasion. + +His fury felt soothingly glutted. + +He had been a match for them both. He recalled his own subtlety and +agility with a genuine smile as he exchanged his dripping uniform +for more informal trousers and a house coat. He had taught that +young man a lesson--a final and ultimate lesson. And he was +beginning to teach one to that girl. Before he was done with +her ... + +He felt for her a mingled passion for her beauty and a lust for +conquest of her resistant spirit that fed every base and cruel +instinct of his nature. + +A find--a rare find--even with her circumvented lover! He would have +his sport with her.... But though he promised this to himself with +feline relish, apprehension and chagrin were still working. + +The fond fatuity with which he had welcomed that starry-eyed little +creature had been rudely overthrown. And his pride smarted at the +idea of the whispers that might echo and re-echo through his palace. +He was too wise an old hand to flatter himself that it would +preserve its bland and silent unawareness of this night. + +So far, he believed, he had been unobserved. In Yussuf's silence he +had absolute confidence.... But of course there were a hundred other +chances--some spying, back-stairs eye, some curious, straining +ear.... + +And for this matter of the boating mishap--he cursed himself now, as +he combed up his fair mustaches and settled a scarlet fez upon his +thinned thatch of graying hair, cursed himself roundly for his +malicious resort to that old oubliette. Anything else would have +done to frighten and overwhelm her and yet he had gratified his +dramatic itch--and now had paid for it with that idiotic story of +the boating expedition. + +He had reason to trust Fatima--there was history behind the old +sword scar upon her cheek, and he had a hold over her through her +ambition for a son. But Fatima was a woman. And she--or some other +who would see that drenched satin would be curious of that boating +story.... + +And of course they could find out from the boatman. + +It occurred to him to go and see the boatman and order him away so +that afterward the man could say he had been sent off duty, and the +story of a nocturnal river trip would not appear too incredible. It +was a small concession to stop gossip's mouth. + +So drawing on a swinging military cloak, the general stole down +through the stair of the water entrance into the lower hall, where +the pale light gleamed through the cross-barred iron of the gate and +the gatekeeper slept like a log in his muffling cloak. + +The soundness of that slumber--loudly attested by the fumes of +wine--afforded the general a profound pleasure. He took the man's +keys softly, and went to the gate; it afforded him less pleasure to +observe that the gate was unlocked, but he put this down to the +keeper's muddleheadedness. + +Carefully he turned the lock and pocketed the keys--for a lesson to +the man's overdeep sleep in the morning and to attest his own +presence there that night; then he went back and brought out an oar, +which he placed conspicuously beside the smallest boat, drawn up +just within the gates. + +He was afraid to alter the boat's position lest the noise should +prove too wakening, but he considered he had laid an artistic +foundation for his story and with a gratifying sense of triumph he +mounted the stairs. + +He was not conscious of fatigue. He had always been a wiry, +indefatigable person, and the alarms and emotions of this night had +cleared his head of its wines and drowsiness. He felt the sense of +tense, highstrung power which came to him in war, in fighting, in +any element of danger. + +Youth! He snapped his fingers at it. Youth was buried in +his masonry--and helpless in its shuttered room. Power was +master--power, craft, subtlety. + +But his elation ebbed as he crossed again that long drawing room +with its faded flowers about the marriage throne, and its abandoned +table with its cloth askew, its crystal disarrayed, its candles +gutted and spent. + +The memory of that insolent moment when a man's hand had gripped +him, had whirled him from Aimee--when a man's voice and gun had +threatened him--that memory was too overpowering for even his +triumph over the invader to lay wholly its smart of outrage. + +He felt again the tightening of his nerves, like quivering wires, as +he crossed the violated reception room and entered the boudoir. It +was empty, but on the divan the flickering candle light revealed the +damp, spreading stain where Aimee's drenched satins had been. + +He thrust aside a hanging and pushed open the door into the room +beyond. + +It was a small bedroom evidently very recently furnished in new and +white shining lacquer of French design, elaborately inlaid with +painted porcelains and draped with a profusion of rosy taffeta. +Among this elegance, surprisingly unrelated to the ancient paneled +walls, stood the hastily opened trunk and bags of the bride, their +raised lids and disarranged trays heaped with the confusion of +unaccustomed, swiftly searching hands. + +Aimee herself, in a gay little French boudoir robe of jade and +citron, sat huddled in a chair, like a mute, terrified child, in the +hand of her dresser, who was shaking out the long, damp hair and +fanning it with a peacock fan. + +At the bey's entrance Fatima suspended the fanning, but with easy +familiarity exhibited the long ringlets. + +Curtly the bey nodded, and gestured in dismissal; the woman laid +down her fan, and with a last slant-eyed look at that strangely +still new mistress she went noiselessly out a small service door. + +With an air of negligent assurance Hamdi Bey gazed about the room +and yawned. "Truly a fatiguing evening," he remarked in his dry, +sardonic voice. "But you look so untouched! What a thing is radiant +youth." + +He sauntered over to her, who drew a little closer together at his +approach, and lifted one of the long dark curls that the serving +woman had exhibited. + +"The ringlets of loveliness," he murmured. "You know the old saying +of the Sadi? 'The ringlets of the lovely are a chain on the feet of +reason and a snare for the bird of wisdom.'... How long ago he said +it--and how true to-day ... Yet such a charming chain! Suppose, +then, I forgive you, little one, since sages have forgiven beauty +before?" + +She was silent, her eyes fixed on him with the silent terror with +which a trapped bird sees its captor, in their bright darkness the +same mute apprehension, the same filming of helpless despair. + +Ryder was dead, she thought. This cruel, incensed old madman had +killed him, for all his oaths. Somewhere beneath those ancient +stones he was lying drowned and dead, a strange, pitiable addition +to the dark secrets of those grim walls. + +He had died for her sake, and all that she asked now of life, she +thought in the utter agony of her youth, was death. And very +quickly. + +"I am so soft hearted," he sighed, still with that ringlet in his +lifted hand, his hand which wanted palpably to settle upon her and +yet was withheld by some strange inhibition of those fixed, helpless +eyes. "Who knows--perhaps I may forgive you yet? You might persuade +me--" + +"He is dead," she said shiveringly. + +"Dead? He?... Ah, the invader, the intruder, the young man who +wanted you for a family in France!" The bey laughed gratingly. "No, +I assure you he is not dead--I have not harmed a hair of his head. +He is alive--only not with quite the widest range of liberty--" + +He broke off to laugh again. "Ah, you disbelieve?" he said politely. +"Shall I send, then, for some proof--an ear, perhaps, or a little +finger, still very warm and bleeding, to convince you?... In five +minutes it will be here." + +Then terror stirred again in her frozen heart. If Ryder were alive +and still in this man's power-- + +"You are horrible," she said to him in a voice that was suddenly +clear and unshaken. "What is it you want of me--fear and hate--and +utter loathing?" + +Her unexpected spirit was briefly disconcerting. The Turk looked +down upon her in arrested irony and then he smiled beneath his +mustaches and bent nearer with kindling gaze. + +"Not at all--nothing at all like that, little dove with talons. I +want sweetness and repentance--and submission. And--" + +"You have a strange way to win them," she said desperately. + +"You have taken a strange way with me, my love! Little did I +foresee, when I escorted you up the stairs this morning--" He broke +off. "There are men," he reminded her, "who would not consider a +cold bath as a complete recompense for your bridal plans." + +She was silent. + +"But I," he murmured, "I am soft hearted." He dropped on one knee +before her and tried to smile into her averted face. "I can never +resist a charming penitent.... I assure you I am pliability itself +in delicate fingers--although iron and steel to a threatening +hand.... If you should woo me very sweetly, little one--" + +She could not overcome and she could not hide from his mocking eyes +the sick shrinking that drew her back from his least touch. But she +did fight down the wild hysteria of her repugnance so that her voice +was not the trembling gasp it wanted to be. + +"How can I know what you are?" she told him. "You mock me--you +threaten to torture that man--it would be folly not to think that +you are deceiving me. If you would only prove to me so that I could +believe--" + +"If you would but prove to _me_ so that _I_ could believe--! Prove +that you are mine--and not that infidel's. Prove that you bring me a +wife's devotion--not a wanton's indifference." He caught her cold +hands, trying to draw her forward to him. "Prove that you only pity +him," he whispered, "but that your love will be mine--" + +She felt as if a serpent clasped her. And yet, if that were the only +way to win Ryder's safety--if it were possible for her sickened +senses to allay this madman's suspicions and undermine his revenge-- + +Quiveringly she thought that to save Ryder she would go through +fire. + +But the hideous, mocking uncertainties! Her utter helplessness--her +lost deference.... + +It was not a sudden sound that broke in upon them but rather the +perception of many sounds, muffled, half heard, but gaining upon +their consciousness. Running feet--a stifled voice--something faint +and shrill-- + +Aimee sprang to her feet; the general rose with her and turned his +head inquiringly in the direction. Then he jerked open the door +through which Fatima had disappeared; it led to a dark service +corridor and small anteroom, from whose bed the attendant was +absent. An outer door was ajar. + +No need to question the sounds now. Faint, but piercingly shrill +shrieks were sounding from above, while the footsteps were racing, +some down, some up-- + +The bey flung shut the door behind him and hurried towards the +confusion. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +BEYOND THE DOOR + + +Ryder had stood stock still with amazement when the girl began to +scream. She had gone mad, he thought for an instant, in masculine +bewilderment, and then her madness revealed its treacherous cunning, +for she began crying wildly for help against an invader, an infidel, +a dog of a Christian who had stolen into her rooms. + +She had chucked him to the lions, Ryder perceived; one furious flash +of lightning jealousy and Oriental anger had overthrown, in that +wild and lawless head, every other design for him for which she had +risked so much. + +He had scorned her.... He had flouted her caprice.... He had dared +to refuse the languors of those dangerous eyes.... + +The hurrying footsteps appeared to him the tread of a legion in +action, and he had no desire to rush out upon the oncomers; he had, +indeed, distinct doubts of his ruthless ability to pass that supple, +clawing, incensed creature at the door. + +He whirled and made a bolt for the window, striking at the fastened +grill. He heard the snapping of wooden bolts and the splintering of +wood and out through the hole he climbed to a precipitous, head-long +flight that fairly felt the clutching hands upon his ankle. + +He had meant to make a jump for it. A three-story plunge into the +Nile appeared a gentle exercise compared to the alternative within +the palace, but in the very act of releasing his hold he changed his +mind. + +Quicker than he had ever moved before, in any vicissitude of his +lithe and agile youth, he clambered up, not down, and crouching back +from sight upon the jutting top of the window, he sent his coat +sailing violently through space. + +He dared not look over for its descent upon the water, for other +heads were peering from below and he could hear an excited outburst +of speech, that broke sharply off. + +Evidently they were hurrying down to the water gate. Swiftly he +utilized this misdirection for his own ends. + +The roofs. That was the refuge to make for. Flat, long-reaching +roofs, from which one could climb off onto a wall or a palm or a +side street. + +He had only a story to ascend and he made it in record time, fearful +that the searchers whom he heard now launching a boat below would +turn their eyes skywards. + +But he gained the top without an outcry being raised and found +himself upon the roof where the ladies of the harem took their air +unseen of any save the blind eyes of the muezzin in the Sultan +mosque upon the hill. There were divans and a little taboret or two +and a framework where an awning could be raised against the sun. + +There was also a trap door. + +And here, tempestuously he changed his mind again. He abandoned the +goal of outer walls and chances of escape. He wrenched violently at +that trap door. It was bolted but the bolt was an ancient one and +gave at his furious exertions, letting him down into a narrow spiral +staircase between walls. + +Down he plunged in haste, before some confused searcher should dash +up. It was no place to meet an opposing force. Nor was the corridor +in which he found himself much better. + +It was black and baffling as a labyrinth, with unexpected turnings, +and he kept gingerly close to the wall with one hand clutching a bit +of iron which he had taken into his possession and his pocket when +Aziza had led him out of the underground walls--the very bit of +pointed iron, it was, with which the volatile creature had effected +his rescue. + +He considered it an invaluable souvenir and twice, in his nervous +apprehension, he almost brought it down upon shadows. + +Direction he judged vaguely by the screaming which was still going +on at a tremendous rate--evidently the girl had gone off into +genuine hysterics or else she had determined not to leave her +agitation at the intrusion in any manner of question. No doubt the +outcries were a relief to her mingled emotions--remorse at her +impetuosity and chagrin that her thwarted plans might conceivably be +now among those emotions--and since the vicinity of those shrieks +must be a gathering place to be avoided by him he stole on, down the +upper hall, and finding a stair, he went down for two continuous +flights. + +Aimee's rooms, he knew, had been upon the water, and recalling the +general direction of those two lighted windows that he had seen so +recently from without, his excavator's instinct led him on. Once he +saw the flitting figure of a turbaned woman in time to draw back +into a heaven-sent niche and again he flattened into a soundless +shadow against the wall as two young serving girls ran by on +slippered feet, their anklets tinkling, chattering to each other in +delighted excitement. + +And then the stealthy opening of a door--it was the very door by +which Yussuf had precipitated himself upon the struggle at the +supper table some age-long hours ago--gave him a glimpse into the +far glooms of the reception room, where its long side of mashrubiyeh +windows revealed now between its fretwork tiny chinks of a paling +sky. + +He could make out the dark-draped marriage throne and the pallor of +the disordered cloth upon the abandoned table below, and behind the +table the dark draperies of the remaining portieres before the +doorway into the boudoir where he had hidden himself and into which +he had last seen Aimee thrust. + +At the other end of the great room were the entrance stairs to the +harem, and there, he imagined, a watchman was stationed, or else +stout bolts and bars were guarding the situation. There remained an +arched doorway into other formal rooms through which he had seen +Aimee and the guests disappear for the wedding supper, and that way +led, he surmised, down into the service quarters. + +A sorry choice of exits! He could form no plan in advance but trust +blindly to the amazing chances of adventure. And first, before he +rushed for escape, there was Aimee to find. + +Yet for all the mad hazard of the situation he was elated with life. +He felt as if he had never fully lived until now, when every breath +was informed with the sharp prescience of danger. He was at once +cool and exultant, wary yet reckless, with the joyous recklessness +of utter desperation. + +With cat-like care he surveyed the drawing-room; it appeared +deserted but as he watched his tense nerves could see the shadows +forming, taking furtive, crouching shape--and then dissolving +harmlessly into a rug, a chair, or a stirring drapery. His eyes +grown used to the dimness he identified the mantle upon the floor in +which he had come and which he had extended to Aimee in that brief +moment of fatuous triumph, and beyond it, across a chair, was the +portiere which the black had torn down from the doorway to wrap +about Ryder's helpless form as he had carried him down to living +death. + +That mantle, he thought, might yet be useful, and he stole forward +and recovered it, but, as he straightened, another shadow darted out +from the boudoir door and silhouetted for an instant against the +lighted, room he saw a figure in a long, swinging military cloak. + +Discovery was inevitable and Ryder made a swift plunge to take the +cloaked figure by surprise, but even as one hand shot out and +gripped the throat while the other held his threatening iron aloft, +his clutch relaxed, his arm fell nervelessly at his side. + +For from the figure had come the broken gasp of a soft voice, and +the face upturned to his was a pale oval under dark, disordered +hair. + +"Aimee!" he breathed in exultant, still half-incredulous joy. +"Aimee!... Did I hurt you--?" + +"Oh, no, no!" came Aimee's shaken voice. "Oh, you are safe!" + +He felt her trembling in his clasp and he swept her close to him. +For one breathless instant they clung together, in a sharp, +passionate gladness which blurred every sense of dread or danger. +They were safe--they were together--and for the moment it was +enough. Every obstacle was surmounted, every terror conquered. + +They clung, obliviously, like children, her pale face against his +shoulder, her hair brushing his lips, her wild heartbeats throbbing +against his own. + +Then the girl, remembering, lifted her head. + +"Quick--we must go," she whispered. "For there I made a fire--" + +He followed her frightened, backward glance at the boudoir door and +suddenly saw its cracks and key hole strangely radiant with light. + +"He left me, to go to those screams," she was saying rapidly. "I +tried to run that way--and found that woman coming back. And I told +her to wait--in her own room--and I slipped back in there--and +suddenly it came to me to thrust the candle about. I thought I would +run out and if I met any one I would call, 'Fire', and say the +general was burning and perhaps in the confusion--" + +The terrible desperation of her both stirred and wrung him. She was +so little, so helpless, so trembling in his clasp ... so made for +love and tenderness.... And to think of her in such fear and horror +that she went thrusting reckless candles into her hangings, setting +a palace on fire in the blind fury for escape.... + +To such work had this night brought her.... This night, and three +men--for he and the craven Tewfick and the fanatic bey were all +linked in this night's work. Yes, and another man--and he thought +swiftly, in a lightning flash of wonder, how little that Paul +Delcasse had known when he set his eager face toward the Old World, +with his wife and baby with him, that he was setting his feet into +such a web ... that his wife would die, languishing in a pasha's +harem, and his little daughter would one night be flying in mad +terror from the cruel beast the weak pasha had sold her to! + +And how little, for that matter, he had known when he had set his +own face toward those same sands what secrets he would discover +there and what forbidden ways his heart would know. + +These thoughts all went through him like one thought, in some clear, +remote background of his mind, while he was swiftly drawing on the +military cloak she gave him and wrapping her in the black mantle. +There was a veil on the mantle's hood that she could fling across +her face when she wished, but Ryder had no fez to complete the +deceptive outline of his masquerade. He must trust to the dark and +to the concealment of the high, military collar of the cloak. + +"Do you know a way?" he whispered and at her shaken head, "The water +gate," he said, thinking swiftly. + +There would be a crowd now about the gate, but if they could only +manage to gain those cellars and hide somewhere they could steal out +later upon that waterman. + +It seemed the most feasible of all the desperate plans. The roofs +might be a trap. The harem entrance led into a garden and the garden +was guarded by an impassable wall. But if he could only get to the +river he knew that he was a strong enough swimmer to save Aimee, or +he might even terrorize the watchman into furnishing a boat. + +She did not question but guided him swiftly through the arch that +led down into the banqueting hall. Twice that day she had gone down +those stairs. Once in her bridal state, her eyes shining, her cheeks +glowing with the wild joy of Ryder's arrival and dreams of escape, +and again, scarcely an hour gone by, she had descended them, tense +and desperate, her revolver at the general's head, seeking vainly +Ryder's rescue. + +And now a third time, a guilty, reckless fugitive in the night, she +stole down those stairs into the many-columned hall where she had +been feted in state among her guests. Here her only knowledge was of +the stone corridor and the locked door through which the bey had led +her, but Ryder knew the way that Aziza had brought him and he turned +cautiously toward those wide, curving stairs. + +Keeping Aimee a few steps behind him, he went down the soft carpet +and peered out at the bottom towards the water gate. He saw no bars; +the gate was open and against the pale square of the water were the +black silhouettes of the general and the gateman, both leaning out +at some splashing in the river. + +He knew a boy's reckless impulse to shove them both in. It was an +unholy thought his better judgment rejected--unless driven to +it--yet some prankish element in his roused recklessness would not +have deplored the necessity. + +If they looked about--! + +But they did not stir as, with Aimee's cold hand in his, he made the +tiptoed descent and slipped softly about the corner of the steps. +Then, instead of going on down the hall to some hiding place in the +ruins, he took a suddenly revealed, sharper turn into a narrow +passage just beyond the stairs. + +It might lead to another gate, some service entrance, perhaps, it +ran so straight and direct between its walls. + +Intuitively that excavator's sense of his defined the direction. +They were going parallel with the river, although a little way back +from the water wall, and in the direction of the men's part of the +palace, the selamlik. + +He recalled the selamlik vaguely as an irregular mass of buildings, +and though the formal entrance was of course through the garden from +the avenue, there was a narrow side street or lane leading back to +the water's edge between this part of the palace and the nest +building, and very likely there was some entrance on that lane. + +Bitterly he blamed himself for his lack of complete inspection that +morning. To be sure he had told himself, then, as he strolled about +the high garden walls and peered down the narrow lane on one side of +the Nile backwaters, that he didn't need a map of the place for his +arrival at an afternoon reception; he was simply going in and out, +and clothes and speech were his only real concern. + +He had even said to himself that he might not reveal himself to +Aimee--if she did not discover him. He wanted merely to see her +again, and be sure that she understood her own history--he had no +notion of attempting any further relations with her, any resumption +of their forbidden and dangerous acquaintance. + +And it was true that had been the defiant and protesting surface of +his thoughts, but deep within himself there had always been that +hot, hidden spark, ready to kindle to a flame at her word--and with +it the unowned, secret longing that she would speak the word. + +And when she had called on him for help, when the trembling appeal +had sprung past her stricken pride, and he had seen the terror in +her soft, child's eyes, then the spark had struck its conflagration. +He had become nothing but a hot, headstrong fury of devotion. + +And he said to himself now that he might have known it was going to +happen, and that if he had not been so concerned that morning about +saving his face and preserving this fiction of indifference he would +know a little more about the labyrinth they were poking about +in--the little more that tips the scale between safety and +destruction. + +But he did not know and blind Chance was his only goddess. + +The passage had brought him to a wall and a narrow stairs while +another passage led off to the right, apparently to the forward +regions of the place. + +He took the stairs. He had had enough of underground regions when +they did not lead to water gates and the stairs promised novelty at +least. + +He wished he knew more about Turkish palaces. He supposed they had a +fairly consistent ground plan, but beyond a few main features of +inner courts and halls he was culpably ignorant of their intentions. +If it were an early Egyptian tomb or temple now! But then, perhaps +the Turks were more indefinite in their building and rebuilding. + +At the head of the stairs a door stood half ajar. Through the crack +he strained his eyes, but his anxious glance met only the darkness +of utter night. Not a gleam of light. And not a sound--except the +far, hollow stamping of some stabled horse. + +Softly he pushed the door open and he and Aimee slipped within. The +place, whatever it was, appeared deserted, a dark, bare, backstairs +region--for he stumbled over a bucket--from which to the right he +could just discern a hall leading into the forward part of the +palace, wanly lighted some distance on, with the pale flicker of an +old ceiling lamp. + +They seemed to be at the end of the hall and the darker shadows in +the walls about them appeared to be a number of doors--closed, so +his groping hands informed him. + +Oh, for his excavator's steady light, or a pocket flash! Oh, for a +light of any kind, even a temporary match! But he dared not risk the +scratch, for now he caught the thud of footfalls overhead, heavy +footfalls, and there might be stairs unexpectedly close at hand. + +He turned to Aimee but the girl shook her head helplessly and +hesitant and dashed, for all their young confidence, they wavered a +moment hand in hand in the dark, fearful of what a rash move might +bring upon them. And in the beating stillness Ryder became conscious +that the muffled, monotonous stamping of a horse is a gloomy, +disheartening thing in the night, and that footsteps overhead are of +all noises the most nervous and unsettling. + +What was behind those doors? Not a spark of light came from them, +that was one comfort. The rooms, kitchen, service, store rooms or +whatever they were, appeared in the same blackness and oblivion.... +But any door might open on a roomful of sleeping gardeners and +grooms.... + +Life and more than life hung on the blind goddess. + +It was only an instant that they hesitated there, yet it appeared an +eternity of indecision, then nearer footsteps sounded, coming down +that hall. No more wavering of the scales! + +Ryder turned to the door at his left, at the very end of the wall +beyond which came that far stamping, and wrenched it open, closing +it swiftly behind him. He saw a light now, a mild, yellow ray +through an opened door ahead that vaguely illumined the strange old +vehicles of the palace, and the stables were beyond. + +Some one else was beyond, too, in the stables, for that very instant +he saw a black horse backed restively into sight, its tossing head +evading the hands that were trying to bridle it. + +"The Fortieth Door!" said Ryder to himself with an involuntary +thrust of humor. + +The door of the horse! The door of forbidden daring! He knew now the +vague associations that had stirred in him as he had stared blindly +about that place of doors.... But he had opened so many forbidden +doors of late that this last was welcome as the supreme test. + +And nothing in the world could have been more welcome than a +horse--a horse with a way out behind it! + +"Stay back," he said under his breath to Aimee, and clasping his bit +of iron he moved toward the door. + +He could see the attendant now, who was finishing his bridling, and +it was Yussuf, the eunuch, so busy gentling and soothing the horse +that he cast only one glance in the direction of the sounds he heard +and that one glance misled him in its glimpse of the general's +cloak. + +"By your favor--but an instant," he called out, "and he is ready--" + +"Stand aside," said Ryder very clearly, emerging from the shadows at +the horse's heels. "Out of the way with you. The horse is for me." + +A moment Yussuf gaped. Then he dropped the bridle and his hand went +swiftly to the knife hilt in his belt. + +"Fool!" said Ryder contemptuously. "Would you tempt fate? Do you +think I am such that your knife could harm me? Must I prove to you +again that walls are nothings--that I but let myself be taken to +prove my powers?" + +Ethiopians are superstitious. And Yussuf knew that his brick and +mortar had been strong.... Yet they have great trust in a crooked, +short-bladed knife, and Yussuf did not relax his hold upon his and +for all that Ryder could See there was no hesitation in the grinning +ferocity of his black face. + +Yet his spring was an instant delayed and in that instant Ryder +spoke again. + +"Look, now at the wall behind you," he said quickly. + +Yussuf looked. And as he turned his bullet head Ryder jumped close +and brought his iron down upon it with a sickening force he thought +scarcely short of murder. + +To his amazement the black did not fall, but staggered only, and +Ryder had need to send the knife spinning from his grasp and strike +again before the eunuch's knees sagged and his huge bulk sank at +Ryder's feet. + +This time Ryder took no chance with a shammed unconsciousness. He +snatched down bits of leather from the wall and bound the man's +hands and feet in tight security and seeing that he was breathing, +although heavily, he thrust a gagging handkerchief into his mouth. + +Then he dragged the heavy body towards a pile of hay he saw +in a vacant stall and concealed it effectively but not too +smotheringly--although Yussuf, he felt, would be no grievous loss +to society. + +Vaguely in the back of his consciousness he had been aware of the +excited plunge of the horse and then of a low, soothing murmur of +speech, and now he turned to find Aimee holding the bridle and +stroking the quivering creature with gentle, fearless hands. + +"Is he dead?" she asked quietly of the eunuch. + +"Stunned," said Ryder, meaning reassurement and was startled by the +passion of her cry, "Oh, I could kill them all--all!" + +"I will--if they try to stop us," he promised grimly, forgetful of +that oath to Aziza. + +Hastily he glanced about the stalls. There was no other horse there, +only a pair of mild-eyed donkeys, and though there might conceivably +be other horses behind other doors there was no instant to spare in +search. + +This luck was too prodigious to risk. + +The door to the street had already been unbolted and now he threw +it back with a quick look into the dark emptiness of the narrow side +street, and then, with a tight hold of the reins, he swung himself +into the saddle and Aimee up into his arms, her head on his +shoulder, her arms clasping him. + +It was a huge Bedouin saddle with high-arched back and curved pummel +and the slender pair no more than filled it, making apparently no +weight at all for the spirited beast which tore out of the stalls at +the charging gallop beloved of Eastern horsemen. + +For a moment Ryder felt wildly that he might meet the fate of the +rash youth in his patron story. He had never ridden a horse like +this, which, like all high-mettled Arabs, resented the authority of +any but his master, and though a good horseman Ryder had all he +could do to keep his seat and Aimee in his arms. + +Around the corner of the lane the horse went racing, and down the +dark, lebbek-lined avenue his flying feet struck back their sparks +of fire. Across an open square he plunged, while irate camels +screamed at him and a harsh voice shouted back loud curses. It +seemed to Ryder that other voices joined in--that there was a +pursuit, an outcry--and then they were out down an open road, wildly +galloping, like a mad highwayman under a pale morning sky. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +MISS JEFFRIES MAKES A CALL + + +That morning Miss Jeffries ate two eggs. She ate them successively, +with increasing deliberation, and afterwards she lingered +interminably over her toast and marmalade. + +Still Ryder made no appearance and since the Arab waiter had +informed her that he had not yet breakfasted she concluded that he +was not at the hotel but had spent the night with some friend of +his--probably that Andrew McLean to whom he was always running off. + +Nor was he in to luncheon. That was rank extravagance because he was +paying at pension rates. His extravagance, however, was no affair of +hers. Neither, she informed herself frigidly, was his appearance or +his non-appearance. It was only rather dull of Jack to lose so many, +well, opportunities. + +She was not going to be in Cairo forever. Not much longer, in fact. +There were adages about gathering rosebuds while ye may and making +hay while the sun shone that Jack Ryder would do well to observe. + +Other men did, reflected Jinny Jeffries with a proud lift of her +ruddy head. Only somehow, the other men-- + +Well, Jack _was_ provokingly attractive! Only of course, if he was +going to rely upon his attraction and not upon his attentions-- + +Deliberately Miss Jeffries smiled upon a stalwart tourist from New +York and promised her society for a foursome at bridge in the hotel +lounge that evening. + +Later, when Jack still failed to materialize and behold her +inaccessibility, the exhibition seemed hardly to have been worth +while.... And there were difficulties getting rid of the New Yorker +the next day. He had ideas about excursions. + +It was during the forenoon of the next day that the first twinge of +genuine worry shot across the sustained resentment which she was +pleased to call her complete indifference. She recalled the vigor of +Ryder's warnings about mentioning his adventure and the grave +dangers of disclosure, and she began to wonder. + +She wished, rather, that he had gone safely out of the house before +she went away. + +Of course nothing could happen. He had done nothing to give himself +away. He was simply a veiled shadow, moving humbly as befitted a +lowly stranger among the high and hospitable surroundings. + +But still, it would have been better if he had gone.... + +Those turbaned women had looked queerly at them when they were +talking so long in the window. Perhaps it was not simply at the +intimacy between a young American and a veiled Oriental. Perhaps +their voices had been unguarded or Jack's tones had awakened +suspicion. Perhaps he had given himself away in his long talk with +the bride. She remembered a Frenchwoman who had come to interrupt +that talk who had looked rather sharply at Jack.... And that +dreadful eunuch was always staring.... + +She thought of a great many things now, more and more things every +minute. + +And still she told herself that she was absurd, that Jack would be +the first to ridicule her alarm. He was probably enjoying himself, +staying on with his friends, forgetting all about herself.... Still +his room at the hotel had not been slept in for two nights now nor +had he called at the hotel and he certainly didn't have an extensive +supply of clothes and linen upon him beneath the mantle. + +Particularly she remembered that he had exhibited some funny black +tennis shoes which he had thought would go appropriately with a +woman's robes. Absurd, to think of him as spending two days in +tennis shoes, and absurd to say that he would go to the shops and +buy more when he had plenty of footgear in his hotel room. + +Unless he wore McLean's. + +She had always regarded the unknown McLean as a most unnecessary +absorbent of Jack Ryder's time and attention and now that view was +deeply reinforced. + +By noon she decided to do something. She would telephone that +Andrew McLean and see if Jack had been there. The Agricultural Bank, +that was the place. An obliging hotel clerk--clerks were always +obliging to Miss Jeffries--gave her the number and she slipped into +the booth feeling a ridiculous amount of excitement and suspense. + +She had never telephoned in Cairo--only been telephoned to--and she +was not prepared for the fact that the telephone company was French. +At the phone girl's "_Numero?--Quel numero, s'il vous plait?_" Jinny +hastily choked back the English response and clutched violently at +French numerals. + +"_Huit cent--no, quatre vingt--un moment!_" she demanded desperately +and hanging up the receiver, sat down to write out her number in +French correctly. + +And then she got the Bank, and, still clinging to her French, she +requested to speak to Monsieur McLean and was informed that it was +Monsieur McLean himself. + +"_Je suis_--oh, how absurd! Of course you speak English," she +exclaimed. "This French telephone upset me.... I wanted to speak to +Mr. Ryder if he is there--or else leave a message for him, if you +know when he will come in." + +"Ryder?" There was a faint intonation of surprise in the voice. +"I've no idea really when he'll be in," said McLean, "but you may +leave the message if you like." + +"Hasn't he--haven't you seen him for some time?" stammered Jinny, +feeling that McLean must be taking her for a pursuing adventuress. + +"Well--not for some time." + +Her heart sank. + +"Not--not for two days?" + +"It might be that," said the Scotchman cautiously. + +Two days. Forty-eight hours, almost, since she had left him in that +harem! And McLean had not seen him. Of course there might be other +friends who had and McLean might know of them. + +"I'm afraid I'll have to see you," she said desperately. "It's +rather important about Jack Ryder--and if I could just talk with you +a minute--this afternoon--?" + +"I have no appointment for three fifteen," McLean told her +concisely. + +Evidently he expected her to call at the Bank.... He was used to +being called on.... "Shall I come--?" she began. + +"I can see you at three fifteen," McLean reassured her, and she +repeated "Three fifteen," with an odd vibration in her voice. + +"I wonder," she murmured, "if I came at three ten--or three +twenty--?" + + * * * * * + +But she didn't. She was humorously careful to make it exactly a +quarter past the hour when she left her cab before McLean's +official looking residence and stepped into the tiled entrance. + +She had no very clear notion of Andrew McLean except that he was, as +Jack had said, Scotch, single, and skeptical, that he was Jack's +intimate friend and an official sort of banker--and the word banker +had unconsciously prepared her for stout dignity and middle age. + +She was not at all prepared for the lean, sandy-haired, rather +abrupt young man who came forward from the depths of the gratefully +cool reception room, and after a nervous hand clasp waved her to a +chair. + +He was still holding her card, and as he glanced covertly at it she +recalled that she had given him no name over the telephone and that +he had known her only by the time of her appointment. Decidedly she +must have made an odd impression! + +Well, he could see for himself now, she thought, a trifle defiantly. +Certainly he was taking stock of her out of those shrewd swift gray +eyes of his. He could see that she was, well--certainly a nice girl! + +As a matter of fact McLean could see that she was considerably more. +Rather disconcertingly more! It was not often that such white-clad +apparitions, piquant of face and coppery of hair, teased the eyes in +his receiving room. + +"You wanted to see me--?" he offered mechanically. + +"Perhaps you have heard Jack Ryder speak of me--of Jinny Jeffries?" +began the girl, determined to put the affair on a sound social +footing as soon as possible. + +McLean considered and, in honesty, shook his head. "He very seldom +mentioned young ladies." + +"Oh--!" Jinny tried not to appear dashed. "We are very old +friends--in America--and of course I've seen a good deal of him +since I've been in Cairo. In fact, he is stopping now at the same +hotel with us--with my aunt and uncle and myself." + +McLean smiled. "He said it was a tooth," he mentioned dryly. + +In Jinny's eyes a little flicker answered him, but her words were +ingenuous. "Oh, of course he _has_ been having a time with the +dentist. That's why he couldn't return to his camp. What I meant +was, that at the hotel we have been seeing him every day until--he +has just disappeared since day before yesterday and we--that is, +I--am very much concerned about it." + +"Disappeared? You mean, he--" + +"Just disappeared, that's all. He hasn't been at the hotel--he +hasn't been anywhere that I know of, and I haven't heard a word from +him--so I telephoned you and then when I found he hadn't been +here--" + +McLean looked off into space. "Eh, well, he'll turn up," he said +comfortingly. "Jack's erratic, you may say, in his comings and +goings. He means nothing by it.... I've known him do the same to +me.... Any time, now; you're likely to hear--" + +Miss Jeffries sat up a little straighter and her cheeks burned with +brighter warmth. + +"It isn't just that I want to see him, Mr. McLean," she took quietly +distinct pains to explain. "It's because I am anxious--" + +"Not a need, not a need in the world. Jack knows his way about.... +He may have been called back to the diggings, you know--if they dug +up a bit porcelain there or a few grains of corn the boy would +forget the sun was shining." + +Perhaps his caller's burnished hair had shaped that thought. "Jack +knows his way about," he repeated encouragingly, as one who +demolishes the absurd fears of women and children. + +"You don't quite understand." Jinny's tones were silken smooth. "You +see, I left him in rather unusual circumstances. It was a place +where he had no business in the world to be--" + +At McLean's unguardedly startled gaze her humor overtook her wrath. + +"Oh, it was quite all right for _me_" she replied mischievously to +that look. "Only not for him. You see, he was masquerading--" + +"Again?" thought McLean, involuntarily. Lord, what a hand for the +lassies that lad was--and he had thought him such an aloof one! + +"Masquerading as a woman--so he could take me to a reception." + +Jinny began to falter. Just putting that escapade into words +portrayed its less commendable features. + +"It was a woman's reception," she began again, "at a Turkish house. +A marriage reception--" + +She had certainly secured McLean's whole-hearted attention. + +"A marriage reception--a Turkish marriage reception?" he said very +sharply and amazedly as his caller continued to pause. "Do you mean +to say that Jack Ryder went into a Turkish house dressed as a +woman--?" + +There was a pronounced angularity of feature about the young +Scotchman which now took on a chiseled sternness. + +Swiftly Jinny interposed. "Oh, you mustn't blame him, Mr. McLean! +You see, I wanted very much to go to a Turkish reception and I +didn't have the courage to go alone or drag some other tourist as +inexperienced as myself, and so Jack--why, there didn't seem any +harm in his dressing up. Just for fun, you know. He put on a Turkish +mantle and a veil up to his eyes and he was sure he'd never be found +out. I ought not to have let him, I know--it was my fault--" + +She looked so flushed and innocent and distressed that McLean's +chivalry rose swiftly to her need. + +"Indeed you mustn't blame yourself Miss--Miss Jeffries. You don't +know Egypt--and Jack does. He knew that if he had been discovered +there would have been no help for him--and no questions asked +afterwards. And it might have been very dangerous for you. The +blame is just his now," he said decisively, yet not without a +certain weak-kneed sympathy with the culprit. + +For if the girl had looked like this ... he could see that she would +be a difficult little piece to withstand ... though any man with an +ounce of sense in his head would have behaved as a responsible +protector and not as a reckless school boy. + +"What happened?" he said quickly. + +"Oh, nothing happened--nothing that I know of. We got along very +well, I thought, although now I remember that some people _did_ +stare.... But I wasn't worried at the time. I thought it was just +because I was an American and he was apparently a Turkish woman, but +there was no reason why an American might not get a Turkish woman to +act as a guide, was there?... And then Jack told me to go home +first--he said it would be simpler that way and that he would slip +over to some friend's or to some safe place and take his disguise +off. He wore a gray suit beneath it, and the only funny thing was +some black tennis shoes.... So I left him. And he hasn't been back +since." + +She added as McLean was silent, "He told me that he had some +engagement for that evening, so I did not begin to worry until the +next day." + +"Now just how long ago was this?" + +"Two days ago. Day before yesterday afternoon." + +She looked anxiously at McLean's face and took alarm at his careful +absence of expression. + +"Oh, Mr. McLean, do you think--" + +He brushed that aside. "And where was it--this reception?" + +"At an old palace, forever away on the edge of the city. I don't +remember the street--we drove and I had the cab wait. But it +belonged to a Turkish general. Hamdi Bey," she brought out +triumphantly. "General Hamdi Bey." + +McLean did not correct her idea of the title. His expression was +more carefully non-committal than ever, while behind its quiet guard +his thoughts were breaking out like a revolution. + +Hamdi Bey.... A wedding reception.... The daughter of Tewfick +Pasha.... + +In the secret depths of his soul he uttered profane and troubled +words. That French girl, again.... So Ryder had not forgotten that +affair, although he had kept silent about it of late. He had bided +his time and taken that rash means of seeing the girl again--and he +had involved this unknowing young American in a risk of scandal and +deceived her into believing herself responsible for this caprice +while all the time she had been a mere cloak and it had been his own +diabolical desire.... + +Miss Jeffries was surprised to see a sudden sorry softness dawn in +the young man's look upon her. And she was surprised, too, at his +next question. + +"I wonder, now, if you were the young lady who took him to a +masquerade ball--some time ago?" + +Lightly she acknowledged it. "You'll think I'm always taking him to +things," she said brightly, but McLean's troubled gaze did not +quicken with a smile. + +He was experiencing a vast compassion. She was so innocent, so +unconscious of the quicksands about her.... Probably she had never +heard a breath of that first adventure. + +And it was this fair Christian creature whom Jack Ryder had +abandoned for a veiled girl from a Turk's harem! + +McLean filled with cold, antagonistic wonder. He forgot the lovely +image of the French miniature, and remembering Tewfick's rounded +eyes and olive features he thought of the veiled girl--most +illogically, for he knew that Tewfick was not her father--as some +bold-eyed, warm-skinned image of base allure. + +Sorrowfully he shook his head over his friend. He determined to +protect him and to protect this girl's innocence of his behavior. He +would help her to save him.... She could do it yet--if only she did +not learn the truth and turn from him. If ever she had been able to +make Jack go to a masquerade--that cursed masquerade!--she could +work other, more beneficent, miracles. + +So now he asked, very cautiously, his mind on divided paths, "Do you +say there was nothing to draw suspicion--he did not talk to any +one, the guests or the bride--?" + +"Oh, yes, he did talk to the bride," said Miss Jeffries with such +utter unconsciousness that McLean's heart hardened against the +renegade. + +"He talked quite a while to her," she said. + +"Did you notice anything--?" + +"Oh, I couldn't hear what was said. He was the last in line and he +stayed for some time. He said afterward that it was all right. She +was very nice to him," said Jinny earnestly, producing every scrap +of incident for McLean's judgment. "She showed him some of her +presents--something about her neck." + +In mid-speech McLean changed a startled "God!" to "Good!" + +"She wasn't suspicious, then?" he said weakly. + +"Not as far as I could see. Oh, nothing _seemed_ to be wrong. But I +did feel uneasy until I got away and then, Jack hasn't come back--" + +Again she looked at the young Scotchman for confirmation of her fear +and again she saw that careful expressionless calm. + +"It's no need for alarm," he told her slowly, "since nothing went +wrong. I see no reason why Jack couldn't have walked out of that +reception. If we only knew where he was going later--" + +"Yes, something might have happened later," Jinny took up. "I +thought of that. He might have wanted some more fun and felt more +reckless--Oh, I _am_ worried," she confessed, her gray eyes very +round and childlike. + +And if anything had happened she would always blame herself, thought +McLean ironically.... The unthinking deviltry of the young +scoundrel!... When he found him he'd have a few things to say! + +"That's why I came to you," Jinny went on. "I hesitated, for he had +warned me so against telling any one, but no one else knows--" + +"And no one must know," McLean assured her crisply. "I daresay it's +a mare's nest and Jack will be found safe and sound at his diggings +or off on a lark with some friend or other, but it's well to make +sure and you did quite right in coming to me." + +Jinny thought she had done quite right, too. + +There was a satisfying strength about McLean. She resented a trifle +his masculine way of trying to keep the dark side from her; she was +not greatly misled by that untroubled look of his and yet she was +unconsciously reassured by it.... And although he refused to be +stampeded by alarm he was not incredulous of it, for his manner was +frankly grave. + +"I'll send out at once," he said decisively, "and see if I can pick +up any gossip of that reception. I've a very clever clerk with +brothers in the bazaars who is a perfect wireless for information. +He has told me the night before a man was to be murdered." + +He paused, reflecting that was not a happy suggestion. + +"Then I'll send out to Jack's diggings. That express doesn't stop +to-night, but I'll find a way. And I'll let you know as soon as I +can." + +"You're very kind," said Jinny gratefully. + +His competent manner brought her a light-hearted sensation of +difficulties already solved. Jack was as good as found, she felt in +swift reaction. If he was in any trouble this forceful young man +would settle it. + +But probably he wasn't in any trouble. Probably he was just at his +diggings--rushing off from her in the exasperating way he seemed to +do whenever they were getting on particularly well.... She +remembered how he had bolted from that masquerade which had begun so +happily. He had said he was ill, but she had never completely slain +the suspicion that his illness sprang from ennui and disinclination. + +She rose. "I mustn't take any more of your time, Mr. McLean--and you +probably have a four fifteen engagement." + +But her light raillery failed of its mark. + +"Eh? No, I have not," seriously he assured her. "You are quite the +last one I took on--the last before tea." + +He paused confused with a strange suggestion.... Tea.... His servant +did it rather well.... And it was time-- + +Usually he had it in the garden. It was a charming garden, full of +roses, with a nice view of the Citadel--and his strange suggestion +expanded with a rosy vision of Jinny among the roses, beside his +wicker table.... Would she possibly care to--? + +He struggled with his idea--and with his shyness. And then the sense +that it wasn't quite decent, somehow, to be offering tea to this +girl whom anxiety for Ryder's unknown lot had brought to him +overcame that unwonted impulse. + +He dismissed the idea. And like all shy men he was oddly relieved at +the passing of the necessity for initiative, even while he felt his +mild hope's expiring pang. + +He stepped before her to open the doors to which she was now taking +herself. + +In the entrance he saw his clerk--the clever one--going out, and +excusing himself he went forward to detain the man. For a moment +there ensued a low-toned colloquy. Then the clerk, a dark-browned +keen-featured fellow in European clothes with a red fez, began to +relate something. + +When McLean turned back to Jinny Jeffries she saw that his look was +sharply altered. There was a transfixed air about him and when he +spoke his voice told her that he had had a shock. + +"My man tells me," he said, "that Hamdi Bey's bride is dead. He +buried her yesterday." + + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +FROM THE BAZAARS + + +There was a moment's pause. + +"What? That lovely girl?" said Jinny in startled pity. She added +incredulously, "Yesterday?... And only the day before--why, what +_could_ have happened?" + +That was what McLean was asking himself very grimly. + +Aloud he told her slowly. "They say that fire happened. Some +accident--a candle overturned in her apartments. And of course the +windows were screened--" + +"_Fire_--how terrible! That lovely girl," said Jinny again. She was +genuinely horrified and pitiful, yet she found a moment to wonder at +the evident depths of McLean's consternation. For of course he had +never seen the girl. + +Yet he looked utterly upset. + +"It's one of the most dreadful things I ever heard of," Jinny +murmured. "On her wedding night.... And she was so young, Mr. +McLean, and so exquisite. She didn't look like a real girl.... She +was a fairy creature.... I never dreamed there _really_ were +rose-leaf skins before but hers was just like flower petals. Jack +and I talked about it, I remember. And her face had something so +bewitching about it, something so sweet and delicate--" + +She broke off revisited with that vision of Aimee's sprite-like +beauty.... How little that poor girl had thought, as she stood there +in the bright splendor of her robes and diadem, that in a few hours +more-- + +"Oh, I hope that fire--that it was merciful--that she didn't +suffer," she said almost inaudibly. + +But speech itself was too definitive of horrors. + +"It's tragic," she finished simply. + +It was tragic, with a complicated tragedy, thought Andrew McLean as +he stood there, his eyes narrowing, his lips compressed, his mind +invaded with a dark swarm of conjecture, surmise, suspicion, his +vision possessed by a flitting rush of pictures. + +He saw Jack talking with the girl at the reception.... The girl +showing him something about her neck--that accursed locket, he +thought acutely.... Jack sending Miss Jeffries home.... Had he +arranged that purposely? Was there some mad, improvised scheme of +escape in the air? + +The pictures became mere flitting wraiths of conjecture, yet touched +with horrifying possibility.... Jack lingering, hiding.... Jack +making love to the girl, attempting flight.... Jack discovered--and +the quick saber thrust--for both. + +A fire?... Very likely--to screen the darker tragedy. Hamdi was +capable of it to save his pride. And it would dispose so easily of +the--evidence. + +McLean's thoughts flinched from the grim outcome of his fear. He +tried to tell himself that he was inventing horrors, that the fire +might be the simple truth, that Ryder's talk with the girl might +actually have ended in farewell--at least a temporary farewell--and +that his consequent low spirits had taken him off to mope in camp. + +That was undoubtedly the thing to believe, at least until there was +actual necessity to disbelieve it, and looking at the story in that +way, McLean's Scotch sense of Providence was capable of pointing out +the stern benefits of the sad visitation. + +Whatever mischief might have been afoot between his friend and that +unfortunate young girl the fire had prevented. And however hard Jack +might take this now, decidedly the poor girl's death was better for +him than her life. + +No more wasting himself now on sad romance and adventure. No more +desire and danger. No more lurking about barred gates and secret +doors and forbidden palaces. No more clandestine trysts. No more +fury of mind, beating against the bars of fate. + +Jack was saved. + +Even if he had succeeded in rescuing the girl--what then? McLean was +skeptical of felicity from such contrasting lives. Better the +finality, the sharp pain, the utter separation. And then-- + +His eyes returned to the young American before him. She was the +unconscious answer to that future. She would save Ryder from regret +and retrospection.... In after years, looking back from a happy and +well-ordered domesticity, this would all become to him a fantastic, +far-off adventure, sad with the remembered but unfelt sadness of +youth, yet mercifully dim and softened with young beauty. + +Jack must never tell this girl the story. McLean had read somewhere +of the mistakes of too-open revelation to women and now he was very +sure of it.... She must never receive this hurt, never know that +when she had been troubling over Jack's disappearance he had been +agonizing over another girl--that the escapade she thought so +intimate a lark had been a trick to see the other--that the young +creature whose loveliness she so innocently praised had been her +rival, drawing Jack from her.... + +McLean would speak clearly to Ryder about this and seal his lips.... +But first he would have to be found. + +He became conscious that he had been a long time silent, following +these thoughts, while Jinny waited. + +"I'll do everything I can to find out about that fire," he told her. +"I mean, about any discovery of Jack in the palace," he quickly +amended as her face was touched with instant question. "And I'll see +if any one in Cairo knows where he is. Then if nothing turns up I'll +just pop out to his diggings in the morning and make sure he's all +right.... I'll get back that night and telephone you. And until +then, not a word about it. Much better not." + +"Not a word," Jinny promised. "And if you should happen to find out +anything to-night--" + +"I'll let you know at once. Well, rather. But don't count on that. +The old boy is out in his tombs, dusting off his mummies. You may +get a letter, yourself, in the morning," he threw out with +heartening inspiration, "And while you are reading it, I'll be +tearing along to the infernal desert--" + +He had brought the smile to her eyes as well as lips. Bright and +reassured and comfortably dependent upon his resourceful strength, +she took her leave. + +But there was no smile remaining upon Andrew McLean's visage. + +Twenty-four hours. Two nights and a day.... And the girl was dead +and in her grave--Moslems wasted no time before interment--and Jack +was--where? + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +IN THE DESERT + + +Clinging to that plunging horse Ryder made little attempt at first +to guide the flight. It was enough to keep himself in the saddle and +Aimee in his arms while every galloping moment flung a farther +distance between them and that palace of horror. + +His heart was beating in a wild, triumphant exultation. Glorious to +be out under the free sky, the wind in his face, the open world +ahead! He felt one with that dashing creature beneath him. + +And Aimee was in his arms, untouched, unhurt, out from the power of +that sinister man and the expectation of dread things. + +The moment was a supreme and glorious emotion. + +They were headed south. And to Ryder's exhilaration this seemed +good. Cairo offered no hiding place for that fugitive girl. Even the +harbor that McLean could give would not be proof against the legal +forces of the Turks. Law and order, power and police were all in the +hands of the husband or father. Even now the alarm might be given, +the telephones ringing. + +Aimee must be hidden until she could be smuggled to France--or +until the French authorities could get out their protective +documents. The hiding place that occurred to Ryder was a wild and +desperate expedient. + +The American hospital at Siut. The isolation ward--the pretense of +contagious illness. And then later travel north, in the care of +nurses-- + +All this, if he could win over one of the doctors. At that moment +winning over a doctor appeared a sane and simple thing to Ryder's +mind. The only difficulty he recognized was getting Aimee into that +hospital. + +But they would not be looking for him in the south. He could manage +it, he felt jubilantly. He could smuggle her into his diggings at +night and then make his arrangements. Anything, everything was +possible, now that the nightmare of a palace was left behind them. + +South they went then, at a quieter pace, the Arab's rhythmic +footfalls ringing through the still, gray world of before dawn. +Across the Nile they made their way, working out on sandbars to the +narrow depths, where Ryder swam beside the swimming horse while +Aimee clung to the saddle. Then south again along the river road. + +The sky was light now. And the river was light. Only the palms and +the villages and the flat dhurra fields were dark. And in the east +behind the Mokattam hills a thin band of gold began to brighten. + +Life was stirring. Small black boys on huge black buffaloes +splashed in the river. Veiled girls with water jars on their +high-held heads from which the shawls trailed down to the dust filed +past from the villages like a Parthenon frieze. On the high banks +the naked fellaheen were already stooping to the incessant dipping +of the shadouf, while from the fields came the plaintive creaking of +the well sweep, as some harnessed camel or bullock began its eternal +round. + +A flock of sheep came down the river road, driven by their ragged +shepherds, and a string of camels, burdened beyond all semblance to +themselves, bobbed by like rhythmic haystacks, led by a black-robed, +bare-footed child, carrying a live turkey in her arms while before +her rode her father, in shining pongee robes on a white donkey +strung with beads of blue. + +And by these travelers there passed in that brightening dawn two +other travelers from the north, a pair on a powerful but tired black +horse, a man in a military cloak and a green and gold turban about +his bronzed head, and behind him, on a pillion, a black-mantled, +black-veiled girl, with bare, dangling feet. + +It was Aimee who had evolved the disguise, constructing the turban +from the negligee beneath her mantle, and it was Aimee who bargained +with the villagers for their breakfast, eggs and goats' milk and +bread and rice, while her lord, as befitted his dignity, stayed +aloof upon his steed, returning a courteous response of "_Allah +salimak_--God bless you" to their greetings. + +Then as the day brightened and the last soft veil of mist was +burned away before a blood-red sun, that pair of travelers left the +highroad and turned west upon a byway that led past fields of corn +and yellow water and mud villages where goats and naked babies and +ragged women squatted idly in the dust, and on through low, +red-granite hills swirled about with yellow sand drift and out into +the desert beyond. + +Here fresh vigor came to the Arab horse, and tossing his mane and +stretching out his nostrils to the dry air he broke into a gallop +that sent sand and pebbles flying from his hoofs. To right and left +the startled desert hares scattered, and from the clumps of spiky +helga the black vultures rose in heavy-winged flight. + +Then the breeze dropped, and the swift-coming heat rushed at them +like a furnace breath, and slower and slower they made their way, +Ryder leading the jaded horse and Aimee nodding in the saddle, mere +crawling specks across the immensity of sand. + +Then, in the shade of a huge clump of gray-green _mit minan_ beside +a jutting boulder they stopped at last to rest. The horse sank on +his knees; Ryder spread out his cloak and Aimee dropped down upon +its folds, lost in exhausted sleep as soon as her head touched the +sands. Ryder, his back against the rock, kept watch. + +It was not the exultant Ryder of that first hour of flight. The +excitement of the night had subsided and withdrawn its wild +stimulation. It was a hot and tired and immensely sobered young man +who sat there with eyes that burned from lack of sleep and a brow +knit into a taut and anxious line. + +Realization flooded him with the sun. Responsibility burned in upon +him with the heat. + +Alone in the Libyan desert he sat there, and at his feet there slept +the young girl whose life he had snapped utterly off from its roots. + +He was overwhelmingly responsible for her. If she had never met him, +if he had never continued to thrust himself upon her, she would have +gone on her predestined way, safe, secluded, luxurious--vaguely +unhappy and mutinous at times, perhaps, in the secret stirrings of +her blood, but still an indulged and wealthy little Moslem. + +And now--she lay there, like a sleeping child, the dark tendrils of +hair clinging to her moist, sun-flushed cheeks, her long lashes +mingling their shadows with the purple underlining of the night's +terrors, homeless, exhausted, resourceless but for that anxious-eyed +young man. + +Desperately he hoped that she would not wake to regret. Even a +sardonic tyrant in a palace might be preferable in the merciless +daylight to a helpless young man in the Libyan desert. + +And she was so slight, so delicate, so made for rich and lovely +luxury.... Looking down at her he felt a lump in his throat ... a +lump of queer, choking tenderness.... + +He wanted to protect her, to save her, to spend himself for her.... +He felt for her a reverent wonder, a stirring that was at once +protective and possessive and denying of all self. + +He would die to save her. He tried to tell himself reassuringly that +he _had_ saved her.... If only he could keep her safe.... + +He thought of the life before her. He thought of that family in +France in whose name he had urged his interference. That unknown +Delcasse aunt who had sent out her agents for her lost heirs--would +she welcome and endow this lovely girl? + +He could not doubt it.... Aimee's youth and beauty would be treasure +trove to a jaded lonely woman with money to invest in futures. Aimee +would be a belle, an heiress.... + +He looked down at her with a sudden darkness in his young eyes.... +And still she slept, wrapped in the sorry mantle of his masquerade, +the torn chiffons of her negligee fluttering over her slim, bare +feet. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV + +THE TOMB OF A KING + + +There were several approaches to the American excavations. McLean, +on that morning after his visit from Jinny Jeffries, chose to borrow +a friend's motor and man and break the speed laws of Upper Egypt, +and then shift to an agile donkey at the little village from which +the gulleys ran west through the red hills into the desert. + +It was a still, hot day without cloud or wind and the sun had an air +of standing permanently high in the heavens, holding the day at +noon. Shimmering heat waves quivered about the base of the farther +hills and veiled the desert reaches. It was not conducive to comfort +and Andrew McLean was not comfortable. He was hot and sticky and +sandy and abominably harassed. + +Not a creature, as far as he could discover, had seen Jack Ryder in +Cairo since the afternoon of that reception at Hamdi Bey's. He had +not been seen at the Museum nor the banks, nor at Cook's, nor the +usual restaurants, nor at the clubs with his friends. And the clever +clerk--with the two brothers in the bazaar--had unearthed quite a +bit of disquieting news about that reception--disquieting, that is, +to one with secret fears. + +There had been a fire in the apartments of the bride of Hamdi Bey +and the bride had been killed instantly--that much was known to all +the world. The general had been distracted. He had sat brooding +beside his bride's coffin, allowing no one, not even her father, to +look upon the poor charred remains that he had placed within. He had +been a man out of his mind with grief, gnawing his nails, beating +his slaves,--Oh, assuredly, it had been a calamity of a very high +order! + +One of the brothers in the bazaar had himself talked with an old +crone whose sister's child was employed in the general's kitchen, +and the fourth-hand story had lost nothing on the route. + +The bride's youth and beauty, her jewels, her robes, the general's +infatuation, and the general's grief, the reports of these ran +through the city like wildfire. And from the particular channel of +the kitchen maid and the old aunt and the brother in the bazaars +came news of the very especial means that Allah had taken to +preserve the general from destruction. + +For he had been in the bride's apartments just before the fire. But +the power of Allah, the Allseeing, had sent a thief, a prowler, by +night, upon the palace roofs, and the screams of a girl in the upper +story had called the general to that direction. + +And so his preservation had been accomplished. + +It was that rumor of the thief upon the roofs which sent the chill +of apprehension down McLean's spine. For though the bazaars knew +nothing of the thief's identity and it was reported he had escaped +by the river yet McLean felt the sinister finger of suspicion. If +the thief had not been a thief--unless of brides!--and if he had +_not_ escaped--? + +Impatiently the young Scotchman clapped his heels against the +donkey's sides, enhancing the efforts of the runner with the +gesticulating stick. + +Suppose, now, that he should not find Jack at the excavations? + +It was encouraging, somehow, to hear the monotonous rise and fall of +the labor song proceeding as usual, although McLean immediately told +himself that the work would naturally be going on under Thatcher's +direction whether Ryder were there or not. The camp knew nothing of +Cairo. The camp would be as usual. + +And yet, after his first moment's survey, he had an indefinite but +uneasy idea that the camp was not as usual. + +True, the tatterdemalion frieze of basket bearers still wove its +rhythmic way over the mounds to the siftings where Thatcher was +presiding as was his wont, but in the native part of the encampment +there appeared a sly stir and excitement. + +The unoccupied, of all ages and sexes, that usually were squatting +interminably about some fire or sleeping like mummies in +hermetically wrapped black mantles, now were gathered in little +whispering knots whose backward glances betrayed a sense of +uneasiness, and as McLean rode past, a young Arab who had been the +center of attention drew back with such carefulness to escape +observation that McLean's shrewd eyes marked him closely. + +It might be that his nerves were deceiving him, but there did seem +to be something surreptitious in the air. + +Over his shoulder he glimpsed the young Arab hurrying out of the +camp. + +It might be anything or nothing, he told himself. The man might be +going shopping to the village and the others giving him their +commissions, or he might be an illicit dealer in curios trying to +pick up some dishonest treasure. In native diggings those hangers on +were thick as flies. + +He dismounted and hurried forward to meet Thatcher's advance. +The men had rarely met and Thatcher's air of hesitation and +absent-mindedness made McLean proffer his name promptly with a +sense of speeding through the preliminaries. Then with a manner +he strove to make casual he put his question. + +"I say, is Ryder back?" + +He knew, in the moment's pause, how tight suspense was gripping him. +Then Thatcher glanced toward the black yawning mouth of a tomb +entrance. + +"Why, yes--he's down there." He added. "Been a bit sick. Complains +of the sun." + +For a moment his relief was so great that McLean did not believe in +it. Jack here--Jack absolutely safe-- + +Mechanically he put, "When did he come in?" + +"When?" Thatcher hesitated, trying to recall. "Oh, night before +last--rode in after dark." He added reassuringly, as the other swung +about towards the tomb, "He says there's nothing really wrong with +him. There's no temperature." + +McLean nodded. His relief now was acutely compounded with disgust. +He felt no lightning leap of thanksgiving that his friend was safe, +but rather that flash of irritated reaction which makes the +primitive parent smack a recovered child. + +Not a thing in the world the matter! A mare's nest--just as he had +prophesied to Miss Jeffries. Why in heaven's name hadn't Jack the +decency to send that over-anxious young lady a card when he +abandoned town so suddenly?... Not that McLean blamed Miss Jeffries. +Given the masquerade and Jack's disappearance and a zealous feminine +interest her concern was perfectly natural. + +But McLean had left a busy office and taken an anxious and +uncomfortable excursion, and his voice had no genial ring as he +shouted his friend's name down the dark entrance of the tomb shaft. + +In a moment he heard a voice shouting hollowly back, then a +wavering spot of light appeared upon the inclined floor and Ryder's +figure emerged like an apparition from the gloom. + +"I say! That you, Andy?" + +Evidently he had been snatched from sleep. His dark hair was +rumpled, his face flushed, and he yawned with complete frankness. + +McLean knew a sudden yearning to put an arm about him.... Dear old +Jack.... Dear, irresponsible scamp.... His reaction of the +irritation vanished.... It was so darned good to see the old chap +again.... + +He muttered something about being in the vicinity while Ryder, +rousing to hostship, called directions to the cook boy to bring a +tray of luncheon. + +"It's cool down here," he told McLean, leading the way back. + +It was cool indeed, in the Hall of Offerings. It was also, McLean +thought, satisfying a recovered appetite, a trifle depressing. + +They sat in a small island of light in an ocean of gloom while about +them shadowy columns towered to indistinguishable heights and +half-seen carvings projected their strange suggestions. + +It seemed incongruous to be smoking cigarettes so unconcernedly at +the feet of the ancient gods. + +But McLean's feeling of depression might have been due to his +renewed awareness of catastrophe. For though Jack was here, safe and +sound enough, although a bit unlike himself in manner, yet Jack +_had_ been at that confounded reception in a woman's rig and Jack +had seen the girl and talked with her--apparently on terms of +understanding. + +And if Jack had left Cairo that night, as he said he did--claiming +delay on the way due to a tired horse--then Jack knew nothing in the +world of the palace fire, and the girl's sudden and tragic death. + +And McLean would have to tell him. He would have to tell him that +the girl he was probably dreaming of in some fool's paradise of +memory and hope was now only a little mound of dust in an Oriental +cemetery. That a shaft of temporary wood already marked the grave of +Aimee Marie Dejane, daughter of Tewfick Pasha and wife of Hamdi +Bey.... + +And however much McLean's sound senses might disapprove of the whole +fantastic affair and his sober judgment commend the workings of +Providence, he loved his friend, and he feared that his friend loved +this lost girl. + +He had to end love and hope and romance and implant a desperate +grief.... + +He thought very steadily of Jinny Jeffries. He cleared his throat. + +"Jack, old man--" + +He started to tell him that there had been a fire in Cairo, a most +shocking fire in a haremlik. It seemed to him that Jack was not +listening, that he had a faraway, yet intent look upon his face, as +of one attending to other things. And then suddenly Jack seemed to +gather resolution and turned to his friend with an air of narration +of his own. + +"Look here, McLean, there's something I want to tell you--" + +"Wait a minute now," said McLean quietly. "I want you to hear +this.... It was a fire in the palace of your friend, Hamdi Bey." + +He had Jack's attention now--he was fairly conscious of arrested +breath. Not looking about him he went grimly on, "The night of the +wedding a fire started in the haremlik.... It was a bad business, a +very bad business, Jack. For the girl--the girl Hamdi had just +married--" + +He was conscious of Jack's look upon him but he did not turn to meet +it. + +"She died," he said heavily. "He buried her yesterday." + +He thought that Jack was never going to speak. + +Then, "Died?" said Ryder in an odd voice. + +"I expect she breathed in a bit of smoke," said McLean, trying for a +merciful suggestion. + +"And he buried her--?" + +Jack was like a child, trying to fit bewildering facts together. +McLean's sympathy hurt him like a physical pain. He wondered what it +could be like to realize that some loved one you had just talked +with, in radiant life, was now gone utterly.... + +And then he heard Jack laugh. Mad, he thought quickly, turning now +to look at him. + +Ryder's head was tilted back; Ryder's shoulders were shaking. "Oh, +my Aunt!" he gasped hysterically. "My Aunt Clarissa--is _that_ what +Hamdi says!" + +He sobered instantly and leaned towards McLean. "That looks as if +he's done with her--what? Saving his face that way? You're sure it +was Aimee--the girl he had just married? Not some other girl--some +co-wife or something?" + +And as McLean bewilderedly muttered that he was sure, Ryder began to +laugh again. To laugh jubilantly, joyously, triumphantly. + +"He's given her up--he's got a saving explanation to thrust in the +world's face! Oh, blessed Allah, Veiler of all that should be +veiled! The man's through. He's had enough. He isn't going to try +to--" + +Across the bright oblong of the entrance a shadow appeared. + +"Ryder--I say, Ryder," said a hurried voice--Thatcher's voice--and +Thatcher came hastily forward in perturbed urgency. + +"There's a lot of men outside--police and natives and what not. With +warrants. They're searching the place. And they want to see you.... +Hang it all, Ryder," said Thatcher explosively but apologetically, +"they say you've made off with some sheik's daughter." + +He paused, shocked at the monstrosity of the accusation. He was a +delicate-minded man--outside of his knowledge of antiquities--and he +evidently expected his young associate to fall upon him and slay him +for the slander. + +"A sheik's daughter--?" said Ryder in a mildly wondering voice. From +his emphasis one might have inferred he was saying, "How odd! I +don't remember any sheik's daughter--" + +A queer uncomfortable flush spread fanways from Thatcher's thin +temples and rayed across his high cheekbones. He did not look at +either of the men as he murmured, "It's most peculiar, but that Arab +horse--the sheik claims the horse is his, too. He says you rode off +on it, with his daughter." + +"That's all right," said Ryder absently. "I don't want the horse.... +But you say the sheik's there? What does he look like? Thin--with +blond mustaches?" + +"Oh, no, no, not at all. He is quite heavy and bearded--one-eyed, if +I recollect. But there _is_ a man with a blond mustache who appears +to do the directing--" + +"And you mean they are searching?" said Ryder abruptly. "You've let +them in--?" + +"They have warrants," Thatcher protested. "And there are proper +policemen conducting the search--" + +"My good God! Where are they now? Not coming _here_? I don't have +any policemen trampling here and meddling with my finds--tell them +to clear out, Thatcher, you know there's no sheik's daughter here!" + +Ryder gave a quick laugh but the impression of his laughter was not +as sharp as the impression of his alarm. + +"I did tell them it was preposterous," Thatcher began, "but, you +see, after finding the horse--" + +"Oh, the horse! I got him for a song--of course the beggar is +stolen. Give him back, if they claim him. But as for any sheik's +daughter--keep the crowd out, Thatcher, I won't have them here, not +in these tombs--" + +"I tell you they are policemen--they are armed--you can't resist--" + +"How many are they? A lot? But they'll take your word, won't they? +Look here, McLean, can't you settle this for me and keep them out?" + +"The natives have been talking," murmured Thatcher, reddening still +deeper, "and they have said enough about your riding in at night +and--and keeping to this tomb all day to make the men very +suspicious. They are watching this one now--" + +"Then keep them back--long as you can. For God's sake," entreated +Ryder with that strange passionate violence. "Andy--you do +something--hold them back. Give me time. I--I've got to get some +things together--I won't have them at my things--hold them back--out +here--till I come." + +He was gone. Gone tearing back into the gloom and silence of his +tomb. And McLean and Thatcher, astounded witnesses of his outburst, +turned speedily to the entrance, avoiding each other's eyes. + +Agitatedly Thatcher was murmuring that Ryder's finds were valuable, +immensely valuable, and it was disturbing to contemplate any +invasion, and with equal agitation but more mechanical calm McLean +was murmuring back that he understood--he quite understood-- + +As for understanding he was stunned and dazed. A sheik's daughter! +And the father himself claiming her--under the direction of a +blond-mustached man.... And a stolen horse.... Jack conceding the +horse.... Jack utterly upset at the search party.... + +But he himself had seen that new-placed shaft with its inscription +to Aimee Marie Dejane.... What then in the name of wonders did this +mean? There couldn't be _another_ girl? McLean's imagination +faltered then dashed on at a gallop. Some--some hand-maiden, +perhaps, whom Jack had rescued in mistaken chivalry? Perhaps the +French girl has sent a maid on ahead? + +McLean's head was whirling now. One thing appeared quite as possible +as another. Pasha's daughters and sheik's daughters, stolen horses +and Djinns and Afrits and palaces and masquerades at wedding +receptions appeared upon the same plane of feasibility. + +Outwardly he was extremely calm. Calm and cold and crisp. + +At the mouth of the tomb he detained the party of native policemen +with their hangers-on of curious natives and examined, with great +show of circumspection and authority, the perfectly regular search +warrants which had been issued for them at the instigation of an +apparently bereft parent. + +He conversed with the alleged parent, a stolid, taciturn native +dignitary whose accusations were confirmed by eagerly assenting +followers. He lived in a small village, not far north of the camp. +He had a young daughter, very beautiful. Three nights ago he had +surprised her with this young American and they had fled upon his +noblest horse. + +It was a simple and direct story. And Jack--by his own report--had +been out upon the desert that night, had appeared, upon the next +night, with this unknown and beautiful horse, and had since kept to +the tomb, claiming illness, in a most persistent way. + +The camp boys had testified that he had been vividly critical of the +food sent in to him, and that he had required extraordinary amounts +of heated water. + +"All of which," McLean said sternly, in the vernacular, "amounts to +nothing--unless you can discover the girl." + +"And that, monsieur," said a Turk in the uniform of the Sultan's +guards, appearing beside the desert sheik, "that is exactly what we +are here to do." + +McLean found himself looking into a thin, menacing face, capped +with a red fez, a face deeply lined, marked by light, arrogant eyes +and embellished with a huge, blond mustache. + +"And your interest in this, monsieur?" he questioned. + +"I am a friend of Sheik Hassan's," said the Turk loftily. "I shall +see that my friend obtains his rights." + +And in McLean's other ear a distraught Thatcher was murmuring "That +officer chap is Hamdi Bey--a General of the Guards. You know, Mr. +McLean, this really is--you know, it is--" + +Hamdi Bey ... Hamdi Bey, two days after his distressing loss, +befriending this sheik and trying to involve Jack Ryder in disgrace. + +Mystifying. Mystifying and disquieting--yes, disquieting, in the +face of Jack's alarm. But for that alarm McLean could have believed +the whole thing a farcical attempt of Hamdi's to revenge himself +upon Ryder--supposing that Hamdi had discovered Ryder in his +masquerade or else as the prowler by night--but Jack's furious +anxiety to keep the party out, and his dashing back, ostensibly to +preserve his things-- + +Was it actually possible that he _had_ that sheik's daughter +concealed in some nook or cranny of the place? + +McLean told himself that it was preposterous. It _was_ +preposterous--but Ryder had been doing preposterous things.... And +glancing at Thatcher he perceived that that perturbed and +transparent gentleman was also telling himself that _his_ +suspicions were preposterous. + +The search party, tiring of parley, was moving about the hall in +businesslike inspection. + +And then Ryder reappeared, a distinctly alert but self-contained +Ryder, who met the interrogations of the police with scoffing and +absolute denial. + +But McLean was conscious that there was something tense and nervous +in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and +his own nerves began to tighten apprehensively. + +It did not add to his composure to see Ryder salute Hamdi Bey with +an ironic and overdone politeness. + +"Ah, monsieur le general! We meet as we parted--in the depths!" + +The general appeared to smile as at some amiable pleasantry, but +McLean caught the snarl of his lifted lip, and felt the currents of +animosity. + +So those two had met! Ryder had been discovered then.... McLean +tried, in futile bewilderment, to recall just what amazing thing +Ryder had been saying when this party had appeared. + +He kept very close at that young man's side as the strange party +moved on into the inner chamber. The searchers were scrupulously +careful of the excavator's finds; they did not finger a frieze nor +disturb a single small box of the tenderly packed potteries and +beads and miniature boats, but they scraped every heap of dust to +see if it concealed an entrance, they exhausted the resources of +each corner, they circled every pillar, shook out every rug of +Jack's blankets and required the opening of the large chest in which +the wax reproductions of the friezes were placed, awaiting +transportation. + +"You will perceive, messieurs," declared Ryder in mocking irony, +"that no human being is within this last fold of wax--especially a +being," he added thoughtfully with a glance at the stolid sheik, "of +the proportions of her papa.... This daughter, was she a large young +lady?" he inquired politely of the Arab. + +The sheik vouchsafed no reply, but from across his ample person the +general leaned forward. + +"She was small, Monsieur Ryder," he said in silken tones, "but she +can raise a man as high as the gallows--or as low as the grave." + +"A marvel!" returned young Ryder smoothly. "And was she also of +charm--a charm that could kindle fires--?" + +It appeared to McLean that he caught the flaunting implications of +the taunt. + +He wished to heaven that Ryder would hold his reckless tongue. + +Ryder was turning now to the official in charge of the police. + +"If you have satisfied yourselves that this place is empty--" + +The man, a rather apologetic, pleasant fellow, shrugged and smiled. +"We have examined all--" + +There was a moment in which the searchers regarded one another +through the gloom in the inquiring embarrassment of the +discountenanced and considered departure. But Hamdi Bey had more +insistent eyes. + +He was circling the place again like a wolf for the scent, flashing +his search light over the carved walls, the dancing gleam picking +out now a relief of Osiris, now a fishing boat upon the Nile, now +the judgment hall of Maat. Suddenly he stopped and began examining a +limestone slab. + +"These stones--these have been merely piled here," he cried +excitedly. "This is a hole--an entrance. Dig them out, men. There is +a door there, I tell you." + +Hastily Ryder addressed the police. "It is simply the burial vault," +he told them. "The sarcophagi are there, ready for transportation. +Mr. Thatcher will tell you--" + +"I assure you it is merely the actual tomb," said Thatcher +nervously. "I have myself assisted my colleague with the +preparation." + +The slabs had been displaced now, disclosing the small door, with +its fine wrought stele. Hamdi flashed a look of triumph upon the man +who had obviously tried to conceal that door from them, a look which +Ryder ignored as he turned to McLean. + +"That is the door which is sealed forever upon the dead, and upon +the Ka, the spiritual double," he said in a low conversational +tone. "It has some remarkable representations of the jackal +Anubis--" + +It seemed to McLean a most extraordinary time for a disquisition +upon Anubis. If Ryder was attempting to prove himself at his ease he +had certainly misjudged his manner. + +"Damn Anubis," McLean gave back under his breath. "He's not the only +jackal--What the devil's the meaning of this?" + +Ryder made no reply. The stone had been pushed back and the +searchers were stooping beneath the narrow entrance. Then as +McLean's head bent at the door he heard his friend whispering, "I +say--you haven't a gun you could slip me--?" + +Mutely he shook his head. And that agitated whisper died away with +the last vestige of belief in Ryder's innocence. Apprehensively +McLean glanced about that inner chamber he was entering, dreading to +encounter instant and damning evidence of a girl. + +He found himself in the presence of the dead. The chamber was a +small, square, walled-up affair, and at one side stood the three +sarcophagi. The other halls had been in total darkness, but the +blackness of this place appeared something palpable and weighty. And +the air had the dry, acrid tang of dust which has lain waiting for +centuries. + +It was hot, whereas the other chambers had been cool--or else +McLean's disturbed blood was pumping too furiously through his +pulses. Instinctively he drew close to Jack, as the party stood +flashing their lights over the bare walls and empty corners, and +then concentrated the pale illumination upon those caskets of the +dead. + +"I told you that the place was empty," Ryder said with distinct +impatience in his voice. "And now, if you have satisfied +yourselves--" + +"You are in haste, monsieur," said Hamdi Bey's smooth voice. "If you +will permit us to see what is within--" + +He approached the first sarcophagus. + +The sheik, who appeared to have committed the restoration of his +daughter into the other's hands, remained imperturbably beside the +entrance while the head of the police came forward to assist Hamdi +in raising the painted lid. + +"I protest," said Ryder very sharply. He stood upon the other side +of the case, eying them combatively. "It is useless to disturb this +lid--I tell you that the Persians have been considerably before +you." + +And indeed the case was empty. Hamdi moved to the next and again +Ryder took up his post opposite. + +"Again I protest," he insisted. "The least jar or injury--" + +But the men raised the lid, and after the briefest look, moved on. + +"And now," Ryder spoke very clearly and authoritatively, addressing +the head of the police, "I must ask you to stop. Even the dust that +you are disturbing is precious. This thing has gone beyond all +reason." + +The police official looked as if he agreed with him, but Hamdi Bey +had moved determinedly to the third sarcophagus. The official +hesitated, evidenced discomfort, but moved finally after the bey. + +"If there is nothing here," he murmured, "surely you cannot +object--" + +"There is precious dust here," Ryder repeated. "You must +understand--" + +"We see for ourselves," said Hamdi Bey, and now his voice had a ring +of triumphant steel through its soft smoothness. "Stand aside. This +is in the name of the law." + +It seemed to McLean that for one mad moment Ryder was tempted to +resist. In the flickering light of the torches he stood defiantly +above the painted mummy case, his eyes steadily upon the bey, his +hands pressing down upon the vivid bloom of the dead woman's +pictured face. + +Then with a beaten but ironic smile he stood aside. + +Slowly the men lifted the lid.... In that moment McLean became aware +that his heart was pumping thickly somewhere in his throat and that +the rest of him was a hollow, horrible void of suspense. + +Hamdi Bey turned his arrogant stare from young Ryder and looked +down.... Drawing closer, fearfully McLean's eyes followed him. + +He could not believe their evidence. His heart could not stop its +idiotic pumping. + +But there he saw no terror-stricken girl, no pallid runaway of the +harems, but a still, dark-shrouded form, swathed in the tight +bandages of the ancient embalmer, a dry, dusty little mummy creature +blankly and inscrutably confronting this unforeseen resurrection. + +Over their dumbfounded heads he heard young Ryder's mocking laugh. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV + +IN CAIRO + + +"It's good news!" said Miss Jeffries with bright positives. + +It was her response to Andrew McLean's greeting that evening. He +had made rather a tardy appearance at the hotel, for there had +been an important dinner with an important bank official passing +through Cairo to escape from, but he arrived at last, looking +extraordinarily well in his very best dinner clothes. + +And Miss Jeffries, for all her harassment of suspense, was no woeful +object in a vivacious blue evening frock with silvery gleams. + +"He's safe--absolutely safe," McLean confirmed. + +He expected radiance. Miss Jeffries' expression was arrested +judgment. + +"Safe--_where_?" + +"At his camp ... I just returned--just in time to dine. I motored +out this morning." + +"Oh!... It took your whole day. I am so sorry!" For a moment the +girl appeared to concentrate her sympathetic interest upon McLean. + +"You must simply hate me," she told him repentantly, dropping into +one of the chairs in the drawing-room corner she had long been +guarding. "Do sit down and tell me all the horrid details....--Uncle +and Aunt are in the Lounge, and I should like you to meet them, but +they'll be there forever and I do want to hear first.... Was it +fearfully hot?" + +"Oh, rather," murmured the young man, confused by this change of +interest. "I mean, that's quite the usual thing, isn't it, for +deserts? I got up a good breeze going, for I was a bit wrought up, +you know--not a soul in Cairo had seen Jack since that day." + +"And he was out at his camp," said Jinny thoughtfully. "How--how +long had he been there?" + +"He says he started that night," said McLean non-committally. + +"Oh!... That night.... That was rather sudden, wasn't it?" + +"Jack's sudden, you know," mentioned his friend uncomfortably. "And +he had a lot of finds to pack up for transport--they are taking +their stuff to the museum and Jack had been away so long, here in +the city--" + +"No wonder I didn't hear then!" said the girl with a laugh in which +it would have taken an acuter ear than McLean's to detect the secret +clamor of chagrin and humiliation. + +Of course she had _wanted_ Jack to be safe.... But he might have +been ill--or away on some official summons-- + +Just back at his diggings. Gone off on an impulse, with no thought +to let her know.... + +And she had rushed to McLean with her silly worries and her anxious +concern which he had probably taken for a tender interest.... + +Heaven knows what disillusionizing thing Jack had said to him that +day!... Men were too hateful. + +And now McLean had come dutifully to report that the man she was so +worried about was quite well and busy, thank you, only he had +overlooked any friendship for her, and so had sent no word-- + +In Jinny's ears was the rush of the furies' wings. But on Jinny's +lips was a proud little smile, and her bright look was a shining +shield for the wounds of the spirit. + +"That _is_ a comfort," she said with pleasant, friendly warmth. "You +don't know how horridly responsible I felt! Really, Jack ought to +have let me know--but that's Jack all over. He's never grown up." + +"He's not had much time," returned McLean from the height of his +twenty-nine years. + +"He never will," said Jinny sagely, "not until--well, not until +he meets some girl, you know, who will make him feel really +responsible." + +It occurred unhappily to McLean that the girl Jack had been meeting +so assiduously of late had certainly not added to his claims to +responsibility! + +Steadily he guarded silence. There are ice fields, on Mont Blanc, +where a whisper precipitates an avalanche, and McLean had no +intention of starting anything in his friend's slippery field of +affairs. + +"I have spent more time," Miss Jeffries was confiding brightly, for +those imperative reasons of her own so obscure to the bewildered +young man, "introducing Jack to nice girls--but it never takes! Not +seriously. He's a perfectly dear friend, but he doesn't care +anything really about girls--and he does need somebody to get him +out of his antiquities and his dusty old diggings ... But of course +you think I am a sentimental thing!" + +McLean did not tell her what he thought. He was still fascinatedly +engrossed with her revelation of the impeccable Platonic basis of +her friendship. His mood of complicated emotion lightened and +brightened and at the same time an amazed wonder unfolded its +astonishment. + +He marveled at his friend. To turn to something fantastic, something +bizarre--for so he thought of that veiled girl of the harem--when he +had this Miss Jeffries for a friend--but probably the young lady +herself had never given him the least encouragement. Women are not +easily moved to romance for men they have always regarded as +brothers and he could see that her feeling for Jack was the warm, +honest, sisterly affection of utter frankness. + +The worse for Jack. For now there seemed no ministering angel to +mend his troubled future. + +It was not only Ryder's troubled future that troubled McLean--it +was also Ryder's troubled present. He was very far from easy in his +mind about him. After that mystifying performance in the tomb he had +not wanted to leave without a frank explanation, but there had been +no moment for revelation; Thatcher had hung about them and Hamdi +Bey, of all men, had requested a place in McLean's motor for the +return to Cairo. + +And that dinner engagement had pressed. He could have abandoned it +for any real reason, but Jack had assured him that there was none. + +"Get the old devil out of here," had been Jack's furious appeal, +referring to Hamdi. "Deny everything to him. Only get him out." + +And McLean had got him out. + +The sheik and his followers after a murmurous conference with the +bey had galloped off; the police had turned towards their post and +Hamdi had accompanied McLean to the nearest village and his waiting +motor. + +Clearly he had wanted to talk to McLean and McLean was not sorry for +the opportunity to exchange implications. The bey had unfolded his +sympathetic friendship for the sheik; McLean had unfolded a cold +surprise that anything so disgraceful should be attributed to such a +prominent archaeologist. The bey had produced the evidence and +McLean had produced a skeptical wonder, and then a thoughtful wonder +if the British government had not better take the matter up and sift +it, for the benefit of all concerned. + +Clearly the thing could not go on. Ryder could not accept such a +rumor against his reputation. Yes, he thought he would advise Ryder +to take the matter up. + +And there he perceived that even the suave and politic Hamdi +squirmed. Doubtless to the Turk, McLean represented British prestige +and political power and all sorts of unknown influence.... And +native testimony, while voluable and unscrupulous, had a way of +offering confused discrepancies to the coldly questioning +investigators of the law. + +And with no real evidence against Ryder-- + +The matter of the sheik's daughter, McLean perceived, would be +dropped. Unless the girl--whatever girl they sought--could be +discovered. + +If Hamdi wished to pay off some score against the American he would +choose other weapons. McLean reflected upon the bey's capacity for +assassination or poisoning while he bade him farewell before the +dark wall of his palace entrance. + +Between them had passed no reference to the bey's recent loss. Since +it would not have been etiquette for him to mention the bey's wife, +he judged it equally inadvisable to refer to her ashes. + +The whole affair was so wrapped in darkness that he could not decide +upon any creditable explanation. It would have to wait until he saw +Ryder in the next day or two--for Ryder had told him he would try to +get in with his finds as soon as possible. + +But no matter how he tried to dismiss the matter from his mind he +had found himself asking, through the courses of that important +dinner and now in the pauses of his conversation with Miss +Jeffries--Was there really some girl? Had he only dreamed that tense +anxiety of Jack's--had Jack led them on for his own young amusement? + +But it was not long possible to maintain an inner communion with +Jinny Jeffries for a vis-a-vis. + +A divided mind could not companion her swift flights and sudden +tangents. Deriding now her silly anxieties and deploring McLean's +unnecessary trip, she had branched into the consideration of how +busy McLean must be--and McLean found himself somehow embarked in +sketchy descriptions of the institution of which Miss Jeffries +seemed to think he was the backbone and of its very interesting work +throughout the country. + +And as he had talked he found himself noticing things that he had +never noticed before about girls, the wave of bright hair against a +flushed cheek, the dimples in a rounded arm, the slim grace of +crossed ankles and silver-slippered feet. + +"And you live all alone in that big house?" Jinny was murmuring. + +"Not exactly alone." McLean smiled. "There's Mohammed and Hassan and +Abdullah and Alewa and Saord-el-Tawahi--" + +"What _do_ you call him when you are in a hurry?" laughed the girl. + +It was a tremendously pleasant evening. He had expected constraint +and secret embarrassment and he had discovered this delightful +interest and bright vivacity. + +And if beneath that interest and vivacity something lay forever +stilled and chilled in Miss Jeffries' breast--like a poor hidden +corpse beneath bright roses--why at two and twenty expectancies +flourish so gayly that one lone bud is not long missed. And chagrin +is sometimes a salutary transient shower, and self-confidence is all +the more delicate for a dimming cloud. + +Moreover McLean's unconscious absorption was balm and blessing. + +When in startled realization of time and place he rose at last and +she murmured laughing, "And after all you never met Aunt and Uncle!" +he felt a queer blush tingle his cheek bones and a daring impulse +shape the thought aloud that in that case he must come again. + +"We're here five days more," said Jinny, the explicit. + +Thoughtfully he repeated, "Five days," and said farewell. + +"Now if he decorously waits to the next to the last day--!" murmured +Jinny to herself, her opinion of the Scots race hanging in the +balance. + +He didn't. But it was not the initiative of the Scots race which +brought him to her, late that very next afternoon, but a soiled +looking note which he held crumpled in his hand. + +He found her at tea upon the veranda with her aunt and uncle and +while he made conversation with the Pendletons he gave Miss Jeffries +the note. + +"From our friend Ryder," he said with forced lightness. "It explains +itself." + +But it certainly did not. It was a hasty scrawl to McLean, saying +that Ryder was on his way with the museum finds and sending this +ahead by runner, and that McLean must positively be at the Cairo +Museum to meet him at five and would he please stop on the way and +call at his hotel upon a Miss Jeffries and borrow a woman's cloak +and hat and veil, or if she wasn't in, get them elsewhere. + +"What is it--another masquerade?" said Jinny blankly. + +McLean looked mutely at her and shook his head, but within him +horrific suspicion was raging like a forest fire. + +He continued his converse with the Pendletons while Jinny went for +the things; she returned with a small bag containing coat and hat +and veil, and the announcement that she would go right over with +him. + +"If the things aren't right I'll know what he wants," she declared, +and then, smiling, "What _do_ you suppose he is up to now?" + +McLean felt that he didn't want to know. And most positively he +didn't want her to know. But having lacked the instant inspiration +to deny her, he could only acquiesce and wonder why he hadn't +thought up some brilliant excuse. + +He looked helplessly at the Pendletons, but they merely murmured +their adieux and their independent niece accompanied McLean to his +waiting carriage as if it were the most natural thing in the world. + + * * * * * + +The caravan was before them. A long line of camels was just turning +in the gates and before the steps of a back entrance other camels, +kneeling with that profound and squealing resentment with which even +the camel's most exhausted moments oppose commands, were being +relieved of their huge loads by natives under the very minute and +exact direction of Thatcher. + +And within the entrance a young man with rumpled dark hair and a +thin, bronzed face flushed with impatience was imperiously conveying +the Arabs who were bearing the precious sarcophagi. + +Over his shoulder he caught sight of the two arrivals. + +"I asked for motors--and they furnished these!" he cried +disgustedly, gesturing at the enduring camels. "It took us all day +though we half killed the brutes.... Hello, Jinny, did you bring the +things?" + +With light casualness he accepted her appearance on the scene. That +glitter in his bright hazel eyes was not for that. "Come in, both +of you," he called, plunging after his men. + +At the foot of the stairs McLean waited with Miss Jeffries until the +men had reached the top and deposited their burdens in the room and +in the manner which Ryder was specifying so crisply, and then they +came mechanically up. + +McLean had the automatic feeling of a mere super in a well rehearsed +scene. He had no idea of plot or appearance but his role of dumb +subservience was clearly defined. + +"You understand," Ryder was calling to the men, "nothing more goes +in this room. All else down stairs.... Come in," he said hurriedly +to his waiting friends, and shutting the door swiftly behind them, +"of course--this doesn't lock!" he muttered. "Jinny, you stand here, +do, and if any one tries to come in tell them they can't." + +"Tell them you say they can't?" questioned Jinny a little +helplessly. + +"No--no--not that. Tell them you are using the room; tell them," +said Ryder with very brisk and serious inspiration, "tell them your +petticoat is coming off!" + +"Why Jack Ryder!" said Jinny indignantly. + +"Nonsense," said he to her indignation. "Don't you remember when +your aunt's petticoat came off on the way to church? It happens." + +"But it doesn't run in families!" + +Her protest fell apparently upon the back of his head. He had +turned to the last sarcophagus and was slipping his fingers beneath +the lid. "Here, Andy," he said quickly. "I had it wedged so it +wasn't tight shut, but it's been so infernally hot and dusty--" + +He was tremendously troubled. It was not the heat which had brought +those fine beads of moisture to his brow, white above the line of +brown, and drawn such a pale ring about his mouth. McLean saw that +the slim, wiry wrists which supported the case's top were shaking. + +"Gently now," he murmured and the lid was lifted and laid aside. + +The same dark, unstirring form of the tomb scene. The same dry, +dusty little mummy.... But with hands strangely reckless for an +archaeologist dealing with the priceless stuff of time Ryder tore at +those bandages; he unwrapped, he unwound, and in a lightning's +flash-- + +To McLean's tense, expectant nerves it was like a scene at the +pantomime. He had divined it; he had foreseen and yet there was the +shock and eerie thrill of magic, the appealing unreality of the +supernatural in the revelation. + +In a wave of an enchanter's wand the mummy was gone. And in its +place lay a Sleeping Beauty, the dark hair in sculptured closeness +to the head, the long, black lashes sweeping the still cheeks. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI + +THE PAINTED CASE + + +"She's fainted," said Ryder in a voice that shook. From his pocket +he drew swiftly a thermos bottle but before the top was off those +long lashes fluttered, and from under their shadow the soft, dark +eyes looked up at him with a smile of very gallant reassurance. + +"Not--faint," said the girl, in a breath of a voice. "But it was so +long--so hot--" + +"Drink this." Ryder slipped an arm about her, offering the filled +top of the thermos. "It's over, all over," he murmured as she drank. +"You're safe now, safe.... You're at the museum.... Then we'll get +you to the hotel--" + +"Hotel--?" the girl echoed with a faint implication of humor in that +silver bell of a voice. + +She put her hands to her hair and to her face in which the hues of +life mingled with the pallor of exhaustion; on her small fingers +sparkled the gleam of diamonds and from her slender arms fell back +the gold and jade tissues of her chiffon robe. + +To McLean she had increasingly the appearance of a creature of +enchantments. And to see that young loveliness in its strange gleam +of color lying against his friend's supporting tan linen arm-- + +Sardonically his eyes sought Ryder. + +"So that was your mummy!" + +"There was nothing else to do." Ryder had withdrawn his arm; the two +men faced each other across the girl. "I was in a blue funk--you +see, I was hiding her in the inner chamber until I could smuggle her +away. And when those wolves came on the scent, and not an instant to +lose--I got the bandages off the real mummy and about Aimee.... +Lord, it was a close call!" + +He drew a long breath. "I hadn't a gun. I hadn't a thing--and I had +to grin and play it through ... And I was deathly afraid of +Thatcher." + +"Thatcher?" + +"Yes, Thatcher. You see I'd popped the mummy into a case without its +bandages and if Thatcher had glimpsed that he'd have said +something--Oh, innocently--that would have given the show away. He +knew there was only one mummy and it was wrapped. But the Lord was +with me. The men opened the empty case first and at the second they +said nothing to show it wasn't empty and Thatcher didn't look in. +Then they went on to the third." + +"And me--when I heard those voices--I stopped breathing," said the +girl. "But I shook so--I thought they would think that mummy was +coming to life! And the dust--Oh, it was almost beyond my force not +to sneeze--" + +"You'd have sneezed us to Kingdom Come," said Ryder, gayly now. + +"But I did not," she protested. "I lay there and thought of Hamdi +looking down upon me, and my flesh crept.... Oh, it was terrible! +And yet it was funny." + +Funny.... McLean gazed in sardonic astonishment upon the two young +creatures with such misguided humor that they found something funny +in this appalling business. Flying from palaces ... hiding in tombs +... taking a mummy's place beneath the dusty bandages of the dead +... Funny.... + +And yet there was laughter in their young eyes when they looked at +each other and a curve of astounding amusement in their lips. + +It touched McLean to wonder. It touched him--queerly--to an odd and +aching pain. For he saw suddenly that he was looking upon something +deathless and imperishable, yet fragile and fleeting as the breath +of time.... + +They were so young, so absorbed, so oblivious.... + +He had forgotten Jinny Jeffries. So too,--not for the first time, +alas!--had Ryder. Now her clear voice from the doorway made them +start. + +"You might present me, Jack." + +Ryder turned, so did the girl in the painted case, and her eyes +widened with a startled surprise. The doorway had not been within +her vision. + +Jinny was leaning back against the door, her hand behind her on the +knob she was to guard, her figure still rigid with astonishment. + +"I didn't know you--you dug them up--alive," she said with a quiver +of uncertain humor. + +"My dear Jinny, I had for--Miss Jeffries, let me present you to +Mademoiselle Delcasse," said Jack gravely. "I know that you met her +the day of her reception--" + +Only in that moment did Jinny place the haunting recollection. + +"But she was burned--she was killed," she protested, shaken now with +excitement. + +"She was not burned--although there was a fire. The man who called +himself her husband pretended she was killed in order to save his +pride. For she escaped from him. And he tried to get her back, +setting another man, a false father, after her with lying +witnesses--Oh, it's a long story!--so I had to hide her in this +case." + +"But Jack, you--why were _you_ hiding her--? Did you get her out?" +stammered Jinny. + +"The night of that reception. You see, I knew she was truly a French +girl who had been stolen by Tewfick Pasha and brought up as his +daughter--Oh, that's a long story, too! But at McLean's I had +happened on the agents who were searching for her from her aunt in +France, and so I knew.... And at the reception when I found she +hated that marriage I stayed behind and--and managed to get her +away,"--thus lightly did Ryder indicate the dangers of that +night!--"so she could escape to France." + +"Oh--France!" said Jinny. + +She could be forgiven for the tone. She had been kept shamefully in +the dark, misled, ignored.... She had been a catspaw, a bystander. + +Not that she cared. Not that she would let them think for a minute +that she cared.... + +But as for this talk of France-- + +Her eyes met the eyes of the girl in the mummy case. And Jinny found +herself looking, not at the interloper, the enchantress, but at a +very young, frightened girl, lost in a strange world, but resolved +upon courage. She saw more than the men could see. She saw the +loveliness, the helplessness, and she saw too the sensitive dignity, +the delicate, defensive spirit.... + +Really, she was a child. + +And to have gone through so much, dared such danger.... She +remembered that dark, forbidding palace, the guarded doors, the +hideous blacks--and that bright, smiling figure in its misty +veil.... And now that little figure sat in its strange hiding place, +confronting her with a lost child's eyes.... + +Into Jinny's bright gray eyes came a mist of tears. She was queerly +moved. It was a mingled emotion, but if some drops for her own +disconcertment were mingled with the warm prompting of pity, her +compassion was none the less true. + +"I'll be so glad to do anything I can to help," she said +impulsively. "If you have no friends to trust in Cairo--" + +"I have no friends to trust--beyond this room," said the girl. + +"Then I'll take you to the hotel with me. You can register as one of +our party and keep your room till we leave--we are going in four +days now. And, oh, I know! You can cross on the same steamer with us +to Europe, for there's a woman at the hotel who wants to give up her +transportation and go on to the Holy Land--she was moaning about it +only this noon. It would all fit in beautifully." + +It seemed to McLean that an angel from Heaven was revealing her +blessed goodness. + +Ryder took the revelation delightedly for granted. + +"Bully for you, Jinny," he said warmly. "I knew I could count on +you." + +If for one moment a twinge of wry reminder recalled that she had +never been able exactly to count upon him it did not dim his mood. +He was alight with triumph. + +"I'll see to the transportation," he said quickly, doing mental +arithmetic about present sums in the bank. "And we won't wire your +aunt until you're safely out of Egypt--better send a wireless from +the ship. I think your aunt is near Paris--" + +"We are going to hurry to Paris," said Jinny, "That was our regular +plan--" + +"And London?" said McLean. + +"London, later, of course. Cathedrals, lakes and universities--then +London." + +"I shall be in London," said McLean thoughtfully, "in June.... If +you are not too occupied--" + +"With cathedrals?" said Miss Jeffries. + +"Where are the things?" demanded Ryder ruthlessly, and thus +recalled, Jinny produced the bag. + +McLean moved toward the door. "We might go and mount guard in the +corridor," he suggested, and he and Jinny stepped outside, back into +the everyday world of Egypt where nothing at all had been happening +but the arrival of a caravan from the excavations. + +Within the room Ryder stooped and lifted the girl from the case and +set her lightly on the floor. Ruefully she shook out the torn +chiffons of that French audacity of a robe, and with a whimsical +smile surveyed the soiled little slippers that she had discarded in +her disguise when she had ridden behind the turbaned Ryder upon the +Arab horse. + +So little time ago, and yet so long away-- + +Under her long lashes she looked up at the young man, who had set +the old life crumbling about her at a touch. Wistfulness edged the +brave smile with which she murmured, "And so it is all arranged--so +quick. I am safe--I go to the hotel with that nice girl--" + +"And I won't be able to see you," he said suddenly. + +"But you have seen me, monsieur, these many days--" + +"Seen you? I haven't seen you. I've sat outside a tomb on guard, +I've marched beside a mummy case--and--and we've said so little--" + +It was true. They had said little. The hours had been absorbed in +action. Their words had always been of explanation, of reassurance, +of anxious planning. Of the future, the future after safety had been +achieved, they had said nothing. It had all been uncertain, +nebulous, vague.... + +And now it was upon them. + +"And I have never said Thank you," she murmured. "I--I think I began +by saying Thank you, monsieur. I remember saying that my education +had proceeded to the Ts!" + +"If--if only you never want to unsay it," he muttered. "You don't +know what's ahead--life's so uncertain--" + +"No, I do not know what is ahead," she told him, "but I am +free--free for whatever will come." + +The brightness of that freedom shone suddenly from her upturned +face. + +"Anything is better than that man," she vowed. "Even if my aunt, +that Madame Delcasse, should not like me--you see, I have thought of +everything, and I am not afraid." + +"Like you--? She'll love you," said Ryder bitterly. "She'll go mad +over you and give you all she has--she'll marry you to a count--" + +"Another marriage?" Aimee raised brows of mockery. "But I am through +with the marriages of convenience--" + +"You're so lovely, darling, that you'll have the world at your +feet," said the young man huskily. + +He looked at her with eyes that could not hide their pain. "Oh, +I--you--it's not fair--" he muttered incoherently. + +He had meant--ever since that sobering moment of guardianship in the +desert--to be very fair. He would not bind her with a word, a touch. +Not since that impulsive clasp of reunion in the palace had he +touched her in caress. With the reverence of his deep tenderness he +had served her in the tomb, meaning to deny his heart, to delay its +revelation, to wait upon her freedom and her youth.... + +Nobly he had resolved.... But now parting was upon him. + +"It's not fair to you," he said desperately--and drew closer. + +For at his blurted words her look had magically changed. The +defensive lightness was fled. A breathless wonder shone out at him +... a delicious shyness brushed with dancing expectation like the +gleam of a butterfly's wing. + +No glamorous moonlight was about them now. No scented shadowy +garden.... But the enchantment was there, in the bare and dusty +room, with its grim old mummy cases, the enchantment and the very +flame of youth. + +"Sweet, I'll be on the ship--I'll wait till you are ready," he vowed +and at her low murmur, "Ready--?" he gave back, "Ready--for love," +with a boy's stammer over the first sound of that word between them. + +"But what is this now," she said wondering, yet with a little elfish +gleam of laughter, "but--love?" + +His last resolve went to the winds. + +And as his arms closed about her, as he held to his heart all that +young loveliness that had been his despair and his delight, there +was more than joy in the confused tumult of his youth, there was +the supreme exultation of triumphant daring. + +For he had opened the forbidden door; he had challenged the +adventure and overcome the risk. + +He had won. And he would hold his winnings. + +"Aimee," he whispered. "Aimee--Beloved." + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FORTIETH DOOR*** + + +******* This file should be named 13498.txt or 13498.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/1/3/4/9/13498 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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