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+*** 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 ***