CHAPTER VII
BILLY HAS HIS DOUBTS
The encounter in the bazaars that Thursday afternoon brought one more result to young Hill besides the bruise upon his chin and the privilege of bowing to Lady Claire and her vigilant chaperon, and the presence of Lady Claire's little handkerchief in his coat pocket.
It brought a young German, scrupulously sober, soberly apologetic, in formal state to Billy's hotel upon Friday morning, whose card announced him to be Frederick von Deigen and whose speech proclaimed him to be utterly aghast at his own untoward behavior.
"I was not myself," he owned, with a sigh and a melancholy twist of his upstanding mustaches. "I had been lunching alone—and it is bad to lunch alone when one has a sadness. One drinks—to forget.... But you are too young to understand." He waved his hand in compliment to Billy's youth, then continued, with increasing energy, "But when I find what dummheit I have done—how I have so rudely addressed the young Fräulein with you, and have used my fists upon you, even to the point of hurling you upon the street—I have no words for my shame."
"Oh, it wasn't exactly a hurl," Billy easily amended. "There was a banana peel where my heel happened to be—and I wasn't half scrapping. I could see you weren't yourself."
"Indeed no! Would I," he struck himself gloomily upon the breast, "would I intrude upon a young Fräulein, and attack her protector? It was that bottle—that last bottle.... I knew—at the time.... I offer you my apology. I can do no more—unless you would have satisfaction—no?"
"I guess I had all the satisfaction that was coming to me yesterday," said Billy. "You've got a fist like a professional. But there's no harm done.... Only you want to get over taking that last bottle and offering presents to young ladies," he concluded, with an accent of youthful severity.
The German nodded a depressed head. His melancholy, bloodshot eyes fixed themselves sadly upon Billy. "Ach, it is so," he assented meekly, "but when one has a sadness—" He sighed.
"Yes, of course, that's tough," agreed Billy sympathetically. "I hate a sadness."
"Perhaps you have known—?" The other's eyes lifted toward him, then dropped dispiritedly. "But, no, you are too young. But I—Ach!" He added in his own tongue a line of which Billy caught geliebt and gelebt, and so nodded understandingly.
"That geliebing business is bad stuff," he returned, and again the other tugged at his mustaches with a nervous hand and shook his big blond head.
"She was to have met me here," he said abruptly. "She wrote—I was to come quick—and then she comes not. That is woman, the ewige weibliche." He scowled. "But, Gott, how enchantment was in her!"
Billy heard himself sigh in unison. The phrase suggested Arlee. And the situation was not dissimilar. He felt a positive sympathy for the big blond fellow in his pronounced clothes and glossy boots and careful boutonnière.... He smiled in friendly fashion.
"She'll come along yet," he prophesied, "and if she doesn't, just you go out after her. I wouldn't take too many chances in the waiting game."
The German shook his head. His blue eyes swam with sentimental moisture. "You do not understand," he said. "She went with another—I must wait for her to come away. I have no address—so?"
"Well, that—that's different," stammered the young American. His sympathy became cynical. Fishy business—but even a fishy business has its human side. So presently he found himself gazing interestedly upon the photograph the German displayed in the back of his watch—the photograph of a decolleté young woman with provocative dark eyes and parted lips and pearl-like teeth, and he shook the caller's hand most heartily in parting, and prophesied, with fine assurance, the successful end of this fishy romance.
"You have a heart, my friend," said the German solemnly, and lifting hat and stick and lemon-colored gloves from the table, he bowed profoundly in farewell.
"And to the Fräulein—you will give my so deep apology?" he added earnestly, and Billy assured him that he would. And he found himself, for all his pre-occupation with the vision of Arlee's spring-like beauty, by no means displeased at the errand. A man must have something to do while he is waiting—if he is to avoid last bottles! He would seek her out that very afternoon.
But by afternoon he was tearing upstairs and downstairs through the hotel after a very different quarry, which at last he ran to earth at a tiny table behind a palm on the veranda. The quarry was further protected by an enveloping newspaper, but Billy did not stand on ceremony.
"I want to talk to you," said he.
Falconer looked up. He recognized Billy perfectly, though his gaze gave no admission of that. This tall young fellow with the deep-set gray eyes and the rugged chin and the straight black hair he first remembered seeing dancing that Wednesday evening with Arlee—after their own disastrous tea and its estrangement. Arlee had appeared on mystifyingly good terms with him, though he was positive from his own observations, and had corroboration from the Evershams, that she had never spoken to him until five minutes before. Then the fellow had fairly grilled the Evershams about the girl's whereabouts last night. And he had learned that the previous afternoon he had managed to take Claire's protection upon himself in the bazaars, actually convincing her that she ought to feel indebted to him, and had driven back with them.... An unabashed intruder, that fellow! He ought to have a lesson.
His air of unwelcome deepened, if possible, as Billy helped himself to a chair, drew it confidentially close to him and cast a careful glance about the veranda.
"I don't want anyone to hear this," he explained.
Falconer smiled cynically. He had met confidential young Americans before. There was nothing they could sell him.
"It's about Miss Beecher." Billy looked uncomfortable. He hesitated, blushed boyishly through his tan, and blurted, "There's something mighty queer about that departure of hers yesterday."
"Ah!"
"I don't feel right about it.... It's deuced queer. She isn't in Alexandria."
"Ah!"
"If you say 'Ah' again, I hope you choke," said Billy violently to himself. Aloud he continued, "I wired to the Khedivial and to all the other hotels—there are just a few—and she isn't registered there, and the Maynards are not, either."
"Possibly staying with friends," said Falconer indifferently. He regarded his paper.
"Very few Americans have friends in Alexandria. However, that might be so. But no ship has arrived from the Continent for three days, and it seems mighty odd, if they were there three days ago, for them to have wired at the last minute and had her tear off like that."
"I do not pretend to account for your compatriots," said the sandy-haired young man.
Billy looked at him a minute. "There's no use in your being disagreeable," he remarked. "I didn't thrust myself upon you because I was attracted to you, at all. But I thought you were a sensible, masculine human being who was interested in Miss Beecher's whereabouts."
"I beg your pardon," said the other young man. "I am—I mean I am interested—if you think there is anything really wrong. But I do not see your point."
"Well, now, see if you can see this. I wired the consul there and some other fellow at the port, and they wired back that no people of the name of Maynard have arrived on any of the boats for the past two weeks—that was as far back as they looked up. Now that's queer."
"He could be mistaken—or they could have bought some one else's accommodations—and that would account for the hastiness of their plans," Falconer argued.
"But what train did she go on?"
"What train? Why, the express for Alexandria."
"That left at eight-thirty. Now why in the world would she rush away in the middle of the afternoon, sending a telegram from the station and leaving her packing undone, for an eight-thirty train?"
"Why I—I really can't say. She may have had errands——"
"Where did she have her dinner? Did she dine with friends at some of the hotels? What friends has she here?"
"I really can't say as to that, either. I wasn't aware that she had any."
"And where did she send that telegram from? There isn't a copy of any such telegram at the offices I've been to—at Cook's or the station. It might have been written on a telegraph blank and sent up by messenger with the money—but why not come herself, with all that time on her hands? And nobody remembers selling her any ticket to Alexandria—and you know anybody would remember selling anything to a girl like that."
Falconer was silent.
"And nobody at Cook's paid out any money on her letter of credit—or cashed any express checks for her. Where did that money come from that was sent back to the hotel?"
"But what is the point of all this?"
"That's what I just particularly don't know.... But it needs looking into."
Falconer favored him with a level scrutiny. "How long have you known Miss Beecher?"
"I met her the night before last. That, however, doesn't enter into the case."
"It would seem to me that it might."
"Between three days and three weeks," said Billy, remembering something, "the difference is sometimes no greater than between Tweedledum and Tweedledee." He smiled humorously at the other young man, a frank, likeable smile that softened magically the bluntness of his young mouth. "That's why I came to you. You are the only soul I know to be interested in Miss Beecher's welfare. The Evershams are off up the Nile—and they'd probably be helpless, anyway. Besides, you know more about this blamed Egypt of yours than I do.... Have you any idea where she went yesterday afternoon?"
"Not at all."
"Neither have the Evershams. They were surprised when I asked them about it this morning. They didn't know she was going. Now she went somewhere in a limousine——"
"Probably to the station."
"American girls don't go to stations in floating white clothes and hats all pink roses. I particularly remember the pink rose," said Billy gloomily. "No, if she had been going to the station she would have had on a little blue or gray suit, very up and down, and a little minute of a hat with just one perky feather. And she'd have a bag of sorts with her—no girl would rush away to Alexandria without a bag."
"She could have sent it ahead of her or returned and dressed later for the station."
"Why the mischief did I tramp off to those bazaars?" said the young American. "But, see here—weren't you around the hotel after that yesterday—at tea time?"
"Er—yes—I——"
"And weren't you rather looking out for Miss Beecher? Wouldn't you have noticed if she had been coming or going?"
Falconer stroked his small mustache and shot a look at Billy out of the corners of his eyes which expressed his distinct annoyance at these intrusive demands.
"I don't remember to have met you," said he slowly.
"You haven't. I know your name, but you don't know mine. I am William B. Hill."
"Ah—Behill."
"No—B. Hill. The B is an initial."
"Of what?" said the other casually, and Billy's cheeks grew suddenly warm.
"Of my middle name," said he, with steady composure. "If we are to do any team-work you will have to let it go at the William and the Hill."
"What team-work do you suggest?"
"Find out where she went yesterday. Find out where she is now. What worries me," he burst out, with ungovernable uneasiness, yet with a hint of humor at his own extravagant imaginings, "is her talking to that Turk fellow yesterday—that Captain Kerissen, I think she called him. She had told me the night before that he was going to get her some ball tickets or other, and I didn't think anything of it, but yesterday I thought he had his nerve to come and call upon her. You see, I passed through the hall and saw them talking. I went out to the veranda and after he had gone I came in again, but she was nowhere in sight. Then I went back to the veranda, and in a few moments she came out, in white with a rose on her hat, and went off in a car that was ready. Of course Kerissen wasn't in the car, and I haven't any proof of his connection with the thing, but he might easily have induced her to look at some mosque or other off the 'beaten track'——"
"But she returned, for later she sent that telegram from the station," Falconer argued.
Billy was silent. Then he burst out, "But all the same there is a mystery to this thing.... She—she's too confoundedly young and pretty to run around alone in this painted jade of a city."
"This city has law and order—much more of them than there are in your national hotbeds of robbery and murder."
"H'm—well, I don't hold any brief for Chicago—I suppose Chicago is the target—so I won't defend that. But I've heard stories."
"Queer ones, I should say."
"Devilish queer ones!... How about that young Monkton or Monkhouse who dropped out of things last winter?"
Falconer looked annoyed. "Oh, there are rumors——"
"Yes, rumors that he flirted with a Turkish lady—that he was on horseback just outside her carriage during the jam at the Kasr-el-Nil bridge, and they looked and smiled and afterwards met in a shop. And rumors that she gave him a rendezvous at her home and that he told another man about it at the club, who warned him sharply, and he only laughed.... But it's no rumor that he disappeared. He's gone, all right, and nobody knows where he went, and nobody seems to want to know. Officially they said he was drowned out swimming—or lost in a sandstorm riding in the desert—or spiked on top of an obelisk or something equally reasonable—but, privately, people say other things.... No international law intrudes into the Turkish woman question."
"What of it?" Falconer looked stubborn. "I daresay the fellow received his deserts.... But the case hardly applies—what?"
"Well—it makes one feel that anything can happen here—that the city is quicksand where a chance step would engulf one." Billy stared frowningly out on the vivid street ahead of him. A pretty English bride and her soldier husband were out exercising their dogs. Two ladies in a victoria were advertising their toilettes. A blond baby toddled past with his black nurse. It was all very peaceful and charming. It did not look like quicksand.... Into the picture came a one-eyed man with a stuffed crocodile on his head, stalking slowly along, scanning the veranda with his single, penetrating eye, calling his wares in harsh gutturals, and with him came suddenly the sense of that strange background before which all this bright tourist life was played, that dark watching, secret East, curious and incalculable.
Falconer folded his paper with a sharp crackle that recalled young Hill's wandering thought. "That's all very well, but it doesn't apply," he observed, with conviction.
"Then where is she?" Billy was bluntly belligerent.
The other put his paper in his pocket. "In Alexandria, to be sure, and not at all pleased, either, to have you bring her name into such questioning." He looked squarely at Billy as he said that, and the eyes of the two young man met and exchanged a secret challenge of hostility.
Billy rose. "Oh, all right," he returned. "I daresay I am as much a fool as you take me for.... She may be all right. But if not—I thought I'd give you a chance to take a hand in it."
"The sporting chance," said Falconer, with an appreciable smile. "I'm much obliged—but I don't at all share your misgivings.... And what in the world do you propose to do about it?"
For a minute Billy's gaze blankly interrogated the sunlit distances. His eyes were fixed, but empty; his forehead knitted in an uncertain frown. Then quite suddenly he turned and flashed at Falconer a look of odd and unforeseen decision.
"I'm going to buy a crocodile," he imparted, with a wide, boyish grin. "I'm going to buy a crocodile of a one-eyed man."
Stolidly Falconer eyed his departing back. Stolidly, definitely, comprehensively, he pronounced judgment. "Mad," said he. "Mad as the March Hare."
CHAPTER VIII
THE MIDNIGHT VISITOR
That stealthy touch brought Arlee half upright, shot with ghastly alarms. Her heart stopped beating; it stood still in the cold clutch of terror. The breath seemed to have left her body.
Once more she felt the hands gropingly upon her. It came from the back side of her bed, reaching apparently from the very wall. And then she heard a voice whispering, "Be still—I do not hurt you. Be still."
It was a woman's voice, soft, sibilant, hushed, and the frozen grip of fear was broken. She was trembling now uncontrollably.
"Who is there?"
"S-sh!" came the warning response, and then, her eyes staring into the shadowy recess, she saw the curtains at the back side of the bed were parting as a figure appeared between them.
"Give me a box, a book—somethings to put here in this lock," commanded the voice peremptorily, and in a daze Arlee found herself extending a magazine across the bed toward the half-seen figure, who turned and busied herself about the curtains a moment, then came straight across the bed into the room beside Arlee.
"Now you see who I am," said the astonishing intruder calmly.
Mutely Arlee shook her head, seeing only a figure about her own height clad in a dark negligée. Dumfounded she stood watching while her visitor deliberately lighted a candle.
"So—that is better," she observed, and in the light of the tiny taper between them the two stood facing each other.
Arlee saw a girl some years older than herself, a small, plump, rounded creature, with a flaunting and insouciant prettiness. Her eyes were dark and bright, her babyish lips were full and scarlet, her nose was whimsically uptilted. Dark hair curled closely to the vivid face and fell in ringlets over the white neck.
"You don't know me?" she said in astonishment at Arlee's eyes of wonder. "He has not told you?" Incredulity, impertinent and mocking, darted out of the dark eyes. "What you think then—you what got my room?"
"Your room?" Arlee echoed faintly. She flung a quivering hand toward the bed. "How did you get in here? I locked the door——"
"You see how I came—I came by the panel," She waited a moment, watching the wide blue eyes before her, the parted lips, the white cheeks in which the blood was slowly stealing back, and incredulity gave way to astonished acceptance. "You don't know that, either? That is very funny."
"Did you lock it?" was Arlee's next breathless question. "What was that you said about putting in a magazine? Did you leave it open?"
The other girl reached quickly and caught her arm, as Arlee turned toward the bed. "No, no, if it goes shut we cannot open it inside," she warned. "It does not open this side unless you have the key. It opens from without. But he will not come in now—he is at the Khedive's palace. We are all right."
"But I want to get away," cried Arlee. She turned upon this other girl great eyes of pitiful entreaty, eyes where the dark shadows about them lay like cruel bruises on the white flesh. "I must get away at once. Won't you help me?"
"Help you? I would help myself, if I could. But there is no way out. It is no use." The unknown girl spoke with a bitterness that brought conviction. Piteously the flare of hope and spirit wilted.
"You are sure?" she questioned faintly. "There is no way out?"
"No way, no way!" The other shook her head impatiently. "Do I not know? Let us talk of that again. Now I came to see you, to see what pretty face had sent me packing!" She laughed, but there was ugliness in the laughter, and catching up the candle she held it before Arlee, her face impudently close, her eyes black darts of curiosity.
"Well you are pretty enough," she said coolly. "Hamdi has always the good taste. But do you think you will keep my room from me—h'm?"
"I do not want your room," said Arlee with passionate intensity. "I do not want to stay here. I want only to go away. Oh, there must be a way. Please help me—please." She choked and broke down, the tears hot in her eyes.
"'I do not want to stay here'"
The other girl abruptly drew her down on the couch and settled herself beside her among the cushions. "Here—be comfortable—let us be comfortable and talk," she said. "Do not cry so—What, you are so soon sorry? You want to be off?"
Desperately Arlee steadied her shaking voice. "I must go at once."
"You got enough so soon?"
"Enough!" was the quivering echo.
"What you come for then?"
"Come for? I did not know what I was coming into. I thought—but tell me," she broke off to demand, "tell me about the plague. Was there any quarantine at all? How soon was it over? What is really happening?"
"Quar—quar—what you mean?"
"The plague? Has there been a plague here? Have people had to stay in the palace on account of it?"
"Oh—h!" The indrawn breath was eloquent of enlightenment. "Is that somethings he said to you?"
"Yes, yes. Isn't it true? Wasn't there any plague?"
With eyes of dreadful apprehension she saw the other shake her head in vigorous denial. "No plague," she said decisively. "My maid—she know everything. No sickness here."
"Then it was all a lie." Arlee's eyes fixed themselves on the dancing candle flame, swaying in the soft night air. She tried to think very coolly and collectedly, but her brain felt numb and fogged and heavy. The sight of that tortured candle flame hypnotized her. Faintly she whispered, "Then it was all—an excuse," and, at that, sharp terror, like a knife, cleaved her numbness. She turned furiously to her visitor.
"But he would not dare make it all up!"
She saw the callousness of the shrug. "Why not—he is the master here!" Her own heart echoed fearfully the words. She stammered, "But—but I wrote—I had a letter—there must——"
"What in all the world are you saying?" demanded the other. "What is this story?" and as Arlee began the quick, whispered narration she listened intently, her little dark head on one side, nodding wisely at intervals.
"So—you came to have tea," she repeated at the close, in her quaintly inflected, foreign-sounding English. "And you stay because of the plague? So?"
"But I wrote—I wrote to my friends and——"
"And gave him the letters!"
"But I had a letter from my friends—or a telegram rather." Arlee knitted her brows in furious thought. "And it sounded like her."
"Does he know her, that friend?" questioned the other and at Arlee's nod, "Then he could write it himself—that is easy on telegraph paper. He is so clever, that devil, Hamdi."
"But my friends knew where I was going"—slowly the mind turned back to trace the blind, careless steps of that afternoon. "At least he said he'd leave a note—Oh, what a fool I was!" she broke off to gasp, seeing how that forethought of his, that far-sighted remark, had prevented her from leaving a note of her own. And she remembered now, with flashing clearness, that upon her arrival he had carelessly inquired if she, too, had left a note of explanation. How lightly she had told him no! And what unguessed springs of action came perhaps from that single word! For so cleverly had the trap been swiftly prepared that if anything had gone wrong, if anyone had become aware of her intentions, it could have passed off as a visit and she would have returned to her hotel prattling joyously of her wonderful glimpse into the seclusion of Turkish aristocracy!
"But the soldier with the bayonet," she said aloud. "There was one on the stairs."
"A servant."
"Oh, if I had passed him!"
"You could not—he would run you through on a nod from Hamdi. They watch that stairs always—day and night."
Day and night—and she was alone here, in this grim palace, alone and helpless and forsaken.... What were her friends thinking about her? Where did they think she was? Her thoughts beat desperately upon that problem, trying to find there some ray of hope, some promise that there were clues which would lead them to her, but she found nothing there but deeper mystery and fearful surmise. He was clever enough to cover his traces. No one had known of his connection with her departure.... Perhaps he had sent them some false and misleading message like the one he had sent her.... What were they thinking? What did they believe? This was Friday night, and she had been gone since Thursday afternoon.
In that moment she saw with merciless clarity the bitter straits that she was in.
"Oh, he is a devil!" her companion was reaffirming with an angry little half-whisper sibilant with fury. "Look how he treat me—me, Fritzi Baroff! You do not know me? You do not know that name? In Vienna it is not so unknown—Oh, God, I was so happy in Vienna!" She stopped, her breast heaving, with the flare of emotion, then went on quickly, with suppressed vehemence, "I was a singer—in the light opera. I dance, too, and I was arriving. Only this year I was to have a fine rôle—and it all went, zut, it all went for that man! I was one fool about him, and his dark eyes and his strange ways.... I thought I had a prince. And he worship me then, too—he follow me, he give me big diamonds.... So he take me here—it was to be the vacation!"
She gave a strangling little laugh. Arlee was listening with a painful intensity. She was living, she thought, in an Arabian nights.
"I stay at the hotel first till he make this like a private apartment for me," went on the little dancer, "and when I come here he do everything for me. I have luxury, yes, jewels and dresses and a fine new car. Then, by and by, I grow tired. It was always the same and he was at the palace, much. And he would not let me make acquaintance. We quarrel, but still I have a fancy for him, and then, you understand, money is not always so easy to find. Life can be hard. But I get more restless, I want to go back on the stage and I, well, I write some letters that he finds out. Bang, goes the door upon me! He laugh like a fiend. He say that I am to be a little Turkish lady to the end of my life. Oh, God, he shut me up like a prisoner in this place, and I can do nothing—nothing—nothing!"
She beat out angry emphasis on the palm of one hand with a clenched little fist. "I go nearly mad. I lose my head. He laugh—he is like that. He is a devil when he turns against you, and, you understand, he had somethings new to play with now.... Sometimes he seem to love me as before, and then I would grow soft and coax that he take me to Europe some day, and then when I think he mean it—Oh, how he laugh!" She drew in her breath sharply. "Sometimes I think he will take me again—sometime—but I cannot tell. And the days never end. They are terrible. My youth is going, going. And my youth is all I have."
She looked at Arlee with eyes where her terror was visible, and all the lines of her pretty, common little face were changed and sharpened, and her babyish lips dragged down strangely at the corners.
A surge of pity went through Arlee Beecher. "Oh, you will escape," she heard herself saying eagerly. "And I will escape—or—or——"
"Or?"
"Or I will kill myself," she whispered quiveringly.
The little Viennese stared hard at her, and a sudden crinkle of amusement darted across the bright shallows of her eyes. "Come, love is not so bad," she said, "and Hamdi can be charming." Then as she saw a shudder run through the young girl before her, "Oh, if you do not fancy him!" she cried airily, yet with a keen look.
But Arlee's two hands sought and covered up the scarlet shame in her face. She did not cry; she felt that every tear in her was dried in that bitter flame. Her whole body seemed on fire, burning with fury and revulsion and that awful sense of humiliation.
The other stirred restively, "Come, do not cry—I hate people to cry. It makes everything so worse. And do not talk of killing. It is not so easy anyway, that killing. Do I not think I will die and end all when my rage is hot—but how? How? I cannot beat my head out against the wall like a Russian. I cannot stick a penknife in my throat or eat glass. To do that one must be a monster of courage. And I have no poison to eat, no gas to turn on.... Then the mood goes and the day is bright and I look in the glass and say, 'Die? Die for you? Kill all this beautiful young thing that has such joy to dance and sing? Never! Some day I will be out of this and laugh at the memory of such blackness.' And so I practice my voice and my steps—and I wait my chance. When you came, yesterday, first I was furious to be pushed out, then I think it is the chance, maybe. I think you would be glad to help me to get out and not to stay to make you jealous. But if you are also in the trap——" Her voice fell dispiritedly. She drew a long, weary breath.
"But I shall not stay in the trap." Arlee spoke with desperate resolve, her eyes on the sputtering candle, her palms against her burning cheeks, her finger tips pressed into her throbbing temples. "I shall not let him make me afraid like this. He must know he will be found out—he cannot play like this with an American girl! I shall face him to-morrow. I shall demand my freedom. I shall tell him that I did tell people at the hotel—that he will be discovered. I will make him afraid!"
"You cannot. He watches what happens on the outside—he knows."
After a pause, "Oh, why did I come!" said Arlee in choking bitterness.
The little dancer turned, and, sitting there cross-legged on the couch like a squat little idol, her chin sunk in her palm, her dark eyes staring unwinkingly at Arlee, gave the girl a long, strange scrutiny.
"You do not like him?" she said.
"I hate him!"
"But you came to tea?"
"To meet his sister. To see the palace."
"His sister? Did he show you one?"
"Yes—a woman with red hair. A Turkish woman. She spoke French to me."
"Ah—that would be Seniha!"
"Seniha? I don't know. She played the piano. Has he more than one sister?"
But as she put the question a sudden flash of intuition forestalled the dancer's mocking cry of "Sister!" And as Fritzi hurried on, "He has no sister—not here, anyway," Arlee's thoughts ran back to the beginning of that very evening which seemed so long ago when she had plunged wildly into those unknown rooms, and saw again that painted, jeweled woman with her outstretched arms.
"She is his wife," the Viennese was saying.
"I—I did not know that he was married."
"Oh, Turkish marriages." The other shrugged, with a contempt a trifle droll in one who had dispensed with every ceremony. "She was his second. The first was a little girl, he said. The match was made for him. She is dead. This Seniha was her cousin, a cousin who was divorced and she lived with the wife. And our pretty Hamdi made love to her, and she was mad about him and so, presently, it happens that he must marry her, for it would be terrible to have disgrace upon the wife's family. Besides the first wife had no children. So he married her. But she had no children. It was all one fairy story." Fritzi laughed under her breath in great enjoyment. "So Hamdi was cheated and he has been a devil to her. The first little wife dies and he shut the second up here, teasing her sometimes, sometimes making love when he is dull, but forcing her to his will for fear he will divorce her.... How she must have hated you, when she had to play that sister. Except that she was glad that I was being put aside," the dancer added with quick spite. "I think she would put poison in my meat if she did not fear Hamdi so.... And always she hopes that he will come back to her. I have seen her waiting, night after night——"
And Arlee thought of the jewels and the silks ... and the long, long, silent hours.... Slowly she put out her hand and snuffed out the smoking wick, then raised her eyes to where the painted bars stretched black across the starry square of sky. "Won't she help?" she asked.
"Not she! Hamdi would find her out.... Not through her can you get word to your friends. For you have friends here? And they will help you? And then you will help me?"
"Oh, yes, if I can get help," promised Arlee. "But I am afraid my friends have gone up the Nile—and there are just—just one or two left in Cairo that would help. And I must get word to them at once. What is the best way? Couldn't I push a note through the windows on the street? Someone might see that!"
"Yes, the doorkeeper. No, that is not safe.... If only that girl were sure——"
"Mariayah?" cried Arlee.
"No, the other—the little one with the wart over her eye. Have you seen her? Well, watch for her, then. She has an itching palm—she may help. But only in little things, of course, for she is afraid. And I have no money left and she is afraid to take a jewel."
"I have almost no money," said Arlee blankly. "Only a letter of credit——"
"A letter of nothing here! But promise her your friends will give much."
"Would she mail a letter?"
"Have you stamps? No? She is so ignorant that is an obstacle. And the post is distant and she dare not go far. But sometimes the baker sends a little boy, and if you had money to give she might get a note to him to carry—though, maybe, she burns the note and keeps the money," the Viennese ended pessimistically.
"But I must get help at once," Arlee iterated passionately. Before——"
"Before?" the other repeated curiously, "He makes love to you—h'm?"
"He—is beginning."
"Only beginning?"
"Only—beginning." Arlee felt the girl's strange, hard scrutiny through the dark. Then she heard her draw a quick breath as if her eyes on Arlee's flower-like face had convinced her of something against all her sorry little reason.
"Well, that is good then," she said. "Try to keep him off. What does he promise you?"
"Promise me? He does not promise anything."
"But he must say something—what is between you—what?" demanded the other impatiently.
Briefly, her shamed cheeks grateful for the shadows, Arlee told of that walk in the garden, of the flowers and the letter, the scene after dinner. And the other girl's eyes grew wider and wider, and then finally she burst into a smothered little laugh.
"Oh, he is mad, that Hamdi!" she whispered. "He is a monster of vanity—'conquest of the spirit'—h'm, I comprehend. That young man has a pride beyond all sense. You dazzle him—he is in love again like a boy. And he must dazzle you. His pride demands a victory not of force alone.... Some men are like that.... Well, that is your chance!"
"My chance?"
"Play with his vanity—fight his force with that!" said this strange initiator into terrible secrets. "He will believe anything of his fascinations—I know him. And if he is so mad for you that he dares all this trouble to have you here, then he is so mad that you can fool him and make him hold back in hopes to gain more from you. Make him think you are coming, as he wishes, heart and body, but still you would wait a little. So you gain time.... Oh, you must be careful! If he loses hope, if you anger him, why the game is over. But if you are careful you can gain a few days——"
"A few days," said Arlee in a tense little voice.
"Well, that is something—since you hate him so!"
"Yes, that is something." Arlee drew a shivering breath, her head drooping, her lashes on her cheeks. Then suddenly, amazingly, her chin came pluckily up, her soft lips set with desperate decision, her eyes turned on her counselor a look of flashing spirit. She was like some young wild thing at bay, harried, defiant, tensely defensive. Something of the pathos of her innocent presence there, in that evil palace, utterly alone, hopelessly defiant, penetrated for an instant the callous acceptances of the little dancer and her eyes softened with facile sympathy, but the impression dulled, and she only nodded her head encouragingly.
"Good! That is the way! Women can always act!" she murmured, slipping off the divan and drawing her fluttering robes about her. "But it is very late and I must go—it is not safe to stay so."
"Where is your room? Could I get to you?"
"No—for you cannot open that panel on the inside—unless you can steal the key from him as I could not! My room—for this present, little one," and her eyes laughed suddenly in challenge, "is up on the top—a little old room all alone. My doors are locked, but there is a panel in my room, too, a panel at the top of tiny stairs, and the lock on that panel is so old and rusty that a knife make it open. So I pushed it open and came down the tiny stairs that end out there in the passage way, and I opened your panel. Now I must steal back, but I shall come again, and we must plan."
"But where does this secret passage go?" Arlee had followed over the bed, and held aside the heavy draperies while the little Baroff was pushing the panel softly and carefully open. Eagerly Arlee peered out into the darkness beyond. "Where does it go?" she repeated.
"It runs above the hall of banquets and into the selamlik," whispered the Viennese. "It opens into Hamdi's rooms, he says, and I know that a servant sleeps always at his door and another is at the foot of the stairs. So it would be madness to try that way."
But Arlee stared thoughtfully into the secret place. "I am glad I know," she said.
"Well, good-by, little one." The Viennese was standing outside now, softly closing the door. For a moment her face remained in the opening. "You will not tell Hamdi that I came—no?" she demanded sharply, and then on Arlee's quick reassurance she nodded, whispered good-by again, and drew back her little face.
The wall rolled into place and a gentle click told of the caught lock. The curtains fell back over the wall. And Arlee was left huddling there alone, feeling that it had all been a dream, but for the heavy scent that lingered in the air and the wild fear beating in her heart.
CHAPTER IX
A DESPERATE GAME
Very slowly the black night grayed down into a wan, spectral morning, and slowly the gray morning paled into a dim mother-of-pearl dawn. And then suddenly the mother-of-pearliness brightened into a shimmering opal, and the ray of pale gold light slanted through the barred window and the bright face of new day peeped over the sill, staring out of countenance the lurking shadows of the night.
And then Arlee's eyes closed, and the heart which had been beating like a frightened rabbit's at every sound and shadow steadied into a rhythm as regular as a clock. She slept like a tired baby; while the light grew brighter and higher, and reached in over the shining dressing table, over the white piano, to rest upon the oblivious face upon the couch and to play with the bright, tangled hair.
The first knocking upon the door did not disturb that sleep, and it was a long time before the knock was again sounded. Then Arlee heard and sprang to her feet in a lightning rush of consciousness. It was Mariayah again, and the water jars which already looked familiar to her, and after the water jars appeared more roses and with the roses a letter.
Those roses came, the letter explained, to droop their heads before her loveliness, which put theirs to shame. They would greet her as humbler sisters greet a fairer. For they were roses of a day, but she was the Rose of Life. The capitals were Kerissen's own. And then abruptly the letter demanded:
Did I frighten you last night? Is it so strange to you that you have magic to make a man forget all the barriers of your convention? Do you not know you have an enchantment which distills in the blood and changes it to wine? You are the Rose of Life, the Rose of Desire, and no man can look upon you without longing. But you must not be angry at me for that, for I am your slave, and would strew roses always to soften the world for your little feet.... Fortune has made you my guest. Will you not smile upon me while Fortune smiles? Luncheon will be in the garden, for it is cool and fresh today.
The mask was slipping. Only a flimsy veil of sentiment now over his rash will. Only a light pretense of her freedom, of his courtesy. He was beginning to declare himself....
But she must not let him suspect that she knew. She must not.
Her spirit responded fiercely to this tense demand upon it. The dread, the panic of the night was gone. The fear that had shaken her was beaten down like a cowardly dog. Excitement burned in her blood. Everything depended upon her coolness and her wit, upon a look, perhaps, the turn of a phrase, the droop of an eye, and she was passionately resolved that neither coolness nor wit should fail her, nor words nor looks nor eyes betray the heart of her. She would play her rôle with every breath she drew.
She crossed the room at the luncheon summons in the nervous tensity of mood that an actress might go to play a part in which her career would live or die. Every half hour with Kerissen was now a duel, every minute was a stroke to be parried, and she flung herself into that duel with the desperate exhilaration of such daring. Her hands were icy, and her cheeks were flaming with the excitement which consumed her, but she revealed no other trace of it, and she wondered to herself at the inscrutable fairness of the face which, looked back at her from the glass.
None of the record of those frightened, sleepless hours was written there, none of her furious pride, her fixed intensity. Only the soft shadows under the blue eyes gave her face a look of added delicacy for all the unnatural flare of brilliant color, and a faint wistfulness in those eyes seemed to overlay the smiles she practiced, like a cloud shadow on a brook. And never, never, in all her glad, care-free days, had she been as distractingly pretty as she was that moment. With an angry little pang she recognized it, pinning on the lace hat with its enchanting rose, and then desperately she resolved to employ it and added two of Kerissen's pink roses to the costume.
She thought the scene was very like a stage, when she came out through the narrow door which the old woman unlocked from a key she carried on a girdle, and slowly descended the stone steps. Beneath the wide-spreading lebbek a low table was laid for luncheon with two wicker chairs beside it. The green of the fresh turf was as vivid as stage grass; the lilies loomed unreally large and white; the poinsettias flaunted like red paper flowers behind the vivid picture that the Captain made in a dazzling buff and green uniform picked out with gold. His bow was theatric, so was the deep look of exaggerated admiration he bent upon her—it was strange to remember that her danger was not theatric also. But that was deadly real, and real, too, was the sudden surge of color into the young man's sallow face.
"You are kind to my roses—if not to me," he said quickly, and held out his hand for the brief little clasp she accorded.
"Your roses are dumb and have said nothing to make me cross," she laughed lightly, and looked swiftly about her. "How lovely this is," she ran on, "and how charming to feel a breeze. That room is rather warm and close.... Is you sister still too ill to come?"
And scarcely waiting for the assent which he began to frame with his searching eyes upon her, she added, "I am afraid I made her angry last night by intruding upon her. But I heard her voice and ran back to her room to ask after her. She wouldn't let me stay at all."
It was droll how natural her voice sounded, she thought. His eyes held their fixed scrutiny in an instant, then dropped carelessly away, as he drew forward the wicker chairs. "She is a nerveuse, you understand," he said with an air of indolent resignation, "and one can do nothing for that sort of thing. A crisis comes—one must wait for it to pass.... She regrets that condition.... And she wished me to present her regrets to you," he added suavely, "for that reception of you last night. She was ill and did not expect you—and she did not wish you to see her in that condition."
"I should not have gone," acknowledged Arlee, "but, as I said, I heard voices from the ante-room and thought I would like to see her.... That pretty little maid she gave me does not speak any English, so I cannot send any messages."
"But you can write them."
"My French spelling is worse than my pronunciation!" She laughed amusedly. "I wish you would find me an interpreter to put my polite remarks into polite sounding phrases. I know I put things like a First Reader!"
He smiled. "You do not put them like a First Reader to me. We do not need an interpreter.... Unless I need one to speak to you?"
"Oh, no, your English is wonderful!" She waited an instant, then took a breathless plunge. "Have you any more news for me?" she demanded, forcing the note of expectancy. It would be suspicious, indeed, if she did not ask that. But what if he had decided to throw the pretense aside——
"Not one word of news more," he said slowly.
She felt him watching her as she looked down on her plate. The pretty little girl was passing a platter of pigeon: Arlee did not speak until she had helped herself, then she said in a voice touched faintly with chagrin, "Well, the English are not very gallant toward ladies in misfortune, are they? I feel furiously snubbed.... Of course Mrs. Eversham never was much of a writer, but they might send over my letters from the hotel. The last mail ought to have brought a lot from that big brother of mine."
"Ah, yes, that big, grown-up, married brother who is so satisfied with all you do!"
She felt she had been unfortunate in her rash confidences.
"He won't be so pleased when he learns how I wasted a perfectly good Nile ticket," she remarked. "And Big Brother is rather fierce when he isn't pleased."
His eyes smiled, as if he understood and despised her suggestion. "Cairo and your America are not so near," he observed negligently, "that an incident here is a matter of immediate knowledge there."
She felt the danger of seeming to threaten him. "Oh, I'd 'fess up," she said lightly, playing with her food. "There—shoo—go away!" she cried suddenly, with a militant gesture about her plate. "That's one thing I hate about Egypt—the flies!"
"I hope that is the only thing you hate," said the young man blandly.
"Isn't that enough? There are so many of them!"
He laughed with real amusement at her petulance. "Is there netting enough in your room?" he inquired. "Would you like more for your bed?"
"Oh, no, I'm all right, thank you. The flies are chiefly bothersome at meals. This is certainly their paradise."
"But is there anything you would like—to make you happy here? I will get it for you. Would you not like some books, some music, some new clothes——"
"I don't wonder you ask! But really this white gown will last a little longer—Cairo is so clean. No, thank you, there is nothing I need bother you about—Oh, yes, there really is one book that I would like—a Turkish or an Arabic dictionary. I have always meant to learn a little of the language and this would seem the opportunity."
In the pause in which he appeared to be consuming pigeon she could feel him weighing her request, foreseeing its results.
"I shall be most happy to teach you," was what he said, but she knew she would never have that dictionary. And so one plan of the morning went flying to the winds. But she snatched at the next opening she saw and plunged into interested questions about the Turkish language, asking the words for such things as seemed spontaneously to occur to her—wall, palace, table—numbers—days of the week—repeating the pronunciation with the earnestness of a diligent young pupil, until she felt that her memory had all it could hold. And distrust, always ready now like a prompter in the box, suggested most upsettingly that perhaps he was not giving the right words. She resolved to experiment upon Mariayah.
He reverted, with increasing emphasis, upon his desire to make her happy in the palace, to surround her with whatever she desired, and swiftly she availed herself of this second opening.
"Yes, indeed, there is something that would make me happier, if you don't mind, please," she added with a droll assumption of meekness. "You don't know how horrid it is for me to be caged in one room and not be out of doors, and I would love to come down into the garden when I want to. Won't you give me a key to that door? That is, if it is always locked."
"Generally it is not," he said readily, "but now with the soldiers about it is safer. You see, the soldiers can approach the garden through the open banquet hall"—and he nodded to the colonnade behind them—"and though it is forbidden, one cannot foretell their obedience."
To one who knew those soldiers were chimerical acquiescence was maddening.
"But, dear me, can't you have some one in the banquet hall to shoo the soldiers away?" Arlee argued persuasively. "Since the rest of the household has the court, it seems awfully selfish not to let the ladies have the garden for their airing."
"It may be managed," he assented. "It has always been done, for the garden is for the ladies. Whenever you wish to be in the garden you have but to send word, and the household will remain in the court, as is, indeed, the custom."
"It would not be so terrible, you know, if a gardener or a donkey-boy did see my face!" laughed Arlee. "Plenty of them have had that pleasure before this."
She saw that the young man's face changed. Every clear-cut line of it was sharp with repugnance. "You need not remind me of that," he said with muffled fierceness, staring down at his plate.
"The danger line!" she thought while shaking her head at him, with the tense semblance of an amused little smile.... "You aren't the least bit English," she rebuked, "and I thought you were."
"Not in that.... And some day England will see her folly."
"America is seeing her folly now," thought Arlee with secret bitterness. But when she raised her eyes they were gently contemplative. She spoke musingly.
"In things like that you aren't at all what I thought you were—about our social customs, I mean. Yet fundamentally, I think you are."
"That I am what?"
"What I thought you were."
He waited, palpably waited, but Arlee continued to peel a tangerine with absorption, and the question had to come from him. He put it with an air of indolent amusement, yet she felt the intent interest in leash.
"And what did you think I was like, chère petite mademoiselle?"
"Very handsome for one thing, Monsieur! You see, I owe you a compliment for calling me such a pretty name as this!" With a mischievous smile she touched the roses nodding in her girdle. "And very autocratic for another, with a very bad temper. If you can't get your way you would be shockingly disagreeable!"
"But I always get my way," he assured her lazily, his teeth showing under his small, black mustache.
"I believe you do!" Ingenuous admiration, simple and sustained, was in the look she gave him. Her hands were not half so icy now, nor her nerves so tense. She felt strangely surer of herself; the actual presence of the danger calmed her. She must make good with this, she thought simply, in strenuous American.
"And yet," she went on thoughtfully, the pretty picture of fascinated absorption in this most feminine topic—the dissection of a young man—"yet, you are chivalrous. And I think that is the quality we American girls admire most of all."
"The quality—of indulgence?" he questioned, with a half-railing air.
"The quality—of gentleness."
"But is there not another quality which you American girls would admire more than that gentleness—if you ever had the chance in your lives to see it? The quality of dominance? The courage of the man who dares what he desires, and who takes what he wills? Is not that——"
"Ah, yes, we love strong men," Arlee flung into the speech that was bearing him on like a tide, "but we don't think them strong unless they are strong enough to fight themselves. They may take what they will—but they mustn't crush it.... There is a gentleness in great strength—I can't explain what I mean——"
"Ah, I see, I see." He smiled subtly. "I am not to crush you, little Rose of Desire," he said softly.
She met the sly significance of his gaze with a look of frank, unfaltering candor. "Of course not," she said stoutly. "When you—you make me afraid of you, you make me like you less. You seem less like the friend I knew on the boat."
"Ah, that boat!... You were my friend, then!" he added suddenly, with a note of question sounding through the affirmation, and she answered quickly, looking away with an air of petulant reproach. "Why, you know I was, Captain Kerissen. And here in Cairo——"
"Yes, here in Cairo," he interrupted triumphantly, "in the face of those eyes and tongues—I saw that red-headed dog of an Englishman looking his anger at you! But you smiled on me before them all—those fools, those tyrannic fools——"
"But you mustn't abuse my other friends! They were only—stupid!"
"Stupid as their blood brother, the ox!... But they are not in the picture now—those other friends!" Disagreeably he laughed. "And you do not grieve for them—no? The world has not touched you? There is no one out there,"—he made a gesture over the guarding walls—"no one who holds a fragment of your thought, of your heart in his hands?"
She looked at him as if puzzled, then burst into a bubbling laugh. "Why, of course not! I've just had a nice time with people. There has never been a bit of sentiment about it!"
"Not on your side," he said meaningly, and because this was hitting the truth smartly on the head she looked past him in some confusion.
"Oh—boys!" she said with a deprecating little laugh. "I've never listened to them."
He leaned back in his chair, feeling for his cigarette case, and the contentment of his look deepened. "You have been a child, asleep to life," he murmured complacently. "I told you you were a princess—let us say a sleeping princess waiting for the prince, like that old fairy tale of the English." He was looking at his cigarette as he tapped it on the arm of his chair, and slowly struck a light, then, after the first breath, "But do you not hear his footsteps in your sleep?" he added, and gave her a glance from the corner of his eyes.
She looked up and then down; she stared out into the sun-flooded garden and laughed softly. "Even princesses dream," she demurely acknowledged, and thought the line and her fleet, meaning glance went very well with this mad opera-bouffe which fate was forcing her to play.
Kerissen seemed to think that went very well, too, for his flashing teeth acknowledged his pleasure in her aptness; then his smile faded and she felt him studying her over his cigarette, studying her averted gaze, the bright color in her cheeks, the curves of her lips, and he was puzzled and perturbed by the sweet, baffling beauty of her. A wild elation began to swell his heart. His eyes glowed, his blood burned with the triumph, not so much of his daring capture of her, but of the flattering tribute that her pretty ways were paying toward his personality alone. Wary as he was, cynical of subterfuge, he did not penetrate her guard. His monstrous vanity whispered eager flattery in his ears.
And still he continued to stare at her, finding her unbelievably lovely. "My grandfather would call you an houri from paradise," he told her, the warmth of admiration deepening in his eyes.
"And your grandfather's grandson knows that I am only an houri from America!... But that is paradise for houris!"
"And not for men, no!... Sometimes I have wished that those English would restore in me that young belief in the heaven of the Prophet," he continued, smiling, "and now that wish is granted. It is here, that paradise," and his smile, flashing about the lonely garden, came to dwell again upon the girl before him.
She laughed. "But does one houri make a paradise?" she bantered, while the beating, hurrying heart of her went faster and faster till she thought his ears would hear it. "We have a proverb—one swallow does not make a summer."
"Cela dépend—that depends upon the houri.... When you are that one it is paradise indeed." He leaned toward her, speaking softly, but with a voice that thrilled more and more in its own eloquence.
She was the Rose of Desire, he reminded her, and beside her all other flowers drooped in envy. She was as lovely as young Dawn to the eyes of men. She was the ravishing embodiment of gaiety and youth and delight. He quoted from the poets, not from his own Oriental poets, but snatches from Campion and Wilde, vowing that
"There was a garden in her face,
Where roses and white lilies grow,"
and adding, with points of fire dancing in his heavy lidded eyes,