The Fortieth Door

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 c...

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 sp...

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 s...

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 i...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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 hi...

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.

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.

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 th...

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...

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 o...

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...

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 mes...

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 whic...

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 confin...

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...

"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...

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, tourist...

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 co...

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 m...

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...

"_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 consterna...

"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 t...

"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...