Chapter 32

"It's just an idea. You know, I told you that on the journey, when Si Maïeddine was being very kind to me--before I knew he cared--I made him a present of the African brooch you gave me in Paris. I hated to take so many favours of him, and give nothing in return; so I thought, as I was on my way to you and would soon see you, I might part with that brooch, which he admired. If Si Maïeddine wore it in Algiers, and Mr. Knight saw----"

"Would he be likely to recognize it, do you think?"

"He noticed it on the boat, and I told him you gave it to me."

"If he would come all the way from Algiers on the strength of a brooch which might have been yours, and you _might_ have given to Maïeddine, then he's a man who knows what he wants, and deserves to get it," Saidee said. "If he _could_ help us! I should feel rewarded for telling Honoré I wouldn't go with him; because some day I may be free, and then perhaps I shall be glad I waited----"

"You will be glad. Whatever happens, you'll be glad," Victoria insisted.

"Maybe. But now--what are we to do? We can see him, and you can recognize him with the field-glass, but unless he has a glass too, he can't see who you are--he can't see at all, because by the time he rides near enough, the ground dips down so that even our heads will be hidden from him by the wall round the roof. And he'll be hidden from us, too. If he asks for you, he'll be answered only by stares of surprise. Cassim will pretend not to know what he's talking about. And presently he'll have to go away without finding out anything."

"He'll come back," said Victoria, firmly. But her eyes were not as bright with the certainty of happiness as they had been.

"What if he does? Or it may be that he'll try to come back, and an accident will happen to him. I hate to frighten you. But Arabs are jealous--and Maïeddine's a true Arab. He looks upon you almost as his wife now. In a week or two you will be, unless----"

"Yes. Unless--_unless_!" echoed Victoria. "Don't lose hope, Saidee, for I shan't. Let's think of something to do. He's near enough now, maybe, to notice if we wave our handkerchiefs."

"Many women on roofs in Africa wave to men who will never see their faces. He won't know who waves."

"He will _feel_. Besides, he's searching for me. At this very minute, perhaps, he's thinking of the golden silence I talked about, and looking up to the white roofs."

Instantly they began to wave their handkerchiefs of embroidered silk, such as Arab ladies use. But there came no answering signal. Evidently, if the rider were looking at a white roof, he had chosen one which was not theirs. And soon he would be descending the slope of the Zaouïa hill. After that they would lose sight of each other, more and more surely, the closer he came to the gates.

"If only you had something to throw him!" Saidee sighed. "What a pity you gave the brooch to Maïeddine. He might have recognized that."

"It isn't a pity if he traced me by it," said Victoria. "But wait. I'll think of something."

"He's riding down the dip. In a minute it will be too late," Saidee warned her.

The girl lifted over her head the long string of amber beads she had bought in the curiosity shop of Jeanne Soubise. Wrapping it in her handkerchief, she began to tie the silken ends together.

Stephen was so close to the Zaouïa now that they could no longer see him.

"Throw--throw! He'll be at the gates."

Victoria threw the small but heavy parcel over the wall which hid the dwellers on the roof.

Where it fell, they could not see, and no sound came up from the sand-dune far below. Some beggar or servant of the Zaouïa might have found and snatched the packet, for all that they could tell.

For a time which seemed long, they waited, hoping that something would happen. They did not speak at all. Each heard her own heart beating, and imagined that she could hear the heart of the other.

At last there were steps on the stairs which led from Saidee's rooms to the roof. Noura came up. "O twin stars, forgive me for darkening the brightness of thy sky," she said, "but I have here a letter, given to me to put into the hands of Lella Saïda."

She held out a folded bit of paper, that had no envelope.

Saidee, pale and large-eyed, took it in silence. She read, and then handed the paper to Victoria.

A few lines were scrawled on it in English, in a very foreign handwriting. The language, known to none in this house except the marabout, Maïeddine, Saidee and Victoria, was as safe as a cypher, therefore no envelope had been needed.

"Descend into thy garden immediately, and bring with thee thy sister," the letter said. And it was signed "Thy husband, Mohammed."

"What can it mean?" asked Victoria, giving back the paper to Saidee.

"I don't know. But we shall soon see--for we must obey. If we didn't go down of our own accord, we'd soon be forced to go."

"Perhaps Cassim will let me talk to Mr. Knight," said the girl.

"He is more likely to throw you to his lion, in the court," Saidee answered, with a laugh.

They went down into the garden, and remained there alone. Nothing happened except that, after a while, they heard a noise of pounding. It seemed to come from above, in Saidee's rooms.

Listening intently, her eyes flashed, and a bright colour rushed to her cheeks.

"Now I know why we were told to come into the garden!" she exclaimed, her voice quivering with anger. "They're nailing up the door of my room that leads to the roof!"

"Saidee!" To Victoria the thing seemed too monstrous to believe.

"Cassim threatened to do it once before--a long time ago--but he didn't. Now he has. That's his answer to your Mr. Knight."

"Perhaps you're wrong. How could any one have got into your rooms without our seeing them pass through the garden?"

"I've always thought there was a sliding door at the back of one of my wall cupboards. There generally is one leading into the harem rooms in old houses like this. Thank goodness I've hidden my diaries in a new place lately!"

"Let's go up and make sure," whispered Victoria.

Still the pounding went on.

"They'll have locked us out."

"We can try."

Victoria went ahead, running quickly up the steep, narrow flight of steps that led to the upper rooms which she and Saidee shared. Saidee had been right. The door of the outer room was locked. Standing at the top of the stairs, the pounding sounded much louder than before.

Saidee laughed faintly and bitterly.

"They're determined to make a good job of it," she said.

XLIV

Stephen rode back with his Arab companion, to the desert city where Nevill waited. He had gone to the Zaouïa alone with the guide, because Nevill had thought it well, in case of emergencies, that he should be able to say: "I have a friend in Oued Tolga who knows where I am, and is expecting me." Now he was coming away, thwarted for the moment, but far from hopeless.

It is a four hours' ride among the dunes, between the Zaouïa and the town, for the sand is heavy and the distance is about seventeen miles. The red wine of sunset was drained from the cups of the sand-hollows, and the shadows were cool when Stephen saw the minaret of the town mosque and the crown of an old watch-tower, pointing up like a thumb and finger of a buried hand. Soon after, he passed through the belt of black tents which at all seasons encircles Oued Tolga as a girdle encircles the waist of an Ouled Naïl, and so he rode into the strange city. The houses were crowded together, two with one wall between, like Siamese twins, and they had the pale yellow-brown colour of honeycomb, in the evening light. The roughness of the old, old bricks, made of baked sand, gave an effect of many little cells; so that the honeycomb effect was intensified; and the sand which flowed in small rippling waves round the city, and through streets narrow and broad, was of the same honey-yellow as the houses, except that it glittered with gypsum under the kindling stars. Among the bubbly domes, and low square towers, vague in the dimming light, bunches of palms in hidden gardens nodded over crumbling walls, like dark plumes on the crowns of the dancing-women.

In the market-place was the little hotel, newly built; the only French thing in Oued Tolga, except the military barracks, the Bureau Arabe, and a gurgling artesian well which a French officer had lately completed. But before Stephen could reach the market-place and the hotel, he had to pass through the quarter of the dancing-girls.

It was a narrow street, which had low houses on either side, with a balcony for every mean window. Dark women leaned their elbows on the palm-wood railings, and looked down, smoking cigarettes, and calling across to each other. Other girls sat in lighted doorways below, each with a candle guttering on a steep step of her bare staircase; and in the street walked silent men with black or brown faces, whose white burnouses flowed round their tall figures like blowing clouds. Among them were a few soldiers, whose uniforms glowed red in the twilight, like the cigarette ends pulsing between the painted lips of the Ouled Naïls. All that quarter reeked with the sweet, wicked smell of the East; and in the Moorish café at the far end, the dancing-music had begun to throb and whine, mingling cries of love and death, with the passion of both. But there was no dancing yet, for the audience was not large enough. The brilliant spiders crouched in their webs, awaiting more flies; for caravans were coming in across that desert sea which poured its yellow billows into the narrow street; and in the market-place, camel-drivers only just arrived were cooking their suppers. They would all come a little later into this quarter to drink many cups of coffee, and to spend their money on the dancers.

As Stephen went by on horseback, the girls on the balconies and in the doorways looked at him steadily without smiling, but their eyes sparkled under their golden crowns, or scarlet headkerchiefs and glittering veils. Behind him and his guide, followed a procession of boys and old men, with donkeys loaded with dead palm-branches from the neighbouring oasis, and the dry fronds made a loud swishing sound; but the dancers paid no attention, and appeared to look through the old men and children as if they did not exist.

In the market-place were the tired camels, kneeling down, looking gloomily at their masters busy cooking supper on the sand. Negro sellers of fruit and fly-embroidered lumps of meat, or brilliant-coloured pottery, and cheap, bright stuffs, were rolling up their wares for the night, in red and purple rags or tattered matting. Beggars lingered, hoping for a stray dried date, or a coin before crawling off to secret dens; and two deformed dwarfs in enormous turbans and blue coats, claimed power as marabouts, chanting their own praises and the praises of Allah, in high, cracked voices.

As Stephen rode to the hotel, and stopped in front of the arcade which shaded the ground floor, Nevill and another man sprang up from chairs pushed back against the white house-wall.

"By Jove, Legs, I'm glad to see you!" Nevill exclaimed, heartily, "What news?"

"Nothing very great so far, I'm sorry to say. Much as we expected," Stephen answered. And as he spoke, he glanced at the stranger, as if surprised that Nevill should speak out before him. The man wore the smart uniform of the Chasseurs d'Afrique. He was quite young, not over thirty-four, and had a keen, brave face, as Stephen could see by the crude light of a lamp that was fixed in the wall. But the large grey eyes, somewhat pale in contrast with deep sunburn, were the eyes of a poet rather than those of a born soldier.

"I must introduce you and Captain Sabine to each other," Nevill went on, in French, as Stephen got off his horse and it was led away by the Arab. "He's staying at the hotel. He and I've been talking about the Zaouïa and--the marabout. The upshot of our conversation will astonish you. I feel sure, when you hear it, you will think we can talk freely about our business to Captain Sabine."

Stephen said something polite and vague. He was interested, of course, but would have preferred to tell his adventure to Nevill alone.

"Monsieur Caird and I made acquaintance, and have been chatting all the afternoon," volunteered Sabine. "To begin with, we find we have many friends in common, in Algiers. Also he knows relations of mine, who have spoken of me to him, so it is almost as if we had known each other longer. He tells me that you and he are searching for a young lady who has disappeared. That you have followed here a man who must know where she is; that in the city, you lost track of the man but heard he had gone on to the Zaouïa; that this made you hope the young lady was there with her sister, whose husband might perhaps have some position under the marabout."

"I told him these things, because I thought, as Captain Sabine's been sinking an artesian well near the Zaouïa, he might have seen Miss Ray, if she were there. No such luck. He hasn't seen her; however, he's given me a piece of information which makes it just about as sure she _is_ there, as if he had. You shall have it from him. But first let me ask you one question. Did you get any news of her?"

"No. I heard nothing."

"Does that mean you saw----"

"No. I'll tell you later. But anyhow, I went into the Zaouïa, almost certain she was there, and that she'd seen me coming. That was a good start, because of course I'd had very little to go on. There was only a vague hope. I asked for the marabout, and they made me send a visiting-card--quaint in the desert. Then they kept me moving about a while, and insisted on showing me the mosque. At last they took me to a hideous reception room, with a lot of good and vile things in it, mixed up together. The marabout came in, wearing the black mask we'd heard about--a fellow with a splendid bearing, and fine eyes that looked at me very hard over the mask. They were never off my face. We complimented each other in French. Then I said I was looking for a Miss Ray, an American girl who had disappeared from Algiers, and had been traced to the Zaouïa, where I had reason to believe she was staying with a relative from her own country, a lady married to some member of his staff. I couldn't give him the best reason I had for being sure she _was_ there, as you'll see when I tell you what it was. But he said gravely that no European lady was married to any one in the Zaouïa; that no American or any other foreign person, male or female, was there. In the guest-house were one or two Arab ladies, he admitted, who had come to be cured of maladies by virtue of his power; but no one else. His denial showed me that he was in the plot to hide Miss Ray. That was one thing I wanted to know; so I saw that the best thing for her, would be for me to pretend to be satisfied. If it hadn't been for what happened before I got to the Zaouïa gates, I should almost have been taken in by him, perhaps, he had such an air of noble, impeccable sincerity. But just as I dipped down into a kind of hollow, on the Zaouïa side of the river, something was thrown from somewhere. Unluckily I couldn't be sure where. I'd been looking up at the roofs behind the walls, but I must have had my eyes on the wrong one, if this thing fell from a roof, as I believe it did. It was a little bundle, done up in a handkerchief, and I saw it only as it touched the ground, about a dozen yards in front. Then I hurried on, you may be sure, hoping it was meant for me, to grab the thing before any one else could appear and lay hands on it."

"Well?"

"Luckily I'd outridden the guide. I made him think afterward that I'd jumped off my horse to pick up the whip, which I dropped for a blind, in case of spying eyes. Tied up in the silk handkerchief--an Arab-looking handkerchief--was a string of amber beads. Do you remember the beads Miss Ray bought of Miss Soubise, and wore to your house?"

"I remember she had a handsome string of old prayer-beads."

"Is this the one?" Stephen took the handkerchief and its contents from his pocket, and Nevill examined the large, round lumps of gleaming amber, which were somewhat irregular in shape. Captain Sabine looked on with interest.

"I can't be sure," Nevill said reluctantly.

"Well, I can," Stephen answered with confidence. "She showed it to me, in your garden. I remember a fly in the biggest bead, which was clear, with a brown spot, and a clouded bead on either side of it. I had the necklace in my hand. Besides, even if I weren't as certain as I am, who would throw a string of amber beads at my feet, if it weren't some one trying to attract my attention, in the only way possible? It was as much as to say, 'I know you've come looking for me. If you're told I'm not here, it's false.' I was a good long way from the gates; but much nearer to a lot of white roofs grouped behind the high wall of the Zaouïa, than I would have been in riding on, closer to the gates. Unfortunately there are high parapets to screen any one standing on the roofs. And anyhow, by the time the beads were thrown, I was too low down in the hollow to see even a waved hand or handkerchief. Still, with that necklace in my pocket, I knew pretty well what I was about, in talking with the marabout."

"You thought you did," said Nevill. "But you'd have known a lot more if only you could have made Captain Sabine's acquaintance before you started."

Stephen looked questioningly at the Frenchman.

"Perhaps it would be better to speak in English," suggested Sabine. "I have not much, but I get on. And the kitchen windows are not far away. Our good landlord and his wife do not cook with their ears. I was telling your friend that the marabout himself has a European wife--who is said to be a great beauty. These things get out. I have heard that she has red hair and skin as white as cream. That is also the description which Mr. Caird gave me of the young lady seeking a sister. It makes one put two and two together, does it not?"

"By Jove!" exclaimed Stephen. He and Nevill looked at each other, but Nevill raised his eyebrows slightly. He had not thought it best, at present, to give the mystery of Cassim ben Halim, as he now deciphered it, into a French officer's keeping. It was a secret in which France would be deeply, perhaps inconveniently, interested. A little later, the interference of the French might be welcome, but it would be just as well not to bring it in prematurely, or separately from their own personal interests. "I wish to heaven," Stephen went on, "I'd known this when I was talking to the fellow! And yet--I'm not sure it would have made much difference. We were deadly polite to each other, but I hinted in a veiled way that, if he were concealing any secret from me, the French authorities might have something to say to him. I was obsequious about the great power of Islam in general, and his in particular, but I suggested that France was the upper dog just now. Maybe his guilty conscience made him think I knew more than I did. I hope he expects to have the whole power of France down on him, as well as the United States, which I waved over his head, Miss Ray being an American. Of course I remembered your advice, Nevill, and was tactful--for her sake, for fear anything should be visited on her. I didn't say I thought he was hiding her in the Zaouïa. I put it as if I wanted his help in finding her. But naturally he expects me back again; and we must make our plans to storm the fortress and reduce it to subjection. There isn't an hour to waste, either, since this necklace, and Captain Sabine's knowledge, have proved to us that she's there. Too bad we didn't know it earlier, as we might have done something decisive in the beginning. But now we do know, with Captain Sabine's good will and introduction we may get the military element here to lend a hand in the negotiations. A European girl can't be shut up with impunity, I should think, even in this part of the world. And the marabout has every reason not to get in the bad books of the French."

"He is in their very best books at present," said Sabine. "He is thought much of. The peace of the southern desert is largely in his hands. My country would not be easily persuaded to offend him. It might be said in his defence that he is not compelled to tell strangers if he has a European wife, and her sister arrives to pay her a visit. Arab ideas are peculiar; and we have to respect them."

"I think my friend and I must talk the whole matter over," said Stephen, "and then, perhaps, we can make up our minds to a plan of action we couldn't have taken if it weren't for what you've told us--about the marabout and his European wife."

"I am glad if I have helped," Sabine answered. "And"--rather wistfully--"I should like to help further."

XLV

"Oh Lella Saïda, there is a message, of which I hardly dare to speak," whispered Noura to her mistress, when she brought supper for the two sisters, the night when the way to the roof had been closed up.

"Tell me what it is, and do not be foolish," Saidee said sharply. Her nerves were keyed to the breaking point, and she had no patience left. It was almost a pleasure to visit her misery upon some one else. She hated everybody and everything, because all hope was gone now. The door to the roof was nailed shut; and she and Victoria were buried alive.

"But one sends the message who must not be named; and it is not even for thee, lady. It is for the Little Rose, thy sister."

"If thou dost not speak out instantly, I will strike thee!" Saidee exclaimed, on the verge of hysterical tears.

"And if I speak, still thou wilt strike! Be this upon thine own head, my mistress. The Ouled Naïl has dared send her woman, saying that if the Little Rose will visit her house after supper, it will be for the good of all concerned, since she has a thing to tell of great importance. At first I would have refused even to take the message, but her woman, Hadda, is my cousin, and she feared to go back without some answer. The Ouled Naïl is a demon when in a temper, and she would thrust pins into Hadda's arms and thighs."

Saidee blushed with anger, disgustful words tingling on her tongue; but she remained silent, her lips parted.

"Of course I won't go," said Victoria, shocked. The very existence of Miluda was to her a dreadful mystery upon which she could not bear to let her mind dwell.

"I'm not sure," Saidee murmured. "Let me think. This means something very curious, I can't think what. But I should like to know. It can't make things worse for us if you accept her invitation. It may make them better. Will you go and see what the creature wants?"

"Oh, Saidee, how can I?"

"Because I ask it," Saidee answered, the girl's opposition deciding her doubts. "She can't eat you."

"It isn't that I'm afraid----"

"I know! It's because of your loyalty to me. But if I send you, Babe, you needn't mind. It will be for my sake."

"Hadda is waiting for an answer," Noura hinted.

"My sister will go. Is the woman ready to take her?"

"I will find out, lady."

In a moment the negress came back. "Hadda will lead the Little Rose to her mistress. She is glad that it is to be now, and not later."

"Be very careful what you say, and forget nothing that _she_ says," was Saidee's last advice. And it sounded very Eastern to Victoria.

She hated her errand, but undertook it without further protest, since it was for Saidee's sake.

Hadda was old and ugly. She and Noura had been born in the quarter of the freed Negroes, in the village across the river, and knew nothing of any world beyond; yet all the wiliness and wisdom of female things, since Eve--woman, cat and snake--glittered under their slanting eyelids.