Chapter 3

A slight cackle emanated from the ledger, but immediately died away. A dead silence reigned in the office, broken only by the distant sound of the sea, and by the hard breathing of Alphonso, who had suddenly begun to pant.

“I wish to go to all the wicked places--_all!_”

The ledger cackled again more audibly. Mr. Greyne felt a prickling sensation run over him, but the thought of “Catherine” nerved him to his awful task.

“It is my wife’s express desire that I should do so,” he added desperately, quite forgetting Mrs. Greyne’s injunction to keep her dark in his desire to stand well with Rook’s.

The ledger went off into a hyena imitation, and Alphonso, turning still more away from Mr. Greyne, so as to get the eye fuller upon him, exclaimed, in a mixture of Aryan and Eurasian languages:

“Sir, I am a respectable, unmarried man. I was born in Buenos Ayres, educated in Smyrna, came of age in Constantinople, and have practised as guide in Bagdad and other particular cities. I refuse to have anything to do with you and your wife.”

So saying, he bounced into the inner room, and banged the door, while the ledger gave itself up to peals of merriment, and Mr. Greyne tottered forth upon the sea-front, bathed in a cold perspiration, and feeling more guilty than a murderer.

It was a staggering blow. He leaned over the stone parapet of the low wall, and let the soft breezes from the bay flit through his hair, and thought of Mrs. Greyne spurned by Alphonso. What was he to do? Kicked out of Rook’s, to whom could he apply? There must be wickedness in Algiers, but where? He saw none, though night was falling and stout Frenchmen were already intent upon their absinthe.

“Does monsieur wish to see the Kasbah to-night?”

Was it a voice from heaven? He turned, and saw standing beside him a tall, thin, audacious-looking young man, with coal-black moustaches, magnificent eyes, and an air that was half-languid, half-serpentine.

“Who are you?”

“I am a guide, monsieur. Here are my certificates.”

He produced from the inner pocket of his coat a large bundle of dirty papers.

“If monsieur will deign to look them over.”

But Mr. Greyne waved them away. What did he care for Certificates? Here was a guide to African frailty. That was sufficient. He was in a desperate mood, and uttered desperate words.

“Look here,” he said rapidly, “are you wicked?”

“Very wicked, monsieur.”

“Good!”

“Wicked, monsieur.”

“Right!”

“Wrong, monsieur.”

“I mean that it is good for me that you are wicked.”

“Monsieur is very good.”

“Yes; but I wish to be--that is, to see the other thing. Can you undertake to show me everything shocking in Algiers?”

“But certainly, monsieur. For a consideration.”

“Name your price.”

“Two hundred pounds, monsieur.”

Mr. Greyne started. It seemed a high figure.

“Monsieur thought it would be more? I make a special price, because I have taken a fancy to monsieur. I remove fifty pounds. Monsieur, of course, will pay all expenses.”

“Of course, of course.”

It was no time to draw back.

“How long will it take?”

“To see all the shocking--?”

“Precisely.”

“There is a good deal. A fortnight, three weeks. It depends on monsieur. If he is strong, and can do without sleep----”

“We shall have to be up at night?”

“Naturally.”

“I shall go to bed during the day, and get through it in a fortnight.”

“Perfectly.”

“Be at the Grand Hotel to-night at ten o’clock precisely.”

“At ten o’clock I will be there. Monsieur will pay a little in advance?”

“Here are twenty pounds,” cried Mr. Greyne recklessly.

The audacious-looking young man took the notes with decision, made a graceful salute, and disappeared in the direction of the quay, while Mr. Greyne walked to his hotel, flushed with excitement, and feeling like the most desperate criminal in Africa. If the militia could see him now!

At dinner he drank a bottle of champagne, and afterwards smoked a strong cigar over his coffee and liqueur. As he was finishing these frantic enjoyments the head waiter--a personage bearing a strong resemblance to an enlarged edition of Napoleon the First--approached him rather furtively, and, bending down, whispered in his ear:

“A gentleman has called to take monsieur to the Kasbah.”

Mr. Greyne started, and flushed a guilty red.

“I will come in a moment,” he answered, trying to assume a nonchalant voice, such as that in which a hardened major of dragoons announces that in his time he was a devil of a fellow.

The head waiter retired, looking painfully intelligent, and Mr. Greyne sprang upstairs, seized a Merrin’s exercise-book and a lead pencil, put on a dark overcoat, popped one of the Springfield revolvers into the pocket of it, and hastened down into the hall of the hotel, where the audacious-looking young man was standing, surrounded by saucy chasseurs in gay liveries and peaked caps, by Algerian waiters, and by German-Swiss porters, all of whom were smiling and looking choke-full of sympathetic comprehension.

“Ha!” said Mr. Greyne, still in the major’s, voice. “There you are!”

“Behold me, monsieur.”

“That’s good.”

“Wicked, monsieur.”

“Well, let’s be off to the mosque.”

One of the chasseurs--a child of eight who was thankful that he knew no better--burst into a piping laugh. The waiters turned hastily away, and the German-Swiss porters retreated to the bureau with some activity.

“To the mosque--precisely, monsieur,” returned the guide, with complete self-possession.

They stepped out at once upon the pavement, where a carriage was in waiting.

“Where are we going?” inquired Mr. Greyne in an anxious voice.

“We are going to the heights to see the Ouled,” replied the guide. “_En avant!_”

He bounded in beside Mr. Greyne, the coachman cracked his whip, the horses trotted. They were off upon their terrible pilgrimage.

V

On the following afternoon, at a quarter to three, when Mr. Greyne came down to breakfast, he found, lying beside the boiled eggs, a note directed to him in a feminine handwriting. He tote it open with trembling fingers, and read as follows:--

1 Rue du Petit Neore.

Dear Monsieur,--I am here. Poor mamma is in the hospital. I am allowed to see her twice a day. At all other times I remain alone, praying and weeping. I trust that monsieur has passed a good night. For me, I was sleepless, thinking of mamma. I go now to church.

Adele Verbena.

He laid this missive down, and sighed deeply. How strangely innocent it was, how simple, how sincere! There were white souls in Algiers--yes, even in Algiers. Strange that he should know one! Strange that he, who had filled a Merrin’s exercise-book with tiny writing, and had even overflowed on to the cover after “crossing” many pages, should receive the child-like confidences of one! “I go now to the church.” Tears came into his eyes as he laid the letter down beside a pile of buttered toast over which the burning afternoon sun of Africa was shining.

“Monsieur will take milk and sugar?”

It was the head waiter’s Napoleonic voice. Mr. Greyne controlled himself. The man was smiling intelligently. All the staff of the hotel smiled intelligently at Mr. Greyne to-day--the waiters, the porters, the chasseurs. The child of eight who was thankful that he knew no better had greeted him with a merry laugh as he came down to breakfast, and an “_Oh, là, là!_” which had elicited a rebuke from the proprietor. Indeed, a wave of human sympathy flowed upon Mr. Greyne, whose ashy face and dull, washed-out eyes betrayed the severity of his night-watch.

“Monsieur will feel better after a little food.”

The head waiter handed the buttered toast with bland majesty, at the same time shooting a reproving glance at the little chasseur, who was peeping from behind the door at the afternoon breakfaster.

“I feel perfectly well,” replied Mr. Greyne, with an attempt at cheerfulness.

“Still, monsieur will feel much better after a little food.”

Mr. Greyne began to toy with an egg.

“You know Algiers?” he asked.

“I was born here, monsieur. If monsieur wishes to explore to-night again the Kasbah I can----”

But Mr. Greyne stopped him with a gesture that was almost fierce.

“Where is the Rue du Petit Nègre?”

“Monsieur wishes to go there to-night?”

“I wish to go there now, directly I have finished break--lunch.”

The head waiter’s face was wreathed with humorous surprise.

“But monsieur is wonderful--superb! Never have I seen a traveller like monsieur!”

He gazed at Mr. Greyne with tropical appreciation.

“Monsieur had better have a carriage. The street is difficult to find.”

“Order me one. I shall start at once.”

Mr. Greyne pushed away the sunlit buttered toast, and got up.

“Monsieur is superb. Never have I seen a traveller like monsieur!” Napoleon’s voice was almost reverent. He hastened out, followed slowly by Mr. Greyne.

“A carriage for monsieur! Monsieur desires to go to the Rue du Petit Nègre!”

The staff of the hotel gathered about the door as if to speed a royal personage, and Mr. Greyne noticed that their faces too were touched with an almost startled reverence. He stepped into the carriage, signed feebly, but with determination, to the Arab coachman, and was driven away, followed by a parting “_Oh, là là!_” from the chasseur, uttered in a voice that sounded shrill with sheer amazement.

Through winding, crowded streets he went, by bazaars and Moorish bath-houses, mosques and Catholic churches, barracks and cafés, till at length the carriage turned into an alley that crept up a steep hill. It moved on a little way, and then stopped.

“Monsieur must descend here,” said the coachman. “Mount the steps, go to the right and then to the left. Near the summit of the hill he will find the Rue du Petit Nègre. Shall I wait for monsieur?”

“Yes.”

The coachman began to make a cigarette, while Mr. Greyne set forth to follow his directions, and, at length, stood before an arch, which opened into a courtyard adorned with orange-trees in tubs, and paved with blue and white tiles. Around this courtyard was a three-storey house with a flat roof, and from a bureau near a little fountain a stout Frenchwoman called to demand his business. He asked for Mademoiselle Verbena, and was at once shown into a saloon lined with chairs covered with yellow rep, and begged to take a seat. In two minutes Mademoiselle Verbena appeared, drying her eyes with a tiny pocket-handkerchief, and forcing a little pathetic smile of welcome. Mr. Greyne clasped her hand in silence. She sat down in a rep chair at his right, and they looked at each other.

“_Mais, mon Dieu!_ How monsieur is changed!” cried the Levantine. “If madame could see him! What has happened to monsieur?”

“Miss Verbena,” replied Mr. Greyne, “I have seen the Ouled on the heights.”

A spasm crossed the Levantine’s face. She put her handkerchief to it for a moment. “What is an Ouled?” she inquired, withdrawing it.

“I dare not tell you,” he replied solemnly.

“But indeed I wish to know, so that I may sympathise with monsieur.”

Mr. Greyne hesitated, but his heart was full; he felt the need of sympathy. He looked at Mademoiselle Verbena, and a great longing to unburden himself overcame him.

“An Ouled,” he replied, “is a dancing-girl from the desert of Sahara.”

“_Mon Dieu!_ How does she dance? Is it a valse, a polka, a quadrille?” “No. Would that it were!” And Mr. Greyne, unable further to govern his desire for full expression, gave Mademoiselle Verbena a slightly Bowdlerised description of the dances of the desert. She heard him with amazement.

“How terrible!” she exclaimed when he had finished. “And does one pay much to see such steps of the Evil One?”

“I gave her twenty pounds. Abdallah Jack----”

“Abdallah Jack?”

“My guide informed me that was the price. He tells me it is against the law, and that each time an Ouled dances she risks being thrown into prison.”

“Poor lady! How sad to have to earn one’s bread by such devices, instead of by teaching to the sweet little ones of monsieur the sympathetic grammar of one’s native country.”

Mr. Greyne was touched to the quick by this allusion, which brought, as in a vision, the happy home in Belgrave Square before him.

“You are an angel!” he exclaimed.

Mademoiselle Verbena shook her head.

“And this poor Ouled, you will go to her again?

“Yes. It seems that she is in communication with all the--the--well, all the odd people of Algiers, and that one can only get at them through her.”

“Indeed?”

“Abdallah Jack tells me that while I am here I should pay her a weekly salary, and that, in return, I shall see all the terrible ceremonies of the Arabs. I have decided to do so------

“Ah, you have decided!”

For a moment Mr. Greyne started. There seemed a new sound in Mademoiselle Verbena’s voice, a gleam in her dark brown eyes.

“Yes,” he said, looking at her in wonder. “But I have not yet told Abdallah Jack.”

The Levantine looked gently sad again.

“Ah,” she said in her usual pathetic voice, “how my heart bleeds for this poor Ouled. By the way, what is her name?”

“Aishoush.”

“She is beautiful?”

“I hardly know. She was so painted, so tattooed, so very--so very different from Mrs. Eustace Greyne.”

“How sad! How terrible! Ah, but you must long for the dear bonnet strings of madame?”

Did he? As she spoke Mr. Greyne asked himself the question. Shocked as he was, fatigued by his researches, did he wish that he were back again in Belgrave Square, drinking barley water, pasting notices of his wife’s achievements into the new album, listening while she read aloud from the manuscript of her latest novel? He wondered, and--how strange, how almost terrible--he was not sure.

“Is it not so?” murmured Mademoiselle Verbena.

“Naturally I miss my beloved wife,” said Mr. Greyne with a certain awkwardness. “How is your poor, dear mother?”

Tears came at once into the Levantine’s eyes.

“Very, very ill, monsieur. Still there is a chance--just a chance that she may not die. Ah, when I sit here all alone in this strange place, I feel that she will perish, that soon I shall be quite deserted in this cruel, cruel world!”

The tears began to flow down her cheeks with determination. Mr. Greyne was terribly upset.

“You must cheer up,” he exclaimed. “You must hope for the best.”

“Sitting here alone, how can I?”

She sobbed.

“Sitting here alone--very true!”

A sudden thought, a number of sudden thoughts, struck him.

“You must not sit here alone.”

“Monsieur!”

“You must come out. You must drive. You must see the town, distract yourself.”

“But how? Can a--a girl go about alone in Algiers?”

“Heaven forbid! No; I will escort you.”

“Monsieur!”

A smile of innocent, girlish joy transformed her face, but suddenly she was grave again.

“Would it be right, _convenable?_”

Mr. Greyne was reckless. The dog potential rose up in him again.

“Why not? And, besides, who knows us here? Not a soul.”

“That is true.”

“Put on your bonnet. Let us start at once!”

“But I do not wear the bonnet. I am not like madame.”

“To be sure. Your hat.”

And as she flew to obey him, Mr. Eustace Greyne found himself impiously thanking the powers that be for this strange chance of going on the spree with a toque. When Mademoiselle Verbena returned he was looking almost rakish. He eyed her neat black hat and close-fitting black jacket with a glance not wholly unlike that of a militiaman. In her hand she held a vivid scarlet parasol.

“Monsieur,” she said, “it is terrible, this _ombrelle_, when mamma lies at death’s door. But what can I do? I have no other, and cannot afford to buy one. The sun is fierce. I dare not expose myself to it without a shelter.”

She seemed really distressed as she opened the parasol, and spread the vivid silk above her pretty black-clothed figure; but Mr. Greyne thought the effect was brilliant, and ventured to say so. As they passed the bureau by the fountain on their way out the stout Frenchwoman cast an approving glance at Mademoiselle Verbena.

“The little rat will not see much more of the little negro now,” she murmured to herself. “After all the English have their uses.”

VI

In Belgrave Square Mrs. Eustace Greyne was beginning to get slightly uneasy. Several things combined to make her so. In the first place, Mademoiselle Verbena had never returned from her mother’s Parisian bedside, and had not even written a line to say how the dear parent was, and when the daughter’s nursing occupation was likely to be over. In the second place, Adolphus, in consequence of the Levantine’s absence, had totally lost his grasp, always uncertain, upon the irregular verbs. In the third place, Darrell, the valet, had returned to London the day after his departure from it, minus not only his master’s dressing-case, but minus everything he possessed. His story was that, while waiting at the station in Paris for his master’s appearance, he had entered into conversation with an agreeable stranger, and been beguiled into the acceptance of an absinthe at a café just outside. After swallowing the absinthe he remembered nothing more till he came to himself in a deserted waiting-room at the Gare du Nord, back to which he had been mysteriously conveyed. In his pocket was no money, no watch, only the return half of a second-class ticket from London to Paris. He, therefore, wandered about the streets till morning broke, and then came back to London a crestfallen and miserable man, bemoaning his untoward fate, and cursing “them blasted Frenchies” from the bottom of his British heart.

Mrs. Greyne’s anxiety on her husband’s behalf, now that he was thrown absolutely unattended upon the inhospitable shores of Africa, was not lessened by a fourth circumstance, which, indeed, worried her far more than all the others put together. This was Mr. Greyne’s prolonged absence from her side. Precisely one calendar month had now elapsed since he had buried his face in her prune bonnet strings at Victoria Station, and there seemed no prospect of his return. He wrote to her, indeed, frequently, and his letters were full of wistful regret and longing to be once more safe in the old homestead in Belgrave Square, drinking barley water, and pasting Romeike & Curtice notices into the new album which lay, gaping for him, upon the table of his sanctum. But he did not come; nay, more, he wrote plainly that there was no prospect of his coming for the present. It seemed that the wickedness of Africa was very difficult to come at. It did not lie upon the surface, but was hidden far down in depths to which the ordinary tourist found it almost impossible to penetrate. In his numerous letters Mr. Greyne described his heroic and unremitting exertions to fill the Merrin’s note-books with matter that would be suitable for the purging of humanity. He set out in full his interview with Alphonso at the office of Rook, and his definite rejection by that cosmopolitan official. According to the letters, after this event he had spent no less than a fortnight searching in vain for any sign of wickedness in the Algerian capital. He had frequented the cafés, the public bars, the theatres, the churches. He had been to the Velodrome. He had sat by the hour in the Jardin d’Essai. At night he had strolled in the fairs and hung about the circus. Yet nowhere had he been able to perceive anything but the most innocent pleasure, the simple merriment of a gay and guileless population to whom the idea of crime seemed as foreign as the idea of singing the English national anthem.

During the third week it was true that matters--always according to Mr. Greyne’s letters home--slightly improved. While walking near the quay, in active search for nautical outrage, he saw an Arab dock labourer, who had been over-smoking kief, run amuck, and knock down a couple of respectable snake-charmers who were on the point of embarkation for Tunis with their reptiles. This incident had filed up a half-score of pages in exercise-book number one, and had flooded Mr. Greyne with hope and aspiration. But it was followed by a stagnant lull which had lasted for days and had only been disturbed by the trifling incident of a gentleman in the Jewish quarter of the town setting fire to a neighbour’s bazaar, in the very natural endeavour to find a French half-penny which he had chanced to drop among a bale of carpets while looking in to drive a soft bargain. As Mrs. Greyne wired to Algiers, such incidents were of no value to “Catherine.”

A very active interchange of views had gone on between the husband and wife as time went by, and the book was at a standstill. At first Mrs. Greyne contented herself with daily letters, but latterly she had resorted to wires, explanatory, condemnatory, hortatory, and even comminatory. She began bitterly to regret her husband’s well-proven innocence, and wished she had despatched an uncle of hers by marriage, an ex-captain in the Royal Navy, who, she began to feel certain, would have been able to find far more frailty in Algiers than poor Eustace, in his simplicity, would ever come at. She even began to wish that she had crossed the sea in person, and herself boldly set about the ingathering of the material for which she was so impatiently waiting.

Her uneasiness was brought to a head by a letter from a house agent, stating that the corner mansion in Park Lane next to the Duke of Ebury’s was being nibbled at by a Venezuelan millionaire. She wired this terrible fact at once to Africa, adding, at an enormous expenditure of cash:

This will never do. You are too innocent, and cannot see what lies before you. Obtain assistance. Go to the British consul.

Mr. Greyne at once cabled back:

Am following your advice. Will wire result. Regret my innocence, but am distressed that you should so utterly condemn it.

Upon receiving this telegram at night, before a lonely dinner, Mrs. Eustace Greyne was deeply moved. She felt she had been hasty. She knew that to very few women was it given to have a husband so free from all masculine infirmities as Mr. Greyne. At the same time there was “Catherine,” there was the mansion in Park Lane, there was the Venezuelan millionaire. She began to feel distracted, and, for the first time in her life, refused to partake of sweetbreads fried in mushroom ketchup, a dish which she had greatly affected from the time when she wrote her first short story. While she was in the very act of waving away this delicacy a footman came in with a foreign telegram. She opened it quickly, and read as follows:--

British consul horrified; was ignominiously expelled from consulate; great scandal; am much upset, but will never give in, for your sake. Eustace.

As the dread meaning of these words penetrated at length to Mrs. Greyne’s voluminous brain a deep flush overspread her noble features. She rose from the table with a determination that struck awe to the hearts of the powdered underlings, and, drawing herself up to her full height, exclaimed:

“Send Mrs. Forbes at once to my study, if you please--at once, do you understand?”

In a moment Mrs. Forbes, who was the great novelist’s maid, appeared on the threshold of the oracle’s lair. She was a sober-looking, black-silk personage, who always wore a pork-pie cap in the house, and a Mother Hubbard bonnet out of it. Having been in service with Mrs. Greyne ever since the latter penned her last minor poetry--Mrs. Greyne had been a minor poet for three years soon after she put her hair up--Mrs. Forbes had acquired a certain literary expression of countenance and a manner that was decidedly prosy. She read a good deal after her supper of an evening, and was wont to be the arbiter when any literary matter was discussed in the servants’ hall.

“Madam?” she said, respectfully entering the room, and bending the pork-pie cap forward in an attentive attitude.

Mrs. Greyne was silent for a moment. She appeared to be thinking deeply. Mrs. Forbes gently closed the door, and sighed. It was nearly her supper-time, and she felt pensive.