But what Rachel had said was evidently not for publication. Miss Guest stopped her with a hand on hers, and a “_Dear_ Monny, please don’t let us think of it any more, if Antoun Effendi disapproves. Maybe it was a silly idea, and we’ve plenty of amusing things to do every minute.”
Monny was apparently contented to let the idea slip, and Brigit had thought that, in the excitement of getting ready for the ball, she and Rachel had really forgotten it. Then, before writing me, she had overheard Rachel say to her friend, “It’s for twelve o’clock sharp.” And Monny had answered, “Won’t it be _great!_ Does Bedr think—-” But she had stopped short at sight of Brigit.
Even this did not suggest to Biddy a visit to a “hasheesh den,” for various other plans had been broached and discouraged by “Antoun.” She did not feel that, as she was not supposed to know his real status, she could go “blabbing” to him; and fearing that mischief was on foot, she had wished for me. When I didn’t arrive, she soothed herself by reflecting that, after all, she need only keep a sharp watch over Monny when midnight drew near. None of the party intended to dance, and so it would be easy, Brigit thought, to “have an eye upon the girls.”
Monny had bought Oriental costumes for herself and Rachel. They were rather conspicuous, luckily for Biddy’s plan, for among the many gorgeous dresses in the Casino she had no difficulty in tracking those two. Until half past eleven, she told herself, she need not be on the alert every instant; but therein had lain her mistake. Sir Marcus Lark had appeared, dressed (more or less) as a Roman officer of the Occupation days, he having heard Mrs. East remark that, “whatever _anybody_ said, it was her favourite period.” The lady, of course, had not missed such an opportunity to appear as Cleopatra. She had brought a costume with her from New York; and while Biddy “lost herself” in watching the effect of this magnificence on Sir Marcus, the girls vanished.
Without alarming Mrs. East, Brigit had begun to search. She asked everybody she knew in the ballroom if the girls had gone out, and inquired in the cloakroom; but the two had been seen by nobody. It was as if they had melted into air; and Brigit began to suspect that they must have covered up their brilliant dresses with dominoes smuggled into the Casino. Willis Bailey was at the ball, but he had developed a flirtation with Miss Guest, and Biddy felt that he was not to be trusted as a confidant. Perhaps, too, he had helped the girls to disappear. It seemed cruel to frighten Mrs. East, when the scheme, whatever it was, might be no more than an innocent freak; so Biddy said nothing to Queen Cleopatra or her Roman attendant. She slipped across the garden to the hotel, and sent an Arab messenger off in a taxi with a note to the address “Antoun” had told her would find him. In less than an hour he arrived, and when he had listened to her account of what had happened, he said after a minute’s reflection that the ladies had almost surely gone with Bedr to some hasheesh den, or a place masquerading as such. “Antoun” consoled Biddy as well as he could, by saying that no harm would come to Miss Gilder or Miss Guest. Bedr would know too well on which side his bread was buttered to take his clients where insult or danger could reach them. Off “Antoun” went to look for the missing ones though, and assured Biddy that she should have news as soon as possible.
It was not till three o’clock that she had begun to be very anxious, and had disturbed the harmony of Sir Marcus Lark’s duet with Mrs. East. Even then she would not have spoken had she not feared that the ball would break up, and there would be no man to appeal to!
Sir Marcus had been inclined to smile at the notion of danger; but he, like Anthony Fenton, was ignorant of any private qualms which troubled Brigit O’Brien. She could not tell him who she was, and that she considered herself far from being a “mascot” to her fellow-travellers. If she had told, and added that she feared enemies who might for certain reasons make a mistake in Monny’s identity, he would have laughed his hearty laugh, and said that such melodramatic things didn’t happen, even in Egypt.
“But _you_ know,” Biddy appealed to me, “that melodramatic things _have_ happened to me and those near me. I’m not even _sure_ that poor Richard’s death was natural, though I watched over him like a hawk in those dreadful days when he was fearing every shadow, and we were flitting from pillar to post, with Esmé. Through Richard two men were electrocuted. He used to get threatening letters forwarded from place to place, always signed with the same initials, and he wouldn’t tell me what they meant. It was because of them that he hid Esmé in a convent-school before he died; for she was threatened as well as he. I, too, for the matter of that! Not that the child or I had done the organization any harm; but Esmé is of his blood, and they may have thought I had more of their secrets than I really have. I’ve not used the name of O’Brien for years now, and I’ve moved about so much that sometimes I have felt I must be safe. Still, I ought perhaps not to have gone to visit Esmé, though she wrote and begged me to, for special reasons I needn’t bother you with: a curious little love romance which I fear must end badly. I didn’t think of danger to Monny; but you see, as I’ve told you, the convent isn’t far from Monaco. I got off the _Laconia_ there, to visit Esmé, and when I came on board again, Monny and Mrs. East and Rachel came with me. They’d been in Italy and France, and had picked up Miss Guest, who was only too enchanted to batten on Monny’s kindness and dollars. It was I who had engaged their staterooms, on a cable from Monny, long before. And if there were a spy anywhere, he might have the idea that I wanted to smuggle Esmé out of her convent by a trick, and–“
“But almost every one must know Miss Gilder’s face from her photographs in newspapers,” I broke in, on a stifled sob of Biddy’s. “She couldn’t be mistaken for another girl, as an unimportant young person might.”
“I’m not sure. Those photographs were snapshots, and very bad, as you must know if you’ve ever seen any. Monny never gave a portrait of herself to a newspaper, and it’s years since they got hold of a good one. Besides, if she weren’t mistaken for Esmé O’Brien, that wretched Bedr might have made up a plot to have her kidnapped for ransom. It was the thing Monny’s father was always afraid of–absurdly afraid of, I _used_ to think.”
“I think so still,” I said. “Such things don’t happen–anywhere, to a grown-up girl.”
“What about Raisuli in Tangier?” Biddy challenged me. “He used to kidnap people whenever he liked. And so do lots of brigands.”
“We haven’t to do with brigands.”
“Oh, what’s in a name? And I wouldn’t put _anything_ past that horrid Bedr.”
“As Anthony said to you, he knows which side his bread’s buttered.”
“But if he hopes some one will give him more butter for being wicked than he can get from us for being good?”
“Let’s not think of far-fetched contingencies, dear,” said I. “Now you’ve told me all, I will try to do something–“
“May I come in?” boomed a big voice at the door. “I knocked and nobody answered, so I thought the room would be empty–“
Biddy dropped my hand like a hot potato. She had jumped up so quickly from our sofa that Sir Marcus Lark’s observant eyes could hardly have seen us sitting there together.
“Of course, come in,” she said. “Have you anything to tell? But I’ll call Mrs. East. She won’t like you to begin without her.”
Biddy darted off to an adjoining room, leaving me alone with my employer.
“What do you think of this affair?” I wanted to know. “Well,” said he, “I can only judge other men by myself. If I had such a chance to appear a hero in the eyes of a pretty woman as Fenton has, I’m afraid I’d be tempted to take advantage of it, even if I had to play some trick to make myself indispensable. Now you see in a nutshell what I think. Captain Fenton will certainly rescue those young ladies from a trap if he has to make the trap himself.”
I was disgusted, and shrugged my shoulders. “You have a poor opinion of Fenton,” I said.
“On the contrary, I think very highly of his intelligence. I’m not worrying about any one of the three, though don’t mention it to Mrs. East or Mrs. Jones that I said so. I’ve come to tell them that my men have searched Cairo and found nothing. Not the police, you know; I haven’t applied to the police after all. I thought Fenton would be furious. And anyhow it might make talk. But I’ve paid the best dragomans in town to look sharp; and they know as much about this old place as the police do, if not more. By the way, Lord Ernest, did Corkran say anything to you about an intention to throw over his job on the _Candace_?”
“No. He said he was going to call on you, that’s all.”
“He did call. I was out–on this business, as it happens. He waited, and I found him, making himself at home in my sitting-room–which I use as a kind of office. I wish I knew how many of my letters and papers he’d had time to read.”
“Surely he wouldn’t–“
“I shouldn’t say ‘surely’ was the word. I’d gone out in a hurry and left things scattered about–which isn’t my habit. When I came back, it struck me that my desk looked a bit tempting for a man with a retired conscience. I was going to keep him on the _Candace_, rather than fuss, because it wasn’t so much his fault as mine that he was the wrong man in the place. He couldn’t do any harm in Jerusalem, it seemed. Let him wail in the Jews’ Wailing Place, if he’d any complaints, said I to myself. I thought he was too keen on money to resign because his silly pride was hurt. But to my surprise, he informed me that he’d come to ‘hand in his papers,’ as he called it. So much the worse for his pocket and the better for mine! Only it struck me as d–d queer, considering Corkran’s character. I wanted to ask if he’d spit out any venom to you.”
“Not a drop,” said I. But I, too, thought it queer, considering Corkran’s character, and the fact that having resigned of his own free will, he could hardly expect Lark to pay his way home. It even occurred to me to wonder if the resignation were not a sudden thought of the Colonel’s. He had spoken several times of going on to Palestine, and had mentioned the trip that morning. Had Sir Marcus said something inadvertently, which had so piqued Corkran that he threw over his appointment on the impulse? Or had he perhaps been dishonourable enough to glance at a letter, in which Lark referred to him in terms uncomplimentary?
As I asked myself these questions, Mrs. East came in with Brigit, and Sir Marcus forgot me. His face said “What a woman!” And anxiety was becoming to Cleopatra. It gave to her that thrilling look which only beautiful Jewesses or women of Latin race ever wear: a look of all the tragedy and mystery of womanhood since Eve. “What news of _them_?” she asked Sir Marcus, when she had given a ringed hand and an almond-eyed glance to me.
“No news exactly,” said the big man, “but I feel sure your niece and her friend are safe–“
“My niece and her friend!” exclaimed Cleopatra, ungratefully frowning. “Why do you say nothing of ‘Antoun?’ Does nobody care what becomes of him?”
As she spoke, there was a knock at the door. One of the Arab servants of the hotel announced that a man had a letter for Mrs. Jones.
“Mrs. Jones?” cried Biddy. “I am Mrs. Jones. Where’s the letter?”
“That man not give it to us. He say he see you or not give it at all.”
“Well, why didn’t you send him up?”
“Arab mans not let in hotel, if peoples don’t ask for them.”
“An Arab! Not–not–is he a stranger?”
“Yes, Missis. Very low man. Never comed before.”
“Bring him here–quick!”
Five minutes passed. We tried to talk, but could think of nothing to say. Then the servant returned, ushering in a dwarfish Arab in a dirty white turban, and the shabby black galabeah worn only by the poor who cannot afford good materials and the bright colours loved by Egyptians.
“From Antoun Effendi?” asked Biddy, in excitement, as he held out a piece of folded paper, not in an envelope.
The man shook his head. “He spik no English,” explained the servant who waited.
“_You_ talk to him,” Biddy appealed to me, while Cleopatra told the hotel footman that he might go. But I had no time to question the messenger. Biddy cried out as she unfolded the paper. “Why, Duffer, inside it’s addressed to you! It says:
“‘For Lord Ernest Borrow. To be opened by Mrs. Jones in his absence.'”
Within the outer wrapping was a second folded paper, of the same kind. They looked like sheets torn from a notebook. And I saw that the address, scrawled in pencil, was in Anthony’s handwriting.
CHAPTER XI
THE HOUSE OF THE CROCODILE
The letter had evidently been dashed off in a great hurry. It was short and written in French, the language in which “Antoun” chose to talk with foreigners.
Give the bearer two hundred piastres and let him go. Don’t try to make him speak. I have promised this. Then quick to Jarvis Pasha and get him to raid the House of the Crocodile. Question of hasheesh. We must be smuggled out when arrests are made–also Bedr, to save scandal.
Not a word as to whether all were safe, or in danger! But I realized that, for some reason, each instant had been of value. And each instant was of value now.
Anthony was one who knew precisely what he wanted and why he wanted it. I obeyed his instructions implicitly. Two hundred piastres went from my pocket into the hand of the withered Arab, and he was allowed to take his departure despite a burst of protest from my companions, who naturally wished the man to be catechised. Once the door had shut behind the bent blue back, I handed round the letter, which had to be translated for Sir Marcus, who professed contempt for “foreign gibberish.”
Jarvis Pasha is at the head of the police, has been for many years, and is the most interesting man in Egypt after the well-beloved “K.” Leaving Sir Marcus to go on with his task of consoling Mrs. East, I dashed off in my waiting taxi with the Nubian of the silver earrings. We drove to the Governorat, a big house in a square near what was once known as the Guarded City, the very heart and birthspot of Cairo: Masrel Kahira, the Martial, founded under the planet Mars.
I scribbled a line to Jarvis Pasha, and sent it to him in an envelope with my card. This combination opened doors for me; and three minutes later I was shaking hands with a tall, thin, white moustached, hawk-featured Englishman who looked all muscle and bones and brain. Jarvis Pasha being in the secret of “Antoun’s” identity and business in Cairo, simplified the explanation, and did away with the necessity for a preface. All I had to tell was the brief story of the girls’ disappearance with Bedr el Gemály, and Fenton’s following them into space; then, how word had come after fourteen hours.
“The House of the Crocodile,” Jarvis Pasha said, when he had taken and read the letter. “H’m! Do you know anything about that house?”
“I know the old stories connected with it,” I answered. “If it’s reputation to-day is as sinister as ever—-.”
“Not at all. Figuratively speaking it has been whitewashed. It’s become a show place–_a monument historique_. This is interesting information which Fenton sends, but if it came from any one else, I should say he had dreamed it. He may be giving us the chance of an important _coup_. Wait a few minutes, and I’ll have this thing attended to, Lord Ernest. But you look upset. Is it that you haven’t had lunch, or are you worrying about the ladies?” “Both,” I answered with a sickly grin. “Not that I mind about lunch. I couldn’t have eaten if I’d had the time.”
“You haven’t as much belief as I have, in your friend,” remarked Jarvis Pasha, “if you think he’d let them come to harm.” “They’re all in the same box, apparently,” I excused my lack of faith.
“Trust Fenton!” said the Head of the Police. “He was sharp enough to find the needles in the haystack, and he’s smart enough and strong enough to take care of them when they’re found.”
On this, Jarvis Pasha went out and left me to my reflections, which rushed to the House of the Crocodile. Every one who has read or heard stories of native Cairo, knows the House of the Crocodile, in the Street of the Sisters, and how, in the later days of Mohammed Ali, people scarcely dared to name it aloud. The “Tiger” Defterdar Ahmed built it, for that beautiful Tigress, Princess Zohra, favourite daughter of Mohammed Ali, who married her off to the fierce soldier when she became too troublesome at home. Zohra had loved a young Irish officer who was murdered for her sake, and had no true affection to give Ahmed or any other. She hated all men because of the murderer, her own nephew, and vowed that since her love had cost the life of the one who had her heart, others who dared to love her must pay the same price. When Ahmed died suddenly, soon after the wedding, those who had heard of Zohra’s vow (and there were many in the harems) whispered “poison.” Never again did the Princess drive out to see the women she knew; and those who had been her friends were sent away from the door of the dead Ahmed’s palace, over which he had suspended for “luck,” a huge crocodile killed in the far south. But Zohra was beautiful, with strange eyes which drew love whether she asked for it or not; and sometimes a small lattice would open in a bay of one of those windows of wooden lace whose carving was known as mushrbiyeh work because shirib, or sherbet, used to be placed there to cool. Out of the lattice would look a wonderful face, as thinly veiled as the moon by a mist, and then it would vanish so quickly that a man who saw, half believed that he had dreamed. But the eyes of the dream seemed to call, and could not be forgotten, any more than the song of a siren can cease to echo in ears which once have heard.
After the beginning of Zohra’s widowhood, the noblest and handsomest youths of Cairo began mysteriously to disappear. They would be well and happy one day, and the next they would be gone from the places that knew them. By and by their bodies would be found in a canal; always the same canal, near the water gate of the House of the Crocodile. Then the vow of the Princess was remembered: but there was no English rule in those days, and the police shut their ears and eyes where a daughter of Mohammed Ali was concerned. Mothers and sisters of handsome young men shuddered and begged those they loved never to pass through the dark Street of the Sisters (Sharia el Benât) where the crocodile grinned over the door, and the vision of a face looked down from a latticed window. The women thought of the water gate at the back of the house; the little children, who had heard secret words spoken, thought of the crocodile, and ran crying past the house; but the handsome young men thought only of the face, and each one said to himself, “She will not make _me_ pay the price.” Still, as years went on, bodies were seen in the water from time to time, with a tiny purple spot over the heart to show the curious that death had not come from drowning. And some, who looked for lost ones, could not reclaim them from the canal, for bodies were not always found. As time passed, it seemed to people who hurried by the house in the narrow street, that the crocodile grew larger and larger. It was said that it had been fed on the children of men Tiger Ahmed had murdered in Sennaar.
None dared to say what they believed of Princess Zohra, but when, after a long imprisonment by her nephew Abbas, in the House of the Crocodile, she escaped to Constantinople, nobody would live where she had lived, and the palace fell almost into ruin.
This was the story of the house where Monny Gilder and Rachel Guest and Anthony Fenton were now. I had heard it talked about by our Arab servants when I was a child, and had never forgotten, though scarcely since then had I thought of the tale, until the remembered name and the horrors attached to it jumped into my mind on reading Anthony’s letter. What had happened in the House of the Crocodile since Zohra’s day, I did not know; but because of the old story it seemed more sinister that my friends should appeal for help from that place than from any other in Cairo.
I was not left long alone. Five minutes after Jarvis Pasha went out of the room to “arrange things” according to Fenton’s request, he sent me a man with whiskey and soda, and biscuits. I drank gladly, and ate rather than seem ungrateful. But there was a lump in my throat which would stick there, I knew, until those three were away from the House of the Crocodile. I was still crumbling biscuits when Jarvis Pasha came briskly back.
“Well,” he asked, “are you braced up now? If you’d like to be in this business, you can. I’m sending a white superintendent with my police to raid the house, on the strength of Fenton’s letter to you, though until now the place hasn’t been suspected. As I said, it’s been a ‘show’ house, for some years–ground floor and first story in repair, just as in Zohra’s day–upper floors ruinous, and the public not admitted there. If anything queer’s going on, it must be in the forbidden part: and the caretaker is mixed up in the show. A pity you felt bound to let Fenton’s messenger off! You can go with my superintendent, Allen, and reach your friends as soon as my men do. Allen has instructions to let Fenton and the ladies, if they’re found there, slip away, and it’s best for you to be on the spot to save mistakes in identification. Also I’ve ordered a closed arabeah to wait for you, as near as possible–my men will show you where. You’ll know it for certain by a red camellia on the Arab driver’s European coat. And by the way, take this Browning, in case of an attack; which I don’t anticipate.”
As Jarvis Pasha spoke, he opened the door, and summoned in a brown young Britisher wearing the tarboosh which denotes “Gyppy” officialdom. Evidently Allen was prepared for me as I for him, and we started off together on foot, for it seemed that our destination was not far away. We walked swiftly through the crowded Mousky (once the fashionable part of Cairo, before the tide flowed to the modern Isma’iliya quarter), and after a few intricate turnings plunged into a still, twilight region. The streets through which we passed were so narrow, and the old houses so far overhung the path that the strip of sky at the top of the dark canyon was a mere line of inlaid blue enamel flecked with gold. The splendid mushrbiyeh windows thrust out toward each other big and little bays, across the ten or twelve feet of distance which parted them, as if to whisper secrets; yet the delicate wooden carvings skilfully hid all that they wished to hide, and only suggested their secrets.
“Now we’ll soon be coming to the House of the Crocodile,” said Allen. “By Jove, it’s a joke on us, and a smart one, if it’s been turned into a hasheesh den, under our noses. But it must be something new, or we should have got onto it. The Chief thinks already he can guess who’s at the bottom of the business and who has put the money up: a certain Bey, in whose service the caretaker was–a rich old Johnny, very old fashioned, who lives not far off in a beautiful house of the best Cairene period. He’s keen on antiquities, and has been of service to the government in several ways, though he’s a reformed smuggler; and his only son, dead now, was a hopeless hashash; that’s what they call slaves of the hasheesh habit. I suppose you’ve read all about the ‘Hashashseyn’ of the Crusaders’ days, whom we speak of as Assassins? Well, ever since then the Hashasheyn have had a bad reputation; but this old man I speak of has been pitied for his son’s failings, which he pretends to think a ‘judgment for his own past, repented sins.’ Now, Lord Ernest, saunter, please, as if you were a tourist in my charge, admiring the old doorways.”
Two native workmen appeared in front of us, with pickaxes on their shoulders. Stopping, they threw down their tools. One produced a cord which he stretched across the street from house to house; and in the middle he hung a small red flag. Then the pair began to pick in a leisurely way at the surface of the road, and before we reached the barrier, an Arab policeman stationed himself by the cord. Glancing ahead, I saw that the farther end of the narrow lane was blocked in the same manner.
“This is one trick we have of doing our work quietly,” said Allen. “It always answers pretty well.”
I said nothing, but used my eyes. Coming from nowhere apparently, there were twenty men in the street. A few had crowbars in their hands. Others, native policemen, carried the canes with which they control the movements of the people. From the shaded doorway of a large house a native sergeant of police stepped out as we approached, and saluted Allen. Over the closed door, a large, dryly smiling, ancient crocodile hung.
“Have our men come and taken their places?” asked my companion in Arabic.
“Yes, Effendi,” the sergeant answered. “All has been done according to order. The back entrance which was the water gate before the old canal was filled up, is surrounded, and the adjoining houses with which some communication may have been established are watched. Not a rat could have crawled out since we came, nor could one have gone in. To-day is the feast of a saint, and these people have their excuse not to open the house to visitors, for so it is with other show places. Look, it is written up, that until to-morrow there is no admission.” As the man pointed to a card hanging from a hook, he and Allen smiled at the cleverness of this pretext for closing the door. In English, French, and Arabic, the reason was announced in neat print. Probably this was not the first time the same excuse had been used in the same way.
“They must have taken alarm at something, and thought they were being watched,” Allen said to me. “That’s why they’ve sported their oak. I expect we shall make a haul, as–for everybody’s sake concerned–they wouldn’t dare let their clients out, to fall into a trap. Yes, that’s why! Or else–“
He stopped, and I did not ask him to go on, for I knew that to ask would be useless. Yet I guessed what he had meant to say, and why he had stopped. He didn’t wish to alarm me, but it was in his mind that the house had teen closed because of something planned to happen inside. And that something might be connected with my friends. We should soon know!
My first thought was that we were to get through the door, by breaking it in, or by forcing those on the other side to open for us. In an instant, however, I realized that my idea was absurd. It would take an hour to batter down that thick slab of old cedarwood, and Allen had said that he wanted to do things quietly. No, the brown sergeant was not here to open the door, but to see that it did not open unless for our benefit.
Two of Allen’s men were unfolding a curious ladder like a lattice, which they made secure with screws when they had stretched it to full length. Then, up it went to one of the beautiful mushrbiyeh windows which, on the level of the story above the ground floor, bayed graciously, overhanging the street. One man standing below held the ladder firmly in place, while another, small and lithe as a monkey and enjoying the task as a monkey might, ran up to the top that leaned against the window. Evidently he was a skilled worker, for before I knew what he would be at, he had with some small, sharp instrument, prized out without breaking it, one of the sections of carved lattice. This he tossed lightly down to a man who caught it, and as he and four others after him slipped through the opening, the sergeant knocked on the closed door, under the swinging form of the crocodile. Nobody answered. But three minutes passed, and then suddenly there was the sound of a falling bar, and a very old, very dark man, with a white turban and a white beard, peeped out.
“Thieves!” he cried in Arabic. “Thieves break in at the windows!”
He was making the best of a bad business, I guessed, and hoped somehow to justify himself to the police. But though he was gray with fright, he forgot to look surprised.
My Arabic was not equal to the strain of catching all the gabble that followed: the old man protesting that it was right to close the house to-day; that if it were the police and not thieves who broke in, it was unjust, it was cruel, and his son Mansoor, the caretaker, would appeal to all the Powers. Before he had come to the end of his first breath, he was hushed and handcuffed, and hustled away; and another man sprang forward from behind the angle of a screen-wall inside the entrance. He was young, and looked strong and fierce as an angry giant, but at sight of Allen and the rest of us, he stopped as if we had shot him. Perhaps he had not expected so many. In any case, he saw that there was nothing he could hope to gain by violence or bluster. All he could do was to protest as his father had done, that this visit was a violation of his right to close the house on a holiday.
“Don’t be a fool, Mansoor,” said Allen, who evidently knew him. “You understand very well that isn’t why we are here. You’ve jot a hasheesh den upstairs, above the public show rooms. A nice trick you thought you’d played us, but you see you didn’t bring it off.”
By this time we were inside the house, having thrust the caretaker in again, and passing the three tortuous screen walls of the entrance, into a courtyard. Several young Arabs dressed as servants stood there, large-eyed, and stricken at sight of their giant master held by four policemen. But there was not a sign of our men who had crawled through the window, and I was impatient to go where they had gone.
There was no sound of scuffling, no sound at all, except the crying of some startled doves, and Mansoor’s voice, swearing by the Prophet’s sacred beard that if anything were wrong he was not the one to blame. There were those above him who must be obeyed or he and all that were his would be put out of life; but I cared too little for him, or what might become of him and his, to listen much. I looked up and saw at the left of the courtyard, with its several closed doors, a short flight of steps with a mounting-block, and a doorway leading to a winding staircase. Round the court went a gallery, supported with old marble pillars, and underneath on one side was a large recess, the takhtabosh, raised slightly above the level of the courtyard, and having a row of wooden benches round its three walls. Here the caretaker and his male relatives and friends had evidently been smoking their nargilehs and drinking coffee; our arrival had disturbed them in the midst.
Suddenly, into the frightened mourning of the doves, broke a sharp sound of cracking wood. “Come along!” cried Allen. “They’ll be past the barrier in a minute!” And leaving Mansoor and the others to be dealt with by subordinates, he led the way up the steep stairs, at a run.
We did not stop at the first story, the “show” part of the House of the Crocodile; but catching a glimpse of a latticed balcony off the landing, all lovely mushrbiyeh work, and a great room of Persian tiled walls and coloured marble floor, beyond, we dashed up another flight of stairs to the story above. These stairs were of common wood, and somewhat out of repair. At the top was a door of carved cedarwood like those below, but rough in execution, faded, and with here and there a starpoint or triangle of the pattern missing, leaving a hole in the thick wood. On this door was nailed a large card with the notice in English, French, and Arabic, “Forbidden to the Public.”
“What a grand idea to install a hasheesh den here!” I could not help thinking as I followed at Allen’s heels to the head of the stairs, where two of his men worked with crowbars to prize open that theatrically dilapidated door. Behind the pair who worked were the others who had entered by the window below; and hardly had we taken our places in the strange _queue_, when with a loud groan the door gave way. The couple in front almost fell into a dark passage on the other side, and my heart leaped, for I half expected to see them driven back upon us by an attack with knives or pistols. But the dim vista seemed to hold only silence and emptiness as I peered over men’s shoulders; and as we crowded in, Allen pushing ahead to take the lead, nothing stirred.
The passage was but a gallery, like that below, but instead of being open, it was closed in with lattice of mushrbiyeh work, so that, though those within could look through, it was as secret for those outside as if it had been enclosed by a solid wall.
The darkness was patterned with light, like ebony thinly inlaid with gold, for the afternoon sunlight trickled into the delicate loopholes of the carvings, and we began to see what Enterprise had made of this ruinous upper story. The floor had been dilapidated and unsafe; but new boards had been placed over it, covered with Egyptian-made matting and rugs to deaden sound and give an appearance of comfort. We walked quickly along to the end where this closed gallery turned at right angles, and there found another door, new and rough, evidently but lately put up. It was not so strong as the old one; and it yielded in a few minutes to the furious industry of our men with their crowbars. They lifted the door from its broken hinges, leaning it against a wall; and as we passed through, an Arab pulled aside a thick curtain which filled in a doorway. He was evidently a servant, and seeing the police, showed no sign of surprise, but only of a most humble resignation which disclaimed responsibility and begged for mercy.
In silence the man was taken into custody; and Allen and I, with three of the four policemen, passed into the region behind the portière. There, all was dusk, save for the faint light sifting down from a carved wooden dome in the ceiling, partly curtained; and a dark lantern flashed out a long revealing ray. The men ran to pull back heavy cloth hangings which entirely covered the latticed windows, and would allow lamps to be lit at night without being seen from street or courtyard. Instantly sunshine pierced the carved interstices, and let us see what Enterprise had done for his clients. We were in the antechamber of a long, beautiful room. The old, coloured marble of the durkááh–the lower level of floor nearest the entrance–had been repaired with new; the dilapidations of a fountain were almost hidden by pink azaleas in pots; the liwán, on the next level, had a good rug or two; and the diwáán, at the farthest and highest end, was furnished with red-covered mattresses and pillows. The low wall-benches of marble were set here and there with glass bowls of roses and syringa; and tiny cedarwood cupboards high in the tiled walls were open to show coffee cups, tobacco jars, and pipes made of cocoanut shells with long stems of cane.
Four men, who had apparently been lying on the mattresses, stood up and faced us, not fiercely, but with something of the attendant’s resignation. Two were in European clothes, with the inevitable tarboosh; and two, equally well dressed, were old fashioned and picturesque in the long, silk gown and turban style which “Antoun” and other lovers of the ancient ways affected. They were of the “Effendi class,” and might be merchants or professional persons. A turbaned man with a black beard Allen knew, and greeted in Arabic, “Hussein Effendi! Who would have thought to see you here!”
“Why not?” answered the other, with a melancholy smile and shrug of the shoulders. “There is no harm, really, but only in the eyes of the English. We are caught, and we cannot complain, for we have had true delight: and we have known, since the alarm came last night, that we might have to pay for our pleasure.”
“So you had the alarm last night?” said Allen, looking as if there were nothing surprising or puzzling in that.
“Yes, why should we not admit it now? Word came that a watch had been set outside, both back and front, and none of us dared leave the house. We consented to be locked in, though there is one in another room who wished to get out and run the risk. That was not permitted, for the sake of others; and to prevent him from taking his own way in spite of prudence, we let ourselves be shut in, with only one attendant who took through the holes in the door such little food as we needed. We had begun to hope that it had been a false alarm, or, since no inquiries seemed to have been made below, that the watchers had gone and would not come again. We planned as soon as night fell to go to our homes; but it was not to be. And if any are to blame, it is not those who come to take pleasures provided for them, but rather they who cheat the coastguard of the swift-running camels, and bring what is forbidden into Egypt.”
“The blame will be rightfully apportioned,” said Allen. “Meanwhile, I am sorry to say, Hussein Effendi, that you and those in your company are subject to the law. I must now leave you, and go farther to see what others we have to deal with.”
The four Effendis were politely left in charge of two policemen who would have been equal to twice their number, and our one remaining man went on with Allen and me.
“Your friends, and perhaps two or three who can afford to pay big prices, will have had their smoke in private rooms,” Allen explained. “We can guess _who_ it was, who wanted to break out! There are probably no more doors, only curtains, so we shall have no trouble. But don’t forget that, if anything unexpected should happen, you have a pistol. Of course, you understand that it could be used only in an extreme case.”
A curtained doorway led out from the diwáán into a small anteroom, and there, on the floor, sat Bedr el Gemály, the picture of dejection. Had I raised my voice in the next room, he would perhaps have ventured in to see what I could do to help him; for now, at sight of me, he scrambled up in shamefaced eagerness.
“Oh, my lordship!” he began to cackle. “Praise be to Allah you are come! I was persuaded to bring the young ladies here. They would make me do it. Yes, sir. It is not my fault. They pay me. I have to obey. Then we get caught, like we was some rats. No fair to punish me. The ladies all right. No harm come, except a little sick.”
“If no harm has come, that’s not due to you, but to a very different man, as you well know,” I said. And as I spoke, the man I had in my mind appeared before my eyes. “Hullo!” I exclaimed, joyously.
Anthony’s eyes and Allen’s met; but I could not tell if they knew each other, nor could I ask then. It was enough for Allen in any case, however, that this magnificent Hadji was one of the friends for whom I searched. He turned to Bedr. “You brought two ladies here, I understand,” he said quickly and sharply. “Then you must have acquaintance with the place. For good reasons which have nothing to do with you, I shall not arrest you, but you will have to report at the Governorat inside the hour, or you will regret it. Do you know the way out at the back of the house?”
“I do, gracious one,” Bedr responded with businesslike promptness.
“Then take these gentlemen, and the ladies, whom I do not need to see, out by that door, and you will all be allowed to go, because my men who are there have seen Lord Ernest Borrow, and they have my instructions.”
We waited for no more, but followed Anthony, who made a dash through the further room, and into another. There, on a mattress, crouched two forlorn figures, veiled as if in haste, and muffled in black satin _habberahs_ such as Turkish ladies wear in the street.
“Lord Ernest! Oh, how glad I am!” cried one of these creatures, while the other, less vital or more miserable, whimpered and gurgled a little behind her veil.
“Come along, quick!” I said; and they came. Bedr led the way, thankful to show himself of use. Anthony followed as if to protect or screen the girls from sight. I brought up the rear, and so, scuttling through a rabbit warren of little unfurnished, dilapidated rooms, we found a narrow side staircase, and tumbled down it, anyhow, in dust and dimness. Then two more staircases, and we were in a cellar which looked as if it might once have been used as a prison. Up again, and rattling at a chained door. Then out, into light and air, into the midst of a group, which for an instant, closed threateningly round us. But the sergeant I had seen was among the alert brown men. A glance, a gesture, and we were allowed to pass, a youth running with us, to show the promised carriage and the Arab driver with the red camellia. So it was over, this adventure!
Yet was it over?
That remained to be seen. And remained also, to see what it meant, if indeed there were a meaning underneath the surface.
CHAPTER XII
THE NIGHT OF THE FULL MOON
“It seems too good to be true that it should end like this,” said Monny.
She said it on the roof of Mena House, in the kiosk-room made of mushrbiyeh work, which I had engaged for a little private dinner-party that night. You see, it was the night of the full moon, the magic night of the Sphinx-spell, which must not be wasted, no matter how tired you may be or how many excitements you may have lived through.
Anthony and I had had our explanations. He had told me that one night in a café, where he was spreading the news of his dream, he had heard two men talking in low voices about the House of the Crocodile. The word “hasheesh” had not been mentioned, but Anthony had imbibed a vague impression of something secret, and had wondered, and been interested. Then the matter had slipped his mind; but, summoned in the night from the writing of letters, to advise Mrs. Jones, he had recalled Monny’s wish to visit a hasheesh den. He knew of none, but suspected the existence of one or two. How to find out in a hurry? he had asked himself. And with that, the remembrance of those few whispered words in the café had come echoing back to his brain. He acted upon the suggestion; went to the door of the swinging crocodile, knocked, and knocked again; had the door opened to him as if in surprise by an apparently sleepy man. Announced the motive of his coming as if it were a foregone conclusion that hasheesh could be smoked in that house by the initiated. His disguise was not suspected. It never was, when he played the Egyptian; and when asked who had sent him, he had the inspiration to utter the name of that Bey who had been Mansoor’s master. This gave him entrance. He was taken upstairs, passed through the door “Forbidden to the Public”; and the first person he saw in the long room as he entered, was Bedr smoking a gozeh, one of those cocoanut, cane-stemmed pipes in which hasheesh is mingled with the Persian tobacco called tumbák.
Bedr was accused of treachery, and defended himself. The ladies had insisted. It was his place to obey. He had done no wrong in engaging a carriage to wait outside the Ghezireh Palace gardens, and bringing his employers to the best place in Cairo for the hasheesh smoking. The ladies were safe and happy, in a private room where they had tried their little experiment, and now they were sleeping. As soon as they waked and felt like going home, he was ready to take them. It was for Miss Gilder, not for Bedr, to beg pardon of her friends if they were frightened. And all the time, it had seemed to Anthony, that the man was expecting some one to arrive. He watched the doorway half eagerly, half anxiously; when a servant came or went, he started, and betrayed emotion which might have been disappointment or relief. But when Anthony questioned him, he said, “I expect no one, Effendi. It is only that I shall not be easy till we get the ladies home, now you tell me their people are alarmed.”
Just then, and before Anthony saw the girls, a servant had come running in to say that there was an alarm. Something had happened in the street, and the police were there. Mansoor feared that it was a ruse, and that the house was being watched, back and front. Where the forbidden thing is, no precaution can be too great. For their own sakes, and Mansoor’s sake, no one must go out, perhaps not till the next night; but luckily a saint’s day would give peace for the morrow, and all doors could be shut without causing remark. The news that there was no escape for many hours to come distressed no one apparently, except “Antoun.” He had gone to the door, and tried to open it, but found that already it was locked on the other side. Then he knew that it was useless to struggle, for he was unarmed, the door was thick, and no one outside could hear if he shouted. He must use his wits; but first he must make sure that the two girls were safe. He forced, rather than induced Bedr to show him the room they had engaged–a small one, closed only with a portière, and looking over the court, down into the open-fronted recess where Mansoor’s family-life went on, like a watch dog’s in his kennel.
It was true, as Bedr had said; the girls slept on a cushioned mattress, wrapped in black habberahs, their faces turned to the wall. As they could not be taken out, Anthony did not wake them, but let them get, in peace, their money’s worth of dreaming. His next thought was to try and bribe the Arab attendant to smuggle out a letter; but acceptable as a bribe would have been, the man explained his helplessness to earn it, at least for the time being. He could do nothing till one of his fellow-servants came up from below, to pass the food for the imprisoned smokers through a hole in the door, made purposely in case of just such an emergency. Probably no one would appear till morning, for who would be hungry before then? Even with the morning, it might be Mansoor himself who would bring the food, and inquire again at the door if all were well within. But if the noble Hadji wrote the letter, it should be sent when opportunity arose. One of the servants below stairs, said the man, was his father, who might during the next day be able to slip out as if on some errand. Then he would perhaps take a letter, if he could be sure of good pay, and that he would not be delivered up to the police. So Anthony had written on a sheet torn from his notebook, and made an envelope of another sheet. The address of the Ghezireh Palace had helped the man to believe that no evil would reach his father; and a “sweetener” in the shape of all Anthony’s ready money had done the rest. But evidently the old man had not succeeded in finding an excuse for an errand until after the noon hour, and meanwhile time had seemed long in the House of the Crocodile. When the girls waked, wanting to go home, they were ill. They found the game not worth the candle–but Anthony’s presence had given them comfort. They were humble, and remorseful; and Bedr was so conspicuously a worm that Monny consented to his discharge. “It would take more time than we’ve got to make him worth converting,” she said to Rachel when the Armenian had carefully laid all the blame of the expedition upon her shoulders.
Never were two runaway children more glad to be found and restored to their anxious relatives than Monny Gilder and Rachel Guest. As for Bedr, he took his dismissal, with a week’s wages, submissively; but the gravest question concerning him still lacked an answer. Had he merely been officious and indiscreet in guiding the girls secretly to the House of the Crocodile, and there procuring hasheesh to buy them dreams, or had he wanted something to happen, in that house, which had not happened? A certain amount of browbeating from “Antoun,” and bullying from me, dragged nothing out of him. And perhaps there was nothing to be dragged. Perhaps it was through oversensitiveness that Brigit and I dwelt suspiciously upon Bedr’s motives, and asked each other who it was he had expected at the House of the Crocodile. Even Anthony did not accuse the Armenian of anything worse than slyness and cowardice, according to him the two worst vices of a man; but he volunteered to find out what mysterious night-disturbance in the street had caused the sudden closing of the doors. It was Biddy’s thought that the person Bedr wished to meet might fortunately have been prevented by this very disturbance from keeping his appointment, and Monny saved a serious ending to her adventure. It began to seem rather a worry, travelling with so important a young woman as Miss Gilder: and a vague dread of the future hung over me, as it hung over Brigit, who loved the girl. We felt, dimly, as if we had had a “warning,” and did not yet know how to profit by it. The atmosphere was charged with electricity, as before an earthquake; and we felt that the affair of the hasheesh den might be but a preface to some chapter yet unwritten. Still, it was impossible not to forgive Monny her indiscretion. Indeed, she became so honey-sweet and childlike in her desire to “make up” for what we had suffered, that the difficulty was not to like her better.
She besought us to forget the episode. If we only _knew_ how sick she and Rachel had been, we’d see why they never wanted to think of those hours again! And when I chanced to mention that to-night would be full moon–the night of nights when the Sphinx and the Ghizeh Pyramids held their court–Monny begged to have the bad taste of her naughtiness taken out of her mouth by a dinner at Mena House. We might dine early, and plunge into the desert later, when the moon was high. Of course, I proposed that all should be my guests–all except “Antoun” who, though recognized as a gentleman of Egypt, was considered by Miss Gilder an alien, not exactly on “dining terms.” He was supposed to go home, “to his own address.” At eight-thirty he was to take a taxi to Mena House, where he would arrive before nine, in time to help me organize my expedition.
I explained to Monny that, though we should dine privately, it would be my duty to see that the _Candace_ people paid their respects to the Sphinx, and gazed upon her as she ate moon-honey. If they missed this sight, or if anything went wrong with their way of seeing it, I should never be forgiven. But the much chastened Monny graciously “did not mind.” She thought it would be fun to watch the sheep-dog rounding up his flock. Useless to explain to her the subtle social distinction between a “Flock” and a “Set” (both with capitals)! To her, the blaze of the Set’s smartness was but the flicker of a penny dip. We could drive the crowd on ahead, and look at _our_ moon when they were out of its light.
So there’s the explanation of Monny’s presence in the mushrbiyeh kiosk on the roof of Mena House, on the night following the great adventure, which would have put most girls to bed with nervous prostration!
Part of our programme, to be sure, had failed; but it was not a part which could interfere with my selfish enjoyment. Mrs. East had changed her mind at the last moment, and had decided not to dine, although I had invited Sir Marcus on purpose for her. According to Biddy, Cleopatra had “something up her sleeve,” something her excuse of “seediness” was meant to cover. Maybe it was only a flirtatious wish to disappoint Sir Marcus–maybe it was something more subtle. But it did not matter much to anybody except Lark, who was obliged to put up with Mrs. Jones in place of Mrs. East; for Rachel Guest and the sculptor, whom we nicknamed “Bill Bailey” were to be paired off: and, urged by Biddy, I intended to monopolize Monny.
I suppose there could scarcely be a more ideal room for an intimate dinner-party on a moonlight night than that kiosk on the flat roof of Mena House. Through the wide open doors, and the openwork walls like a canopy of black lace lined with silver, the moonlight filtered, sketching exquisite designs upon the white floor and bringing out jewelled flecks of colour on the covering and cushions of the divans. There was no electricity in this kiosk, and we aided the moonlight only with red-shaded candles, and ruby domed “fairy lamps,” the exact shade of the crimson ramblers which decorated the table. For the corners by the open doors, I had ordered pots of Madonna lilies, which gave up their perfume to the moon, and looked, in the mingling radiance of rose and silver, like hovering doves.
“Oh, I could hug and _kiss_ that moon!” sighed Monny, tall and fair in her white dress as the lilies I had chosen for her.
I was relieved that the Man in the Moon has now been superseded by a Gibson Girl; for Monny was beautiful at that moment as a vision met in the secret garden which lies on the other side of sleep.
“And the stars,” Monny said, as I watched her uplifted face, wondering just how much I was in love with it, “the little stars high up at the zenith twinkle like silver bees. Those that sit on the edge of the horizon are huge and golden, like desert watch-fires. Oh, do you know, Lord Ernest, if quite a dull, uninteresting man, or–or one that it would be madness even to _think_ of–proposed to me on such a night, I should _have_ to say yes. It would seem so prosaic and such a waste, of moonlight, not to. Wouldn’t you feel like that if you were a girl?”
“I’m sure I should,” I replied with extraordinary sympathy. “I _do_ feel like it, even as a man. I warn you not to propose, or I shall snap at you.”
She laughed; but I was wondering if I were dull and uninteresting enough to stand a chance. It seemed as if Providence were actually _handing_ it to me. But just then Biddy and Sir Marcus came to the doorway which so becomingly framed Monny’s form and mine. Naturally that put the idea out of my head; and two such opportunities don’t come to a man in a single night.
Dinner was not ready yet, and we sauntered about on the flat roof, white as marble in the moonlight. The sky was milk–the desert, honey –far off Cairo with its crowned citadel, pale opal veined with light, and faintly streaked with misty greens and purples; the cultivated land a deep indigo sea. The fantastically built hotel (in its ancient beginnings the palace of a Pasha) was like a closely huddled group of châlets, looked down on from its central roof. On the fringe of the oasis-garden the cafés and curiosity-shops buzzed with life, and glittered like lighted beehives. Outside the gateway, donkey-boys and camel-men and drivers of sandcarts chattered. To-night, and on a few moonlight nights to come they would reap their monthly harvest. They were all ready to start off anywhere at a moment’s notice; but apart from them and their clamour, reposed a row of camels previously engaged, free, therefore, to enjoy themselves until after dinner. As we gazed down as if from a captive balloon, at the line of sitting forms, they looked immense, like giant, newborn birds, with their huge egg-shaped bodies and thin necks. Along the arboured road from Cairo, flashed motor-car after motor-car, their lights winking in and out between the dark trees, now blazing, now invisible, their occupants all intent on doing the right thing: dining at Mena House, and seeing the full moon feed honey to the Sphinx. Some, wishing to save time, or to dine later in town, or to take a train, for somewhere, later, did not turn in at the hotel gate, but swept past with siren shrieks, and tore on, hoping to “rush” the steep hill to the Pyramid platform at top speed. Only a few of the strongest succeeded, and, with a dash instead of an ignominious crawl, triumphantly fanned their lights along the base of that vast monument in which King Cheops vainly sought eternal privacy. What would he say, we wondered, could he see the crowds of tourists tearing out to pay him a call, on their way to the Sphinx? Would he blight them with a curse, or would he remember pearly nights of old, when his subjects assembled in multitudes for the feast of the Goddess Neith when the moon was full, and all the white, brightly painted houses along the Nile reflected their flowerlike illuminations in the water? Anyhow (as Sir John Biddell would have said), this was helping to keep his name before the public; and nothing could succeed in vulgarizing his mountain of gold in its gleaming waves of desert, under pulsing stars and creamy floods of moonlight.
Anthony had told me that the great “tip” was to go out while the less instructed sightseers ate their dinner. Then, the desert was comparatively empty; and, more important still, instead of having the moon on her head, and her face in shadow, the Sphinx received its full blaze in her farseeing eyes. Of this advice I meant to avail myself, feeling vaguely guilty as I thought of the giver, who was absent from the feast: Anthony Fenton, one of the finest young soldiers in Egypt, who could be lionized in drawing-rooms at home if he would “stand for it”! Anthony who, would he but accept the repentant overtures of that tyrannical old prince, his maternal grandfather, might inherit a fortune and a palace at Constantinople! Yet as Ahmed Antoun in his green turban, he was “taboo” at our little party.
He was due later, however, and I rather expected to find him waiting below, when I excused myself to descend to the Set. But I had not left the roof when a note for Monny was brought up by an ebony person in livery. I watched her as she read, one side of her face turned to marble by the moon, the other stained rose by the red-shaded candles. I thought that the rosy side grew more rosy as she finished the letter.
“There’s a–message for you, Lord Ernest,” she said. “Aunt Clara wants me to tell you that ‘Antoun’ can’t meet you at the hotel, because she –changed her mind about not coming out, and sent for him. She felt better, it seems, and got thinking what a pity it would be to miss the full moon, so she suddenly remembered that ‘Antoun’ wasn’t with us, and decided to invite him. She writes in a hurry and didn’t know where they would dine, but says anyhow they’ll meet us by the Sphinx between nine and ten.”
“Where ‘_they’d_’ dine!” echoed Sir Marcus, pricked to interest. “Was she going to let Fe–I mean ‘Antoun,’ take her out to dinner?”
“Apparently she was,” replied Monny, rather dryly.
“Why not?” asked Brigit. “He’s perfectly splendid. And Mrs. East–not that she isn’t a young woman, of course–is old enough to go about without a chaperon.”
“If we’re to meet them between nine and ten at the Sphinx,” said Monny briskly, “don’t you think, Lord Ernest, you’d better hurry and get your people off, so we can set out ourselves?”
“I’m going,” I assured her. “But I thought we planned to give them a long start, in hopes that they might be ready to come back by the time we arrived?”
“Oh, well,” she said, “that will make it very late, won’t it, and we may miss Aunt Clara? Anyhow, lots of other creatures just as bad as yours will be there, for we can’t engage the desert like a private sitting-room.”
That settled it. I dashed downstairs and sorted out my charges. They had got themselves up in all kinds of costumes, for this “act.” One man had on a folding opera-hat, which he had thought just the right thing for Egypt, as it was so easy to pack! Girls in evening dress; men young and old in helmets and straw hats, ancient maidens, and fat married ladies, in dust cloaks or ball gowns, climbed or leaped or scrambled onto camels, with shrieks of joy or moans of horror: or else they tumbled onto donkeys which bounded away before the riders were well on their backs. And men, women, and animals were shouting, giggling, groaning, gabbling, snarling, and squeaking; an extraordinary procession to pay honour to the Pyramids and the lonely Sphinx.
We of the roof-party considered ourselves, figuratively speaking, above camels, far above donkeys, and scornful of motor-cars, in which it was irreverent to charge up to the Great Pyramid as if to the door of a café. We walked, and Monny still lent herself to me; but she no longer bubbled over with delight at everything. A subdued mood was upon her, and her eyes looked sad, even anxious, in the translucent light which was not so much like earthly moonlight as the beginning of sunrise in some far, magic dreamland. She had the pathetic air of a spoiled child who begins suddenly, if only vaguely, to realize that it cannot have everything it wants in the world. And she merely smiled when I told her how, to insure the peace of the desert, I had offered a prize of a large blue scarab as big as a paperweight, for that member of the Set who did not even say “Oh!” to the Sphinx. “Antoun” had “vetted” the alleged scarab and pronounced it a modern forgery; but nobody else knew that, and as a prize it was popular.
The sky had that clear pale blue of dawn, when day first realizes that, though born of night, it is no longer night. Casseopeia’s Chair and Orion were being tossed about the burning heavens like golden furniture out of a house on fire; and one great star-jewel had fallen on the apex of cruel Khufu’s Pyramid. I should have liked to believe it was Sirius, the “lucky” star sacred to Isis and Hathor; but Monny’s schoolgirl knowledge of astronomy bereft me of that innocent pleasure. No wonder that the ancient Egyptians, with such jewels in their blue treasure-house, were famous astrologers and astronomers before the days when Rameses’ daughter found Moses in the bulrushes of Roda Island!
The stars spoke to us as we walked, soft-footed, through the sand; and the pure wind of the desert spoke other words of the same language, the language of the Universe and of Nature. Here and there yellow lights in a distant camp flashed out like fireflies; far away across the billowing sands, rocks bleached like bone gave an effect of surf on an unseen shore; now and then a silent, swift-moving Arab stealing out of shadow, might have been the White Woman who haunts the Sphinx, hurrying to a fatal tryst: and the Great Pyramid seemed to float between desert sand and cloudless sky like the golden palace of Aladdin being transported through air by the Geni of the Lamp. There never was such gold as this gold of sand and pyramids, under the moon! We said that it was like condensed sun rays, so vivid, so bright, that the moon could not steal its colour. Cloudlike white figures were running up Khufu’s geometric mountain; Arabs expecting money when they should come leaping down, whole or in pieces. And the khaki uniforms of British soldiers mounting or descending for their own stolid amusement, made the Pyramid itself seem to be writhing, so like was the colour of the cloth to that of the stone. No use being angry because the monument was crawling with Tommies! The Pyramids were as much theirs as ours. And probably Napoleon’s soldiers spent their moonlit evenings in the same way; a thought which somehow made the thing seem less intolerable.
We climbed to the vast platform of the Ghizeh Pyramids, and then plunged into the billows of the desert, in quest of the Sphinx. Sir Marcus was entitled to call himself the pioneer, but we needed no one to show us the way. It was but too clearly indicated by the bands of pilgrims, going or returning. And among the latter were those whom Monny callously referred to as “poor Lord Ernest’s crowd.” Miss Hassett-Bean and the Biddell girls made us linger, with sand trickling over the tops of our shoes, while they poured into our ears their impressions of the Sphinx. Miss H. B. thought that She (with a capital S) was a combination of Goddess, Prophetess, and Mystery. Enid thought she was like an Irish washerwoman making a face; and Elaine said she was the image of their bulldog at home. Monny (after a sandy introduction) listened to these verbal vandalisms in horrified silence. I could see that she was exerting herself, for my sake, to be civil to my charges (who were more interested in her than they had been in the Sphinx), and that, if she could have done so without hurting their feelings, she would have struck them dead. But my fears that their mental suggestions might obsess her were baseless. She did not speak when the golden billows parted to give us a first vision of the great Mystery of the Desert. I had led Monny by a roundabout way, and instead of seeing the Sphinx from the back, we came upon her face to face, as she gazed with her wonderful, all-knowing eyes, straight into that world beyond knowledge which lies somewhere east of the moon. Veiled by the night in silver and blue, with a proud lift of the head, she faced past and future, which were one for her, and the present, nothing. The moon gave back for a few hours all her lost loveliness, of which men had robbed her, seeming miraculously to restore the broken features, whole and beautiful as they had been in her youth before history began. It was as if in the moon’s rays were silver hands, mending the marred majesty, giving life to the eyes and to the haunting, secret smile. I thought of the story of King Harmachis: how he dreamed that the Sphinx came to him, saying that the sand pressed upon her, and she could not breathe. Nobody since his day had for long left her buried!
“What does it mean to you?” I broke the silence to ask.
“I don’t know,” Monny said. “All I know is that she’s more wonderful than I expected, and as beautiful as the loveliest marble Venus of Italy, though a thousand times greater–if one perfect thing can be greater than another. She’s so great that I don’t think she can be meant to be a woman–or even a man. She is like a _soul_ carved in stone.”
“All in a moment you have guessed the riddle!” I exclaimed, liking and understanding the girl better than I had liked or understood her yet. “I believe that’s the secret of the Sphinx. The king who had this stupendous idea, and caused it to be carried out, said to some inspired sculptor, ‘Make for me from the rock of the desert, a portrait, not of me as I am seen by men, in my mortal part or Khat, for that can be placed elsewhere; but an image of my real self, my soul or Ka, looking past the small things of this world into eternity, which lies beyond this desert and all deserts.’ Then the sculptor made the Sphinx, and gave it such grandeur, such mystery of countenance that instinctively the souls of people recognized the _soul look_. You have a soul, and it told you the secret. Only those who have no souls find the Sphinx heavy or hideous, or utterly beyond their comprehension.”
“Have I a soul?” Monny asked, dreamily. “Men I’ve known have told me I haven’t. Yet sometimes I’ve thought I felt it fluttering. And if I have a soul, I shall find it in Egypt. Oh, I shall! Something–yes, the Sphinx herself!–tells me that.”
I was tempted to ask “What about a heart?” And then–in a violent hurry, before anybody came–to mention my own, into which the moon seemed pouring a little of the honey it had brought for the Sphinx. I did feel that some one owed a moonlight proposal under the Sphinx’s nose (or the place where its nose had been) to such a girl as Monny. Her Egyptian experience could never be perfect and complete unless she were proposed to on the night of the full moon, with the Sphinx’s blessing; and as no better man was here to do it, I could not be thought conceited if I took the duty upon myself. Besides, Brigit would so thoroughly approve!
“Look here, Biddy, I mean Monny,” I began hastily, “there’s something I want to tell you, something very important you ought to know, because matters can’t go on much longer as they are–“
“Is it something about ‘Antoun’?” she broke in, with a little gasp, as I paused for breath and courage. “If it is, maybe I know it already!”
Extraordinary, the relief I felt! I ought to have suffered a shock of disappointment, because I couldn’t possibly finish a proposal after such an interruption. But instead, my spirits went up with a bound. Probably, however, that was because her hint was a whip to my curiosity. “_What_ do you know about ‘Antoun’?” I asked.
Perhaps I forgot to lower my voice; or perhaps voices carry far across desert-spaces, as across water. Anyhow the clear tones of Cleopatra answered like an echo. “Antoun–Antoun! I hear Lord Ernest calling.”
Biddy–dear little matchmaking Biddy–had managed Sir Marcus, Bill Bailey and Rachel, as a circus rider manages three spirited white horses at one time. The desert was her ring, and she had reined her steeds to her will, keeping them out of my way and Monny’s at all costs, no matter whether they saw the Sphinx in back view or noseless profile. But Mrs. East’s principal occupation in life was not to get me engaged to the Gilded Rose. And either she lost her presence of mind, or else she was not so much enjoying her moonlight tête-à-tête with Fenton, that it was worth while to hide from us behind a sand dune.
The two emerged from a gulf of shadow, Anthony very splendid under the moon, a true man of the desert. I thought I heard Monny draw in a little sharp breath as she saw that noble incarnation of Egypt (so he must have seemed, unless she knew the British reality of him) walking beside Cleopatra.
Then up came the others, Sir Marcus impossible to restrain; and we all talked together as people are expected to talk when they have come thousands of miles to see these monuments of Egypt. Yes, yes! Wonderful–incredible! Which do you find more impressive, the Sphinx or the Pyramids? Isn’t it a pity they let the temple between the paws remain buried? And aren’t the Pyramids just like Titanic, golden beehives? And can’t you simply _see_ the swarming builders, like bees themselves, working for twenty years?
Thus we jabbered; and others, many others, appeared to dispute the scene with us, to break the magic of the moonlight, and to puncture the vast silence of the desert with their cooings and gurglings and chatterings in German, English, Arabic, and every other language known since the Tower of Babel. Arab guides lit up the Sphinx with flaring magnesium, an impertinence that should have made hideous with hate the insulted features, but instead turned them for a thrilling instant of suspense into marble. Indeed, none of our petty vulgarities could jar or even fret the majestic calm of the desert and the stone Mystery among its billows. The Sphinx gazed above and past us all. She was like some royal captive surrounded by a rabble mob, yet as undisturbed in soul as though her puny, hooting tormentors had no existence. It was not so much that she scorned us, as that she did not know we were there.
When we sorted ourselves out, to escape Sir Marcus, Cleopatra deigned to make use of me, having first observed (with burning interest) that Monny and Rachel were with Bailey, and that “Antoun” was pointing things out to Brigit O’Brien, as it is Man’s métier (in pictures and advertisements) to point things out to Woman.
“It’s been a wonderful evening,” Mrs. East said. “It has made up for everything I suffered last night. We brought dinner out into the desert, in that smallest tea-basket, you know, and ate it together, he and I–Antony and I. There! I may as well confess that’s what I call him to myself, for I’ve guessed your secret–and his. But don’t be afraid. I won’t tell a soul. It’s too romantic and fascinating for words–or to put into words. He let me have my fortune told by an Arab sand diviner, who came while we were at dinner. I can’t repeat to you what the fortune-teller said. But I feel as if I were living in a book. Oh, if only I were writing it myself and could make everything happen just as I want it to happen! Do you know one thing I would put into the story?”
“No, I can’t think,” I said, rather anxiously.
“I would have _you_ propose to Monny.”
“Oh–by Jove, Mrs. East!”
“Why–don’t you admire her?”
“But of course. She’s irresistible. Only she’s so horribly rich. And besides, she doesn’t think of me in that way.”
“You can’t be sure. Now, Lord Ernest, I’m going to whisper you a secret. I believe–I really do–that Monny would be _glad_ if you’d propose. If I were in your place, if I _liked_ her, I would do so as soon as possible. It might save her from humiliation–from a great trouble.”
Being a duffer, I could only say once again, “By Jove!”
CHAPTER XIII
AN UNDERGROUND PROPOSAL
I didn’t sleep much that night, for thinking of Monny; and when I did sleep, I dreamed of her; tangled dreams, in which she was Monny Gilder with Brigit O’Brien’s eyes. Could it be possible that she liked me? Mrs. East ought to know. I made up my mind that to-morrow I would begin by feeling my way, but when to-morrow came I had no time to feel anything which concerned my private affairs.
It seemed, or so I was told “for my own good” by Miss Hassett-Bean, that the Candace people thought it “snobby” for me to have indulged in a private dinner-party, and to have hustled them off in a drove to the Sphinx while I went leisurely with my smart friends. They knew all about the feast on the roof, and were of opinion that they ought to have been there. Did I consider my American heiress better than they, better even than the family of an ex-Lord Mayor? If I wished to make up lost ground, I must devote myself to duty, and be nicer than ever to everybody.
This was one of the moments when I was tempted to throw over my job; but I remembered the reward, and set myself once more to the earning of it. For the next few days I scarcely saw Monny or Brigit, or even heard what was happening to them–for they had “done” the principal sights of Cairo, and I (at the head of the _Candace_ crowd) was “doing” them. As if in a game of “Follow my Leader,” I led the band from mosque to mosque; not indeed visiting the whole two hundred and sixty-four, but calling on the best ones. To begin with, I collected the Set on the height of the Citadel, which commands all Cairo, the platform of the Pyramids (not only the Ghizeh Pyramids but the sixty odd others, which newcomers don’t talk about): the tawny Mokattam Hills, and the silver-blue serpent of the Nile. From this vantage place I pointed out the things we had to see in the city spread out below us, so that on the vaguest minds the picture might be painted in its entirety, before they began to absorb details on that mosaic map which was Cairo. The tombs of the Mamelukes, strangely shaped monuments, vague and white as squatting ghosts; the graves of the Caliphs; the historic gates of el-Kahira; and the many ancient mosques, whose minarets soared against the blue like tall-stemmed flowers in a palace garden.
Mentally fortified by this bird’s-eye view from the Citadel (of course, I had to trot them up again for the sunset), my charges let themselves be led from mosque to mosque, from tomb to tomb. Some, possessed with a demoniac desire to get their money’s worth of Egypt, were unable to enjoy any sight, in their nervous dread of missing some other spectacle, which people at home might ask them about. These strained their wearied intelligences to see more than they possibly could at any one moment, unless they had eyes all round their heads; and others, of an even more irritating type, never lifted the few eyes they had from the pages of guide-books. I liked better those who, like Monny, frankly said that they didn’t wish to have their minds tidied up, and be told a string of things about Egypt. They just wanted to _feel_ the things, and let them slowly soak in. And the nice, lazy, Southern Americans, who said they were “tomb shy,” and loitered about, betting from one to six scarabs on the speed of fleas, or donkeys, while I whipped forth for their tired companions a dull drove of facts fattened for their benefit.
Mosques and churches and tombs had to be visited, but did not appeal to all tastes. The Bazaars did. So did the Zoo, more fascinating than any other zoo, because each animal has its trick, or pet, or plaything.
As an excuse to see Monny and the rest of my friends, I got up a moonlight digging expedition at Fustat, those great mounds of rubbish and buried treasure near Egyptian Babylon where a city was burnt lest it should fall into the hands of the Crusaders. Monny and her party were invited to join us, and accepted the invitation, piloted by “Antoun.” And concerning this entertainment, I had an idea. Those who choose to dig among these desert-like sandhills, between the Coptic churches of Babylon and the tombs of the Mamelukes, may chance on something of value, especially after a windstorm or a landslip: bits of Persian pottery, fragments of iridescent glass, broken bracelets of enamel, opaline beads, or tiny gods and goddesses. Why should I not (thought I) apportion off to each member of the band his or her own digging patch? This would save squabbling, and would provide an opportunity for me to propose in a unique way to Monny.
Regarding the idea as an inspiration, I carried it out scientifically. Helped by Anthony, after the sun had set and the mounds were deserted, I staked out the most promising “claims,” and marked each space with the name of the “miner” for whom I intended it. In Monny’s patch, near the surface where she could not possibly miss it, I buried a letter wrapped round a cow-eared head of Hathor which I had bought at the Egyptian Museum-shop. Now, in justice to myself, I must tell you that this letter was no common letter, such as any Tom, Dick, or Harry may write to the Mary Jane Smith of the moment. It was a missive which cost me midnight electricity and brain-strain; for not only must I appeal to my lady, I must also suit an environment.
Monny had taken up the study of hieroglyphics, in order to appreciate intelligently the tombs and temples of the Nile. She had bought books, and was learning with the energy of a stenographer, to write and read. She wrote out exercises, and submitted them for correction to “Antoun” who, as an Egyptian, was to be considered an authority. “Of course,” she explained to me, “one comes here thinking that all Egyptians nowadays, even Copts, are Arabs. But _he_ says that Egyptians are as Egyptian as they ever were, because Arab invasion has left little more trace in their blood than the Romans left in the blood of the English. It interests me _much_ more to feel when I’m in Egypt that I’m among real Egyptians.”
With this in my mind, I was convinced that a love letter in hieroglyphics, unearthed by moonlight in the mounds of Fustat, would please Monny.
The difficulty was that, though I could speak Arabic fairly well, I hardly knew the difference between hieroglyphic, hieratic and demotic forms; but the limited symbols I was able to employ were so strong in themselves that a few would go a long way: and if they were not as correct as the sentiments they expressed, Monny was not herself a mistress of hieroglyphic style. I could find no hieroglyphic suit in which to clothe the name Ernest; but since I had become keeper of men, mice, and morals in Sir Marcus Lark’s floating zoo, Monny’s craze for Egyptianizing everything had suggested the nickname of Men-Kheper-Rã. She sometimes called me Rã for short, therefore I now ventured to divert to my own uses a sign and cartouche once the property of a “son of the Sun,” and King of Egypt:
[Illustration: “The Love Letter”]
Translation: Beautiful Queen, Star (of) My Heart (and) Soul. Give Me (your) Love. Become My Wife (and) Goddess (for) Eternity.
Men-Kheper-(Ka) Rã.
I patted myself on the back, put the letter in the ground; and the digging party was a wild success; but time passed on, and I had no answer. What I expected was a reply in kind, an hieratic acceptance or a demotic refusal; either one would be good practice for Monny. But not a hieroglyph of any description came. I had to go on as if nothing had happened. To be ignored was less tolerable than being refused. Monny’s silence began to get upon my nerves; and to make matters worse, there was that desert trip hanging over my head. I knew even less about organizing a desert trip than I knew about hieroglyphics; yet it had to be done. As Sir Marcus said it was “up to me” to do it so well that Cook would look sick. Anthony was absorbed in secret official duties and open, unofficial duties. His was a great “thinking” part, and our occupations kept us apart rather than brought us together. On the one occasion when we were alone, he devoted four out of five minutes to telling me what he had learned of the night disturbance in front of the House of the Crocodile. “A Britisher of sorts” had come into the street, guided by an Arab. There had been some dispute about payment, and the Britisher had slapped the dragoman’s face. This had been followed, as he might have known it would, with a stab; a crowd had assembled, and scattered before the police; the stabbed one had gone to hospital, the stabber to prison. Altogether it was not surprising that Mansoor, the suspicious caretaker, had feared a trap, and closed his doors. Bedr el Gemály, now one of the great unemployed, had been seen near the hospital where the injured man lay; but he had taken the alarm and departed without inquiring for the invalid’s health; or else his being in that neighbourhood was a coincidence. The name of the man knifed was Burke, and London was given as his address. He was between thirty-five and forty, and according to the arrested dragoman was “not a gentleman, but a tourist.” His hurt was not severe: and as the Arab had been exasperated by a blow, the punishment would not be excessive.
When at length I had seized the last remaining minute to put the question, “Do you think Miss Gilder has found out who you really are?” Fenton seemed astonished.
“I hadn’t thought of it at all,” he answered simply. “She’s giving me too many other things to think of.”
“What kind of things?” I stealthily inquired.
“Oh,”–with an evasive air–“I don’t know what to make of her yet. But I haven’t given up my silly scheme.”
“What silly scheme?”
“Antoun” looked almost sulky. “Well, if you’ve forgotten, I won’t remind you. It’s absurd; it’s even brutal; and I’m ashamed of it. But I stick to it.”
CHAPTER XIV
THE DESERT DIARY BEGUN
I found out why Monny paid no attention to my buried letter. But the way in which I found it out (and several other things at the same time) is part of the desert trip.
I am not a man whose soul turns to diaries for consolation; but I did keep up a bowing acquaintance with a notebook in Egypt–it helped me with my lectures–and in the desert it relieved my feelings. Looking over the desert pages, I’m tempted to give them as they stand:
_Black Friday_: Morning. The start’s for Monday, and nothing done! Could I develop symptoms of creeping paralysis, and throw the responsibility on Anthony? But too late for that now; and he may have to stay on in Cairo for a day or two. Why did I leave my peaceful home? It’s the lure of the Mountain of the Golden Pyramid. Last night before I went to bed, read over my copy of Ferlini’s letters, to gain courage. Gained it for a little; but when I think of that desert I’m supposed to turn into a happy playground for trippers, and not a tent hired or a prune bought, or an egg laid, for all I know, I wish Anthony and I had let Lark stick to our mountain.
This is Lark’s fault anyhow. He sprang the thing on me. Said it would be easy as falling off a log. Said Cairo was full of Arabs whose mission in life was supplying tents and utensils for desert tours. People would be charmed with simple life, and me as universal provider. All I had to do was to supply cheap editions of “The Garden of Allah,” and plenty of dates; and hint that it was considered vulgar in the Best Circles to put on Pêche Melba airs in the desert. With a few quotations, I should make them content with a loaf of bread, a cup of wine, and Thing-um-Bob. Why, they’d be falling in love with each other under the desert stars, and my principal occupation would be saying, “Bless you, my children!”
Sounded neat; and I remembered that, according to Brigit, Monny wanted the “desert to take her.” Thought it might be useful if I were on in that act. Abyssmal beast of a dragoman who lurks round Mena House buoyed me up with false hopes. Said he had a fine outfit which he let, and threw himself in as guide. Plenty of everything (including cheek) for fifteen people, the exact number who have put down their names to go. (Some girls and parents are staying for a ball at the Semiramis, where I’ve tearfully persuaded the only soft-hearted officers I know to dance with them–otherwise the lot would have been on my hands in the desert.) Had so much to do yesterday taking the crowd to Matariyeh, where the Holy Family hid in a hollow tree, that I had no time to look at the Arab’s outfit. Was inclined to save trouble and trust him, but saw Anthony a minute last night; he urged me to inspect everything. Did so early this morning. Rotten outfit: tents like old patchwork quilts, pots and pans, etc., probably bought job lot from Noah when the Ark was docked. Those keenest on desert “taking” them, will be mad as hatters if it takes them in. Suppose I’ll have to interview half the Arabs in Cairo to-day. Wish I had a Ka or Ba or whatever you get for an astral body in Egypt, and I could say to it, “Here, my dear chap, I trust you to do this job while I stay in Cairo and rest my features.” Then he’d get the blame, and I’d disappear, never to be seen again. Or if he were a Ka with Cook accomplishments, maybe he’d bring the thing off all right, in which case I could turn up and take the credit and marry Monny. Happy thought! Cook! Why shouldn’t I sneak to Cook, and inquire in a careless way if they publish any pamphlet on “How to Do a Desert Tour.”
_Later_: Have been to Cook. No pamphlet, but a friend in need. Talk of casting bread on the waters! In Rome I cast a crust which I didn’t want, and it’s come back in Cairo with butter and sugar on it.
Must have been two years ago in Rome when a young chap wrote to me to the Embassy. Said he’d been disappointed in getting work he’d come abroad for, had seen my name, recognized it, was from my county; and could I use him as a stenographer or anything? I couldn’t; but I found him some one who could; and forgot him till I saw him this morning a fully fledged clerk at Cook’s. Checking the impulse to fall on his neatly striped blue and white bosom, I invited him to lunch; and as a reward for what he calls “past and present favours,” he had given me new life. What I mean to say is, he’s promised to provide me not only with tents, but camels and camel-boys and a camp chef, and waiters and washbowls and a desert dragoman, and thousands of things I’d never thought of. It seems practically certain that since Napoleon no such genius has been born as Slaney. Cleopatra would say that S. is the reincarnation of Napoleon; but neither Cleopatra nor any one else –above all, Sir Marcus Lark–is to know of his existence. Such is the disinterested self-sacrifice of this buttered-and-sugared Crust, that it will do everything for me, while keeping itself and the Organization which controls it, completely in the background. The Organization is too great to mind; and the Crust, alias T. Slaney, thinks itself too small.
Lark, Ltd., considers himself a budding rival of the firm of Cook; but a deadly bud. If, however, Sir M. should come to hear that I had flown for succour to the enemy’s camp, I fear it would be all over with the bargain for which Anthony and I are selling our souls. T. Slaney says he never shall know. He guarantees that Cook labels and other telltale marks shall be removed from everything, though time is short and there is much to do. He will be the power behind the tents, and I will be in them, absorbing all the credit.
_Saturday_: All _couleur de Rose_, thanks to Slaney. Should like to get him canonized. Many less worthy men, now deceased, have been given the right to put Saint before their names. He has handed me a list, something less than a mile long, of articles which Biddy and I, as children, used to call eaties and drinkies. He has told me where the things can be bought, and has written a letter of introduction which secures me “highest consideration and lowest prices.” Also he has suggested a medicine-chest, packs of cards, the newest games, cigarettes suited to European and Arab tastes, picture post-cards of desert scenes; ink, pens, and writing paper. “People forget everything they want on these trips, but you mustn’t,” said he. I have acted on all his suggestions, and feel as proud as if I had originated them myself.
_Sunday:_ My precious friend Slaney has made a large collection of Arabs, camels, tents, etc., and ordered everything, animate and inanimate, to assemble in the neighbourhood of Mena House this afternoon, in order to be inspected by me, and to be ready for a start early to-morrow morning. We are to have a sandcart with a desert horse for Cleopatra, who has tried a camel and found it wanting. I fancy she thinks a sandcart the best modern substitute for a chariot; and at worst, it ought to be as comfortable. Slaney has promised a yellow one –cart, not horse. The horse, by request, is to be white. The other ladies are having camels. I daren’t think of Miss Hassett-Bean at the end of the week. The men, also, will camel. There is, indeed, no alternative between camelling and sandcarting–sandcarting not recommended by the faculty but insisted upon by Cleopatra. Hope it will work out all right; and am inclined to be optimistic. A week in the desert and the flowery oasis of the Fayum, with the two most charming women in Egypt! There will be others, but there’s a man each, and more. I shall have to look after Monny and Brigit, as Anthony is having his hands full with Cleopatra lately, and, besides, he can’t start with us. Something keeps him in Cairo for two days more, and he will have to join us near Tomieh.
_Sunday Evening:_ Back from Great Pyramid, where I went to inspect the assembling army. Magnificent is the only word! The camels fine animals, but Anthony has provided the three best, borrowing these aristocrats of the camel world from Major Gunter of the Coast Guard. They have chased hasheesh smugglers, and have seen desert fighting. Were snarling horribly when I was introduced, but a snarl as superior to the common snarls of baggage-camels as their legs are superior in shape. Biddy, Monny, Mrs. East, and Rachel Guest were there with Sir M. and “Antoun,” having been inside the pyramid and up to the top. Monny on her high horse because “Antoun” says it will be better for the ladies to ride the baggage-camels. The others take his word, meekly, but she persists, and Anthony agrees to give her the camel he had meant to ride, the one supposed to be the most spirited. When he joins us, he will have the animal intended for her. When this bargain was struck between them I thought his eyes looked dangerous, but she didn’t notice or didn’t care. Fenton tells me he has dreamed again of the red-faced man with the purple moustache. I laughed at his bugbear and flung Colonel Corkran in his teeth. By the way, nothing has been heard of C. by any of us since the day he handed in his resignation. Suppose he has gone back to England in the sulks.
_Monday Night:_ I am writing in my tent, which is to be shared with Anthony when he arrives. I feel years older than when we started this morning. Middle age seems to have overtaken me. If I keep on at this rate, shall be a centenarian by the time we get back to Cairo.
We made a splendid caravan at the start. Besides the train of camels ridden by my party from the _Candace_ and Monny Gilder with her satellites (it goes against the grain, though, to call a bright particular star like Biddy a satellite), there were over thirty gigantic beasts laden with our numerous bedroom, kitchen, luncheon, and dinner-tents, tent-pegs, cooking-stove, food for humans, fodder for animals, casks of water, mattresses, folding-beds, other tent furniture, tourists’ luggage, and so on. I was happy till after the baggage-train had got away, each camel with its head roped to the tail of the one ahead, all trailing off toward the distant Pyramids of Sakkhara well in advance of us. Each camel looked like a house-moving. On top of the kitchen-camel’s load was perched the chêf, a singularly withered old gentleman with black and blue complexion, clad in a vague, flying blanket. (Has been Turkish-coffee man in Paris hotels.) Many other negroid persons in white with large turbans; a few café au lait Arabs; these all counted beforehand by Slaney, for me, and identified as assistant-cooks, waiters, bed-makers, and camel-men, enough apparently to stock a village. But we had one surprise at the moment of starting in the form of a bright black child, clad in white, with a white skull cap and a flat profile evidently copied from the Sphinx. I don’t know yet why this Baby Sphinx has come or who he is; but he rode on the kitchen-camel’s tail, hanging on by the bread (our bread!) which was in a bag.
When this cavalcade had wound away, the camels making blue heart-shaped tracks in the yellow sand, it was our turn to start. Not one of us would have changed places with any old Egyptian king or queen, and we did not feel vulgar for doing this trip in luxury, because ancient royalties had done the same, and so do the great sheikhs of the desert even now. As I put Cleopatra into the sandcart with its broad, iron-rimmed wheels, she was recalling the days when she travelled with a train of asses in order to have milk for her bath. I suggested a modern condensed substitute, but the offer was not received in the spirit with which it was made. Now to get the ladies on their camels, after which we men would vault upon our animals, and wind away among billowing dunes full of shadowy ripples and high lights, like cream-coloured velvet!
But just here arose the first small cloud in the blue. It was bigger than a man’s hand, for it was the exact size and shape of Miss Hassett-Bean’s hat. It was a largish hat of imitation Panama trimmed with green veiling, just the hat for a post-card desert all pink sunset and no wind. As she was about to mount the squatting camel, a breeze blew the flap over her eyes. This prevented Miss H.B. from seeing that the camel had turned its neck to look at her; and so, as she reached the saddle and the hat blew up, lady and camel met face to face. It was a moment of suspense, for neither liked the other at first sight. The camel began to gurgle its throat in a threatening manner, and at the same time to rise. Miss Hassett-Bean, staring into two quivering nostrils shaped like badly made purses, shrieked, forgot whether she must first bend forward or bend back, bent in the way she ought not to have bent, and fell upon the sand. I don’t quite see why I was to blame for this result, but she _saw_, and said I ought to have warned her what a vile creature a camel was. Nothing would induce her to try again. She would go to any extreme rather than ride a beast with a snake for a neck, and a nasty unsympathetic face full of green juice which it spit out at you. She was used to being liked. She simply couldn’t go about on a thing which would never love her, and she wouldn’t want it to if it did. She would go home or else she would have a sandcart. All the neighbouring sandcarts were engaged; but fortunately “Antoun Effendi” appeared at that instant (he’d taxied out to see us off), and he persuaded Cleopatra to let Miss Hassett-Bean drive with her. The desert horse, feeling this extra weight, looked round almost as unsympathetically as the camel had; but nobody paid the slightest attention except his attendant, who was to lead him: a type of negro “Nut,” who had a snobbish habit of reddening his nails with henna.
By this time a crowd had assembled, kept in check by the tall, blue-robed sheikh of the Pyramids. It consisted mostly of Arabs determined to take our photographs or sell us scarabs–which Miss Hassett-Bean refused on the ground that she disliked things off dead people. But on the fringe lurked a few Europeans, amused to see so large a caravan setting forth; and the men of our party, hitherto proud of their curtained helmets and desert get-up, became self-conscious under a fire of snapshots.
“Hello, my Boy Scout!” I was hailed by Sir Marcus, arriving three minutes behind Anthony, and on the same errand. This blow to my self-esteem fell as I was leading Monny to the white camel which was hers and should have been Anthony’s. She laughed–I suppose she couldn’t help it. I couldn’t myself, if it had been Harry Snell or Bill Bailey; but as it was, my pride of khaki helmet, knickers, and puttees collapsed like a burst balloon. I seemed to feel the calves of my legs wither. It was in this mood that I had to put Monny on that coastguard camel, while “Antoun” stood looking on. He did not offer to help the girl, as their talk yesterday on the subject of baggage-camels versus running camels had not conduced to officiousness.
Monny was in white: broad white helmet such as women wear, white suede shoes, white silk stockings, and a lot of lacy, garden-party things that showed frills when she flew, birdlike, onto the cushioned saddle. “_That’s_ the way to do it!” I heard her cry, exultantly–and what happened next I can’t say, for the white camel knocked me over as it bounded up, jerking its nose rope from the leader’s hand, and the next thing I knew it was making for the horizon. I hadn’t been on a camel since I was four, if then, so it was useless to follow. But while I stood spitting out sand, Anthony flung himself onto one of the swift coastguard beasts, and was after her like a streak of four-legged lightning. None of us had the nerve to continue our operations until, a quarter of an hour later, they appeared from behind the Great Pyramid, coming at a walk, “Antoun” holding the bridle of Monny’s camel.
I saw by Fenton’s face that he intended to make no suggestions, and I guessed that he was practising his chosen method. If Miss Gilder wished for anything she must ask for it, and ask for it humbly if she expected to get it.
Her face, too, was a study. She was pale and even piteous. I thought there were tears in the blue-gray eyes; and if I had been Anthony I could not have hardened my heart. Pride or no pride, I should have begged her to abandon this praiseworthy adventure, and deign to mount the baggage brute. Not so Anthony. He led back the camel, with Monny limply sitting on it, and when it had calmed down at sight of its friends he retired into the background.
“How wonderful that you kept on, darling!” exclaimed Biddy.
“I didn’t,” said Monny. Then she turned to “Antoun,” who remained on his beast, in case of another emergency, or because he did not wish to be looked down upon by her. He was rather glorious enthroned on his camel, the only one of our party who was truly “in” the desert picture. I didn’t blame him for stopping up there on his sheepskin, eye to eye with the girl.
For a moment Monny did not speak. She was evidently hesitating what to do, but common sense and natural sweetness got the better of false pride. “Antoun, you were right, and I was wrong,” she admitted. “I said yesterday that you were selfish, keeping the coastguard camels for yourself and Lord Ernest and General Harlow, and giving us women the baggage ones. Now I’m sorry. I was silly and hateful. I wouldn’t ride another fifty yards on this demon for fifty thousand dollars. He’s nearly broken my back, and if it hadn’t been for you, he would quite have done it. Please help me off, and put me on any old baggage thing that nobody else wants.”
Anthony’s eyes lit for an instant, from satisfaction as a man, or from Christian joy in her moral improvement. He sprang off his sky-scraping camel, brought Monny’s animal to its knees, helped her off, and motioned to the Arab attendant of the Ugly Duckling of all the other creatures. It gave the effect of being a cross between a camel and an ostrich, and had been chosen by “Antoun” as his own mount, when he surrendered the aristocrat to Monny.
“Oh, dearest, I can’t have you ride that grasshopper!” cried Biddy. “‘Antoun’ took it for himself very kindly because it’s the worst. And I don’t care any more than he did. Give the thing to me, and take _my_ one, that dear creature with the blue bead necklace.”
But Anthony answered for Monny. “Mademoiselle Gilder made a bargain with me yesterday,” he said. “If she failed in what _she_ wanted to do, she was to do what _I_ wanted her to do. I think she will wish to keep her bargain.”
“I’m _sure_ I wish to,” added Monny.
With a chastened, not to say shattered air, she curled herself up on the sheepskin-covered cushion which was the ugly Duckling’s saddle. This time it was “Antoun” who settled her into place, with her feet meekly crossed; and the caricature of a camel rose like a sofa at a spiritualistic séance. Strange to say, however, when all were ready to start, Monny appeared more comfortably lodged than any of the camel-riding ladies; and the thought entered my mind that perhaps Anthony had, with extreme subtlety, taken this roundabout way of benefitting Miss Gilder.
After this we got off with only a few minor mishaps. The one remaining incident of note was the arrival on the scene, as we left it, of another caravan–a small caravan consisting of two Europeans–a few laden camels, and camel-boys marshalled by one dragoman. The dragoman was Bedr el Gemály, and he smiled at us as affectionately as though we had not driven him from us in disgrace.
“How forgiving Arabs are, even when they’re not converted!” remarked Rachel Guest, by whose side I happened to be riding.
“He isn’t an Arab,” said I. “He’s an Armenian. And both are supposed to be the reverse of forgiving. But he’s found another job quickly, so he can afford to let bygones be bygones.”
“Oh, he would _anyway_!” Miss Guest exclaimed, warmly. “Poor fellow, you’ve all done him a great injustice, but I’m thankful he’s not going to suffer for it. I wonder if he and his people are bound the same way we are?”
I feared that this was likely to be the case, as we were going the conventional round, sticking–as one might say–to suburban desert, on our way to the Fayum. But, as Monny observed the other night, we couldn’t engage the desert like a private sitting-room. I would, however, have preferred sharing it with most people rather than Bedr and his clients, though the two latter looked singularly harmless, almost Germanic.
We went on more or less happily, though I noticed that whenever a camel changed its walk for a trot, each one of the ladies reached back a desperate hand to clutch the saddle and save her spine from the bruising bump! bump! which smote the bone with every step. As for me, that feeling of middle age began to creep on while my coast-guard camel and I were getting acquainted. I tried to distract my thoughts from the end of my spine, by concentrating them in admiration upon the scene. There was the Sphinx welcoming us with an immense smile of benevolence, as suitable to the sunshine as had been her mysterious solemnity to the moonlight. There, far away to the left, the spire-crowned Citadel floated in translucent azure. Its domes and minarets, and the long serrated line of the Mokattam Hills were carved against the sky in the yellow-rose of pink topaz. Shafts of light gave to jagged shapes and terraces of rock on the low mountains an appearance of temples and palaces, very noble and splendid, as must have been the first glimpse of Ancient Egypt to desert-worn fugitives from famine in Palestine. Between us and the Nile, hiding the sparkling water as we rode, went a dark line of palms, purple, with glints of peacock-feather green, in the distance. Hundreds of tiny birds flew up into the burning blue like a black spray, and the sand was patterned by their feet, in designs intricate as lace. Wherever lay a patch of white and yellow flowers or of rough grass no bigger than a prayer rug, a lark soared from its nest singing its jewel-song; and here and there a gentle hoopoo reared the crown which rewarded it for guiding lost King Solomon and his starving army to safety.
All this was beautiful; but I wondered painfully if Monny could be happy in spite of the bumps, now that the desert was taking her. Strange, how a disagreeable sensation constantly repeated at the end of a mere bone can change a man’s outlook on life! If Monny had come to my camel-side and whispered, “I found your buried letter, oh, Men-Kheper-Rã. Behold that bird now flying toward you. It is my Ba–my Heart or Soul-bird carrying the gift of my love:” I should with difficulty have prevented myself from snapping out, “Thanks very much; but, my good girl, I’m in no mood to talk tommy-rot.”
It was sympathy, kind, friendly sympathy I yearned for, not spoken in words, but given from soft, sweet eyes, as little Biddy had given it when I tore my hands and barked my shins birds’-nesting on the rocks a hundred years ago.
I think we should have liked the excuse to stop and gaze at the ruinous Pyramids of Abusir; but the dragoman-guide supplied by Slaney urged us on to the great plateau of the Pyramids and Necropolis of Sakkara. There, on the terrace of Marriette’s House, we saw a crowd of Cook’s tourists from Bedrachen, and I had some moments of guilty fear lest my Secret should leak out, as their dragoman rushed down and warmly greeted ours. But in the throes of rolling off their camels for the first time, the ever-wakeful suspicions of the Set were submerged under physical emotions. It’s an ill camel that bumps no one any good!
I was only too glad to lure my charges away from danger-zone; and luckily it was so early that the influential ones who never lunched until two “at home,” gave the word, “Tombs before food.” Girding up its aching loins, the procession allowed itself to be led by me and my dragoman down inclined planes into dark, mysteriously warm passages where our lights were wandering red stars. Now and then a face would start suddenly out of the gloom, haloed with candle-light: and in this way, Biddy’s flashed upon me, starry-eyed. “Oh, I’m glad to see you!” she whispered. Bedr and his two tourists are here. I’m afraid!”
“My dear child,” I said soothingly, but not as soothingly as if I hadn’t had toothache in the spine, “you may be afraid of Bedr, but hardly of two stout Germans in check suits.”
“Not if they _are_ Germans. But are they? Just now one of their candles almost collided with mine, and his eyes stared so! Then they looked over my head at Monny, who was behind me. And where she is now, heaven knows!”
“Nothing can happen to either of you here,” I assured her. “And probably our fuss about Bedr is much ado about nothing. We have no evidence–“
“The man who stared at me over his candle has a scar on his forehead,” said Biddy. “Maybe he got it in that row in front of the House of the Crocodile. Maybe he is Burke, and has just come out of the hospital.”
“Most likely he is Schmidt, and adorned himself with the wound in a student duel,” said I.
“It’s too fresh-looking. He must be over thirty,” she objected, but at that moment Miss Hassett-Bean loomed into sight; and in the stuffy atmosphere of the tomb felt the need of my arm to keep her from fainting.
We “did” the Pyramid of Unas, dilapidated without, secretively beautiful within. We went from tomb to tomb, lingering long in the labyrinthine Mansion of Mereruka who, ruddy and large as life, stepped hospitably down in statue-form from his stela recess, to welcome us in the name of himself and wife. Almost he seemed to wave his hands and say, “Look at these nice pictures of me and my family and our ways of life, painted on the walls–our servants, our dwarfs, our mountebanks and acrobats, our flocks and herds. Sorry there’s no refreshment at present on my alabaster mastaba, or table of offerings, but you see I didn’t prepare for visitors outside my own immediate circle of Ka’s and Ba’s. Still, as you _have_ come, make yourselves at home, and take pot luck. I think when you’ve examined everything, you’ll admit that you haven’t a Soul-House in Europe to touch mine which, if I do say it, is the best thing this side of Thebes.”
Next came the Tomb of Thi; but by this time, mural representations of fish, flesh, and fruit began to be aggravating. It would be past two before we could reach our luncheon-tent; and somehow it seemed less desirable to feed after than before that sacred hour, though the custom be sanctioned by royalty. “Another tomb to see before lunch?” groaned Sir John Biddell, when the dragoman firmly insisted on the Apis Mausoleum. “Oh, darn! _Need_ we? What? Where they buried _Bulls_? I’d as soon see a slaughter house, on an empty stomach. Lady Biddell and I will go sit in the shadow of our camels.”
And they did; nor would they believe the twins’ assertions that the dark Mausoleum, with its cavernous rock chambers and granite vaults, was the most impressive thing they had seen in Egypt. “You say that to be aggravating, because we weren’t there,” I heard Lady Biddell snap, over the grumbling of the camels.
The sky blazed down and the sand blazed up. The desert was white-hot, with a silver whiteness hotter than gold, and the foreshortened shadows were turquoise blue. It was heaven to arrive at a miniature oasis, and see the open-fronted, awninged luncheon-tent reflected with its green frame of palms, in a clear lagoon, thoughtfully left by the receding Nile. At sight of this picture, my popularity went up with a bound. It really was a lovely vision: the big tent lined with Egyptian appliqué work in many colors, the porchlike roof extension supported by poles, and in its shadow a white table loaded with good things and guarded by Arab waiters waving beaded fly-whisks. As we lingered over our chicken-salad, fruit, and cool drinks, and lazily watched our camels munching bersím, all our first enthusiasm for these interesting beasts streamed back. The ladies called them poor dears, and sweet things; and the men marvelled at their calm endurance, or the number of their leg-joints.
Monny was gay and charming, and looked at me so kindly that I thought she must mean to give a favorable answer to the buried letter. I blessed Cleopatra for the “tip” she had given, though I wondered what was the “humiliation” from which I could save her niece. “After all,” said I, “the desert trip’s going to pan out a success.” But it must have been about this time that the wind rose. It blew Miss Hassett-Bean’s hat up instead of down, and other hats off, when we had started again–and it blew into our eyes grains of sand as large as able bodied paving-stones. Also, as we passed through a picturesque mud-village which ought to have pleased everybody, it blew into our noses smells which Lady Biddell knew would give us plague. As if this were not enough, the sandcart nearly turned over in a rut, and Miss Hassett-Bean said that she must go home or be left to die in the desert. I had to lead the little stallion before she would consent to go on, and realized when I had ploughed through fifty yards of sand, that the manicured snob of a leader was a thin brown hero. By the time I had had a mile or two of this, the dark Pyramids of Dahshur were visible, and I knew that our camp was to be pitched not far beyond. My first emotion was pleasure; my second, panic.
What if Slaney had forgotten his promise to remove the Cook labels?
Since remounting Farag (only the coastguard camels had names; the baggage-beasts smelt as sweet without) Monny and I had been bumping along side by side, and she had just said, “If I tell you something, you’ll never breathe it to a soul, will you?” when I saw those Pyramids, and was smitten with the fear of Cook.
“Never!” I vowed, torn between the desire to hear her secret, and to dash ahead of the caravan into camp.
“It’s about ‘Antoun,'” Monny went on. “You know I said to you the other night, that perhaps I knew something about him?”
“Yes–er–oh, yes!”
We were within a few hundred yards of the Pyramids now. At any instant the camp might burst into sight.
“You don’t look interested!”
“But I am, awfully!”
“You’re _sure_ you won’t tell?”
“_Dead_ sure.”