"Throw--throw! He"ll be at the gates."
Victoria threw the small but heavy parcel over the wall which hid the dwellers on the roof.
Where it fell, they could not see, and no sound came up from the sand-dune far below. Some beggar or servant of the Zaoua might have found and s.n.a.t.c.hed the packet, for all that they could tell.
For a time which seemed long, they waited, hoping that something would happen. They did not speak at all. Each heard her own heart beating, and imagined that she could hear the heart of the other.
At last there were steps on the stairs which led from Saidee"s rooms to the roof. Noura came up. "O twin stars, forgive me for darkening the brightness of thy sky," she said, "but I have here a letter, given to me to put into the hands of Lella Sada."
She held out a folded bit of paper, that had no envelope.
Saidee, pale and large-eyed, took it in silence. She read, and then handed the paper to Victoria.
A few lines were scrawled on it in English, in a very foreign handwriting. The language, known to none in this house except the marabout, Maeddine, Saidee and Victoria, was as safe as a cypher, therefore no envelope had been needed.
"Descend into thy garden immediately, and bring with thee thy sister,"
the letter said. And it was signed "Thy husband, Mohammed."
"What can it mean?" asked Victoria, giving back the paper to Saidee.
"I don"t know. But we shall soon see--for we must obey. If we didn"t go down of our own accord, we"d soon be forced to go."
"Perhaps Ca.s.sim will let me talk to Mr. Knight," said the girl.
"He is more likely to throw you to his lion, in the court," Saidee answered, with a laugh.
They went down into the garden, and remained there alone. Nothing happened except that, after a while, they heard a noise of pounding. It seemed to come from above, in Saidee"s rooms.
Listening intently, her eyes flashed, and a bright colour rushed to her cheeks.
"Now I know why we were told to come into the garden!" she exclaimed, her voice quivering with anger. "They"re nailing up the door of my room that leads to the roof!"
"Saidee!" To Victoria the thing seemed too monstrous to believe.
"Ca.s.sim threatened to do it once before--a long time ago--but he didn"t.
Now he has. That"s his answer to your Mr. Knight."
"Perhaps you"re wrong. How could any one have got into your rooms without our seeing them pa.s.s through the garden?"
"I"ve always thought there was a sliding door at the back of one of my wall cupboards. There generally is one leading into the harem rooms in old houses like this. Thank goodness I"ve hidden my diaries in a new place lately!"
"Let"s go up and make sure," whispered Victoria.
Still the pounding went on.
"They"ll have locked us out."
"We can try."
Victoria went ahead, running quickly up the steep, narrow flight of steps that led to the upper rooms which she and Saidee shared. Saidee had been right. The door of the outer room was locked. Standing at the top of the stairs, the pounding sounded much louder than before.
Saidee laughed faintly and bitterly.
"They"re determined to make a good job of it," she said.
XLIV
Stephen rode back with his Arab companion, to the desert city where Nevill waited. He had gone to the Zaoua alone with the guide, because Nevill had thought it well, in case of emergencies, that he should be able to say: "I have a friend in Oued Tolga who knows where I am, and is expecting me." Now he was coming away, thwarted for the moment, but far from hopeless.
It is a four hours" ride among the dunes, between the Zaoua and the town, for the sand is heavy and the distance is about seventeen miles.
The red wine of sunset was drained from the cups of the sand-hollows, and the shadows were cool when Stephen saw the minaret of the town mosque and the crown of an old watch-tower, pointing up like a thumb and finger of a buried hand. Soon after, he pa.s.sed through the belt of black tents which at all seasons encircles Oued Tolga as a girdle encircles the waist of an Ouled Nal, and so he rode into the strange city. The houses were crowded together, two with one wall between, like Siamese twins, and they had the pale yellow-brown colour of honeycomb, in the evening light. The roughness of the old, old bricks, made of baked sand, gave an effect of many little cells; so that the honeycomb effect was intensified; and the sand which flowed in small rippling waves round the city, and through streets narrow and broad, was of the same honey-yellow as the houses, except that it glittered with gypsum under the kindling stars. Among the bubbly domes, and low square towers, vague in the dimming light, bunches of palms in hidden gardens nodded over crumbling walls, like dark plumes on the crowns of the dancing-women.
In the market-place was the little hotel, newly built; the only French thing in Oued Tolga, except the military barracks, the Bureau Arabe, and a gurgling artesian well which a French officer had lately completed.
But before Stephen could reach the market-place and the hotel, he had to pa.s.s through the quarter of the dancing-girls.
It was a narrow street, which had low houses on either side, with a balcony for every mean window. Dark women leaned their elbows on the palm-wood railings, and looked down, smoking cigarettes, and calling across to each other. Other girls sat in lighted doorways below, each with a candle guttering on a steep step of her bare staircase; and in the street walked silent men with black or brown faces, whose white burnouses flowed round their tall figures like blowing clouds. Among them were a few soldiers, whose uniforms glowed red in the twilight, like the cigarette ends pulsing between the painted lips of the Ouled Nals. All that quarter reeked with the sweet, wicked smell of the East; and in the Moorish cafe at the far end, the dancing-music had begun to throb and whine, mingling cries of love and death, with the pa.s.sion of both. But there was no dancing yet, for the audience was not large enough. The brilliant spiders crouched in their webs, awaiting more flies; for caravans were coming in across that desert sea which poured its yellow billows into the narrow street; and in the market-place, camel-drivers only just arrived were cooking their suppers. They would all come a little later into this quarter to drink many cups of coffee, and to spend their money on the dancers.
As Stephen went by on horseback, the girls on the balconies and in the doorways looked at him steadily without smiling, but their eyes sparkled under their golden crowns, or scarlet headkerchiefs and glittering veils. Behind him and his guide, followed a procession of boys and old men, with donkeys loaded with dead palm-branches from the neighbouring oasis, and the dry fronds made a loud swishing sound; but the dancers paid no attention, and appeared to look through the old men and children as if they did not exist.
In the market-place were the tired camels, kneeling down, looking gloomily at their masters busy cooking supper on the sand. Negro sellers of fruit and fly-embroidered lumps of meat, or brilliant-coloured pottery, and cheap, bright stuffs, were rolling up their wares for the night, in red and purple rags or tattered matting. Beggars lingered, hoping for a stray dried date, or a coin before crawling off to secret dens; and two deformed dwarfs in enormous turbans and blue coats, claimed power as marabouts, chanting their own praises and the praises of Allah, in high, cracked voices.
As Stephen rode to the hotel, and stopped in front of the arcade which shaded the ground floor, Nevill and another man sprang up from chairs pushed back against the white house-wall.
"By Jove, Legs, I"m glad to see you!" Nevill exclaimed, heartily, "What news?"
"Nothing very great so far, I"m sorry to say. Much as we expected,"
Stephen answered. And as he spoke, he glanced at the stranger, as if surprised that Nevill should speak out before him. The man wore the smart uniform of the Cha.s.seurs d"Afrique. He was quite young, not over thirty-four, and had a keen, brave face, as Stephen could see by the crude light of a lamp that was fixed in the wall. But the large grey eyes, somewhat pale in contrast with deep sunburn, were the eyes of a poet rather than those of a born soldier.
"I must introduce you and Captain Sabine to each other," Nevill went on, in French, as Stephen got off his horse and it was led away by the Arab.
"He"s staying at the hotel. He and I"ve been talking about the Zaoua and--the marabout. The upshot of our conversation will astonish you. I feel sure, when you hear it, you will think we can talk freely about our business to Captain Sabine."
Stephen said something polite and vague. He was interested, of course, but would have preferred to tell his adventure to Nevill alone.
"Monsieur Caird and I made acquaintance, and have been chatting all the afternoon," volunteered Sabine. "To begin with, we find we have many friends in common, in Algiers. Also he knows relations of mine, who have spoken of me to him, so it is almost as if we had known each other longer. He tells me that you and he are searching for a young lady who has disappeared. That you have followed here a man who must know where she is; that in the city, you lost track of the man but heard he had gone on to the Zaoua; that this made you hope the young lady was there with her sister, whose husband might perhaps have some position under the marabout."
"I told him these things, because I thought, as Captain Sabine"s been sinking an artesian well near the Zaoua, he might have seen Miss Ray, if she were there. No such luck. He hasn"t seen her; however, he"s given me a piece of information which makes it just about as sure she _is_ there, as if he had. You shall have it from him. But first let me ask you one question. Did you get any news of her?"
"No. I heard nothing."
"Does that mean you saw----"
"No. I"ll tell you later. But anyhow, I went into the Zaoua, almost certain she was there, and that she"d seen me coming. That was a good start, because of course I"d had very little to go on. There was only a vague hope. I asked for the marabout, and they made me send a visiting-card--quaint in the desert. Then they kept me moving about a while, and insisted on showing me the mosque. At last they took me to a hideous reception room, with a lot of good and vile things in it, mixed up together. The marabout came in, wearing the black mask we"d heard about--a fellow with a splendid bearing, and fine eyes that looked at me very hard over the mask. They were never off my face. We complimented each other in French. Then I said I was looking for a Miss Ray, an American girl who had disappeared from Algiers, and had been traced to the Zaoua, where I had reason to believe she was staying with a relative from her own country, a lady married to some member of his staff. I couldn"t give him the best reason I had for being sure she _was_ there, as you"ll see when I tell you what it was. But he said gravely that no European lady was married to any one in the Zaoua; that no American or any other foreign person, male or female, was there. In the guest-house were one or two Arab ladies, he admitted, who had come to be cured of maladies by virtue of his power; but no one else. His denial showed me that he was in the plot to hide Miss Ray. That was one thing I wanted to know; so I saw that the best thing for her, would be for me to pretend to be satisfied. If it hadn"t been for what happened before I got to the Zaoua gates, I should almost have been taken in by him, perhaps, he had such an air of n.o.ble, impeccable sincerity. But just as I dipped down into a kind of hollow, on the Zaoua side of the river, something was thrown from somewhere. Unluckily I couldn"t be sure where. I"d been looking up at the roofs behind the walls, but I must have had my eyes on the wrong one, if this thing fell from a roof, as I believe it did. It was a little bundle, done up in a handkerchief, and I saw it only as it touched the ground, about a dozen yards in front. Then I hurried on, you may be sure, hoping it was meant for me, to grab the thing before any one else could appear and lay hands on it."
"Well?"