"It"s a storm," Billy shouted at her, raising his voice above the wind. "It"s been blowing up this way for an hour now--they won"t follow long in the face of it. Can you hang on a little longer?"
"Forever," she cried back, gripping the pommel tight and bending her head before the whirling particles. There was sand in her hair, sand on her lashes and in her eyes, sand on her face and down her neck, and sand in her mouth when she wet her lips, but she heard herself laughing in the night.
"By and by we"ll get off," he called back, and by and by when the hot, stifling, stinging, choking, whirling gale was too blinding to be borne, he checked the camels in one of the hollows of the desert dunes from which the wind was skimming ammunition for its peppery a.s.saults, and the beasts knelt with a haste that spoke of gladness.
"It"s the backbone of it now; cover your head and lie down," Billy commanded, and Arlee covered it with what he thrust into her hands--his overcoat, she found--and tucked herself down against him as he crouched beside the camels.
"I should think--it was--the backbone," she gasped, unheard, into her m.u.f.fling coat. For the wind howled now like a rampaging demon; it tore at them in hot anger; it dragged at the coat about her head, and when her clutch resisted, it flung the sand over and over her till she lay half buried and choking. And then, very slowly and sulkily, it retreated, blowing fainter and fainter, but slipping back for a last spiteful gust whenever she thought it finally gone, but at last her head came out from its burrow, and she began cautiously to wipe the sand crust off her face and lashes.
"In your eyes?" said a sympathetic voice.
In the darkness beside her Billy Hill was sitting up, digging at his countenance.
"Not now--I"ve cried--that all gone," she panted back.
He chuckled. "I"ll try it--swearing"s no use."
She sat up suddenly. "Are they coming?"
"Not a bit. No use, if they did. You"re safe now."
"Oh, my _soul_!" She drew a long, long breath. "I can"t believe it." Then she whirled about on him. "How--why--why is it _you_?"
He looked suddenly embarra.s.sed, but the darkness hid it from her. He became oddly intent on brushing his clothes. "Oh, I guessed," he said in a casual tone.
"You guessed? Don"t they know? What did they think? Oh, where did everyone think I was?"
He told her, dwelling upon the misleading details; the hasty message of farewell from the station, the directions about luggage, the money to pay the hotel bill. "You see, his wits and luck were just playing together," he said.
"Then the Evershams _are_ up the Nile?"
"Of course. They never dreamed----"
"They wouldn"t." Arlee was silent. She wondered confusedly--she wanted to ask a question--she wanted to ask two questions.
"But--but--no one else----?" she stammered.
There was a particularly large lump of sand in Billy B. Hill"s throat just then; he cleared it heavily. "Oh, yes, some one else guessed, too," he said then. "That English friend of yours, Robert Falconer, he and I had a regular old shooting party in the palace last Sunday evening. If you"d been there then he would certainly have had you out."
"So he knows." She said it a little faintly, Billy thought, as if she was disappointed and troubled. She would know, of course, by intuition, how the Englishman would think about a sc.r.a.pe of that sort.
"But he doesn"t know now," he said eagerly. "He is sure you are all right in Alexandria, because the Evershams received another fake telegram from you from Alexandria. The Captain was stalling them along, apparently, keeping everything under cover as long as possible. And when Falconer heard about that, his suspicions were over. He thought we"d made fools of ourselves in going to the palace."
She was silent. Looking at her, after a while, Billy saw her staring out obliviously into the darkness; her hair was hanging all about her.
His glance seemed to recall her thoughts. She started and then brushed back her hair; the sand fell from it and she took hold of one soft strand. "Look out, I"m going to shake this!" she warned, and he half shut his eyes and underneath the lids he saw her shaking her head as vigorously as a little terrier after a bath.
"Isn"t it awful?" she appealed.
"I could scratch a match on my face," he confirmed.
"But tell me," she began again, "how did you know I was in that palace? And I must tell you how I happened to go and how I was kept there."
"You were told there was a quarantine, weren"t you?" Billy supplied, as she hesitated.
Her astonishment found quick speech. "Why, how did you know _that_?"
"The Baroff told me--that Viennese girl who came into your room."
"Why, you know _everything_! How did you?"
"Oh, I carried her over a wall, thinking it was you."
"But how could you think it was _I_? And what were you doing at the wall? I don"t see how----"
"Oh, one of the palace maids gave me a message in Arabic and I thought it was from you. You see, I suspected--I had seen you drive off in that motor----"
"But how could the maid bring you a message? Where were you? Where did she see you?"
"I was painting out in front of the palace." Billy sounded more and more casual.
"You said you were an engineer," said Arlee. His heart jumped. At least she had remembered that!
"So I am--the painting was just a joke."
"And you happened there," she began, wondering, and after he had opened his mouth to correct her, he closed it silently again.
Grat.i.tude was an unwieldy bond. He did not want to burden her with obligation. And he suspected, with a rankling sort of pang, that he was not the rescuer she had expected. So he made as light as possible of his entrance into the affair, telling her nothing at all of his first uneasiness and his interview with the one-eyed man which had confirmed his suspicions against the Captain"s character, and the masquerade he had adopted so he could hang about the palace.
Instead he let her think him there by chance; he ascribed the delivery of Fritzi"s message to sheer miracle, and his presence under the walls that night to wanton adventure, with only a half-thought that she was involved.
Stoutly he dwelt upon Falconer"s part in the attack the next night, and upon the entire reasonableness of his abandonment of the trail.
He put it down to his own mulishness that he had hung on and had learned through the little boy of her removal from the palace.
He interrupted himself then with questions, and she told him of her strange trip down the Nile in the _dahabiyeh_, under guard of the old woman and the Nubian. "But how did you come?" she demanded.
"Well, I just swung on to the same train he was in," said Billy.
"And I got out at a.s.siout because he"d bought a ticket there, but I couldn"t see a thing of him in the darkness and confusion of the station, and I had a horrid feeling that he"d gone somewhere else, the Lord knew where, to you. But the Imp--that"s the little Arab boy who adopted me and my cause--went racing up and down, and he got a glimpse of the Captain tearing off on a horse and behind him a man loping along with a bundle on a donkey, and the Imp raced behind him and yelled he"d dropped something. The man went back to look, and the Imp ran alongside him, asking him for work as a donkey boy. The fellow shook him off, but that had delayed him, and though we lost the horseman we kept the donkey-man in sight and followed him on to the village. I reconnoitered while the Imp stole these two camels--jolly good ones they are--and while I was trying to make out where you were, for there were lights in several windows, I suddenly heard your voice and then I saw a glare of fire. Well, my revolver was a pa.s.sport.... Now, how about that fire? What started it?"
"I did; he--he was trying to make love to me," she answered breathlessly, "and I just got to the candles."
"Are you burned at all? Truthfully now? I never stopped to ask."
"If I am, I don"t know it," she laughed tremulously. Then, "Isn"t this _crazy_!" she burst forth with.
"It"s--it"s off the beaten track," Billy B. Hill admitted. "It"s a jump back into the Middle Ages." His note of laughter joined hers as they sat staring owlishly at each other through the dark of the after-storm.
A little longer they talked, their questions and answers flitting back and forth over those six strange days; then, as the excitement waned, Billy heard a sleepy little sigh and saw a small hand covering a yawn. The girl"s slender shoulders were wilting with incalculable fatigue.
Instantly he commanded sleep, and obediently she curled down into the little nest he prepared, pillowing her head upon his coat, and almost instantly he heard her rhythmic breathing, slow and unhurried as a little child. His heart swelled with a feeling for which he had no name, as he sat there, his back against a camel, staring out into the night, an unknown feeling in which joy was very deep and triumph was merged into a holy thankfulness.