"See here, young fellow, me lad, cut that!"
"O, cut your throat, you big mooch," she replied haughtily. "I"m an icicle myself but I know a grand moon when I see one!"
But she wasn"t looking at the moon at all. She was leaning out as far as she could and peering on the balcony below where she thought she had seen a sign of white drapery. But when she looked again it was gone.
Had she only known!
If she had she"d have known it was Lady Speedway stretching her ear to try and find out why a messenger was going at so late an hour to the room of a single girl like Miss Mayonnaise.
But as it was, Verbeena squatted on the balcony rail lighting cigarette after cigarette as she looked out into the market place where the moon and her nostrils told her was the caravan she had engaged from Musty Ale for her wild, mad adventure.
If b.u.t.ternut had acted differently--but b.u.t.ternut hadn"t!
Dear little b.u.t.ternut, sweet little b.u.t.ternut!
She had his note to prove it conclusively to Lord Tawdry. To-morrow would see her plunging forth into the yellow wilderness, the vast places, the majestic silences, the----
Verbeena felt a sudden, mad boyish temptation to shoot her cigarette stump into the eye of a native sleeping at the foot of the verandah.
But, very unusual with her in such cases, she refrained. It might start some trouble and she didn"t want that to happen now.
Nothing must prevent her journey upon the desert!
From her window she looked out toward it, so wonderful, so superb, so exquisite, weird and beautiful. Exactly, she told herself, like a big, black smudge.
But she cuddled in bed with one knee up to her neck in cute boyish fashion, laughing softly at the remembrance of another time when she had popped a cigarette stump into the eye of a London bobby from the top of a "bus.
And such a merry fight as she had put up when he had yanked her down!
She was wearing her usual boy"s clothes and when she had given her real name at the station, the policeman wouldn"t believe it of her and the matron had resigned rather than carry the investigation further.
Verbeena gave her boyish head a twist or two on the pillow and then she slept. Two weird sounds were in her ears as she dropped off. One was a queer, wild, melancholy song. The other was the snores of Lord Tawdry, equally weird, equally melancholy, equally wild.
Yet she slept.
But an hour later awoke.
Verbeena untied her long, knotted eyelashes and peered about.
Had--she seen something?
The moon was all there, the famous, well-known Biscuit moon, lighting the room riotously.
Yet she saw nothing. She took a sharp peek around. As her state of consciousness emerged from the nebulous condition of soft pitch and congealed to the concrete of a highway, Verbeena said softly to herself:
"I could kick myself for a goal if I didn"t see somp"n. Mystic it was, white, thrilling, strange----"
"Meow!"
Verbeena rushed for the balcony but the cat took the rail in a streak.
"Bally thing!"
Again on the still white night she heard that weird song with its slurred but insistent staccato _expressione_, ancient as the days of the Pharaohs, the melancholy, pa.s.sionate Katsbemerri.
But there would be no cats in the desert. Only nice, gentle, cute little, wriggly sandworms. No big b.o.o.b brother, Tawdry. No Knitting Needle Hussars.
Out there, beyond, swallowed up in that dear black smudge she had seen from the balcony her soul would wave its Stars and Stripes of freedom and move grandly in the palpitant sunlight upon the yellow linoleum of the mighty desert!
And she would have for company kickin", bitin" horses and daredevil men, magnificent, virile, strenuous nomads of the wild silences and the silver moons!
Only under no circ.u.mstances were they--any one of them--to be allowed to go too far!
Camaraderie--yes, in her boyish way she would offer them that. But beyond that----
"Remember, Verbie," she told herself. "As regards such bally things you are an icicle--an icicle."
She shivered.
"An icicle!"
She drew the covers swiftly up to her chin--up to the loose, red curls that brother Tawdry so loved to club about her ears.
CHAPTER II
The promised send-off of Verbeena from the Biscuit Hotel had been enthusiastic.
"Very much so," had said Lady Speedway, the mean thing.
At dawn Musty Ale sent ahead the procession of baggage bearers, the lumbering camels, all of them Verbeena thought showing great facial resemblance to Lady Speedway and hoped some day to tell her so.
But otherwise she just adored them.
"See," said she to Lord Tawdry who had surprised her by getting up, "the darling camels how they chew and chew and chew and are never satisfied!"
At dawn also on many of the private balconies of the Biscuit Hotel were seen veiled faces. They were veiled by lattices and lace curtains--each with one eye out.
It was the espionage of the Knitting Needle Hussars.
"There she goes, the bold minx," murmured Mrs. the Honorable General the Earl Dumpydale.
"She means to do it--to cross the desert alone! O, shameless!" openly cried the d.u.c.h.ess Pyllboxe-Beauchamp.
"She"d better keep her fingers crossed at the same time!"
This from that old Lady Speedway, of course.