Desert Love Part 5

Jill smiled icily.

"I _thought_ as much. You scoundrel! So it is drugged, and I, having drunk it, would have lain unconscious at your mercy. G.o.d! to think that such brutes as you are allowed to live."

The man was watching the girl's every movement, ready to spring like a cat from the area steps upon the unsuspecting sparrow in the road, but neither her eyes nor her hand moved as she continued speaking very gently.

"Listen! I should have killed you myself to-night, feeling myself justified, so that other wretched girls should escape the fate you had prepared for me--you, lower than the beasts of the field; but I am not going to do it, as happily I know of one more powerful than I who will enjoy it thoroughly. Think of what I say when you see his messenger with your ring upon his finger, to-morrow or next month or next year perhaps--and when your time comes, watch the procession of betrayed and tortured girls as they pa.s.s before you to catch your soul in their slim hands as it leaves your body. Now! drink that coffee!"

But the man stood stock still, and Jill frowned, for she was not a paragon of patience at any time, and the obstinacy of the man fretted her already jagged nerves.

"Very well," she said, "I give you one more chance. If you refuse again I shall put a bullet straight through your head just between the eyebrows, as I shall now put one through that brooch kind of thing in your turban."

There was another deafening report, and the turban flew from the oriental's head just as a paper-bag will fly before a March wind.

"Go and pick that turban up and put it on your head. Hurry now, or we shall have the police or someone coming to inquire about the shooting gallery."

The eyes of the boa-constrictor in the Zoo were gems of humanity in comparison with those of the negroid-Egyptian's as he turned to obey, and then stopped mulishly until a third little reminder chipped splinters from the marble at his heel, whereupon he stooped and recovered his headgear, minus the brooch, but plus a neat little hole fore and aft.

"Now come and drink the coffee! It won't be very nice as it is almost cold. And remember in future if you are allowed to live, which I _very_ much doubt, that such supreme indifference as mine could only _possibly_ be the outcome of an absolute sense of perfect security."

Jill patted the silly-looking little ivory and silver thing she held.

"You mongrel!" she continued sweetly, "I was simply playing with you until the right moment--the coffee moment which I knew must happen--should arrive in which to give you a lesson. Why! when I saw your eyes in the restaurant I took my little friend from my pocket and made sure he was in order. I may look a fool, and I may act in a manner still more foolish, but I am _not_ exactly what you would call a _born_ fool! Now drink that, I am late already! And don't spill a single drop or I'll shoot you on the spot!"

There was nothing for it but to obey, though the brute took the only revenge he could in pouring out a torrent of language beyond description, until Jill suddenly rose and levelled her revolver at his head, which seemed to send the sickly contents post-haste down his throat, after which Jill ordered him to stretch himself comfortably upon the flower-screened divan.

He did so smiling stupidly, the drug having begun to take effect; and the big eyes closed and opened and closed again, and the mouth relaxed as a gentle snore told Jill that as far as the present danger was concerned she was safe.

She stood for a second looking idly down upon one of the world's greatest criminals, and then at the thought of the dangers which might still be awaiting her on the other side of the door, unloaded her revolver and slipped a fully loaded clip into her little friend.

Then picking up the emerald ring from the table, and her dressing-case from behind the cus.h.i.+ons, she crept gently across the room, and gently--oh! so very gently, opened the door which yielded noiselessly to her touch, and stepped into a deserted hall only to recoil violently from something at her feet.

Across the threshold lay a girl.

The agonised eyes in the beautiful dark face gazed up in terror at Jill, whilst a little hand searched weakly for a jewelled plaything of a dagger at her waist.

"Oh! Poverina!" said Jill, as she knelt to raise the little head, and then stared in horror at the girl's shoulders and the hem of her satin trousers.

Some expert hand had flicked the delicate flesh off the back in a criss-cross pattern; what was left of the feet lay in a pool of blood, the deep red of which stretched across the hall far into the distance, showing the path along which the child, left by her torturers for dead, had dragged herself.

"Poor little, little thing!" whispered Jill, as she made to raise the body in her arms. But the dusky head shook feebly, and a dainty henna-tipped finger pointed to a window across the hall, and Jill, feeling herself pushed away ever so slightly, rose as three words were whispered over and over again:

"Vite--allez--mort--vite--allez--mort!"

And understanding that there was nothing more to be done she bent and kissed the child upon the cheek and turned away, looking back as she opened the window which gave on to a balcony about ten feet above the level of the deserted street, and even as she looked, saw the door of the room she had just left being pushed back inch by inch as the dying girl, strengthened by love and agony, dragged herself slowly into the room in which lay the man she wors.h.i.+pped asleep.

CHAPTER XI

Ten o'clock!--half-past!--eleven!

The usual noises of a night in an Egyptian town were at their height.

The distant and never-ceasing shuffling of slippered or naked feet on stone, or sand, made a dull accompaniment to the sharper notes of men's voices crying their wares of sticky sweetmeat or fruit, and the barking and growling of innumerable dogs.

m.u.f.fled e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns could be heard, little gurgles of laughter, which in Egypt, thanks be to Allah, do not degenerate into giggles, the swish of a whip in the shadow, followed by a woman's cry, and through all, above all, unfinished catches of music.

All kinds of humans, including tourists, writers, European officials and desert dilettanti, have affixed every kind of adjective to Egypt's music.

Ethereal, melancholy, wailing, plaintive, nebulous, and pathetic are but a few. Why--why try to tie a label to something which slips from the fingers even as they close about it? Why _try_ to describe that which cannot be described? There is, or was, a certain line which in the heat of an Egyptian noon, or the stillness of an Egyptian night, when the first notes of a human voice, or stringed instrument, or rudely cut pipe-reed reach the ears, would creep out of some memory cell.

One loved the vagueness of those words:

"Out of the nowhere, into here!"

Loved the infinite s.p.a.ce they opened up with their aloofness and indefiniteness, until, alas! they took concrete shape when chosen as t.i.tle to the picture of a robust, Royal Academy, Fed-on-Virol looking babe, which doubtless, when trying to grab some pa.s.sing Olympian b.u.t.terfly, fell off the lap of the G.o.ds into a sitting position upon Mother Earth.

Also, one thinks of that mist wraith which on a cloudless day stretched across some mountain's breast, lies lightly upon the air, with diaphanous ends coming out of and going into nothingness; for in just such manner does the music fall across an Egyptian day or night.

These catches of music have no end, and no beginning; they rise, linger a moment, and are gone, leaving behind them an indescribable loneliness of soul, and a longing to stretch one's hand back down the centuries to pluck their meaning from the past.

Under the sand, the granite, the marble, buried deep in the pyramids or merely covered by the earth of shallow graves, there must surely be many instruments of music wrought in gold or silver, studded in jewels, or cut out of humble wood; many strings still unbroken, and near them many whitened bones of dusky hands which, for all we know, at odd moments of day or night set those strings a-thrumming, or lift the reed pipes to ghostly lips.

Who knows but that the British Museum at night, rid at last of those who gape at Egypt's dishonoured dead, may not be filled with s.n.a.t.c.hes of music from throat or hand of those unfortunates, priest, priestess, fair woman and honoured man, dug out and laid upon a slab of gra.s.s for the education of the revellers of a wet Bank Holiday, or those others from Northern climes, who bid their snuffling, sticky progeny to "coom oop, lad, an' look at t' stuffed un!"

And on this night of which I write, music was caught up, and carried hither and hither upon the breeze which c.l.i.ttered the leaves of the palms, and softly moved the flowing robes of Hahmed the Arab, who, perfectly motionless, stood in the ink-black shadow cast by the bougainvillaea, which trailed its purple ma.s.ses over the walls of the house, s.h.i.+ning faintly pink under the silver moon.

At the man's feet lay three camels, superb beasts. One red brown and one-humped, packed with a seemingly huge load which in reality it hardly felt, and two Bactrian or two-humped, pacing dromedaries of Dhalul, one of deepest black and therefore most rare, with black saddle cloth embroidered in silver, the third of a light golden colour, decked out in cloth of softest silk patterned with glistening jewels, and s.h.i.+mmering crystal specks, cus.h.i.+ons padding the saddle-seat, to which hung stirrups of silver.

About this beast's neck, outstretched upon the sand, lay a garland of flowers, upon the ground by its side lay an Eastern rug of purple shade, covered inches deep in flowers of every kind.

There was no grumbling or snarling, they knew their master and lay still, until, with a slight grunt, one raised its head and looked towards the East, as the man with a muttered "Allah" slowly moved towards the gate.

Putting his hands to his lips and forehead and murmuring, "Peace be upon you!" he took Jill's dressing-case from her.

"I'm sorry to be so late," she said in a voice devoid of anything in the way of tone or inflection, "and I had to bring my dressing-case, it would be so tiresome to be stranded in the desert with no looking-gla.s.s or face cream, wouldn't it?"

"It would be terrible!" was the answer, as though a dearth in dates was in discussion.

And then Jill sat down upon a convenient block of marble, and searching in her cheap bag for one of those Russian cigarette cases of wood, which had the advantage of being inexpensive and distinctive compared to those of gold, silver, or silver gilt, which jingle so irritatingly against the universal gold, silver, or silver gilt bag, took out a cigarette, lit it, and began to make conversation.

It is very difficult to describe the girl's frame of mind at this moment when she stood upon the verge of great happenings, or in fact of any moment when danger, possible or certain, confronted her.

She was perfectly calm, in fact a little dull, with a heart which physically neither slowed nor hastened.

Yet it was not the fearlessness of blissful ignorance, or the aggravating recklessness of the foolhardy.