Tales of Secret Egypt Part 28

So far he had proceeded and no further, when a slight noise, that was not of my imagination, came from immediately outside the tent. On the instant I sprang forth ... but no one was there and nothing now disturbed the solitude of the desert about me. A moment I stood, peering to left and right, into the void of the velvet dusk; no more than a moment, I can swear, yet long enough for that dreadful thing to happen--that thing which sometimes haunts my dreams.

Shrill and awful upon the silence it burst; the scream of a stricken man. It stabbed me like a knife; and as a creature of clay I stood, unable to stir or think. It died away, in a long wail of pain, that gave place to a guttural, inarticulate babbling--a choking, sobbing sound indescribable, but that may not be forgotten once it has been heard.

No living thing, as I can testify, entered or left the tent; so far the evidence of my senses bears me. But that one had entered and left it, unseen, I learned, when, throwing off this palsy of horror, I staggered back to the side of the one who knew the secret of Ismail.

He lay writhing upon the ground; blood issued from his mouth. The tongue of Abdl Moharli had been torn out!

II

Three weeks later I had my first sight of the secret oasis. The fate from which Abdl had fled had overtaken him as I have related, in my tent, and from that moment until we parted company--for this poor wretch survived his mutilation--not another hint could I glean from him respecting the discovery for which he had paid so terrible a price.

In the first place, he lacked the accomplishment of writing and in the second place his fear of the vengeance of Ismail had become a veritable madness. I left him at Beni Suef, filled with a determination to probe this mystery for myself. Suitably prepared for such an undertaking I set out alone from Der Byad, and undertook the four days' journey which I had planned.

In a little gorge, arid, shadeless, in which only a few stunted tamarisks grew, but affording a sort of hiding-place for myself and my camel, I made my base of operations. Provisions of a sort I had plenty, but for water I must depend on the secret oasis, which I estimated to be not more than four miles distant. In the dead of night I set out, making for a series of mounds or hillocks rising up from the rocky face of the plateau. Cautiously I ascended their slopes, ever watchful and with eagerly beating heart; and it was lying p.r.o.ne upon the crest of the greatest of these that I first saw the village and the oasis.

There was nothing extraordinary in the appearance of the village; it presented to the eye the usual group of small, squat houses clinging to the trunks of the palm trees and surrounding a shrine or mosque boasting a wooden minaret. There were tilled fields and palm groves to the left of the village and a large house surrounded by white walls embracing extensive gardens. My spirits rose high. Within that house lay the secret of Ismail.

I determined to approach from the left, where I should be able to take advantage of the far-cast shadows of the palm groves and of the direction of the faint breeze; for most of all I feared the dogs, without which no Arab village is complete. Sure enough, although I had elected to approach the left of the village and although I crawled laboriously upon hands and knees, the accursed brutes apparently scented me or heard me and made night hideous with their clamor.

Flat upon the ground I lay, awaiting the dogs who bore down upon me snarling, their fangs bared. I had come prepared for this; but, mysteriously, at a point by the end of the palm grove and some twenty yards away from me, the pack halted, and after a time became silent.

This was unaccountable but fortunate; and after waiting a while longer to learn if anyone had been aroused by the outcry, I advanced towards the wall of the garden, pa.s.sing stealthily from palm to palm.

I observed that the mosque was a more important building than I had supposed, with a tomb on the right of the entrance surmounted by a white dome. A pa.s.sage leading to the courtyard, which presented a charming picture in the moonlight, its fountain overshadowed by acacias, reminded me very much of that in the Mosque of Muayyad in Cairo. As in the latter, a double arcade surrounded it on three sides and the columns were of some kind of marble and sculptured with inscriptions in Arabic. I had a glimpse of a blue-tiled sanctuary, through a fine _mushrabiyeh_ screen beneath the pointed arches.

Arabesques in colored gla.s.s rendered the windows very beautiful to look upon. Nothing stirred within the village, as I crept along the narrow lane separating the mosque from the wall of the garden. Beyond prospecting the ground, I had no definite plans for to-night; but Fate had willed it that I was to become more deeply involved in the affair than I had designed or intended.

A side door opened from the garden at a spot nearly opposite the little wooden platform which served as the minaret of the mosque; and the mud bricks of the porch were so broken and decayed by time that I perceived here an opportunity of mounting to the top of the wall, an opportunity of which I instantly availed myself.

Yes, in spite of my peaceful calling (I have explained that I have cotton interests in the Delta) my life has not been unadventurous nor have I ever hesitated to incur risk where profit might be gained.

Therefore, having climbed to the top of the wall, unmolested, and perceiving at a spot some little distance to the right a sort of trellis overgrown with purple blossom, I did not hesitate to make for it and to descend into the garden. I had just completed the descent, and stood looking cautiously about me, when a sound disturbed the silence--a sound so entirely unexpected, in that place, at such an hour, that it turned my blood cold, bringing to my mind all those stories of the black magic for which the people of this oasis were famed.

It was the sound of a woman singing; and although the song she sang was a familiar Arab love song and the voice of the singer was sweet, if very mournful, the effect, as I have said, was weird to a degree.

_As.h.i.+k yekul l'il hammam hat le genahak yom_ (A lover said to a dove, "Lend me your wings for a day," etc.)

Overcoming the fear and astonishment which momentarily had deprived me of action, I advanced with the utmost caution in the direction from whence this mysterious singing seemed to proceed. Pa.s.sing an angle of the house, where the stucco wall ran sheerly up to a _mushrabiyeh_ window, I perceived before me a smaller, detached building in the form of a sort of pavilion. Some fine acacias overhung its white and glistening dome, in which were little windows of colored gla.s.s.

Concealed in the shadow of the house, I stood looking towards this smaller building, observing with astonishment that it possessed a ma.s.sive, bronze-mounted door.

Indeed, in many respects, and in spite of the charming picture which its jeweled appearance presented, it might well have been the tomb of some holy Sheikh. But seated on an old-fas.h.i.+oned _mastabah_ before the entrance were two huge negroes of most ferocious aspect, armed with scimitars which glittered evilly in the light of the moon!

I drew back sharply into the shelter of the projecting wall. One of the negroes seemed to slumber, but the wicked black eyes of his companion were widely open and he revealed his ivory teeth in a frightful leer. The beating of my heart almost suffocated me, for I ascribed that ghastly grimace to the fact that the negro had detected my presence and was already gloating over the pleasing prospect of my swift and b.l.o.o.d.y despatch. For many agonized moments I lurked there, one hand clutching the stucco wall and the other resting upon the b.u.t.t of a new Colt magazine pistol which I had taken the precaution to purchase in Alexandria a week earlier.

When again I ventured to protrude my head, I learned how groundless my fears had been; I realized that the loathsome contortion of the negro's countenance represented a smile of appreciation. He was listening to the unseen singer whose voice now stole again upon the silence of the night! His blubber lips drooped open cavernously and his fierce little eyes blinked in stupid rapture.

It appeared to me, now, that the sweet voice proceeded from some subterranean place: I thought that I was listening to the song of a _ginneyeh_. I remembered how the Sheikh Ismail was reputed to be the son of an _Efreet_ and an Arabian princess, and to have lived in that oasis for generations, since the reign of the Sultan Mohammed Nasir ibn-Kalan, who had expelled him from Cairo as a magician. He was said to possess the secrets of Geber and of Avicenna--the great Ibn Sina of Bokhara; to possess the Philosophers' Stone and the _Elixir Vitae_. In this pavilion with the bronze door I beheld the magician's treasure-house, guarded, within, by a _ginneyeh_ and, without, by ghouls or black _Efreets_!

You will understand that these childish superst.i.tions sometimes overcome me, because I have lived so long among those who believe them; but to me, a Greek, possessing the consolation of the true religion, it was only momentary, this cold fear which belongs to ignorance and is bred in the blood of the Moslem but finds no place in the heart of a true Christian.

And now the Fates again took a hand in the game. The pack of curs in the distant palm grove set up a sudden tempest of sound, so that they seemed to have become possessed of a million devils. It was a disturbance infinitely louder and more prolonged than that with which the dogs had greeted my appearance, and I had barely time to throw myself flat in the depths of a black and friendly shadow ere the two negroes, monstrous in the moonlight, pa.s.sed me silently and trotted off in the direction from whence the uproar proceeded. You will say, no doubt, that a madness as great as that of the dogs possessed me; but because what I tell you is true, you must not be surprised to find it strange.

Allowing the negroes time to reach the gate for which I divined them to be making, I ran across the moon-bathed garden to the door of the pavilion.

You must understand that my madness was not entirely without method; for I had a vague plan in my mind: it was to ascertain the character of the lock upon the bronze door (for you must know that I am skilled in the craft of the locksmith), and then, pa.s.sing beyond the pavilion, which I was a.s.sured was the treasure-house of Ismail, to make my escape over the garden wall at some point to the west and return to my base in the desert ravine armed with a knowledge of the enemy's dispositions.

But, as I have said, the Fates took a hand. The sweet-voiced singer ceased her song as I approached the pavilion; and, at the moment that I set foot upon the lower step, her voice--by Allah! whose Name be exalted, it was sweet as honey!--addressed to me these words:

"O my master, at last thou art come! Here is the key! enter ere they return."

Whilst I stared blankly upward to the open lattice from whence the invisible speaker thus addressed me, an antique key wrapped in a piece of perfumed silk, fell almost upon my head!

III

Dazed though I was by the complete unexpectedness of this happening I doubt if I should have had the temerity to pursue the matter further that night but for the sound of fleetly running footsteps of which at this moment I became aware.

My escape was cut off! If I endeavored to pa.s.s around the pavilion in accordance with my original plan I should undoubtedly be perceived. My only hope lay in accepting the invitation so singularly given. With trembling hands I fitted the key to the c.u.mbersome lock, opened the door, and entered the pavilion. My presence of mind had not completely deserted me and before closing the door I withdrew the key.

I found myself in a saloon of extraordinary magnificence, furnished with mattresses covered with silk and lighted by hanging lamps and by candles, and having at its upper end a couch of alabaster decorated with pearls and canopied by curtains of satin peac.o.c.k-blue. From a carved wooden archway draped with cloth of gold there leaped forth a girl of such surpa.s.sing loveliness that her image must forever reside in my heart together with those of the saints.

Conceive all the dark-eyed beauties of Oriental poetry, of Hafiz, of Omar, of Attar, and from each distil the very essence of female loveliness; though you combine them all in one rapturous vision of delight you will have conceived but a feeble shadow of shadows of this wondrous reality who now stood panting before me, her red lips parted and her bosom tumultuous.

I think if the light in her eyes had been for me I could gladly have died for her and found death sweet; but as her gaze met mine a pitiful change took place in that lovely countenance. Her color fled and she swayed and almost fell.

"Oh," she whispered, "thou art not my beloved! O Allah! this is some snare that Ismail hath set for my feet! Who art thou? who art thou?"

But because of the excess of the loveliness of the speaker, from whom I could not remove my eyes, and because as I stood in that perfumed apartment it seemed to me that I was no longer a real man, but a figment of some _Efreet's_ dream, I found myself incapable of both speech and action.

Yet I was speedily to know that the Fates, which had thrust me into that saloon--nay, which had brought me across the desert to that secret oasis--were not yet wearied of their sport.

A soft call, a lover's signal (for no true Believer will whistle at night, since to do so is to summon the evil _ginn_) sounded from immediately outside the bronze door, followed by a m.u.f.fled rapping upon the door itself!

"Said, my beloved!" cried the girl wildly, and ran towards the door.

At that very moment, and whilst I stood there like a man of clay, I heard the negro guardians returning to their posts; I heard the clatter of their sandals and I heard their guttural cries of rage!

Uttering a long tremulous sigh, the beautiful occupant of the pavilion fell swooning upon the floor.

A loud imperious voice now rose above the sounds of conflict which had commenced outside the pavilion; I heard the sound of many running feet, and--my blood turned to ice--that of a key being inserted in the lock of the bronze door! Power of action returned to me, though I confess that I now grew sick with dread. Only one hiding-place was possible: the first I could reach.

I leaped across the lovely form extended upon the floor and dropped, almost choking with emotion, behind the alabaster couch. I had barely gained this cover when the door was hurled open and a tall, excessively gaunt, and hawk-faced old man entered, his eyes blazing, his thin nostrils quivering, and his lean hands opening and closing at his sides in a sort of clutching movement horribly suggestive and terrifying.

He was followed by the two negroes, who were dragging between them a young Egyptian of prepossessing appearance down whose pale face blood was pouring from a wound in the brow.

Several other persons, princ.i.p.ally servants of the _harem_, brought up the rear.

Towering over the rec.u.mbent body of the girl, the terrible old man--in whom I could not fail to recognize the Sheikh Ismail--glared down at her for some moments in pa.s.sionate silence; then he made as if to spurn her with his foot; then he clutched his long white beard with both hands and plucked at it frenziedly, whilst tears began to course down his furrowed cheeks, which had the frightful appearance of those of a mummy.

"O light of mine eyes!" he exclaimed; "O shame of my house! O reproach of my white hairs!"