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The Carpet from Bagdad

by Harold MacGrath · English · Gutenberg #43749 · 421,394 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Carpet from Bagdad

Author: Harold MacGrath

Illustrator: J. André Castaigne


        
Release date: September 16, 2013 [eBook #43749]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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THE CARPET FROM BAGDAD


[Illustration]


THE CARPET FROM BAGDAD

by

HAROLD MACGRATH

Author of
A Splendid Hazard
The Man on the Box

With Illustrations by Andre Castaigne







Indianapolis
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Publishers

Copyright 1911
The Bobbs-Merrill Company




TO
ROBERT HICHENS




  _The wild hawk to the windswept sky,_
    _The deer to the wholesome wold,_
  _And the heart of a man to the heart of a maid,_
    _As it was in the days of old._

                        --_Rudyard Kipling._




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
      I WHAT'S IN A NAME?                                              1
     II AN AFFABLE ROGUE                                              20
    III THE HOLY YHIORDES                                             37
     IV AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE                                           55
      V THE GIRL WHO WASN'T WANTED                                    74
     VI MOONLIGHT AND POETRY                                          96
    VII RYANNE TABLES HIS CARDS                                      114
   VIII THE PURLOINED CABLE                                          132
     IX THE BITTER FRUIT                                             145
      X MAHOMED LAUGHS                                               160
     XI EPISODIC                                                     179
    XII THE CARAVAN IN THE DESERT                                    200
   XIII NOT A CHEERFUL OUTLOOK                                       219
    XIV MAHOMED OFFERS FREEDOM                                       240
     XV FORTUNE'S RIDDLE SOLVED                                      259
    XVI MAHOMED RIDES ALONE                                          279
   XVII MRS. CHEDSOYE HAS HER DOUBTS                                 301
  XVIII THE MAN WHO DIDN'T CARE                                      323
    XIX FORTUNE DECIDES                                              337
     XX MARCH HARES                                                  354
    XXI A BOTTLE OF WINE                                             367
   XXII THE END OF THE PUZZLE                                        380




CHAPTER I

WHAT'S IN A NAME?


To possess two distinctly alien red corpuscles in one's blood,
metaphorically if not in fact, two characters or individualities under
one epidermis, is, in most cases, a peculiar disadvantage. One hears of
scoundrels and saints striving to consume one another in one body,
angels and harpies; but ofttimes, quite the contrary to being a curse,
these two warring temperaments become a man's ultimate blessing: as in
the case of George P. A. Jones, of Mortimer & Jones, the great
metropolitan Oriental rug and carpet company, all of which has a
dignified, sonorous sound. George was divided within himself. This he
would not have confessed even into the trusted if battered ear of the
Egyptian Sphynx. There was, however, no demon-angel sparring for points
in George's soul. The difficulty might be set forth in this manner: On
one side stood inherent common sense; on the other, a boundless, roseate
imagination which was likewise inherent--a kind of quixote imagination
of suitable modern pattern. This _alter ego_ terrified him whenever it
raised its strangely beautiful head and shouldered aside his
guardian-angel (for that's what common sense is, argue to what end you
will) and pleaded in that luminous rhetoric under the spell of which our
old friend Sancho often fell asleep.

P. A., as they called him behind the counters, was but twenty-eight, and
if he was vice-president in his late father's shoes he didn't wabble
round in them to any great extent. In a crowd he was not noticeable; he
didn't stand head and shoulders above his fellow-men, nor would he have
been mistaken by near-sighted persons, the myopes, for the Vatican's
Apollo in the flesh. He was of medium height, beardless, slender, but
tough and wiry and enduring. You may see his prototype on the streets a
dozen times the day, and you may also pass him without turning round for
a second view. Young men like P. A. must be intimately known to be
admired; you did not throw your arm across his neck, first-off. His
hair was brown and closely clipped about a head that would have gained
the attention of the phrenologist, if not that of the casual passer-by.
His bumps, in the phraseology of that science, were good ones. For the
rest, he observed the world through a pair of kindly, shy, blue eyes.

Young girls, myopic through ignorance or silliness, seeing nothing
beyond what the eyes see, seldom gave him a second inspection; for he
did not know how to make himself attractive, and was mortally afraid of
the opposite, or opposing, sex. He could bully-rag a sheik out of his
camels' saddle-bags, but petticoats and lace parasols and small Oxfords
had the same effect upon him that the prodding stick of a small boy has
upon a retiring turtle. But many a worldly-wise woman, drawing out with
tact and kindness the truly beautiful thoughts of this young man's soul,
sadly demanded of fate why a sweet, clean boy like this one had not been
sent to her in her youth. You see, the worldly-wise woman knows that it
is invariably the lay-figure and not Prince Charming that a woman
marries, and that matrimony is blindman's-buff for grown-ups.

Many of us lay the blame upon our parents. We shift the burden of
wondering why we have this fault and lack that grace to the shoulders of
our immediate forebears. We go to the office each morning denying that
we have any responsibility; we let the boss do the worrying. But George
never went prospecting in his soul for any such dross philosophy. He was
grateful for having had so beautiful a mother; proud of having had so
honest a sire; and if either of them had endued him with false weights
he did his best to even up the balance.

The mother had been as romantic as any heroine out of Mrs. Radcliff's
novels, while the father had owned to as much romance as one generally
finds in a thorough business man, which is practically none at all. The
very name itself is a bulwark against the intrusions of romance. One can
not lift the imagination to the prospect of picturing a Jones in ruffles
and highboots, pinking a varlet in the midriff. It smells of
sugar-barrels and cotton-bales, of steamships and railroads, of stolid
routine in the office and of placid concern over the daily news under
the evening lamp.

Mrs. Jones, lovely, lettered yet not worldly, had dreamed of her boy,
bayed and decorated, marrying the most distinguished woman in all
Europe, whoever she might be. Mr. Jones had had no dreams at all, and
had put the boy to work in the shipping department a little while after
the college threshold had been crossed, outward bound. The mother, while
sweet and gentle, had a will, iron under velvet, and when she held out
for Percival Algernon and a decent knowledge of modern languages, the
old man agreed if, on the other hand, the boy's first name should be
George and that he should learn the business from the cellar up. There
were several tilts over the matter, but at length a truce was declared.
It was agreed that the boy himself ought to have a word to say upon a
subject which concerned him more vitally than any one else. So, at the
age of fifteen, when he was starting off for preparatory school, he was
advised to choose for himself. He was an obedient son, adoring his
mother and idolizing his father. He wrote himself down as George
Percival Algernon Jones, promised to become a linguist and to learn the
rug business from the cellar up. On the face of it, it looked like a big
job; it all depended upon the boy.

The first day at school his misery began. He had signed himself as
George P. A. Jones, no small diplomacy for a lad; but the two initials,
standing up like dismantled pines in the midst of uninteresting
landscape, roused the curiosity of his school-mates. Boys are boys the
world over, and possess a finesse in cruelty that only the Indian can
match; and it did not take them long to unearth the fatal secret. For
three years he was Percy Algy, and not only the boys laughed, but the
pretty girls sniggered. Many a time he had returned to his dormitory
decorated (not in accord with the fond hopes of his mother) with a
swollen ear, or a ruddy proboscis, or a green-brown eye. There was a
limit, and when they stepped over that, why, he proceeded to the best of
his ability to solve the difficulty with his fists. George was no
milksop; but Percival Algernon would have been the Old Man of the Sea on
broader shoulders than his. He dimly realized that had he been named
George Henry William Jones his sun would have been many diameters
larger. There was a splendid quality of pluck under his apparent
timidity, and he stuck doggedly to it. He never wrote home and
complained. What was good enough for his mother was good enough for him.

It seemed just an ordinary matter of routine for him to pick up French
and German verbs. He was far from being brilliant, but he was sensitive
and his memory was sound. Since his mother's ambition was to see him an
accomplished linguist, he applied himself to the task as if everything
in the world depended upon it, just as he knew that when the time came
he would apply himself as thoroughly to the question of rugs and
carpets.

Under all this filial loyalty ran the pure strain of golden romance,
side by side with the lesser metal of practicality. When he began to
read the masters he preferred their romances to their novels. He even
wrote poetry in secret, and when his mother discovered the fact she
cried over the sentimental verses. The father had to be told. He laughed
and declared that the boy would some day develop into a good writer of
advertisements. This quiet laughter, unburdened as it was with ridicule,
was enough to set George's muse a-winging, and she never came back.

After leaving college he was given a modest letter of credit and told
to go where he pleased for a whole year. George started out at once in
quest of the Holy Grail, and there are more roads to that than there are
to Rome. One may be reasonably sure of getting into Rome, whereas the
Holy Grail (diversified, variable, innumerable) is always the exact sum
of a bunch of hay hanging before old Dobbin's nose. Nevertheless, George
galloped his fancies with loose rein. He haunted the romantic quarters
of the globe; he hunted romance, burrowed and plowed for it; and never
his spade clanged musically against the hidden treasure, never a forlorn
beauty in distress, not so much as chapter one of the Golden Book
offered its dazzling first page. George lost some confidence.

Two or three times a woman looked into the young man's mind, and in his
guilelessness they effected sundry holes in his letter of credit, but
left his soul singularly untouched. The red corpuscle, his father's
gift, though it lay dormant, subconsciously erected barriers. He was
innocent, but he was no fool. That one year taught him the lesson,
rather cheaply, too. If there was any romance in life, it came
uninvited, and if courted and sought was as quick on the wing as that
erstwhile poesy muse.

The year passed, and while he had not wholly given up the quest, the
practical George agreed with the romantic Percival to shelve it
indefinitely. He returned to New York with thirty-pounds sterling out of
the original thousand, a fact that rejuvenated his paternal parent by
some ten years.

"Jane, that boy is all right. Percival Algernon could not kill a boy
like that."

"Do you mean to infer that it ever could?" Sometimes a qualm wrinkled
her conscience. Her mother's heart told her that her son ought not to be
shy and bashful, that it was not in the nature of his blood to suspect
ridicule where there was none. Perhaps she had handicapped him with
those names; but it was too late now to admit of this, and useless,
since it would not have remedied the evil.

Jones hemmed and hawed for a space. "No," he answered; "but I was afraid
he might try to live up to it; and no Percival Algernon who lived up to
it could put his nose down to a Shah Abbas and tell how many knots it
had to the square inch. I'll start him in on the job to-morrow."

Whereupon the mother sat back dreamily. Now, where was the girl worthy
her boy? Monumental question, besetting every mother, from Eve down,
Eve, whose trials in this direction must have been heartrending!

George left the cellar in due time, and after that he went up the ladder
in bounds, on his own merit, mind you, for his father never stirred a
hand to boost him. He took the interest in rugs that turns a buyer into
a collector; it became a fascinating pleasure rather than a business. He
became invaluable to the house, and acquired some fame as a judge and an
appraiser. When the chief-buyer retired George was given the position,
with an itinerary that carried him half way round the planet once a
year, to Greece, Turkey, Persia, Arabia, and India, the lands of the
genii and the bottles, of arabesques, of temples and tombs, of
many-colored turbans and flowing robes and distracting tongues. He
walked always in a kind of mental enchantment.

The suave and elusive Oriental, with his sharp practices, found his
match in this pleasant young man, who knew the history of the very wools
and cottons and silks woven in a rug or carpet. So George prospered,
became known in strange places, by strange peoples; and saw romance,
light of foot and eager of eye, pass and repass; learned that romance
did not essentially mean falling in love or rescuing maidens from
burning houses and wrecks; that, on the contrary, true romance was
kaleidoscopic, having more brilliant facets than a diamond; and that the
man who begins with nothing and ends with something is more wonderful
than any excursion recounted by Sinbad or any tale by Scheherazade. But
he still hoped that the iridescent goddess would some day touch his
shoulder and lead him into that maze of romance so peculiar to his own
fancy.

And then into this little world of business and pleasure came death and
death again, leaving him alone and with a twisted heart. Riches mattered
little, and the sounding title of vice-president still less. It was with
a distinct shock that he realized the mother and the father had been
with him so long that he had forgotten to make other friends. From one
thing to another he turned in hope to soothe the smart, to heal the
wound; and after a time he drifted, as all shy, intelligent and
imaginative men drift who are friendless, into the silent and intimate
comradeship of inanimate things, such as jewels, ivories, old metals,
rare woods and ancient embroideries, and perhaps more comforting than
all these, good books.

The proper tale of how the aforesaid iridescent goddess jostled (for it
scarce may be said that she led) him into a romance lacking neither
comedy nor tragedy, now begins with a trifling bit of retrospection. One
of those women who were not good and who looked into the clear pool of
the boy's mind saw the harmless longing there, and made note, hoping to
find profit by her knowledge when the pertinent day arrived. She was a
woman so pleasing, so handsome, so adroit, that many a man, older and
wiser than George, found her mesh too strong for him. Her plan matured,
suddenly and brilliantly, as projects of men and women of her class and
caliber without variation do.

Late one December afternoon (to be precise, 1909), George sat on the
tea-veranda of the Hotel Semiramis in Cairo. A book lay idly upon his
knees. It was one of those yarns in which something was happening every
other minute. As adventures go, George had never had a real one in all
his twenty-eight years, and he believed that fate had treated him rather
shabbily. He didn't quite appreciate her reserve. No matter how late he
wandered through the mysterious bazaars, either here in Egypt or over
yonder in India, nothing ever befell more exciting than an argument with
a carriage-driver. He never carried small-arms, for he would not have
known how to use them. The only deadly things in his hands were
bass-rods and tennis-racquets. No, nothing ever happened to him; yet he
never met a man in a ship's smoke-room who hadn't run the gamut of
thrilling experiences. As George wasn't a liar himself, he believed all
he saw and most of what he heard.

Well, here he was, eight-and-twenty, a pocket full of money, a heart
full of life, and as hopeless an outlook, so far as romance and
adventure were concerned, as an old maid in a New England village. Why
couldn't things befall him as they did the chap in this book? He was
sure he could behave as well, if not better; for this fellow was too
handsome, too brave, too strong, not to be something of an ass once in a
while.

"George, you old fool, what's the use?" he thought. "What's the use of a
desire that never goes in a straight line, but always round and round in
a circle?"

He thrust aside his grievance and surrendered to the never-ending wonder
of the Egyptian sunset; the Nile feluccas, riding upon perfect
reflections; the date-palms, black and motionless against the
translucent blue of the sky; the amethystine prisms of the Pyramids, and
the deepening gold of the desert's brim. He loved the Orient, always so
new, always so strange, yet ever so old and familiar.

A carriage stopped in front, and his gaze naturally shifted. There is
ceaseless attraction in speculating about new-comers in a hotel, what
they are, what they do, where they come from, and where they are going.
A fine elderly man of fifty got out. In the square set of his shoulders,
the flowing white mustache and imperial, there was a suggestion of
militarism. He was immediately followed by a young woman of twenty,
certainly not over that age. George sighed wistfully. He envied those
polo-players and gentleman-riders and bridge-experts who were stopping
at the hotel. It wouldn't be an hour after dinner before some one of
them found out who she was and spoke to her in that easy style which he
concluded must be a gift rather than an accomplishment. You mustn't
suppose for a minute that George wasn't well-born and well-bred, simply
because his name was Jones. Many a Fitz-Hugh Maurice or Hugh
Fitz-Maurice might have been---- But, no matter. He knew instinctively,
then, what elegance was when he saw it, and this girl was elegant, in
dress, in movement. He rather liked the pallor of her skin, which hinted
that she wasn't one of those athletic girls who bounced in and out of
the dining-room, talking loudly and smoking cigarettes and playing
bridge for sixpenny points. She was tall. He was sure that her eyes were
on the level with his own. The grey veil that drooped from the rim of
her simple Leghorn hat to the tip of her nose obscured her eyes, so he
could not know that they were large and brown and indefinably sad. They
spoke not of a weariness of travel, but of a weariness of the world,
more precisely, of the people who inhabited it.

She and her companion passed on into the hotel, and if George's eyes
veered again toward the desert over which the stealthy purples of night
were creeping, the impulse was mechanical; he saw nothing. In truth, he
was desperately lonesome, and he knew, moreover, that he had no business
to be. He was young; he could at a pinch tell a joke as well as the next
man; and if he had never had what he called an adventure, he had seen
many strange and wonderful things and could describe them with that
mental afterglow which still lingers over the sunset of our first
expressions in poetry. But there was always that hydra-headed monster,
for ever getting about his feet, numbing his voice, paralyzing his
hands, and never he lopped off a head that another did not instantly
grow in its place. Even the sword of Perseus could not have saved him,
since one has to get away from an object in order to cut it down.

Had he really ever tried to overcome this monster? Had he not waited for
the propitious moment (which you and I know never comes) to throw off
this species from Hades? It is all very well, when you are old and dried
up, to turn to ivories and metals and precious stones; but when a
fellow's young! You can't shake hands with an ivory replica of the Taj
Mahal, nor exchange pleasantries with a Mandarin's ring, nor yet confide
joys and ills into a casket of rare emeralds; indeed, they do but
emphasize one's loneliness. If only he had had a dog; but one can not
carry a dog half way round the world and back, at least not with
comfort. What with all these new-fangled quarantine laws, duties, and
fussy ships' officers who wouldn't let you keep the animal in your
state-room, traveling with a four-footed friend was almost an
impossibility. To be sure, women with poodles.... And then, there was
the bitter of acid in the knowledge that no one ever came up to him and
slapped him on the shoulder with a--"_Hel_-lo, Georgie, old sport;
what's the good word?" for the simple fact that his shoulder was always
bristling with spikes, born of the fear that some one was making fun of
him.

Perchance his mother's spirit, hovering over him this evening, might
have been inclined to tears. For they do say that the ghosts of the dear
ones are thus employed when we are near to committing some folly, or to
exploring some forgotten chamber of Pandora's box, or worse still, when
that lady intends emptying the whole contents down upon our unfortunate
heads. If so be, they were futile tears; Percival Algernon had
accomplished its deadly purpose.

Pandora? Well, then, for the benefit of the children. She was a lady who
was an intimate friend of the mythological gods. They liked her
appearance so well that they one day gave her a box, casket, chest, or
whatever it was, to guard. By some marvelous method, known only of gods,
they had got together all the trials and tribulations of mankind (and
some of the joys) and locked them up in this casket It was the Golden
Age then, as you may surmise. You recall Eve and the Apple? Well,
Pandora was a forecast of Eve; she couldn't keep her eyes off the latch,
and at length her hands--Fatal curiosity! Whirr! And everything has been
at sixes and at sevens since that time. Pandora is eternally recurring,
now here, now there; she is a blonde sometimes, and again she is a
brunette; and you may take it from George and me that there is always
something left in the casket.

George closed the book and consulted his sailing-list. In a short time
he would leave for Port Saïd, thence to Naples, Christmas there, and
home in January. Business had been ripping. He would be jolly glad to
get home again, to renew his comradeship with his treasures. And, by
Jove! there _was_ one man who slapped him on the shoulder, and he was no
less a person than the genial president of the firm, his father's
partner, at present his own. If the old chap had had a daughter now....
And here one comes at last to the bottom of the sack. He had only one
definite longing, a healthy human longing, the only longing worth while
in all this deep, wide, round old top: to love a woman and by her be
loved.

At exactly half after six the gentleman with the reversible cuffs
arrived; and George missed his boat.




CHAPTER II

AN AFFABLE ROGUE


The carriage containing the gentleman with the reversible cuffs drew up
at the side entrance. Instantly the Arab guides surged and eddied round
him; but their clamor broke against a composure as effective as granite.
The roar was almost directly succeeded by a low gurgle, as of little
waves receding. The proposed victim had not spoken a word; to the Arabs
it was not necessary; in some manner, subtle and indescribable, they
recognized a brother. He carried a long, cylindrical bundle wrapped in
heavy paper variously secured by windings of thick twine. His regard for
this bundle was one of tender solicitude, for he tucked it under his
arm, cumbersome though it was, and waved aside the carriage-porter, who
was, however, permitted to carry in the kit-bag.

The manager appeared. When comes he not upon the scene? His quick,
calculating eye was not wholly assured. The stranger's homespun was
travel-worn and time-worn, and of a cut popular to the season gone the
year before. No fat letter of credit here, was the not unreasonable
conclusion reached by the manager. Still, with that caution acquired by
years of experience, which had culminated in what is known as Swiss
diplomacy, he brought into being the accustomed salutatory smile and
inquired if the gentleman had written ahead for reservation, otherwise
it would not be possible to accommodate him.

"I telegraphed," crisply.

"The name, if you please?"

"Ryanne; spelled R-y-a double-n e. Have you ever been in County Clare?"

"No, sir." The manager added a question with the uplift of his eyebrows.

"Well," was the enlightening answer, "you pronounce it as they do
there."

The manager scanned the little slip of paper in his hand. "Ah, yes; we
have reserved a room for you, sir. The French style rather confused me."
This was not offered in irony, or sarcasm, or satire; mining in a Swiss
brain for the saving grace of humor is about as remunerative as the
extraction of gold from sea-water. Nevertheless, the Swiss has the
talent of swiftly substracting from a confusion of ideas one point of
illumination: there was a quality to the stranger's tone that decided
him favorably. It was the voice of a man in the habit of being obeyed;
and in these days it was the power of money alone that obtained
obedience to any man. Beyond this, the same nebulous cogitation that had
subdued the Arabs outside acted likewise upon him. Here was a brother.

"Mail?"

"I will see, sir." The manager summoned a porter. "Room 208."

The porter caught up the somewhat collapsed kit-bag, which had in all
evidence received some rough usage in its time, and reached toward the
roll. Mr. Ryanne interposed.

"I will see to that, my man," tersely.

"Yes, sir."

"Where is your guest-list?" demanded Mr. Ryanne of the manager.

"The head-porter's bureau, sir. I will see if you have any mail." The
manager passed into his own bureau. It was rather difficult to tell
whether this man was an American or an Englishman. His accent was
western, but his manner was decidedly British. At any rate, that tone
and carriage must be bastioned by good English sovereigns, or for once
his judgment was at fault.

The porter dashed up-stairs. Mr. Ryanne, his bundle still snug under his
arm, sauntered over to the head-porter's bureau and ran his glance up
and down the columns of visiting-cards. Once he nodded with approval,
and again he smiled, having discovered that which sent a ripple across
his sleeping sense of amusement. Major Callahan, room 206; Fortune
Chedsoye, 205; George P. A. Jones, 210.

"Hm! the Major smells of County Antrim and the finest whisky in all the
isle. Fortune Chedsoye; that is a pleasing name; tinkling brooks, the
waving green grasses in the meadows, the kine in the water, the fleeting
shadows under the oaks; a pastoral, a bucolic name. To claim Fortune for
mine own; a happy thought."

As he uttered these poesy expressions aloud, in a voice low and not
unpleasing, for all that it was bantering, the head-porter stared at
him with mingling doubt and alarm; and as if to pronounce these emotions
mutely for the benefit of the other, he permitted his eyes to open their
widest.

"Tut, tut; that's all right, porter. I am cursed with the habit of
speaking my inmost thoughts. Some persons are afflicted with insomnia;
some fall asleep in church; I think orally. Beastly habit, eh?"

The porter then understood that he was dealing not with a species of
mild lunacy, but with that kind of light-hearted cynicism upon which the
world (as porters know it) had set its approving seal. In brief, he
smiled faintly; and if he had any pleasantry to pass in turn, the
approach of the manager, now clothed metaphorically in deferentialism,
relegated it to the limbo of things thought but left unsaid.

"Here is a letter for you, Mr. Ryanne. Have you any more luggage?"

"No." Mr. Ryanne smiled. "Shall I pay for my room in advance?"

"Oh, no, sir!" Ten years ago the manager would have blushed at having
been so misunderstood. "Your room is 208."

"Will you have a boy show me the way?"

"I shall myself attend to that. If the room is not what you wish it may
be exchanged."

"The room is the one I telegraphed for. I am superstitious to a degree.
On three boats I have had fine state-rooms numbered 208. Twice the
number of my hotel room has been the same. On the last voyage there were
208 passengers, and the captain had made 208 voyages on the
Mediterranean."

"Quite a coincident."

"Ah, if roulette could be played with such a certainty."

Mr. Ryanne sighed, hitched up his bundle, which, being heavy, was
beginning to wear upon his arm, and signified to the manager to lead the
way.

As they vanished round the corner to the lift, the head-porter studied
the guest-list. He had looked over it a dozen times that day, but this
was the first instance of his being really interested in it. As his chin
was freshly shaven he had no stubble to stroke to excite his mental
processes; so he fell back, as we say, upon the consoling ends of his
abundant mustache. Curious; but all these persons were occupying or
about to occupy adjacent rooms. There was truly nothing mysterious
about it, save that the stranger had picked out these very names as a
target for his banter. Fortune Chedsoye; it was rather an unusual name;
but as she had arrived only an hour or so before, he could not
distinctly recall her features. And then, there was that word bucolic.
He mentally turned it over and over as physically he was wont to do with
post-cards left in his care to mail. He could make nothing of the word,
except that it smacked of the East Indian plague.

Here he was saved from further cerebral agony by a timely interruption.
A man, who was not of bucolic persuasion either in dress or speech,
urban from the tips of his bleached fingers to the bulb of his bibulous
nose, leaned across the counter and asked if Mr. Horace Ryanne had yet
arrived. Yes, he had just arrived; he was even now on his way to his
room. The urban gentleman nodded. Then, with a finger slim and
well-trimmed, he trailed up and down the guest-list.

"Ha! I see that you have the Duke of What-d'ye-call from Germany here.
I'll give you my card. Send it up to Mr. Ryanne. No hurry. I shall be in
again after dinner."

He bustled off toward the door. He was pursy, well-fed, and decently
dressed, the sort of a man who, when he moved in any direction, created
the impression that he had an important engagement somewhere else or was
paring minutes from time-tables. For a man in his business it was a
clever expedient, deceiving all but those who knew him. He hesitated at
the door, however, as if he had changed his mind in the twenty-odd paces
it took to reach it. He stared for a long period at the elderly
gentleman who was watching the feluccas on the river through the window.
The white mustache and imperial stood out in crisp relief against the
ruddy sunburn on his face. If he was aware of this scrutiny on the part
of the pursy gentleman, he gave not the least sign. The revolving door
spun round, sending a puff of outdoor air into the lounging-room. The
elderly gentleman then smiled, and applied his thumb and forefinger to
the waxen point of his imperial.

In the intervening time Mr. Ryanne entered his room, threw the bundle on
the bed, sat down beside it, and read his letter. Shadows and lights
moved across his face; frowns that hardened it, smiles that mellowed
it. Women hold the trick of writing letters. Do they hate, their
thoughts flash and burn from line to line. Do they love, 'tis lettered
music. Do they conspire, the breadth of their imagination is without
horizon. At best, man can indite only a polite business letter, his
love-notes were adjudged long since a maudlin collection of loose
sentences. In this letter Mr. Ryanne found the three parts of life.

"She's a good general; but hang these brimstone efforts of hers. She
talks too much of heart. For my part, I prefer to regard it as a mere
physical function, a pump, a motor, a power that gives action to the
legs, either in coming or in going, more especially in going." He
laughed. "Well, hers is the inspiration and hers is the law. And to
think that she could plan all this on the spur of the moment, down to
the minutest detail! It's a science." He put the letter away, slid out
his legs and glared at the dusty tips of his shoes. "The United Romance
and Adventure Company, Ltd., of New York, London, and Paris. She has the
greatest gift of all, the sense of humor."

He rose and opened his kit-bag doubtfully. He rummaged about in the
depths and at last straightened up with a mild oath.

"Not a pair of cuffs in the whole outfit, not a shirt, not a collar. Oh,
well, when a man has to leave Bagdad the way I did, over the back fence,
so to speak, linen doesn't count."

He drew down his cuffs, detached and reversed them, he turned his
folding collar wrong-side out, and used the under side of the foot-rug
as a shoe-polisher. It was the ingenius procedure of a man who was used
to being out late of nights, who made all things answer all purposes.
This rapid and singularly careless toilet completed, he centered his
concern upon the more vital matter of finances. He was close to the
nadir: four sovereigns, a florin, and a collection of battered coppers
that would have tickled the pulse of an amateur numismatist.

"No vintage to-night, my boy; no long, fat Havana, either. A bottle of
stout and a few rags of plug-cut; that's the pace we'll travel this
evening. The United Romance and Adventure Company is not listed at
present. If it was, I'd sell a few shares on my own hook. The kind Lord
knows that I've stock enough and to spare." He laughed again, but
without the leaven of humor. "When the fool-killer snatches up the last
fool, let rogues look to themselves; and fools are getting scarcer every
day.

"Percival Algernon! O age of poets! I wonder, does he wear high collars
and spats, or has she plumbed him accurately? She is generally right.
But a man changes some in seven years. I'm an authority when it comes to
that. Look what's happened to me in seven years! First, Horace, we shall
dine, then we'll smoke our pipe in the billiard-room, then we'll softly
approach Percival Algernon and introduce him to Sinbad. This independent
excursion to Bagdad was a stroke on my part; it will work into the
general plan as smoothly as if it had been grooved for the part. Sinbad.
I might just as well have assumed that name: Horace Sinbad, sounds well
and looks well." He mused in silence, his hand gently rubbing his chin;
for he did possess the trick of talking aloud, in a low monotone, a
habit acquired during periods of loneliness, when the sound of his own
voice had succeeded in steadying his tottering mind.

What a woman, what a wife, she would have been to the right man! Odd
thing, a man can do almost anything but direct his affections; they
must be drawn. She was not for him; nay, not even on a desert isle.
Doubtless he was a fool. In time she would have made him a rich man.
Alack! It was always the one we pursued that we loved and never the one
that pursued us.

"I'm afraid of her; and there you are. There isn't a man living who has
gone back of that Mona Lisa smile of hers. If she was the last woman and
I was the last man, I don't say." He hunted for a cigarette, but failed
to find one. "Almost at the bottom, boy; the winter of our discontent,
and no sun of York to make it glorious. Twenty-four hundred at cards,
and to lose it like a tyro! Wallace has taught me all he knows, but I'm
a booby. Twenty-four hundred, firm's money. It's a failing of mine, the
firm's money. But, damn it all, I can't cheat a man at cards; I'd rather
cut his throat."

He found his pipe, and a careful search of the corners of his
coat-pockets revealed a meager pipeful of tobacco. He picked out the
little balls of wool, the ground-coffee, the cloves, and pushed the
charge home into the crusted bowl of his briar.

"To the devil with economy! A pint of burgundy and a perfecto if they
hale us to jail for it. I'm dead tired. I've seen three corners in hell
in the past two months. I'm going as far as four sovereigns will take
me.... Fortune Chedsoye." His blue eyes became less hard and his mouth
less defiant. "I repeat, the heart should be nothing but a pump.
Otherwise it gets in the way, becomes an obstruction, a bottomless pit.
Will-power, that's the ticket. I can face a lion without an extra beat,
I can face the various countenances of death without an additional
flutter; and yet, here's a girl who, when I see her or think of her,
sends the pulse soaring from seventy-seven up to eighty-four. Bad
business; besides, it's so infernally unfashionable. It's hard work for
a man to keep his balance 'twixt the devil and the deep, blue sea;
Gioconda on one side and Fortune on the other. Gioconda throws open
windows and doors at my approach; but Fortune locks and bars hers, nor
knocks at mine. That's the way it always goes.

"If a man could only go back ten years and take a new start. Ass!"
balling his fist at the reflection in the mirror. "Snivel and whine over
the bed of your own making. You had your opportunity, but you listened
to the popping of champagne-corks, the mutter of cards, the inane drivel
of chorus-ladies. You had a decent college record, too. Bah! What a
guileless fool you were! You ran on, didn't you, till you found your
neck in the loop at the end of the rope? And perhaps that soft-footed,
estimable brother of yours didn't yank it taut as a hangman's? You heard
the codicil; into one ear and out the other. Even then you had your
chance; patience for two short years, and a million. No, a thousand
times no. You knew what you were about, empty-headed fool! And to-day,
two pennies for a dead man's eyes."

He dropped his fist dejectedly. Where had the first step begun? And
where would be the last? In some drab corner, possibly; drink, morphine,
or starvation; he'd never have the courage to finish it with a bullet.
He was terribly bitter. Everything worth while seemed to have slipped
through his fingers, his pleasure-loving fingers.

"Come, come, Horace; buck up. Still the ruby kindles in the vine. No
turning back now. We'll go on till we come bang! against the wall. There
may be some good bouts between here and there. I wonder what Gioconda
would say if she knew why I was so eager for this game?"

He went down to dinner, and they gave him a table in an obscure corner,
as a subtle reminder that his style was _passé_. He didn't care; he was
hungry and thirsty. He could see nearly every one, even if only a few
could see him. This was somewhat to his vantage. He endeavored to pick
out Percival Algernon; but there were too many high collars, too many
monocles. So he contented himself with a mild philosophical observance
of the scene. The murmur of voices, rising as the wail of the violins
sank, sinking as the wail rose; the tinkle of glass and china, the
silver and linen, the pretty women in their rustling gowns, the delicate
perfumes, the flash of an arm, the glint of a polished shoulder: this
was the essence of life he coveted. He smiled at the thought and the
sure knowledge that he was not the only wolf in the fold. Ay, and who
among these dainty Red Riding Hoods might be fooled by a vulpine
grandmother? Truth, when a fellow winnowed it all down to a handful,
there were only fools and rogues. If one was a fool, the rogue got you,
and he in turn devoured himself.

He held his glass toward the table-lamp, moved it slowly to and fro
under his nose, epicureanly; then he sipped the wine. Something like! It
ran across his tongue and down his throat in tingling fire, nectarious;
and he went half way to Olympus, to the feet of the gods. For weeks he
had lived in the vilest haunts, in desperate straits, his life in his
open hands; and now once more he had crawled from the depths to the
outer crust of the world. It did not matter that he was destined to go
down into the depths again; so long as the spark burned he was going to
crawl back each time. Damnable luck! He could have lived like a prince.
Twenty-four hundred, and all in two nights, a steady stream of gold into
the pockets of men whom he could have cheated with consummate ease, and
didn't. A fine wolf, whose predatory instincts were still riveted to
that obsolete thing called conscience!

"Conscience? Rot! Let us for once be frank and write it down as caution,
as fear of publicity, anything but the white guardian-angel of the
immortality of the soul. Heap up the gold, Apollyon; heap it up, higher
and higher, till not a squeak of that still small voice that once awoke
the chap in the Old Testament can ever again be heard. Now; no more
retrospection, Horace; no more analysis; the vital question simmers down
to this: If Percival Algernon balks, how far will four sovereigns go?"




CHAPTER III

THE HOLY YHIORDES


George drank _his_ burgundy perfunctorily. Had it been astringent as the
native wine of Corsica, he would not have noticed it. The little nerves
that ran from his tongue to his brain had temporarily lost the power of
communication. And all because of the girl across the way. He couldn't
keep his eyes from wandering in her direction. She faced him diagonally.
She ate but little, and when the elderly gentleman poured out for her a
glass of sauterne, she motioned it aside, rested her chin upon her
folded hands, and stared not at but through her _vis-à-vis_.

It was a lovely head, topped with coils of lustrous, light brown hair;
an oval face, of white and rose and ivory tones; scarlet lips, a small,
regular nose, and a chin the soft roundness of which hid the resolute
lift to it. To these attributes of loveliness was added a perfect form,
the long, flowing curves of youth, not the abrupt contours of maturity.
George couldn't recollect when he had been so impressed by a face. From
the moment she had stepped down from the carriage, his interest had been
drawn, and had grown to such dimensions that when he entered the
dining-room his glance immediately searched for her table. What luck in
finding her across the way! He questioned if he had ever seen her
before. There was something familiar; the delicate profile stirred some
sleeping memory but did not wake it.

How to meet her, and when he did meet her, how to interest her? If she
would only drop her handkerchief, her purse, something to give him an
excuse, an opening. Ah, he was certain that this time the hydra-headed
one should not overcome him. To gain her attention and to hold it, he
would have faced a lion, a tiger, a wild-elephant. To diagnose these
symptoms might not be fair to George. "Love at first sight" reads well
and sounds well, but we hoary-headed philosophers know that the phrase
is only poetical license.

Once, and only once, she looked in his direction. It swept over him with
the chill of a winter wind that he meant as much to her as a tree, a
fence, a meadow, as seen from the window of a speeding railway train.
But this observation, transient as it was, left with him the indelible
impression that her eyes were the saddest he had ever seen. Why? Why
should a young and beautiful girl have eyes like that? It could not mean
physical weariness, else the face would in some way have expressed it.
The elderly man appeared to do his best to animate her; he was kindly
and courteous, and by the gentle way he laughed at intervals was trying
to bolster up the situation with a jest or two. The girl never so much
as smiled, or shrugged her shoulders; she was as responsive to these
overtures as marble would have been.

George's romance gathered itself for a flight. Perhaps it was love
thwarted, and the gentleman with the mustache and imperial, in spite of
his amiability, might be the ogre. Perhaps it was love and duty. Perhaps
her lover had gone down to sea. Perhaps (for lovers are known to do such
things) he had run away with the other girl. If that was the case,
George did not think highly of that tentative gentleman's taste. Perhaps
and perhaps again; but George might have gone on perhapsing till the
crack o' doom, with never a solitary glimmer of the true state of the
girl's mind. Whenever he saw an unknown man or woman who attracted his
attention, he never could resist the impulse to invent a romance that
might apply.

Immediately after dessert the two rose; and George, finding that nothing
more important than a pineapple ice detained him, got up and followed.
Mr. Ryanne almost trod on his heels as they went through the doorway
into the cosy lounging-room. George dropped into a vacant divan and
waited for his _café à la Turque_. Mr. Ryanne walked over to the
head-porter's bureau and asked if that gentleman would be so kind as to
point out Mr. George P. A. Jones, if he were anywhere in sight. He
thoughtfully, not to say regretfully, laid down a small bribe.

"Mr. Jones?" The porter knew Mr. Jones very well. He was generous, and
treated the servants as though they were really human beings. Mr.
Ryanne, either by his inquiry or as the result of his bribe, went up
several degrees in the porter's estimation. "Mr. Jones is over there,
on the divan by the door."

"Thanks."

But Ryanne did not then seek the young man. He studied the quarry from a
diplomatic distance. No; there was nothing to indicate that George
Percival Algernon Jones was in any way handicapped by his Arthuresque
middle names.

"No fool, as Gioconda in her infinite wisdom hath said; but romantic,
terribly romantic, yet, like the timid bather who puts a foot into the
water, finds it cold, and withdraws it. It will all depend upon whether
he is a real collector or merely a buyer of rugs. Forward, then, Horace;
a sovereign has already dashed headlong down the far horizon." The curse
of speaking his thoughts aloud did not lie heavily upon him to-night,
for these cogitations were made in silence, unmarked by any facial
expression. He proceeded across the room and sat down beside George. "I
beg your pardon," he began, "but are you not Mr. Jones?"

Mildly astonished, George signified that he was.

"George P. A. Jones?"

George nodded again, but with some heat in his cheeks. "Yes. What is
it?" The girl had just finished her coffee and was going away. Hang this
fellow! What did he want at this moment?

If Ryanne saw that he was too much, as the French say, he also perceived
the cause. The desire to shake George till his teeth rattled was
instantly overcome. She hadn't seen him, and for this he was grateful.
"You are interested in rugs? I mean old ones, rare ones, rugs that are
bought once and seldom if ever sold again."

"Why, yes. That's my business." George had no silly ideas about trade.
He had never posed as a gentleman's son in the sense that it meant
idleness.

Ryanne presented his card.

"How do you pronounce it?" asked George naïvely.

"As they do in Cork."

"I never saw it spelled that way before."

"Nothing surprising in that," replied Ryanne. "No one else has, either."

George laughed and waited for the explanation.

"You see, Ryan is as good a name as they make them; but it classes with
prize-fighters, politicians, and bar chemists. The two extra letters put
the finishing touch to the name. A jewel is all right, but what tells
is the way you hang it round your neck. To me, those additional letters
represent the jewel Ryan in the hands of a Lalique."

"You talk like an American."

"I am; three generations. What's the matter?" with sudden concern.

George was frowning. "Haven't I met you somewhere before?"

"Not to my recollection." A speculative frown now marred Ryanne's
forehead. It did not illustrate a search in his memory for such a
casualty as the meeting of George. He never forgot a face and certainly
did not remember George's. Rather, the frown had its source in the mild
dread that Percival Algernon had seen him somewhere during one of those
indispositions of the morning after. "No; I think you have made a
mistake."

"Likely enough. It just struck me that you looked something like a chap
named Wadsworth, who was half-back on the varsity, when I entered my
freshman year."

"A university man? Lord, no! I was turned loose at ten; been hustling
ever since." Ryanne spoke easily, not a tremor in his voice, although
he had received a slight mental jolt. "No; no college record here. But I
want to chat with you about rugs. I've heard of you, indirectly."

"From the carpet fellows? We do a big business over here. What have you
got?"

"Well, I've a rug up in my room I'd like to show you. I want your
judgment for one thing. Will you do me the favor?"

Since the girl had disappeared and with her those imaginary
appurtenances that had for a space transformed the lounging-room into a
stage, George saw again with normal vision that the room was simply a
common meeting-ground for well-dressed persons and ill-dressed persons,
of the unimpeachable, the impeccable, the doubtful and the peccant; for
in Cairo, as in ancient Egypt, there is every class and kind of humans,
for whom the Decalogue was written, transcribed, and shattered by the
turbulent Moses, an incident more or less forgotten these days. From the
tail of his eye he gave swift scrutiny to this chance acquaintance, and
he found nothing to warrant suspicion. It was not an unusual procedure
for men to hunt him up in Cairo, in Constantinople, in Smyrna, or in
any of the Oriental cities where his business itinerary led him. The
house of Mortimer & Jones was widely known. This man Ryanne might have
been anywhere between thirty and forty. He was tall, well set up, blond
and smooth-skinned. True, he appeared to have been ill-fed recently. A
little more flesh under the cheek-bones, a touch of color, and the
Irishman would have been a handsome man. George could read a rug a
league off, as they say, but he was a child in the matter of
physiognomy, whereas Ryanne was a past-master in this regard; it was
necessary both for his business and safety.

"Certainly, I'll take a look at it. But I tell you frankly," went on
George, "that to interest me it's got to be a very old one. You see,
it's a little fad of mine, outside the business end of it. I'm crazy
over real rugs, and I know something about every rare one in existence,
or known to exist. Is it a copy?"

"No. I'll tell you more about it when we get to my room."

"Come on, then." George was now quite willing to discuss rugs and
carpets.

Having gained the room, Ryanne threw off his coat and relighted his
cigar, which, in a saving mood, he had allowed to go out. He motioned
George to be seated.

"Just a little yarn before I show you the rug. See these cuffs?"

"Yes."

"You will observe that I have had to reverse them. Note this collar?
Same thing. Trousers-hems a bit frayed, coat shiny at the elbows."
Ryanne exhibited his sole fortune. "Four sovereigns between me and a
jail."

George became thoughtful. He was generous and kind-hearted among those
he knew intimately or slightly, but he had the instinctive reserve of
the seasoned traveler in cases like this. He waited.

"The truth is, I'm all but done for. And if I fail to strike a bargain
here with you.... Well, I should hate to tell you the result. Our consul
would have to furnish me passage home. Were you ever up against it to
the extent of reversing your cuffs and turning your collars? You don't
know what life is, then."

George gravely produced two good cigars and offered one to his host.
There was an absence of sound, broken presently by the cheerful crackle
of matches; two billowing clouds of smoke floated outward and upward.
Ryanne sighed. Here was a cigar one could not purchase in all the length
and breadth of the Orient, a Pedro Murias. In one of his doubtfully
prosperous epochs he had smoked them daily. How long ago had that been?

"Yonder is a rug, a prayer-rug, as holy to the Moslem as the idol's eye
is to the Hindu, as the Bible is to the Christian. For hundreds of years
it never saw the outside of the Sultan's palace. One day the late, the
recently late, Abdul the Unspeakable Turk, gave it to the Pasha of
Bagdad. Whenever this rug makes its appearance in Holy Mecca, it is
worshiped, and none but a Sultan or a Sultan's favorite may kneel upon
it. Bagdad, the hundred mosques, the old capital of Suleiman the Great,
the dreary Tigris and the sluggish Euphrates, a muezzin from the turret
calls to prayer, and all that; eh?"

George leaned forward from his chair, a gentle terror in his heart. "The
Yhiordes? By Jove! is that the Yhiordes?"

Admiration kindled in Ryanne's eyes. To have hit the bull's-eye with so
free and quick an aim was ample proof that Percival Algernon had not
boasted when he said that he knew something about rugs.

"You've guessed it."

"How did you come by it?" George demanded excitedly.

"Why do you ask that?"

"Man, ten-thousand pounds could not purchase that rug, that bit of
carpet. Collectors from every port have been after it in vain. And you
mean to tell me that it lies there, wrapped in butcher's paper?"

"Right-O!"

Ryanne solemnly detached a cuff and rolled up his sleeve. The bare
muscular arm was scarred by two long, ugly knife-wounds, scarcely
healed. Next he drew up a trousers-leg, disclosing a battered shin. "And
there's another on my shoulder-blade, the closest call I ever had. A man
who takes his life in his hands, as I have done, merits some reward. Mr.
Jones, I'll be frank with you. I am a kind of derelict. Since I was a
boy, I have hated the humdrum of offices, of shops. I wanted to be my
own man, to go and come as I pleased. To do this and live meant
precarious exploits. This rug represents one of them. I am telling you
the family secret; I am showing you the skeleton in the closet,
confidentially. I stole that rug; and when I say that the seven labors
of our old friend Hercules were simple diversions compared, you'll
recognize the difficulties I had to overcome. You know something of the
Oriental mind. I handled the job alone. I may not be out of the jungle
yet."

George listened entranced. He could readily construct the scenes through
which this adventurer had gone: the watchful nights, the untiring
patience, the thirst, the hunger, the heat. And yet, he could hardly
believe. He was a trifle skeptical. Many a rogue had made the mistake of
playing George's age against his experience. He had made some serious
blunders in the early stages of the business, however; and everybody, to
gain something in the end, must lose something at the start.

"If that rug is the one I have in mind, you certainly have stolen it.
And if it's a copy, I'll tell you quickly enough."

"That's fair. And that's why," Ryanne declared, "I wanted you to look at
it. To me, considering what I have gone through to get it, to me it is
the genuine carpet. To your expert eye it may be only a fine copy. I
know this much, that rare rugs and paintings have many copies, and that
some one is being hooked, sold, bamboozled, sandbagged, every day in the
week. If this is the real article, I want you to take it off my hands,"
the adventurer finished pleasantly.

"There will be a hue and cry."

"No doubt of it."

"And the devil's own job to get it out of Egypt." These were set phrases
of the expert, preliminaries to bargaining. "One might as well carry
round a stolen elephant."

"But a man who is as familiar with the game as you are would have little
difficulty. Your integrity is an established fact, on both sides of the
water. You could take it to New York as a copy, and no appraiser would
know the difference. It's worth the attempt. I'd take it to New York
myself, but you see, I am flat broke. Come; what do you or I care about
a son-of-a-gun of a Turk?" drolly.

"What do you want for it, supposing it's genuine?" George's throat was
dry and his voice harsh. His conscience roused herself, feebly, for it
had been a long time since occasion had necessitated her presence.

Ryanne narrowed his eyes, carefully balancing the possibilities. "Say,
one thousand pounds. It is like giving it away. But when the devil
drives, you know. It is beyond any set price; it is worth what any
collector is willing to pay for it. I believe I know the kind of man you
are, Mr. Jones, and that is why, when I learned you were in Cairo, I
came directly to you. You would never sell this rug. No. You would
become like a miser over his gold. You would keep it with your emeralds
(I have heard about them, too); draw the curtains, lock the doors,
whenever you looked at it. Eh? You would love it for its own sake, and
not because it is worth so many thousand pounds. You are sailing in a
few days; that will help. The Pasha is in Constantinople, and it will be
three or four weeks before he hears of the theft, or the cost," with a
certain grimness.

"You haven't killed any one?" whispered George.

"I don't know; perhaps. Christianity against paganism; the Occidental
conscience permits it." Ryanne made a gesture to indicate that he would
submit to whatever moral arraignment Mr. Jones deemed advisable to make.

But George made none. He rose hastily, sought his knife and, without so
much as by your leave, slashed the twine, flung aside the paper, and
threw the rug across the counterpane. It was the Yhiordes. There was not
the slightest doubt in his mind. He had heard it described, he had seen
a photograph of it, he knew its history and, most vital of all, he owned
a good copy of it.

Against temptation that was robust and energetic and alluring (like the
man who insists upon your having a drink when you want it and ought not
to have it), what chance had conscience, grown innocuous in the long
period of the young man's good behavior? Collectors are always honest
before and after that moment arrives when they want something
desperately; and George was no more saintly than his kind. And how deep
Ryanne and his confederates had delved into human nature, how well they
could read and judge it, was made manifest in this moment of George's
moral relapse.

[Illustration]

Bagdad, the jinns, Sinbad, the Thousand and One Nights, Alibaba and the
Forty Thieves: George was transported mentally to that magic city,
standing between the Tigris and the Euphrates, in all its white glory of
a thousand years gone. Ryanne, the room and its furnishings, all had
vanished, all save the exquisite fabric patterned out of wool and cotton
and knotted with that mingling love and skill and patience the world
knows no more. He let his hand stray over it. How many knees had pressed
its thick yet pliant substance? How many strange scenes had it mutely
witnessed, scenes of beauty, of terror? It shone under the light like
the hide of a healthy hound.

The nerves of a smoker are generally made apparent by the rapidity of
his exhalations. These two, in the several minutes, had filled the room
with a thick, blue haze; and through this the elder man eyed the
younger. The sign of the wolf gleamed in his eyes, but without
animosity, modified as it was by the half-friendly, half-cynical smile.

"I'll risk it," said George finally, having stepped off the magical
carpet, as it were. "I can't give you a thousand pounds to-night. I can
give you three hundred, and the balance to-morrow, between ten and
eleven, at Cook's."

"That will be agreeable to me."

George passed over all the available cash he had, rolled up the treasure
and tucked it under his arm. That somewhere in the world was a true
believer, wailing and beating his breast and calling down from Allah
curses upon the giaour, the dog of an infidel, who had done this thing,
disturbed George not in the least.

"I say," as he opened the door, "you must tell me all about the
adventure. It must have been a thriller."

"It was," replied Ryanne. "The story will keep. Later, if you care to
hear it."

"Of course," added George, moved by a discretionary thought, "this
transaction is just between you and me."

"You may lay odds on that," heartily. "Well, good night. See you at
Cook's in the morning."

"Good night." George passed down the corridor to the adjoining room.

And now, bang! goes Pandora's box.




CHAPTER IV

AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE


That faculty which decides on the lawlessness of our actions: so the
noted etymologist described conscience. It fell to another distinguished
intellect to add that conscience makes cowards of us all. Ay. She may be
overcome at times, side-tracked for any special desire that demands a
clear way; but she's after us, fast enough, with that battered red
lantern of hers, which, brought down from all tongues crisply into our
own, reads--"Don't do it!" She herself is not wholly without cunning.
She rarely stands boldly upon the track to flag us as we come. She
realizes that she might be permanently ditched. No; it is far safer to
run after us and catch us. A digression, perhaps, but more pertinently
an application.

Temptation then no longer at his shoulder, George began to have qualms,
little chaps, who started buzzing into his moral ears with all that
maddening, interminable drone which makes one marvel however do
school-teachers survive their first terms. Among these qualms there was
none that pleaded for the desolate Turk or his minions whose
carelessness had made the theft possible. For all George cared, the
Moslem might grind his forehead in the soulless sand and make the air
palpitate with his plaints to Allah. No. The disturbance was due to the
fact that never before had he been wittingly the purchaser of stolen
goods. He never tried to gloze over the subtle distinction between
knowing and suspecting; and if he had been variously suspicious in
regard to certain past bargains, conscience had found no sizeable wedge
for her demurrers. The Yhiordes was confessedly stolen.

He paused, with his hand upon the door-knob of his room. If he didn't
keep the rug, it would fall into the hands of a collector less
scrupulous. To return it to the Pasha at Bagdad would be pure folly, and
thankless. It was one of the most beautiful weavings in existence. It
was as priceless in its way as any Raphael in the Vatican. And he
desired its possession intensely. Why not? Insidious phrase! Was it not
better that the world should see and learn what a wonderful craft the
making of a rare rug had been, than to allow it to return to the sordid
chamber of a harem, to inevitable ruin? As Ryanne said, what the deuce
was a fanatical Turk or Arab to him?

Against these specious arguments in favor of becoming the adventurer's
abettor and accomplice, there was first the possible stain of blood. The
man agreed that he had come away from Bagdad in doubt. George did not
like the thought of blood. Still, he had collected a hundred emeralds,
not one of which was without its red record. Again, if he carried the
rug home with his other purchases, he could pull it through the customs
only by lying, which was as distasteful to his mind as being a receiver
of stolen goods.

He had already paid a goodly sum against the purchase; and it was not
likely that a man who was down to reversing his collars and cuffs would
take back the rug and refund the money. The Yhiordes was his, happen
what might. So conscience snuffed out her red lantern and retired.

Some light steps, a rustle, and he wheeled in time to see a woman open a
door, stand for a minute in the full light, and disappear. It was she.
George opened the door of his own room, threw the rug inside, and
tiptoed along the corridor, stopping for the briefest time to ascertain
the number of that room. He felt vastly more guilty in performing this
harmless act than in smothering his mentor.

There was no one in the head-porter's bureau; thus, unobserved and
unembarrassed, he was free to inspect the guest-list. Fortune Chedsoye.
He had never seen a name quite like that. Its quaintness did not suggest
to him, as it had done to Ryanne, the pastoral, the bucolic. Rather it
reminded him of the old French courts, of rapiers and buckles, of
powdered wigs and furbelows, masks, astrologers, love-intrigues, of all
those colorful, mutable scenes so charmingly described by the genial
narrator of the exploits of D'Artagnan. And abruptly out of this age of
Lebrun, Watteau, Molière, reached an ice-cold hand. If that elderly
codger wasn't her father, who was he and what?

The Major--for George had looked him up also--was in excellent trim for
his age, something of a military dandy besides; but as the husband of so
young and exquisite a creature! Out upon the thought! He might be her
guardian, or, at most, her uncle, but never her husband. Yet (O
poisonous doubt!), at the table she had ignored the Major, both his
jests and his attentions. He had seen many wives, joyfully from a safe
distance, act toward their husbands in this fashion. Oh, rot! If his
name was Callahan and hers Chedsoye, they could not possibly be tied in
any legal bonds. He dismissed the ice-cold hand and turned again to the
comforting warmth of his ardor.

He had never spoken to young women without presentation, and on these
rare occasions he had broached the weather, suggested the possibilities
of the weather, and concluded with an apostrophe on the weather at
large. It was usually a valedictory. For he was always positive that he
had acted like a fool, and was afraid to speak to the girl again. Never
it failed, ten minutes after the girl was out of sight, the brightest
and cleverest things crowded upon his tongue, to be but wasted on the
desert air. He was not particularly afraid of women older than himself,
more's the pity. And yet, had he been as shy toward them as toward the
girls, there would have been no stolen Yhiordes, no sad-eyed maiden, no
such thing as The United Romance and Adventure Company, Ltd.; and he
would have stepped the even tenor of his way, unknown of grand passions,
swift adventure, life.

George was determined to meet Fortune Chedsoye, and this determination,
the first of its kind to take definite form in his mind, gave him a
novel sensation. He would find some way, and he vowed to best his old
enemy, diffidence, if it was the last fight he ever put up. He would
manoeuver to get in the way of the Major. He never found much trouble
in talking to men. Once he exchanged a word or two with the uncle or
guardian, he would make it a point to renew the acquaintance when he saw
the two together. It appeared to him as a bright idea, and he was rather
proud of it. Even now he was conscious of clenching his teeth strongly.
It's an old saying that he goes farthest who shuts his teeth longest. He
was going to test the precept by immediate practice.

He had stood before the list fully three minutes. Now he turned about
face, a singular elation tingling his blood. Once he set his mind upon a
thing, he went forward. He had lost many pleasurable things in life
because he had doubted and faltered, not because he had reached out
toward them and had then drawn back. He was going to meet Fortune
Chedsoye; when or how were but details. And as he discovered the Major
himself idling before the booth of the East Indian merchant, he saw in
fancy the portcullis rise and the drawbridge fall to the castle of
enchantment. He strolled over leisurely and pretended to be interested
in the case containing mediocre jewels.

"This is a genuine Bokhara embroidery?" the Major was inquiring.

"Oh, yes, sir."

"How old?"

The merchant picked up the tag and squinted at it. "It is between two
and three hundred years old, sir."

To George's opinion the gods themselves could not have arranged a more
propitious moment.

"You've made a mistake," he interposed quietly. "That is Bokhara, but
the stitch is purely modern."

The dark eyes of the Indian flashed. "The gentleman is an authority?"
sarcastically.

"Upon that style of embroidery, absolutely." George smiled. And then,
without more ado, he went on to explain the difference between the
antique and the modern. "You have one good piece of old Bokhara, but it
isn't rare. Twenty-pounds would be a good price for it."

The Major laughed heartily. "And just this moment he asked a hundred for
it. I'm not much of a hand in judging these things. I admire them, but
have no intimate knowledge regarding their worth. Nothing to-night," he
added to the bitter-eyed merchant. "The Oriental is like the amateur
fisherman: truth is not in him. You seem to be a keen judge," as they
moved away from the booth.

"I suppose it's because I'm inordinately fond of the things. I've really
a good collection of Bokhara embroideries at home in New York."

"You live in New York?" with mild interest. The Major sat down and
graciously motioned for George to do the same. "I used to live there;
twenty-odd years ago. But European travel spoils America; the rush
there, the hurry, the clamor. Over here they dine, there they eat.
There's as much difference between those two performances as there is
between _The Mikado_ and _Florodora_. From Portland in Maine to Portland
in Oregon, the same dress, same shops, same ungodly high buildings. Here
it is different, at the end of every hundred miles."

George agreed conditionally. (The Major wasn't very original in his
views.) He would have shed his last drop of blood for his native land,
but he was honest in acknowledging her faults.

Conversation idled in various channels, and finally became anchored at
jewels. Here the Major was at home, and he loved emeralds above all
other stones. He proved to be an engaging old fellow, had circled the
globe three or four times, and had had an adventure or two worth
recounting. And when he incidentally mentioned his niece, George wanted
to shake his hand.

Would Mr. Jones join him with a peg to sleep on? Mr. Jones certainly
would. And after a mutual health, George diplomatically excused himself,
retired, buoyant and happy. How simple the affair had been! A fellow
could do anything if only he set his mind to it. To-morrow he would
meet Fortune Chedsoye, and may Beelzebub shrive him if he could not
manage to control his recalcitrant tongue.

As he passed out of sight, Major Callahan smiled. It was that old
familiar smile which, charged with gentle mockery, we send after
departing fools. It was plain that he needed another peg to keep company
with the first, for he rose and gracefully wended his way down-stairs to
the bar. Two men were already leaning against the friendly, inviting
mahogany. There was a magnum of champagne standing between their
glasses. The Major ordered a temperate whisky and soda, drank it,
frowned at the magnum, paid the reckoning, and went back up-stairs
again.

"Don't remember old friends, eh?" said the shorter of the two men,
caressing his incarnadined proboscis. "A smile wouldn't have hurt him
any, do you think?"

"Shut up!" admonished Ryanne. "You know the orders; no recognition on
the public floors."

"Why, I meant no harm," the other protested. He took a swallow of wine.
"But, dash it! here I am, more'n four thousand miles from old Broadway,
and still walking blind. When is the show to start?"

"Not so loud, old boy. You've got to have patience. You've had some good
pickings for the past three months, in the smoke-rooms. That ought to
soothe you."

"Well, it doesn't. Here I come from New York, three months ago, with a
wad of money for you and a great game in sight. It takes a week to find
you, and when I do.... Well, you know. No sooner are you awake, than
what? Off you go to Bagdad, on the wildest goose-chase a man ever heard
of. And that leaves me with nothing to do and nobody to talk to. I could
have cried yesterday when I got your letter saying you'd be in to-day."

"Well, I got it."

"The rug?"

"Yes. It was wild; but after what I'd been through I needed something
wild to steady my nerves; some big danger, where I'd simply have to get
together."

"And you got it?" There was frank wonder and admiration in the pursy
gentleman's eyes. "All alone, and you got it? Honest?"

"Honest. They nearly had my hide, though."

"Where is it?"

"Sold."

"Who?"

"Percival."

"Horace, you're a wonder, if there ever was one. Sold it to Percival!
You couldn't beat that in a thousand years. You're a great man."

"Praise from Sir Hubert."

"Who's he?"

"An authority on several matters."

"How much did he give you for it?"

"Tut, tut! It was all my own little jaunt, Wallace. I should hate to lie
to you about it."

"What about the stake I gave you?"

Ryanne made a sign of dealing cards.

"Threw it away on a lot of dubs, after all I've taught you!"

"Cards aren't my _forte_."

"There's a yellow streak in your hide, somewhere, Horace."

"There is, but it is the tiger's stripe, my friend. What I did with my
money is my own business."

"Will she allow for that?"

"Would it matter one way or the other?"

"No, I don't suppose it would. Sometimes I think you're with us as a
huge joke. You don't take the game serious enough." Wallace emptied his
glass and tipped the bottle carefully. "You're out of your class,
somehow."

"So?"

"Yes. You have always struck me as a man who was hunting trouble for one
end."

"And that?" Ryanne seemed interested.

Wallace drew his finger across his throat. Ryanne looked him squarely in
the eye and nodded affirmatively.

"I don't understand at all."

"You never will, Wallace, old chap. I am the prodigal son whose brother
ate the fatted calf before I returned home. I had a letter to-day. She
will be here to-morrow sometime. You may have to go to Port Saïd, if my
little plan doesn't mature."

"The _Ludwig_?"

"Yes."

"Say, what a _Frau_ she would have made the right man!"

Ryanne did not answer, but glowered at his glass.

"The United Romance and Adventure Company." Wallace twirled his glass.
"If you're a wonder, she's a marvel. A Napoleon in petticoats! It does
make a fellow grin, when you look it all over. But this is going to be
her Austerlitz or her Waterloo. And you really got that rug; and on top
of that, you have sold it to George P. A. Jones! Here's----"

"Many happy returns," ironically.

They finished the bottle without further talk. There was no conviviality
here. Both were fond of good wine, but the more they drank, the tighter
grew their lips. Men who have been in the habit of guarding dangerous
secrets become taciturn in their cups.

From time to time, flittingly, there appeared against one of the
windows, just above the half-curtain, a lean, dark face which, in
profile, resembled the kite--the hooked beak, the watchful, preyful
eyes. There were two hungers written upon that Arab face, food and
revenge.

"Allah is good," he murmured.

He had but one eye in use, the other was bandaged. In fact, the face,
exhibited general indications of rough warfare, the skin broken on the
bridge of the nose, a freshly healed cut under the seeing eye, a long
strip of plaster extending from the ear to the mouth. There was nothing
of the beggar in his mien. His lean throat was erect, his chin
protrusive, the set of his shoulders proud and defiant. Ordinarily, the
few lingering guides would rudely have told him to be off about his
business; but they were familiar with all turbans, and in the peculiar
twist of this one, soiled and ragged though it was, they recognized some
prince from the eastern deserts. Presently he strode away, but with a
stiffness which they knew came from long journeys upon racing-camels.

George dreamed that night of magic carpets, of sad-eyed maidens, of
fierce Bedouins, of battles in the desert, of genii swelling
terrifically out of squat bottles. And once he rose and turned on the
lights to assure himself that the old Yhiordes was not a part of these
vivid dreams.

He was up shortly after dawn, in white riding-togs, for a final canter
to Mena House and return. In two days more he would be leaving Egypt
behind. Rather glad in one sense, rather sorry in another. Where to put
the rug was a problem. He might carry it in his steamer-roll; it would
be handier there than in the bottom of his trunk, stored away in the
ship's hold. Besides, his experience had taught him that steamer-rolls
were only indifferently inspected. You will observe that the luster of
his high ideals was already dimming. He reasoned that insomuch as he was
bound to smuggle and lie, it might be well to plan something
artistically. He wished now that he was going to spend Christmas in
Cairo; but it was too late to change his booking without serious loss of
time and money.

He had a light breakfast on the veranda of the Mena House, climbed up to
the desert, bantered the donkey-boys, amused himself by watching the
descent of some German tourists who had climbed the big Pyramid before
dawn to witness the sunrise, and threw pennies to the horde of blind
beggars who instantly swarmed about him and demanded, in the name of
Allah, a competence for the rest of their days. He finally escaped them
by footing it down the incline to the hotel gardens, where his horse
stood waiting.

It was long after nine when he slid from the saddle at the side
entrance of the Semiramis. He was on his way to the bureau for his key,
when an exquisitely gloved hand lightly touched his arm.

"Don't you remember me, Mr. Jones?" said a voice of vocal honey.

George did. In his confusion he dropped his pith-helmet, and in stooping
to pick it up, bumped into the porter who had rushed to his aid.
Remember her! Would he ever forget her? He never thought of her without
dubbing himself an outrageous ass. He straightened, his cheeks afire;
blushing was another of those uncontrollable asininities of his. It was
really she, come out of a past he had hoped to be eternally
inresuscitant; the droll, the witty woman, to whom in one mad moment of
liberality and Galahadism he had loaned without security one hundred and
fifty pounds at the roulette tables in Monte Carlo; she, for whom he had
always blushed when he recalled how easily she had mulcted him! And here
she was, serene, lovely as ever, unchanged.

"My dear," said the stranger (George couldn't recall by what name he had
known her); "my dear," to Fortune Chedsoye, who stood a little behind
her, "this is the gentleman I've often told you about. You were at
school at the time. I borrowed a hundred and fifty pounds of him at
Monte Carlo. And what do you think? When I went to pay him back the next
day, he was gone, without leaving the slightest clue to his whereabouts.
Isn't that droll? And to think that I should meet him here!"

That her name had slipped his memory, if indeed he had ever known it,
was true; but one thing lingered incandescently in his mind, and that
was, he _had_ written her, following minutely her own specific
directions and inclosing his banker's address in Paris, Naples, and
Cairo; and for many passings of moons he had opened his foreign mail
eagerly and hopefully. But hope must have something to feed upon, and
after a struggle lasting two years, she rendered up the ghost.... It
wasn't the loss of money that hurt; it was the finding of dross metal
where he supposed there was naught but gold. Perhaps his later shyness
was due as much to this disillusioning incident as to his middle names.

"Isn't it droll, my dear?" the enchantress repeated; and George grew
redder and redder under the beautiful, grateful eyes. "I must give him
a draft this very morning."

"But.... Why, my dear Madame," stammered George. "You must not....
I...!"

Fortune laughed. Somehow the quality of that laughter pierced George's
confused brain as sometimes a shaft of sunlight rips into a fog,
suddenly, stiletto-like. It was full of malice.




CHAPTER V

THE GIRL WHO WASN'T WANTED


If any one wronged George, defrauded him of money or credit, he was
always ready to forgive, agreeing that perhaps half the fault had been
his. This was not a sign of weakness, but of a sense of justice too well
leavened with mercy. Humanity errs in the one as much as in the other,
doubtless with some benign purpose in perspective. Now, it might be that
this charming woman had really never received his letter; such things
have been known to go astray. In any case he could not say that he had
written. That would have cast a doubt upon her word, an unpardonable
rudeness. So, for her very beauty alone, he gave her the full benefit of
the doubt.

"You mustn't let the matter trouble you in the least," he said, his
helmet now nicely adjusted under his arm. "It was so long ago I had
really forgotten all about it." Which was very well said for George.

"But I haven't. I have often wondered what you must have thought of me.
Monte Carlo is such a place! But I must present my daughter. I am Mrs.
Chedsoye."

"I am glad to meet you, Mr. Jones;" and in the sad eyes there was a
glimmer of real friendliness. More, she extended her hand.

It was well worth while, that hundred and fifty pounds. It was well
worth the pinch here and the pinch there which had succeeded that loan.
For he had determined to return to America with a pound or two on his
letter of credit, and the success of this determination was based upon
many a sacrifice in comfort, sacrifices he had never confided to his
parents. It was not in the nature of things to confess that the first
woman he had met in his wanderings should have been the last. As he took
the girl's hand, with the ulterior intent of holding it till death do us
part, he wondered why she had laughed like that. The echo of it still
rang in his ears. And while he could not have described it, he knew
instinctively that it had been born of bitter thought.

They chatted for a quarter of an hour or more, and managed famously. It
seemed to him that Fortune Chedsoye was the first young woman he had
ever met who could pull away sudden barriers and open up pathways for
speech, who, when he was about to flounder into some _cul-de-sac_,
guided him adroitly into an alley round it. Not once was it necessary to
drag in the weather, that perennial if threadbare topic. He was truly
astonished at the ease with which he sustained his part in the
conversation, and began to think pretty well of himself. It did not
occur to him that when two clever and attractive women set forth to make
a man talk (always excepting he is dumb), they never fail to succeed. To
do this they contrive to bring the conversation within the small circle
of his work, his travels, his preferences, his ambitions. To be sure,
all this is not fully extracted in fifteen minutes, but a woman obtains
in that time a good idea of the ground plan.

Two distinct purposes controlled the women in this instance. One
desired to interest him, while the other sought to learn whether he was
stupid or only shy.

At last, when he left them to change his clothes and hurry down to
Cook's, to complete the bargain for the Yhiordes, he had advanced so
amazingly well that they had accepted his invitation to the polo-match
that afternoon. He felt that invisible Mercurial wings had sprouted from
his heels, for in running up the stairs, he was aware of no gravitative
resistance. That this anomaly (an acquaintance with two women about whom
he knew nothing) might be looked upon askance by those who conformed to
the laws and by-laws of social usages, worried him not in the least. On
the contrary, he was thinking that he would be the envy of every other
man out at the Club that afternoon.

"Well?" said Mrs. Chedsoye, a quizzical smile slanting her lips.

"You wish my opinion?" countered the daughter. "He is shy, but he is
neither stupid nor silly; and when he smiles he is really good-looking."

"My child," replied the woman, drawing off her gloves and examining her
shapely hands, "I have looked into the very heart of that young man. A
thousand years ago, a red-cross on his surtout, he would have been
beating his fists against the walls of Jerusalem; five hundred years
later, he would have been singing _chant-royales_ under lattice-windows;
a paladin and a poet."

"How do you know that? Did he make love to you?"

"No; but I made love to him without his knowing it; and that was more to
my purpose than having him make love to me," enigmatically. "Three days,
and he was so guileless that he never asked my name. But in Monte Carlo,
as you know, one asks only your banker's name."

"And your purpose?"

"It is still mine, dear. Do you realize that we haven't seen each other
in four months, and that you haven't offered to kiss me?"

"Did he go away without writing to you about that money?"

Mrs. Chedsoye calmly plucked out the inturned fingers of her gloves. "I
believe I did receive a note inclosing his banker's address, but,
unfortunately, in the confusion of returning to Paris, I lost it. My
memory has always been a trial to me," sadly.

"Since when?" coldly. "There is not a woman living with a keener memory
than yours."

"You flatter me. In affairs that interest me, perhaps."

"You never meant to pay him. It is horrible."

"My dear Fortune, how you jump at conclusions! Did I not offer him a
draft the very first thing?"

"Knowing that at such a moment he could not possibly accept it?"
derisively. "Sometimes I hate you!"

"In these days filial devotion is a lost art."

"No, no; it is a flower parents have ceased to cultivate."

And there was in the tone a strained note which described an intense
longing to be loved. For if George Percival Algernon Jones was a lonely
young man, it was the result of his own blindness; whereas Fortune
Chedsoye turned hither and thither in search of that which she never
could find. The wide Lybian desert held upon its face a loneliness, a
desolation, less mournful than that which reigned within her heart.

"Hush! We are growing sentimental," warned the mother. "Besides, I
believe we are attracting attention." Her glance swept a half-circle
complacently.

"Pardon me! I should be sorry to draw attention to you, knowing how you
abhor it."

"My child, learn from me; temper is the arch-enemy of smooth
complexions. Jones--it makes you laugh."

"It is a homely, honest name."

"I grant that. But a Percival Algernon Jones!" Mrs. Chedsoye laughed
softly. It was one of those pleasant sounds that caused persons within
hearing to wait for it to occur again. "Come; let us go up to the room.
It is a dull, dusty journey in from Port Saïd."

Alone, Fortune was certain that for her mother her heart knew nothing
but hate. Neglect, indifference, injustice, misunderstanding, the chill
repellence that always met the least outreaching of the child's
affections, the unaccountable disappearances, the terror of the unknown,
the blank wall of ignorance behind which she was always kept, upon these
hate had builded her dark and brooding retreat. Yet, never did the
mother come within the radius of her sight that she did not fall under
the spell of strange fascination, enchaining, fight against it how she
might. A kindly touch of the hand, a single mother-smile, and she would
have flung her arms about the other woman's neck.

But the touch and the mother-smile never came. She knew, she understood:
she wasn't wanted, she hadn't been wanted in the beginning; to her
mother she was as the young of animals, interesting only up to that time
when they could stand alone. That the mother never made and held
feminine friendships was in nowise astonishing. Beauty and charm, such
as she possessed, served immediately to stimulate envy in other women's
hearts. And that men of all stations in life flocked about her, why, it
is the eternal tribute demanded of beauty. Here and there the men were
not all the daughter might have wished. Often they burnt sweet flattery
at her shrine, tentatively; but as she coolly stamped out these
incipient fires, they at length came to regard her as one regards the
beauty of a frosted window, as a thing to admire and praise in passing.
One ache always abided: the bitter knowledge that had she met in kind
smile for smile and jest for jest, she might have been her mother's boon
companion. But deep back in some hidden chamber of her heart lay a
secret dread of such a step, a dread which, whenever she strove to
analyze it, ran from under her investigating touch, as little balls of
quicksilver run from under the pressure of a thumb.

She was never without the comforts of life, well-fed, well-dressed,
well-housed, and often her mother flung her some jeweled trinket which
(again that sense of menace) she put away, but never wore. The bright
periods were when they left her in the little villa near Mentone, with
no one but her old and faithful nurse. There, with her horse, her books
and her flowers, she was at peace. Week into week and month into month
she was let be. Never a letter came, save from some former schoolmate
who was coming over and wanted letters of introduction to dukes and
duchesses. If she smiled over these letters it was with melancholy; for
the dukes and duchesses, who fell within her singular orbit, were not
the sort to whom one gave letters of introduction.

Where her mother went she never had the least idea. She might be in any
of the great ports of the world, anywhere between New York and Port
Saïd. The Major generally disappeared at the same time. Then, perhaps,
she'd come back from a pleasant tram-ride over to Nice and find them
both at the villa, maid and luggage. Mayhap a night or two, and off
they'd go again; never a word about their former journey,
uncommunicative, rather quiet. These absences, together with the
undemonstrative reappearances, used to hurt Fortune dreadfully. It gave
her a clear proof of where she stood, exactly nowhere. The hurt had
lessened with the years, and now she didn't care much. Like as not, they
would drag her out of Eden for a month or two, for what true reason she
never could quite fathom, unless it was that at times her mother liked
to have the daughter near her as a foil.

At rare intervals she saw steel-eyed, grim-mouthed men wandering up and
down before the gates of the Villa Fanny, but they never rang the bell,
nor spoke to her when she passed them on the street. If she talked of
these men, her mother and the Major would exchange amused glances,
nothing more.

If, rightly or wrongly, she hated her mother, she despised her uncle,
who was ever bringing to the villa men of money, but of coarse fiber,
ostensibly with the view of marrying her off. But Fortune had her
dreams, and she was quite content to wait.

There was one man more persistent than the others. Her mother called him
Horace, which the Major mellowed into Hoddy. He was tall, blond,
good-looking, a devil-may-care, educated, witty, amusing; and in evening
dress he appeared to be what it was quite evident he had once been, a
gentleman. At first she thought it strange that he should make her,
instead of her mother, his confidante. As to what vocation he pursued,
she did not know, for he kept sedulous guard over his tongue; but his
past, up to that fork in the road where manhood says good-by to youth,
was hers. And in this direction, clever and artful as the mother was,
she sought in vain to wrest this past from her daughter's lips. To the
mother, it was really necessary for her to know who this man really was,
had been, knowing thoroughly as she did what he was now.

Persistent he undeniably was, but never coarse nor rude. Since that time
he had come bade from the casino at Monte Carlo, much the worse for
wine, she feared him; yet, in spite of this fear, she had for him a
vague liking, a hazy admiration. Whatever his faults might be, she stood
witness to his great physical strength and courage. He was the only man,
among all those who appeared at the Villa Fanny and immediately
vanished, who returned again. And he, too, soon grew to be a part of
this unreal drama, arriving mysteriously one day and departing the next.

That a drama was being enacted under her eyes she no longer doubted; but
it was as though she had taken her seat among the audience in the middle
of the second act She could make neither head nor tail to it.

Whenever she accompanied her mother upon these impromptu journeys, her
character, or rather her attitude, underwent a change. She swept aside
her dreams; she accepted the world as it was, saw things as they were;
laughed, but without merriment; jested, but with the venomed point. It
was the reverse of her real character to give hurt to any living thing,
but during these forced marches, as the Major humorously termed them,
and such they were in truth, she could no more stand against giving the
cruel stab than, when alone in her garden, she could resist the tender
pleasure of succoring a fallen butterfly. She was especially happy in
finding weak spots in her mother's armor, and she never denied herself
the thrust. Mrs. Chedsoye enjoyed these sharp encounters, for it must be
added that she gave as good as she took, and more often than not her
thrusts bit deeper and did not always heal.

Fortune never asked questions relative to the family finances. If she
harbored any doubts as to their origin, to the source of their
comparative luxury, she never put these into speech.

She had never seen her father, but she had often heard him referred to
as "that brute" or "that fool" or "that drunken imbecile." If a portrait
of him existed, Fortune had not yet seen it. She visited his lonely
grave once a year, in the Protestant cemetery, and dreamily tried to
conjure up what manner of man he had been. One day she plied her old
Italian nurse with questions.

"Handsome? Yes, but it was all so long ago, _cara mia_, that I can not
describe him to you."

"Did he drink?" Behind this question there was no sense of moral obloquy
as applying to the dead.

"Sainted Mary! didn't all men drink their very souls into purgatory
those unreligious days?"

"Had he any relatives?"

"I never heard of any."

"Was he rich?"

"No; but when the signora, your mother, married him she thought he was."

It was not till later years that Fortune grasped the true significance
of this statement. It illumined many pages. She dropped all
investigations, concluding wisely that her mother, if she were minded to
speak at all, could supply only the incidents, the details.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was warm, balmy, like May in the northern latitudes. Women wore white
dresses and carried sunshades over their shoulders. A good band played
airs from the new light-operas, and at one side of the grand-stand were
tea-tables under dazzling linen. Fashion was out. Not all her votaries
enjoyed polo, but it was absolutely necessary to pretend that they did.
When they talked they discussed the Spanish dancer who paraded back and
forth across the tea-lawn. They discussed her jewels, her clothes, her
escort, and quite frankly her morals, which of the four was by all odds
the most popular theme. All agreed that she was handsome in a bold way.
This modification invariably distinguishes the right sort of women from
the wrong sort, from which there is no appeal to a higher court. They
could well afford to admit of her beauty, since the dancer was outside
what is called the social pale, for all that her newest escort was a
prince _incognito_. They also discussed the play at bridge, the dullness
of this particular season, the possibility of war between England and
Germany. And some one asked others who were the two well-gowned women
down in front, sitting on either side of the young chap in pearl-grey.
No one knew. Mother and daughter, probably. Anyhow, they knew something
about good clothes. Certainly they weren't ordinary tourists. They had
seen What's-his-name tip his hat; and this simple act would pass any one
into the inner shrine, for the general was not promiscuous. There, the
first-half was over. All down for tea! Thank goodness!

George was happy. He was proud, too. He saw the glances, the nods of
approval. He basked in a kind of sunshine that was new. What an ass he
had been all his life! To have been afraid of women just because he was
Percival Algernon! What he should have done was to have gone forth
boldly, taken what pleasures he found, and laughed with the rest of
them.

There weren't two other women in all Cairo to compare with these two.
The mother, shapely, elegant, with the dark beauty of a high-class
Spaniard, possessing humor, trenchant comment, keen deduction and
application; worldly, cynical, high-bred. The student of nations might
have tried in vain to place her. She spoke the French of the Parisians,
the Italian of the Florentines, the German of the Hanoverians, and her
English was the envy of Americans and the wonder of the Londoners. The
daughter fell behind her but little, but she was more reserved. The
worldly critic called this good form: no daughter should try to outshine
her widowed mother.

As Fortune sat beside the young collector that afternoon, she marveled
why they had given him Percival Algernon. Jones was all right, solid
and substantial, but the other two turned it into ridicule. Still, what
was the matter with Percival Algernon? History had given men of these
names mighty fine things to accomplish. Then why ridicule? Was it due to
the perverted angle of vision created by wits and humorists in the comic
weeklies, who were eternally pillorying these unhappy prefixes to
ordinary cognomens? And why this pillorying? She hadn't studied the
subject sufficiently to realize that the business of the humorist is not
so much to amuse as to warn persons against becoming ridiculous. And
Percival Algernon Jones was all of that. It resolved itself into a
matter of values, then. Had his surname been Montmorency, Percival
Algernon would have fitted as a key to its lock. She smiled. No one but
a fond mother would be guilty of such a crime. And if she ever grew to
know him well enough, she was going to ask him all about this mother.

What interest had her own mother in this harmless young man? Oh, some
day she would burst through this web, this jungle; some day she would
see beyond the second act! What then? she never troubled to ask
herself; time enough when the moment arrived.

"I had an interesting adventure last night, a most interesting one,"
began George, who was no longer the shy, blundering recluse. They were
on the way back to town.

"Tell it me," said Mrs. Chedsoye.

He leaned over from his seat beside the chauffeur of the hired
automobile. (Hang the expense on a day like this!) "A fellow brought me
a rug last night, one of the rarest outside the museums. How and where
he got it I'm not fully able to state. But he had been in a violent
struggle somewhere, arms slashed, shins battered. He admitted that he
had gone in where many shapes of death lurked. It was a bit irregular. I
bought the rug, however. Some one else would have snatched it up if I
hadn't. I wanted him to recount the adventure, but he smiled and
refused. I tell you what it is, these eastern ports are great places."

"How interesting!" Mrs. Chedsoye's color was not up to the mark. "He was
not seriously wounded?"

"Oh, no. He looks like a tough individual. I mean, a chap strong and
hardy enough to put himself out of pretty bad holes. He needed the
money."

"Did he give his name?" asked Fortune.

"Yes; but no doubt it was assumed. Ryanne and he spelt it with an 'ne,'
and humorously explained why he did so."

"Is he young, old, good-looking, or what?"

Mrs. Chedsoye eyed her offspring through narrowed lids.

"I should say that he was about thirty-five, tall, something of an
athlete; and there remains some indications that in the flush of youth
he was handsome. Odd. He reminded me of a young man who was on the
varsity eleven--foot-baller--when I entered my freshman year. I didn't
know him, but I was a great admirer of his from the grand-stand. Horace
Wadsworth was _his_ name."

Horace Wadsworth. Fortune had the sensation of being astonished at
something she had expected to happen.

Just before going down to dinner that night, Fortune turned to her
mother, her chin combative in its angle.

"I gave Mr. Jones a hundred and fifty pounds out of that money you left
in my care. Knowing how forgetful you are, I took the liberty of
attending to the affair myself."

She expected a storm, but instead her mother viewed her with appraising
eyes. Suddenly she laughed mellowly. Her sense of humor was too
excitable to resist so delectable a situation.

"You told him, of course, that the money came from me?" demanded Mrs.
Chedsoye, when she could control her voice.

"Surely, since it did come from you."

"My dear, my dear, you are to me like the song in _The Mikado_," and she
hummed lightly--

  "'To make the prisoner pent
  Unwillingly represent
  A source of innocent merriment,
  Of innocent merriment!'"

"Am I a prisoner, then?"

"Whatever you like; it can not be said that I ever held you on the
leash," taking a final look into the mirror.

"What is the meaning of this rug? You and I know who stole it.

"I have explicitly warned you, my child, never to meddle with affairs
that do not concern you."

"Indirectly, some of yours do. You are in love with Ryanne, as he calls
himself."

"My dear, you do not usually stoop to such vulgarity. And are you
certain that he has any other name?"

"If I were I should not tell you."

"Ah!"

"A man will tell the woman he loves many things he will not tell the
woman he admires."

"As wise as the serpent," bantered the mother; but she looked again into
the mirror to see if her color was still what it should be. "And whom
does he admire?" the Mona Lisa smile hovering at the corners of her
lips.

"You," evenly.

Mrs. Chedsoye thought for a moment, thought deeply and with new insight.
It was no longer a child but a woman, and mayhap she had played upon the
taut strings of the young heart once too often. Still, she was unafraid.

"And whom does he love?"

"Me. Shall I get you the rouge, mother?"

Still with that unchanging smile, the woman received the stab. "My
daughter," as if speculatively, "you will get on. You haven't been my
pupil all these years for nothing. Let us go down to dinner."

Fortune, as she silently followed, experienced a sense of disconcertion
rather than of elation.




CHAPTER VI

MOONLIGHT AND POETRY


A ball followed dinner that night, Wednesday. The ample lounging-room
filled up rapidly after coffee: officers in smart uniforms and spurs,
whose principal function in times of peace is to get in everybody's way,
rowel exposed ankles, and demolish lace ruffles, Egyptians and Turks and
sleek Armenians in somber western frock and scarlet eastern fez or
_tarboosh_, women of all colors (meaning, of course, as applied) and
shapes and tastes, the lean and fat, the tall and short, such as _Billy
Taylor_ is said to have kissed in all the ports, and tail-coats of as
many styles as Joseph's had patches. George could distinguish his
compatriots by the fit of the trousers round the instep; the Englishman
had his fitted at the waist and trusted in Providence for the hang of
the rest. This trifling detective work rather pleased George. The women,
however, were all Eves to his eye; liberal expanses of beautiful white
skin, the bare effect being modified by a string of pearls or diamonds
or emeralds, and hair which might or might not have been wholly their
own. He waited restlessly for the reappearance of Mrs. Chedsoye and her
daughter. All was right with the world, except that he was to sail
altogether too soon. His loan had been returned, and he knew that his
former suspicions had been most unworthy. Mrs. Chedsoye had never
received his note.

Some one was sitting down beside him. It was Ryanne, in evening clothes,
immaculate, blasé, pink-cheeked. There are some men so happily framed
that they can don ready-made suits without calling your attention to the
fact. George saw at once that the adventurer was one of these fortunate
individuals.

"Makes a rather good picture to look at; eh?" began Ryanne, rolling a
flake-tobacco cigarette. "Dance?"

"No. Wish I could. You've done quick work," with admiring inspection.
"Not a flaw anywhere. How do you do it?"

"Thanks. Thanks to you, I might say. I did some tall hustling, though.
Strange, how we love these funeral toggeries. We follow the dance and we
follow the dead, with never a variation in color. The man who invented
the modern evening clothes must have done good business during the day
as chief-mourner."

"Why don't you send for your luggage?"

Ryanne caressed his chin. "My luggage is, I believe, in the hands of the
enemy. It is of no great importance. I never carry anything of value,
save my skin. I'm not like the villain in the melodrama; no
incriminating documents, no lost wills, no directions for digging up
pirates' gold."

"I suppose you'll soon be off for America?" George asked indifferently.

"I suppose so. By the way, I saw you at the game to-day."

"No! Where were you?"

"Top row. I am going to ask a favor of you. It may sound rather odd to
your ears, but I know those two ladies rather well. I kept out of the
way till I could find some clothes. The favor I ask is that you will not
tell them anything regarding the circumstances of our meeting. I am
known to them as a globe-trotter and a collector."

"That's too bad," said George contritely. "But I have already told
them."

"The devil you have!" Ryanne dropped his cigarette into the ash-tray.
"If I remember rightly, you asked me to say nothing."

"I know," said George, visibly embarrassed. "I forgot."

"Well, the fat is in the fire. I dare say that I can get round it. It
was risky. Women like to talk. I expect every hour to hear of some one
arriving from Bagdad."

"There's no boat from that direction till next week," informed George,
who was a stickler on time-tables.

"There are other ways of getting into Egypt. Know anything about
racing-camels?"

"You don't believe...?"

"My friend I believe in all things that haven't been proved impossible.
You've been knocking about here long enough to know something of the
tenacity of the Arab and the East Indian. Given a just cause, an idol's
eye or a holy carpet, and they'll follow you round the world ten times,
if need be. I never worry needlessly, but I lay out before me all the
points in the game. There is one man in Bagdad who will never cease to
think of me. This fellow is an Arab, Mahomed-El-Gebel by name, the real
article, proud and savage, into whose keeping the Holy Yhiordes was
given; Mahomed-El-Gebel, the Pasha's right-hand, a sheik in his own
right."

"But you haven't got the rug now."

"No, Mr. Jones, I haven't; but on the other hand, you have. So, here we
are together. When he gets through with me, your turn."

George laughed. Ryanne grew thoughtful over this sign. Percival Algernon
did not seem exactly worried.

"Aren't you a little afraid?"

"I? Why should I be?" inquired George innocently. "Certainly, whatever
your Arab friend's arguments may be, moral or physical, I'm going to
keep that Yhiordes."

Was he bluffing? Ryanne wondered. Did he really have nerve? Well,
within forty-eight hours there would come a test.

"Say, do you know, I rather wish you'd been with me on that trip--that
is, if you like a rough game." Ryanne said this in all sincerity.

"I have never been in a rough game, as you call it; but I've often had a
strong desire to be, just to find out for myself what sort of a duffer I
am."

Ryanne had met this sort of man before; the fellow who wanted to know
what stuff he was made of, and was ready to risk his hide to find out.
His experience had taught him to expect nothing of the man who knew just
what he was going to do in a crisis.

"Did you ever know, Mr. Jones," said Ryanne, his eyes humorous, "that
there is an organization in this world of ours, a company that offers a
try-out to men of your kidney?"

"What's that? What do you mean?"

"What I say. There is an established concern which will, upon
application for a liberal purchase of stock, arrange any kind of
adventure you wish."

"What?" George drew in his legs and sat up. "What sort of a jolly is
this?"

"You put your finger upon the one great obstacle. No one will believe
that such a concern exists. Yet it is a fact. And why not?"

"Because it wouldn't be real; it would be going to the moon _à la_ Coney
Island."

"Wrong, absolutely wrong. If I told you that I am a stock-holder in this
company, and that the adventure of the Yhiordes rug was arranged for my
special benefit, what would you say?"

"Say?" George turned a serious countenance toward the adventurer. "Why,
the whole thing is absurd on the face of it. As a joke, it might go; but
as a genuine affair, utterly impossible."

"No," quietly. "I admit that it sounds absurd, yes; but ten years ago
they'd have locked up, as insane, a man who said that he could fly. But
think of last summer at Paris, at Rheims, at Frankfort; the Continental
air was full of flying-machines. Bah! It's pretty difficult to impress
the average mind with something new. Why shouldn't we cater to the
poetic, the romantic side of man? We've concerns for everything else.
The fact is, mediocrity is always standing behind the corner with
brickbats for the initiative. Believe me or not, Mr. Jones, but this
company exists. The proof is that you have the rug and I have the
scars."

"But in these prosaic times!" murmured George, still skeptical.

"Prosaic times!" sniffed Ryanne. "There's one of your brickbats. They
swung it at the head of the first printer. Prosaic times! My friend,
this is the most romantic and bewildering age humanity has yet seen.
There's more romance and adventure going about on wheels and
steel-bottoms than ever there was in the days of Drake and the
Spanish galleons. There's an adventure lurking round the nearest
corner--romance, too. What this organization does is to direct you;
after that you have to shift for yourself. But, like a first-rate
physical instructor, they never map out more than a man can do. They
gave me the rug. Your bones, on such a quest, would have been bleaching
upon the banks of the Tigris."

"What the deuce is this company called?" George was enjoying the
conversation immensely.

"The United Romance and Adventure Company, Ltd., of London, Paris, and
New York."

"Have you any of the company's paper with you?" George repressed his
laughter because Ryanne's face was serious enough.

"Unfortunately, no. But if you will give me your banker's address I'll
be pleased to forward you the prospectus."

"Knauth, Nachod and Kühne. I am shortly leaving for home. Better send it
to New York. I say, suppose a chap buys an adventure that is not up to
the mark; can he return it or exchange it for another?"

"No. It's all chance, you know. The rules of the game are steel-bound.
We find you an adventure; it's up to you to make good."

"But, once more, suppose a chap gets a little too rough a game, and
doesn't turn up for his dividends; what then?"

"In that event," answered Ryanne sadly, "the stock reverts to the
general fund."

George lay back in his chair and let go his laughter. "You are mighty
good company, Mr. Ryanne."

"Well, well; we'll say nothing more about it. But a moment gone you
spoke as if you were game for an exploit."

"I still am. But if I knew the adventure was prearranged, as you say,
and I was up against a wall, there would be the inclination to cable the
firm for more instructions."

Ryanne himself laughed this time. "That's a good idea. I don't believe
the company ever thought of such a contingency. But I repeat, our
business is to give you the kick-off. After that you have to fight for
your own downs."

"The stock isn't listed?" again laughing.

"Scarcely. One man tells another, as I tell you, and so on."

"You send me the prospectus. I'm rather curious to have a look at it."

"I certainly shall do so," replied Ryanne, with gravity unassumed. "Ah!
Here come Mrs. Chedsoye and her daughter. If you don't mind, I'll make
myself scarce. I do not care to see them just now, after your having
told them about the stolen Yhiordes."

"I'm sorry," said George, rising eagerly.

"It's all in the game," gallantly.

George saw him gracefully manoeuver his way round the crush toward the
stairs leading to the bar. Really, he would like to know more about
this amiable free-lance. As the old fellows used to say, he little
dreamed that destiny, one of those things from Pandora's box, was
preparing a deeper and more intimate acquaintance.

"And what has been amusing you, Mr. Jones?" asked Mrs. Chedsoye. "I saw
you laughing."

"I was talking with the rug chap. He's a droll fellow. He said that he
had met you somewhere, but concluded not to renew the acquaintance,
since I told him that his adventure in part was known to you."

"That is foolish. I rather enjoy meeting men of his stamp. Don't you,
Fortune?"

"Sometimes," with a dry little smile. "I believe we have met him,
mother. There was something familiar about his head. Of course, we saw
him only from a distance."

"I do not think there is any real harm in him," said George. "What made
me laugh was a singular proposition he set before me. He said he owned
stock in a concern called 'The United Romance and Adventure Company';
and that for a specified sum of money, one could have any adventure one
pleased."

"Did you ever hear of such a thing?" cried the mother merrily. Fortune
searched her face keenly. "The United Romance and Adventure Company! He
must have been joking. What did you say his name is?"

"Ryanne. Joking is my idea exactly," George agreed. "The scheme is to
plunge the stock-holder into a real live adventure, and then let him
pull himself out the best way he can. Sounds good. He added that this
rug business was an instance of the success of the concern. There goes
the music. Do you dance, Miss Chedsoye?"

"A little." Fortune was preoccupied. She was wondering what lay behind
Mr. Ryanne's amiable jest.

"Go along, both of you," said Mrs. Chedsoye. "I am too old to dance. I
prefer watching people." She sat down and arranged herself comfortably.
She was always arranging herself comfortably; it was one of the secrets
of her perennial youth. She was very lovely, but George had eyes for the
daughter only. Mrs. Chedsoye saw this, but was not in the least
chagrined.

"It is so many years since I tripped the light fantastic toe," George
confessed, reluctantly and nervously, now that he had bravely committed
himself. "It is quite possible that the accent will be primarily upon
the trip."

"Perhaps, then," replied the girl, who truthfully was out of tune,
"perhaps I had better get my wraps and we'll go outside. The night is
glorious."

She couldn't have suggested anything more to his liking. And so, after a
little hurrying about, the two young people went outside and began to
promenade slowly up and down the mole. Their conversation was desultory.
George had dropped back into his shell and the girl was not equal to the
task of drawing him out. Once he stumbled over a sleeping beggar, and
would have fallen had she not caught him by the arm.

"Thanks. I'm clumsy."

"It's rather difficult to see them in the moonlight; their rags match
the pavements."

The Egyptian night, that sapphirine darkness which the flexible
imagination peoples with lovely and terrible shades, or floods with
mystery and romance and wonder, lay softly upon this strip of verdure
aslant the desert's face, the Valley of the Nile. The moon, round,
brilliant, strangely near, suffused the scarred old visage of the world
with phantom silver; the stones of the parapet glowed dully, the
pavement glistened whitely, all things it touched with gentleness,
lavishing beauty upon beauty, mellowing ugliness or effacing it. The
deep blue Nile, beribboned with the glancing lights from the silent
feluccas, curling musically along the sides of the frost-like dahabeahs
and steamers, rolled on to the sea; and the blue-white arc-lamps,
spanning the Great Nile Bridge, took the semblance of a pearl necklace.
From time to time a caravan trooped across the bridge into Cairo. The
high and low weird notes of the tom-toms, the wheezing protests of the
camels, the raucous defiance of the donkeys, the occasional thin music
of reeds, were sounds that crossed and recrossed one another, anciently.

"Do you care for poetry, Mr. Jones?"

"I? I used to write it."

"And you aren't afraid to admit it?"

"Well, I shouldn't confess the deed to every one," he answered frankly.
"We all write poetry at one time or another; but it's generally not
constitutional, and we recover."

"I do not see why any one should be ashamed of writing poetry."

"Ah, but there is poetry and poetry. My kind and Byron's is born of
kindred souls; but he was an active genius, whereas, I wasn't even a
passive one. In all great poets I find my own rejected thoughts, as
Emerson says; and that's enough for my slender needs. Poets are rather
uncomfortable chaps to have round. They are capricious, irritable,
temperamental, selfish, and usually demand all the attention."

The little vocal stream dried up again, and once more they listened to
the magic sounds of the night. She stopped abruptly to look over the
parapet, and his shoulder met hers; after that the world to him was
never going to be the same again.

Moonlight and poetry; not the safest channels to sail uncharted. The
girl was lonely, and George was lonely, too. His longing had now assumed
a definite form; hers moved from this to that, still indefinitely. The
quickness with which this definition had come to George rather startled
him. His first sight of Fortune Chedsoye had been but yesterday; yet,
here he was, not desperately but consciously in love with her. The
situation bore against all precepts; it ripped up his preconceived ideas
of romance as a gale at sea shreds a canvas. He felt a bit panicky. He
had always planned a courtship of a year or so, meetings, separations,
and remeetings, pleasurable expectations, little junkets to theatres and
country places; in brief, to witness the rose grow and unfold. Somewhere
he had read or heard that courtship was the plummet which sounded the
depths of compatibility. He knew nothing of Fortune Chedsoye, save that
she was beautiful to his eyes, and that she was as different from the
ordinary run of girls as yonder moon was from the stars. Here his
knowledge ended. But instinct went on, appraising and delving and
winnowing, and instinct told him what knowledge could not, that she was
all his heart desired.

When a man finally decides that he is in love, his troubles begin, the
imaginary ones. Is he worthy? Can he always provide for her? Is it
possible for such a marvelous creature to love an insignificant chap
like himself? And that worst of mental poisons, is she in love with any
one else? What to do to win her? The feats of Hercules, of Perseus, of
Jason: what mad piece of heroism can he lay his hand to that he may wake
the slumbering fires, and having roused them, continue to feed them?

Manhood, meaning that decade between thirty and forty, looks upon this
phase, abashed. After all, it wasn't so terrible; there were vaster
emotions, vaster achievements in life to which in comparison love was as
a candle held to the sun.

Again she stopped, leaning over the parapet and staring down at the
water swirling past the stone embankment. He did likewise, resting upon
his folded arms. Suddenly his tongue became alive; and quietly, without
hesitancy or embarrassment, he began to tell her of his school life, his
life at home. And the manner in which he spoke of his mother warmed her;
and she was strangely and wonderingly attracted.

"Of course, the mother meant the best in the world when she gave me
Percival Algernon; and because she meant the best, I have rarely tried
to hide them. What was good enough for her to give was good enough for
me to keep. It is simply that I have been foolish about it,
supersensitive. I should have laughed and accepted the thing as a joke;
instead, I made the fatal move of trying to run away and hide. But,
taking the name in full," lightly, "it sounds as incongruous as playing
_Traumerei_ on a steam-piano."

He expected her to laugh, but her heart was too full of the old ache.
This young man, kindly, gentle, intelligent, if shy, was a love-child.
And she? An offspring, the loneliest of the lonely, the child that
wasn't wanted. Many a time she had thought of flinging all to the winds,
of running away and hiding where they never should find her, of working
with her own hands for her bread and butter. Little they'd have cared.
But always the rebel spirit died within her as she stepped outside the
villa gates. To leave behind for unknown privations certain assured
comforts, things of which she was fond, things to which she was used,
she couldn't do it, she just couldn't. Morally and physically she was a
little coward.

"Let us go in," she said sharply. Another moment, and she would have
been in tears.




CHAPTER VII

RYANNE TABLES HIS CARDS


During this time Mrs. Chedsoye, the Major, Messrs. Ryanne and Wallace,
officers and directors in the United Romance and Adventure Company,
Ltd., sat in the Major's room, round the boudoir-stand which had
temporarily been given the dignity of a table. The scene would not have
been without interest either to the speculative physiognomist or to the
dramatist. To each it would have represented one of those astonishing
moments when the soul of a person comes out into the open, as one might
express it, incautiously, to be revealed in the expressions of the eyes
and the mouth. These four persons were about going forward upon a
singularly desperate and unusual enterprise. From now on they were no
longer to fence with one another, to shift from this topic to that,
with the indirect manoeuvers of a house-cat intent upon the quest of
the Friday mackerel. The woman's face was alive with eagerness; the
oldest man looked from one to the other with earnest calculation;
Wallace no longer hid his cupidity; Ryanne's immobility of countenance
was in itself a tacit admission to the burning of all his bridges that
he might become a part of this conclave.

"Smuggling," said the Major, with prudent lowering of voice, evidently
continuing some previous debate, "smuggling is a fine art, a keen
sporting proposition; and the consequences of discovery are never very
serious. What's a fine of a thousand dollars against the profits of many
successful excursions into the port of New York? Nothing, comparatively.
For several years, now, we have carried on this business with the utmost
adroitness. Never have we drawn serious attention. We have made two or
three blunders, but the suspicions of the secret-service were put to
sleep upon each occasion. We have prospered. Here is a gem, let us say,
worth on this side a thousand; over there we sell it for enough to give
us a clean profit of three or four hundred. Forty per cent. upon our
investment. That ought to be enough for any reasonable person. Am I
right?"

Mrs. Chedsoye alone was unresponsive to this appeal.

"I continue, then. We are making enough to lay by something for our old
age. And that's the only goal which never loses its luster. But this
affair!"

"Talk, talk," said Mrs. Chedsoye impatiently.

"My dear Kate, allow me to relieve my mind."

"You have done so till the topic is threadbare. It is rather late in the
day to go over the ground again. Time is everything just now."

"Admitted. But this affair, Kate, is big; big with dangers, big with
pitfalls; there is a hidden menace in every step of it. Mayhap death;
who knows? The older I grow, the more I cling to material comforts, to
enterprises of small dangers. However, as you infer, there's no going
back now."

"No," assented Ryanne, his mouth hard; "not if I have to proceed alone."

She smiled at him. "You talk of danger," speaking to the Major. "What
danger can there be?"

"The unforeseen danger, the danger of which we know nothing, and
therefore are unable to prepare for it. You do not see it, my dear, but
it is there, nevertheless."

Wallace nodded approvingly. Ryanne shrugged.

"Failure is practically impossible. And I want excitement; I crave it as
you men crave your tobacco."

"And there we are, Kate. It really isn't the gold; it's the excitement
of getting it and coming away unscathed. If I could only get you to look
at all sides of the affair! It's the Rubicon."

"I accept it as such. I am tired of petty things. I repeat, failure is
not possible. Have I not thought it out, detail by detail, mapped out
each line, anticipated dangers by eliminating them?"

"All but that one danger of which we know nothing. You're a great woman,
Kate. You have, as you say, made ninety-nine dangers out of a hundred
impossible. Let us keep an eye out for that hundredth. Our photographs
have yet to grace the rogues' gallery."

"With one exception." Ryanne's laughter was sardonic.

"Whose?" shot the Major.

"Mine. A round and youthful phiz, a silky young mustache. But rest
easy; there's no likeness between that and the original one I wear now."

"You never told us...." began Mrs. Chedsoye.

"There was never any need till now. Eight years ago. Certain powers that
be worked toward my escape. But I was never to return. You will
recollect that I have always remained this side. Enough. What I did does
not matter. I will say this much: my crime was in being found out. One
venture into New York and out to sea again; they will not have a chance.
I doubt if any could recall the circumstances of my meteoric career. You
will observe that I am keyed for anything. Let us get to work. It
doesn't matter, anyhow."

"You did not...." Mrs. Chedsoye hesitated.

"Blood?" reading her thought. "No, Gioconda; my hands are guiltless, at
least they were till this Bagdad affair; and I am not sure there. I was
a trusted clerk; I gambled; I took money that did not belong to me. And
here I am, room number 208."

"It doesn't matter. Come, Kate; don't stare at Hoddy as if he were a new
species." The Major smoothed the ends of his mustache. "This confession
will be good for his soul."

"Yes, Gioconda; I feel easier now. I am heart and soul in this affair. I
need excitement, too. Lord, yes. When I went to Bagdad, I had no idea
that I should ever lay eyes upon that rug. But I did. And there's the
emeralds, too, Major."

The Major rubbed his hands pleasurably. "Yes, yes; the emeralds; I had
not forgotten them. One hundred lovely green stones, worth not a penny
under thirty thousand. A fine collection. But another idea has taken
possession of this teeming brain of mine. Have you noticed how this
fellow Jones hovers about Fortune? He's worth a million, if he's worth a
cent. I am sure, in pure gratitude, she would see to it that her loved
ones were well taken care of in their old age."

"I am going to marry Fortune myself," said Ryanne blandly.

"You?" The Major was nonplussed.

Wallace shuffled his feet uneasily. This blond companion of his was
always showing kinks in his nature, kinks that rarely ever straightened
out.

"Yes. And why not? What is she to either you or her mother? Nothing.
Affection you have never given her, being unable. It surprises you; but,
nevertheless, I love her, and I am going to marry her."

"Really?" said Mrs. Chedsoye.

"Even so."

"You are a fool, Horace!" with rising fury. So then, the child had not
jibed her in a moment of pique?

"Men in love generally are fools. I've never spoken before, because you
never absolutely needed me till now. There's my cards, pat."

Mrs. Chedsoye's fury deepened, but not visibly. "You are welcome to her,
if she will have you."

"Yes," supplemented the Major; "if she will have you, my friend, take
her, and our benedictions."

Ryanne's shoulders stirred suggestively.

"Of course, I expect to have the final word to say on the subject. She
is my daughter," said Mrs. Chedsoye.

"A trifling accident, my dear Gioconda," smiled Ryanne; "merely that."

"Just a little oil, just a little oil," the Major pleaded anxiously.
"Dash it all, this is no time for a row of this silly order. But it's
always the way," irritably. "A big enterprise, demanding a single
purpose, and a trifle like this to upset it all!"

"I am ready for business at any moment."

"And you, Kate?"

"We'll say no more about it till the affair is over. After that...."

"Those who live will see, eh?" Ryanne rolled a cigarette.

"To business, then. In the first place, Mr. Jones must not reach the
_Ludwig_!"

"He will not." Ryanne spoke with quiet assurance.

"He will not even see that boat," added Wallace, glad to hear the sound
of his voice again.

"Good. But, mind, no rough work."

"Leave it all to me," said Ryanne. "The United Romance and Adventure
Company will give him an adventure on approval, as it were."

"To you, then. The report from New York reads encouragingly. Our friends
there are busy. They are merely waiting for us. From now on Percival
Algernon must receive no more mail, telegrams or cables."

"I'll take care of that also." Ryanne looked at Mrs. Chedsoye musingly.

"His real-estate agent will wire him, possibly to-morrow."

"In that event, he will receive a cable signifying that the transaction
is perfectly correct."

"He may also inquire as to what to do with the valuables in the
wall-safe."

"He will be instructed to touch nothing, as the people who will occupy
the house are old friends." Ryanne smoked calmly.

"Wallace, you will return to New York at once."

"I thought I was wanted here?"

"No longer."

"All right; I'm off. I'll sail on the _Prince Ludwig_, state-room 118.
I'll have my joke by the way."

"You will do nothing of the kind. You will have a state-room by
yourself," said Mrs. Chedsoye crisply. "And no wine, no cards. If you
fail, I'll break you...."

"As we would a churchwarden's pipe, Wallace, my lad." Ryanne gripped his
companion by the shoulder, and there was enough pressure in the grip to
cause the recipient to wince.

"Well, well; I'll lay a straight course." Wallace slid his shoulder from
under Ryanne's hand.

"To you, then, Hoddy, the business of quarantining our friend Percival.
Don't hurt him; simply detain him. You must realize the importance of
this. Have you your plans?"

"I'll perfect them to-morrow. I shall find a way, never fear."

"Does the rug come in anywhere?" The Major was curious. It sometimes
seemed to him that Ryanne did not always lay his cards face up upon the
table.

"It will play its part. Besides, I am rather inclined to the idea of
taking it back. It may be the old wishing-carpet. In that case, it will
come in handy. Who knows?"

"How much is it worth?"

"Ah, Major, Percival himself could not say exactly. He gave me a
thousand pounds for it."

"A thousand pounds!" murmured Wallace.

The Major struck his hands lightly together. Whether in applause or
wonder he alone knew.

"And it was worth every shilling of it, too. I'll tell you the story
some day. There are a dozen ways of suppressing Percival, but I must
have something appealing to my artistic side."

"You have never told us your real name, Horace," Mrs. Chedsoye bent
toward him.

He laughed. "I must have something to confess to you in the future, dear
Gioconda."

"Well, the meeting adjourns, _sine die_."

"What are you going to do with Fortune?" demanded Ryanne.

"Send her back to Mentone."

"What the deuce did you bring her here for, knowing what was in the
wind?"

"She expressed a desire to see Cairo again," answered Mrs. Chedsoye.

"We never deny her anything." The Major rose and yawned suggestively.

In the corridor, Ryanne whispered softly: "Why not, Gioconda?"

"She shall never marry a man of your stamp," coldly.

"Charming mother! How tenderly you have cherished her!"

"Horace," calmly enough, "is it wise to anger me?"

"It may not be wise, but I have never seen you in a rage. You would be
magnificent."

"Cease this foolery," patiently. "I am in no mood for it to-night. As an
associate in this equivocal business, you do very well; you are
necessary. But do not presume too much upon that. For all that I may not
have been what a mother should be, I still have some self-respect. So
long as I have any power over her, Fortune shall never marry a man so
far down in the social scale as yourself."

"Social scale? Gioconda, how you hurt me!" mockingly. "I should really
like to know what your idea of that invincible barrier is. Is it because
my face is in the rogues' gallery? Surely, you would not be cruel!"

"She is far above us all, my friend," continuing unruffled. "Sometimes I
stand in absolute awe of her."

"A marvel! If my recollection is not at fault, many a man has entered
the Villa Fanny, with a view to courtship, men beside whom I am as
Roland to the lowest Saracen. You never objected to them."

"They had money and position."

"Magic talisman! And if I had money and position?"

"My objections would be no less strong."

"Your code puzzles me. You would welcome as a son-in-law a man who stole
openly the widow's mite, while I, who harass none but the predatory
rich, must dwell in the outland? Rank injustice!"

"You couldn't take care of her."

"Yes, I could. With but little effort I could make these two hands as
honest as the day is long."

"I have my doubts," smiling a little.

"Suppose, for the sake of an argument, suppose Fortune accepted me?"

Mrs. Chedsoye's good humor returned. She knew her daughter tolerably
well; the child had a horror of men. "Poor Horace! Do you build upon
that?"

"Less, perhaps, than upon my own bright invention. My suit, then, to be
brief, is rejected?"

"Emphatically. I have spoken."

"Oh, well; the feminine prerogative shall be mine, the last word. Good
night; _dormi bene_!" He bowed grandly and turned toward his own room.

He possessed that kind of mockery which was the despair of those at whom
it was directed. They never knew whether his mood was one of harmless
fun or of deadly intent. And rather than mistake the one quality for the
other, they generally pretended to ignore. Mrs. Chedsoye, who had a
similar talent, was one of the few who felt along the wall as one does
in the dark, instinctively. To-night she recognized that there was no
harmless fun but a real desperateness behind the mask; and she had held
in her temper with a firm hand. This was not the hour for a clash. She
shivered a little; and for the first time in the six or seven years she
had known him, she faced a fear of him. His great strength, his reckless
courage, his subtle way of mastering men by appearing to be mastered by
them, held her in the thrall of a peculiar fascination which, in quiet
periods, she looked upon as something deeper. Marriage was not to her an
ideal state, nor was there any man, living or dead, who had appealed to
the physical side of her. But he was in the one sex what she was in the
other; and while she herself would never have married him, she raged
inwardly at the possibility of his wanting another woman.

To her the social fabric which holds humanity together was merely a
convenience; the moral significance touched neither her heart nor her
mind. In her the primordial craving for ease, for material comforts,
pretty trinkets and gowns was strongest developed. It was as if this
sense had been handed down to her, untouched by contact with
progression, from the remote ages, that time between the fall of Roman
civilization and where modern civilization began. In short, a beautiful
barbarian, whose intellect alone had advanced.

Fortune was asleep. The mother went over to the bed and gently shook the
slim, round arm which lay upon the coverlet. The child's nature lay
revealed as she opened her eyes and smiled. It did not matter that the
smile instantly changed to a frowning inquiry. The mother spoke truly
when she said that there were times when she stood in awe of this, her
flesh and blood.

"My child, I wish to ask you a question, and for your own good answer
truthfully. Do you love Horace?"

Fortune sat up and rubbed her eyes. "No." Had her wits been less
scattered she might have paltered.

The syllable had a finality to it that reassured the mother more than a
thousand protestations would have done.

"Good night," she said.

Fortune lay down again and drew the coverlet up to her chin. With her
eyes shut she waited, but in vain. Her mother disrobed and sought her
own bed.

Ryanne was intensely dissatisfied with himself. For once his desperate
mood had carried him too far. He had made too many confessions, had
antagonized a woman who was every bit as clever and ingenious as
himself. The enterprise toward which they were moving held him simply
because it was an exploit that enticed wholly his twisted outlook upon
life. There was a forbidding humor in the whole affair, too, which he
alone saw. The possible rewards were to him of secondary consideration.
It was the fun of the thing. It was the fun of the thing that had put
him squarely upon the wide, short road to perdition, which had made him
first a spendthrift, then a thief. The fun of the thing: sinister
phrase! A thousand times had he longed to go back, for he wasn't all
bad; but door after door had shut behind him; and now the single
purpose was to get to the end of the road by the shortest route.

He did not deceive himself. His desperate mood was the result of an
infernal rage against himself, a rage against the weakness of his heart.
Fortune Chedsoye. Why had she not crossed his path at that time when he
might have been saved? And yet, would she have saved him? God alone
knew.

He heard Jones stirring in his room next door. Presently all became
still. To sleep like that! He shrugged, threw off his coat, swept the
cover from the stand, found a pack of cards, and played solitaire till
the first pallor of dawn announced the new day.

Reclining snugly against the parapet, wrapped in his tattered arbiyeh,
or cloak, his head pillowed upon his lean arm, motionless with that
pretended sleep of the watcher, Mahomed-El-Gebel kept his vigil. Miles
upon miles he had come, across three bleak, cold, blinding deserts, on
camels, in trains, on camels again, night and day, day and night, across
the soundless, yellow plains. Allah was good to the true believer. The
night was chill, but certain fires warmed his blood. All day long he
had followed the accursed, lying giaour, but never once had he wandered
into the native quarters of the city. Patience! What was a day, a week,
a year? Grains of sand. He could wait. _Inshalla!_




CHAPTER VIII

THE PURLOINED CABLE


George, having made his bargain with conscience relative to the Yhiordes
rug, slept the sleep of the untroubled, of the just, of the man who had
nothing in particular to get up for. In fact, after having drunk his
breakfast cocoa and eaten his buttered toast, he evinced his
satisfaction by turning his face away from the attracting morning light
and passing off into sleep again. And thereby hangs this tale.

So much depended upon his getting his mail as it came in that morning,
that Fate herself must have resisted sturdily the desire to shake him by
the shoulder. Perhaps she would have done so but for the serenity of his
pose and the infantile smile that lingered for a while round his lips.
Fate, as with most of us, has her sentimental lapses.

The man next door, having no conscience to speak of (indeed, he had
derailed her while passing his twentieth meridian!), was up betimes. He
had turned in at four; at six he was strolling about the deserted
lounging-room, watching the entrances. It is inconceivable how easily
mail may be purloined in a large hotel. There are as many ways as points
to the wind. Ryanne chose the simplest. He waited for the mail-bag to be
emptied upon the head-porter's counter. Nonchalantly, but deftly, while
the porter looked on, the adventurer ran through the bulk. He found
three letters and a cable, the latter having been received by George's
bankers the day before and mailed directly to the hotel. The porter had
no suspicion that a bold theft was being committed under his very eyes.
Moreover, circumstances prevented his ever learning of it. Ryanne
stuffed the spoils into a pocket.

"If any one asks for me," he said, "say that I shall be at my banker's,
the Anglo-Egyptian Bank, at ten o'clock."

"Yes, sir," replied the porter, as he began to sort the rest of the
mail, not forgetting to peruse the postals.

Ryanne went out into the street, walking rapidly into town.
Mahomed-El-Gebel shook the folds of his cloak and followed. The
adventurer did not slacken his gait till he reached Shepheard's Hotel.
Upon the steps he paused. Some English troops were marching past, on the
way to the railway station; the usual number of natives were patrolling
the sidewalks, dangling strings of imitation scarabs; a caravan of
pack-camels, laden with cotton, shuffled by haughtily; a blind beggar
sat on the curb in front, munching a piece of sugar-cane. Ryanne,
assured that no one he knew was about, proceeded into the writing-room,
wholly deserted at this early hour.

He sat down at a desk and opened the cable. It contained exactly what he
expected. It was a call for advice in regard to the rental of Mr. George
P. A. Jones's mansion in New York and the temporary disposing of the
loose valuables. Ryanne read it over a dozen times, with puckered brow,
and finally balled it fiercely in his fist. Fool! He could not, at that
moment, remember the most essential point in the game, the name and
office of the agent to whom he must this very morning send reply.
Hurriedly he fished out the letters; one chance in a thousand. He swore,
but in relief. In the corner of one of the letters he saw that for some
unknown reason the gods were still with him. Reynolds and Reynolds,
estates, Broad Street; he remembered. He wrote out a reply on a piece of
hotel paper, intending to copy it off at the cable-office. This reply
covered the ground convincingly. "Renting for two months. Old friends.
Leave things as they are. P. A." The initials were a little stroke. From
some source Ryanne had picked up the fact that Jones's business
correspondence was conducted over those two initials. He tore up the
cable into small illegible squares and dropped some into one basket and
some into another. Next, he readdressed George's mail to Leipzig;
another stroke, meaning a delay of two or three months; from the head
office of his banker's there to Paris, Paris to Naples, Naples to New
York. That Ryanne did not open these letters was in nowise due to moral
suasion; whatever they contained could be of no vital importance to him.

"Now, Horace, we shall bend the crook of our elbow in the bar-room. The
reaction warrants a stimulant."

An hour later the whole affair was nicely off his hands. The cable had
cost him three sovereigns. But what was that? _Niente_, _rien_; nothing;
a mere bagatelle. For the first time in weeks a sense of security
invaded his being.

It was by now nine o'clock; and Percival Algernon still reposed upon his
bed of ease. Let him sleep. Many days were to pass ere he would again
know the comfort of linen sheets, the luxury of down under his ear.

What to do? mused the rogue. On the morrow Mr. Jones would leave for
Port Saïd. Ryanne shook his head and with his cane beat a light tattoo
against the side of his shin. Abduction was rather out of his sphere of
action. And yet, the suppression of Percival was by all odds the most
important move to be made. He had volunteered this service and
accomplish it he must, in face of all obstacles, or poof! went the whole
droll fabric. For to him it was droll, and never it rose in his mind
that he did not chuckle saturninely. It was a kind of nightmare where
one hung in mid-air, one's toes just beyond the flaming dragon's jaws.
The rewards would be enormous, but these he would gladly surrender for
the supreme satisfaction of turning the poisoned arrow in the heart of
that canting hypocrite, that smug church-deacon, the sanctimonious, the
sleek, the well-fed first-born. And poor Percival Algernon, for no blame
of his own, must be taken by the scruff of his neck and thrust bodily
into this tangled web of scheme and under-scheme. It was infinitely
humorous.

He had had a vague plan regarding Mahomed, guardian of the Holy
Yhiordes, but it was not possible for him to be in Cairo at this early
date. That he would eventually appear Ryanne never doubted. He knew the
Oriental mind. Mahomed-El-Gebel would cross every barrier less effective
than death. It was a serious matter to the Moslem. If he returned to the
palace at Bagdad, minus the rug, it would mean free transportation to
the Arabian Gulf, bereft of the most important part of his excellent
anatomy, his head. Some day, if he lived, Ryanne intended telling the
exploit to some clever chap who wrote; it would look rather well in
print.

To turn Mahomed against Percival as being the instigator would be an
adroit bit of work; and it would rid him of both of them. Gioconda said
that she wanted no rough work. How like a woman! Here was a man's game,
a desperate one; and Gioconda, not forgetting that it was her
inspiration, wanted it handled with gloves! It was bare-hand work, and
the sooner she was made to realize this, the better. It was no time for
tuning fiddles.

Mahomed out of it, there was a certain English-Bar in the Quarter
Rosetti, a place of dubious repute. Many derelicts drifted there in
search of employment still more dubious. Dregs, scum; the bottom and the
top of the kettle; outcasts, whose hand and animus were directed against
society; black and brown and white men; not soldiers of fortune, like
Ryanne, but their camp-followers. In short, it was there (and Ryanne
still felt a dull shame of it) that Wallace, carrying the final
instructions of the enterprise, had found him, sleeping off the effects
of a shabby rout of the night before. It was there also that he had
heard of the history and the worth of the Yhiordes rug and the
possibility of its theft. He laughed. To have gone upon an adventure
like that, with nothing but the fumes of wine in his head!

For a few pieces of gold he might enroll under his shady banner three or
four shining lights who would undertake the disposal of Percival. Not
that he wished the young man any harm--no; but business was business,
and in some way or another he must be made to vanish from the sight and
presence of men for at least two months.

As for Major Callahan's unforeseen danger, the devil could look out for
that.

Ryanne consulted his watch, a cheap but trustworthy article, costing a
dollar, not to be considered as an available asset. He would give it
away later in the day; for he had decided that while he was in funds
there would be wisdom in the purchase of a fine gold _Longines_. A good
watch, as every one knows, is always as easily converted into cash as a
London bank-note, providing, of course, one is lucky enough to possess
either. Many watches had he left behind, in this place or in that; and
often he had exchanged the ticket for a small bottle with a green neck.
Wherever fortune had gone against him heavily at cards, there he might
find his latest watch. Besides getting a new time-piece, he was
strongly inclined to leave the bulk of his little fortune in the
hotel-safe. One never could tell.

And another good idea, he mused, as he swung the time-piece into his
vest-pocket, would be to add the splendor of a small white stone to his
modest scarf. There is only one well-defined precept among the sporting
fraternity: when flush, buy jewelry. Not to the cause of vanity, not at
all; but precious stones and gold watches constitute a kind of
reserve-fund against the evil day. When one has money in the pocket the
hand is quick and eager to find it. But jewelry is protected by a
certain quality of caution; it is not too readily passed over bars and
gaming-tables. While the pawnbroker stands between the passion and the
green-baize, there's food for thought.

Having settled these questions to his satisfaction, there remained but
one other, how to spend his time. It would be useless to seek the
English-Bar before noon. Might as well ramble through the native town
and the bazaars. He might pick up some little curio to give to Fortune.
So he beckoned to an idle driver, climbed into the carriage, and was
driven off as if empires hung upon minutes.

Ryanne never wearied of the bazaars in Cairo. They were to him no less
enchanting than the circus-parades of his youth. In certain ways, they
were not to be compared with those in Constantinople and Smyrna; but, on
the other hand, there was more light, more charm, more color. Perhaps
the magic nearness of the desert had something to do with it, the
rainless skies, the ever-recurring suggestions of antiquity. His lively
observation, his sense of the picturesque and the humorous, always close
to the surface, gave him that singular impetus which makes man a
prowler. This gift had made possible his success in old Bagdad. Some
years before he had prowled through the narrow city streets, had noted
the windings, the blind-alleys, and had never forgotten. Faces and
localities were written indelibly upon his memory.

One rode to the bazaars, but walked through them or mounted donkeys.
Ryanne preferred his own legs. So did Mahomed. Once, so close did he
come that he could have put his two brown hands round the infidel's
throat. But, patience. Did not the Koran teach patience among the
higher laws? Patience. He could not, madly as he had dreamed, throttle
the white liar here in the bazaars. That would not bring the Holy
Yhiordes to his hands. He must wait. He must plan to lure the man out at
night, then to hurry him into the desert. Out into the desert, where no
man might be his master. Oh, the Holy Yhiordes should be his again; it
was written.

The cries, the shouts, the tower of Babel reclaimed; the intermingling
of the races of the world: the Englishman, the American, the German, the
Italian, the Frenchman, the Greek, the Levantine, the purple-black
Ethiopian, the bronze Nubian; the veiled women, the naked children; all
the color-tones known to art, but predominating, that marvelous faded
tint of blue, the Cairene blue, in the heavens, in the waters, in the
dyes.

"Make way, O my mother!" bawled a donkey-boy to the old crone peddling
matches.

"Backsheesh! Backsheesh!" in the eight tones of the human voice. From
the beggar, his brother, his uncle, his grandfather, his children and
his children's children. "Backsheesh, backsheesh!"

"To the right!" was shrilled into Ryanne's ear; and he dodged. A troop
of donkeys passed, laden with tourists, unhappy, fretful,
self-conscious. A water-carrier brushed against him, and he whiffed the
fresh dampness of the bulging goat-skin. A woman, the long, black
head-veil streaming out behind in the clutch of the monkey-like hand of
a toddling child, carried a terra-cotta water-jar upon her head. The
grace with which she moved, the abruptness of the color-changes, caught
Ryanne's roving eye and filled it with pleasure.

Dust rose and subsided, eddied and settled; beggars blind and one-eyed
squatted in it, children tossed it in play, and beasts of burden
shuffled through it.

The roar in front of the shops, the pressing and crowding of customers,
the high cries of the merchants; the gurgle of the water-pipes, the
pleasant fumes of coffee, the hardy loafers lolling before the khans or
caravansaries; a veiled face at a lattice-window; the violet shadows in
a doorway; the sunshine upon the soaring mosques; a true believer,
rocking and mumbling over his tattered Koran; gold and silver and
jewels; amber and copper and brass; embroideries and rugs and carpets;
and the pest of fleas, the plague of flies, the insidious smells.

Rarely one saw the true son of the desert, the Bedouin. He disdained
streets and walls, and only necessity brought him here among the
polyglot and the polygon.

Ryanne found himself inspecting "the largest emerald in the world, worth
twelve thousand pounds," which looked more like a fine hexagonal of onyx
than a gem. It was one of the curiosities of the bazaars, however, and
tourists were generally round it in force. To his experienced eye it was
no more than a fine specimen of emerald quartz, worth what any fool of a
collector was willing to pay for it. From this bazaar he passed on into
the next, and there he saw Fortune.

And as Mahomed, always close at hand, saw the hard lines in Ryanne's
face soften, the cynical smile become tender, he believed he saw his way
to strike.




CHAPTER IX

THE BITTER FRUIT


Fortune had a hearty contempt for persons who ate their breakfast in
bed. For her the glory of the day was the fresh fairness of the morning,
when every one's step was buoyant, and all life stirred energetically.
There was cheer and hope everywhere; men faced their labors with clear
eye and feared nothing; women sang at their work. It was only at the
close of day that despair and defeat stalked the highways. So she was up
with the sun, whether in her own garden or in these odd and mystical
cities. Thus she saw the native as he was, not as he later in the day
pretended to be, for the benefit of the Feringhi about to be stretched
upon the sacrificial stone. She saw, with gladness, the honey-bee
thirling the rose, the plowman's share baring the soil: the morning,
the morning, the two or three hours that were all, all her own. Her
mother was always irritable and petulant in the morning, and her uncle
never developed the gift of speech till after luncheon.

She had the same love of prowling that lured Ryanne from the beaten
paths. She was not inquisitive but curious, and that ready disarming
smile of hers opened many a portal.

She was balancing upon her gloved palm, thoughtfully, a Soudanese
head-trinket, a pendant of twisted gold-wires, flawed emeralds and
second pearls, really exquisite and not generally to be found outside
the expensive shops in the European quarters, and there infrequently.
The merchant wanted twenty pounds for it. Fortune shook her head,
regretfully. It was far beyond her means. She sighed. Only once in a
great while she saw something for which her whole heart cried out. This
pendant was one of these.

"I will give you five pounds for it. That is all I have with me."

"Salaam, madame," said the jeweler, reaching for the pendant.

"If you will send it to the Hotel Semiramis this afternoon...." But she
faltered at the sight of the merchant's incredulous smile.

"I'll give you ten for it; not a piastre more. I can get one like it in
the Shâriâ Kâmel for that amount."

Both Fortune and the merchant turned.

"You, Horace?"

"Yes, my child. And what are you doing here alone, without a dragoman?"

"Oh, I have been through here alone many times. I'm not afraid. Isn't it
beautiful? He wants twenty pounds for it, and I can not afford that."

She had not seen him in many weeks, yet she accepted his sudden
appearance without question or surprise. She was used to his turning up
at unexpected moments. Of course, she had known that he was in Cairo:
where her mother and uncle were this secretive man was generally within
calling. There had been a time when she had eagerly plied him with
questions, but he had always erected barriers of evasion, and finally
she ceased her importunities, for she concluded that her questions were
such. No matter to whom she turned, there was no one to answer her
questions, questions born of doubt and fear.

"Ten pounds," repeated Ryanne, a hand in his pocket.

[Illustration]

The merchant laughed. Here were a young man and his sweetheart. His
experience had taught him, and not unwisely, that love is an easy
victim, too proud to haggle, too generous to bargain sharply. "Twenty,"
he reiterated.

"Salaam!" said Ryanne. "Good day!" He drew the somewhat resisting hand
of Fortune under his arm and made for the door. "Sh!" he whispered.
"Leave it to me." They gained the street.

The merchant was dazed. He had misjudged what he now recognized as an
old hand. The two were turning up another street when he ran out,
shouting to them and waving the pendant. Ryanne laughed.

"Ten pounds. I am a poor man, effendi, and I need the money. Ten pounds.
I am giving it away." The merchant's eyes filled with tears, a trick
left to him from out the ruins of his youth, that ready service to
forestall the merited rod.

Ryanne counted out ten sovereigns and put the pendant in Fortune's
hand. And the pleasure in his heart was such as he had not known in many
days. The merchant wisely hurried back to his shop.

"But...." she began protestingly.

"Tut, tut! I have known you since you wore short dresses and
tam-o'-shanters."

"I really can not accept it as a gift. Let me borrow the ten pounds."

"And why can't you accept this little gift from me?"

She had no ready answer. She gazed steadily at the dull pearls and the
flaky emeralds. She could not ask him where he had got those sovereigns.
She could not possibly be so cruel. She could not dissemble in words
like her mother. That gold she knew to be a part of a dishonest bargain
whose forestep had been a theft--more, a sacrilege. Her honesty was like
pure gold, unalloyed, unmixed with sophistic subterfuges. That the young
man who had purchased the rug might be mildly peccable had not yet
occurred to her.

"Why not, Fortune?" Ryanne was very earnest, and there was a pinch at
his heart.

"Because...."

"Don't you like me, just a little?"

"Why, I do like you, Horace. But I do not like any man well enough to
accept expensive gifts from him. I do not wish to hurt you, but it is
impossible. The only concession I'll make is to borrow the money."

"Well, then, let it go at that." He was too wise to press her.

"And can you afford to throw away ten pounds?" with assumed lightness.
"My one permanent impression of you is the young man who was always
forced to borrow car-fare whenever he returned from Monte Carlo."

"A fool and his money. But I'm a rich man now," he volunteered. And
briefly he sketched the exploit of the Yhiordes rug.

"It was very brave of you. But has it ever occurred to you that it
wasn't honest?"

"Honest?" frankly astonished that she should question the ethics. "Oh, I
say, Fortune; you don't call it dishonest to get the best of a pagan!
Aren't they always getting the best of us?"

"If you had bargained with him and beaten him down, it would have been
different. But, Horace, you stole it; you admit that you did."

"I took my life in my hands. I think that evened up things."

"No. And you sold it to Mr. Jones?"

"Yes, and Mr. Jones was only too glad to buy it. I told him the facts.
He wasn't particularly eager to bring up the ethics of the case. Why,
child, what the deuce is a Turk? I shouldn't cry out if some one stole
my Bible."

"Good gracious! do you carry one?"

"Well, there's always one on the room-stand in the hotels I patronize."

"I suppose it all depends upon how we look at things."

"That's it. A different pair of spectacles for every pair of eyes."

If only he weren't in love with her! thought the girl. He would then be
an amusing comrade. But whenever he met her he quietly pressed his suit.
He had never spoken openly of love, for which she was grateful, but his
attentions, his little kindnesses, his unobtrusive protection when those
other men were at the villa, made the reading between the lines no
difficult matter.

"What shall you do if this Mahomed you speak of comes?"

"Turn him loose upon our friend Jones," with a laugh.

"And what will he do to him?"

"Carry him off to Bagdad and chop off his head," Ryanne jested.

"Tell me, is there any possibility of Mr. Jones coming to harm?"

"Can't say." Her concern for Percival annoyed him.

"Is it fair, when he paid you generously?"

He did not look into the grave eyes. They were the only pair that ever
disconcerted him. "My dear Fortune, it's a question which is the more
valuable to me, my skin or Percival's."

"It isn't fair."

"From my point of view it's fair enough. I warned him; I told him the
necessary facts, the eventual dangers. He accepted them all with the
Yhiordes. I see nothing unfair in the deal, since I risked my own life
in the first place."

"And why must you do these desperate things?"

"Oh, I love excitement. My one idea in life is to avoid the humdrum."

"Is it necessary to risk your life for these excitements? Is your life
nothing more to you than something to experiment with?"

"Truth, sometimes I don't know, Fortune. Sometimes I don't care. When
one has gambled for big stakes, it is hard to play again for penny
points."

"A strong, healthy man like you ought not to court death."

"I do not seek it. My only temptation is to see how near I can get to
the Man in the Shroud, as some poet calls it, without being touched.
I'll make you my confessor. You see, it is like this. A number of
wearied men recently formed a company whereby monotony became an
obsolete word in our vocabulary. You must not think I'm jesting; I'm
serious enough. This company ferrets out adventures and romances and
sells them to men of spirit. I became a member, and the trip to Bagdad
is the result. One never has to share with the company. The rewards are
all yours. All one has to do is to pay a lump sum down for the adventure
furnished. You work out the end yourself, unhindered and unassisted."

"Are you really serious?"

"Never more so. Now, Percival Algernon has always been wanting an
adventure, but the practical side of him has made him hold aloof. I told
him about this concern, and he refuses to believe in it. So I am going
to undertake to prove it to him. This is confidential. You will say
nothing, I know."

"He will come to no harm physically?"

"Lord, no! It will be mild and innocuous. Of course, if any one told him
that an adventure was toward for his especial benefit, it would spoil
all. I can rely upon your silence?"

She was silent. He witnessed her indecision with distrust. Perhaps he
had said too much.

"Won't you promise? Haven't I always been kind to you, Fortune, times
when you most needed kindness?"

"I promise to say nothing. But if any harm comes to that young man,
either in jest or in earnest, I will never speak to you again."

"I see that, after getting Percival Algernon into an adventure, I've got
to cicerone him safely out of it. Well, I accept the responsibility."
Some days later he was going to recall this assurance.

"Sometimes I wonder...." pensively.

"Wonder about what?"

"What manner of man you are."

"I should have been a great deal better man had I met you ten years
ago."

"What? When I was eleven?" with a levity intended to steer him away from
this channel.

"You know what I mean," he answered, moody and dejected.

She opened her purse and dropped the pendant into it, but did not speak.

"Ten years ago," abstractedly. "What a lot of things may happen in ten
years! Deaths, births, marriages," he went on; "the snuffing out of
kingdoms and republics; wars, panics, famine; honor to some and dishonor
to others. It kind of makes a fellow grind his teeth, little girl; it
kind of makes him shut his fists and long to run amuck."

"Why should a strong, intelligent man, such as you are, think like that?
You are resourceful and unafraid. Why should you talk like that? You are
young, too. Why?"

He stopped and looked full into her eyes. "Do you really wish to know?"

"Had I better?" with a wisdom beyond her years.

"No, you had better not. I'm not a good man, Fortune, as criterions go.
I've slipped here and there; I've gambled and drunk and squandered my
time. Why, in my youth I was as model a boy as ever was Percival. Where
the divarication took place I can't say. There's always two forks in the
road, Fortune, and many of us take the wrong one. It's easier going.
Fine excuse; eh? Some persons would call me a scoundrel, a black-leg; in
some ways, yes. But in the days to come I want you always to remember
the two untarnished spots upon my shield of honor: I have never cheated
a man at cards nor run away with his wife. The devil must give me these
merits, however painful it may be to him. Ten years ago, only a decade;
good Lord! it's like a hundred years ago, sometimes."

Fortune breathed with difficulty. Never before had he taken her into his
confidence to such extent. She essayed to speak; the old terror seemed
fairly to smother her. It was not what he had told her, but what she
wished to but dared not ask. She was like Bluebeard's wife, only she had
not the moral courage to open the door of the grisly closet.... Her
mother, her uncle; what of them, ah, what of them? The crooked street
vanished; the roar dwindled away; she was alone, all, all alone.

"I suppose I ought not to have told you," he said troubled at the misery
he saw gathered in her eyes and vaguely conscious of what had written it
there. "Your mother and uncle have been very kind to me. They know less
of me than you do. I have been to them a kind of errand-boy; a
happy-go-lucky fellow, who cheered them when they had the doldrums."
With forced cheerfulness he again took her hand and snuggled it under
his arm, giving it a friendly, reassuring pat. "I'll not speak to you of
love, child, but a hair of your head is more precious to me than all
Midas' gold. Whenever I've thought of you, I've tried to be good.
Honestly."

"And can't you go back to the beginning and start anew?" tremulously.

"Can any one go back? The moving finger writes. An hour is a terrible
thing when you look to see what can happen in it. But, come; sermons!
I'd far rather see you smile. Won't you?"

She tried to, but to him it was sadder than her tears would have been.

For an hour they walked through the dim and musty streets. He exerted
himself to amuse her and fairly succeeded. But never did the
unaccountable fear, that presage of misfortune, sleep in her heart. And
at last, when he took her to her carriage and bade her good-by till
dinner, a half-formed idea began to grow in her brain: to save Mr. Jones
without betraying Ryanne.

The latter's carriage was at the other end of the bazaars; so he strode
sullenly through the press, rudely elbowing those who got in his way. An
occasional curse was flung after him; but his height, his breadth of
shoulder, his lowering face, precluded anything more active. The Moslems
had a deal of faith in the efficacy of curses; so the jostled ones
rested upon the promise of these, satisfied that directly, or in the
near future, Allah would blast the unbelieving dog in his tracks.

What cleverness the mother and scallawag of an uncle had shown to have
kept the child in ignorance all these years! That she saw darkly, as
through a fog, he was perfectly sure. Sooner or later the storm would
burst upon her innocent head, and then God alone knew what would become
of her. Oh, damn the selfish, sordid world! At that instant a great
longing rolled over him to cut loose from all these evil webs, to begin
anew somewhere, even if that somewhere were but a wilderness, a clearing
in a forest.

This moment flashed and was gone. Next, he reviewed with chagrin and
irritation the folly of his ultimatum of the preceding night. He had had
not the slightest semblance of a plan in his head. Sifted down, he saw
only his savage and senseless humor and the desire to stir up discord.
Gioconda was right. Fortune was above them all, in feeling, in instinct,
in loyalty. What right had he, roisterer by night that he was,
predaceous outlaw, what right had he to look upon Fortune as his own?
Harm her! He would have lopped off his right hand first.

Well, he had but little time, and Percival Algernon called for prompt
action. The young fool was smitten with Fortune. Any one could see that.
As he shouldered his pathway to the carriage, his eyes seeing but not
visualizing objects, three brown men glided in between him and the
carriage-step.




CHAPTER X

MAHOMED LAUGHS


The drawing back of Ryanne's powerful arm was produced by the stimulus
of self-preservation; but almost instantly thought dominated impulse,
and all indications of belligerency disappeared. The arm sank, relaxed.
It was not possible nor politic that Mahomed-El-Gebel meant to take
reprisal in this congested quarter. It would have gained him no
advantage whatever. And Ryanne's perception of the exact situation
enabled him to smile with the cool effrontery of a man inured to sudden
dangers.

"Well, well! So you have found your way to Cairo, Mahomed?"

"Yes, effendi," returned Mahomed, with a smile that answered Ryanne's in
thought and expression, the only perceivable difference being in the
accentuated whiteness of his fine teeth. "Yes, I have found you."

"And you have been looking for me?"

"Surely."

Ryanne, with an airy gesture, signified that he wished to enter his
carriage. Mahomed, with a movement equally light, implied his
determination to stand his ground.

"In a moment, effendi," he said smoothly.

Mahomed spoke English more or less fluently. His career of forty-odd
years had been most colorful. Once a young sheik of the desert, of ample
following, a series of tribal wars left him unattached, a wanderer
without tent, village, or onion-patch. He had first appeared in Cairo.
Here he had of necessity picked up a few words of English; and from a
laborer in the cotton fields he was eventually graduated to the envied
position of dragoman or guide. He tired of this, being nomadic by
instinct and inclination. He tried his hand at rugs in Smyrna, failed,
and found himself stranded in Constantinople. He drifted, became a
stevedore, a hotel porter, burying his pride till that moment when he
could, in dignity and security, resurrect it. Fortune, hanging fire,
relented upon his appointment as _cavass_ or messenger to the British
Consulate. After a time, he became what he considered prosperous; and
like all fanatic pagans of his faith, proposed to reconstruct his
religious life by a pilgrimage to Holy Mecca. While there, he had
performed a considerable service in behalf of the future Pasha of
Bagdad, who thereafter gave him a place in his retinue.

Mahomed was not only proud but wise; and a series of events, sequences
of his own shrewdness, pushed him forward till he became in deed, if not
in fact, the Pasha's right-hand man in Bagdad. That quaint city, removed
as it is from the ordinary highways of the Orient, is still to most of
us an echo remote and mysterious; and the present Pasha enjoys great
privileges, over property, over life and death; and it is not enlarging
upon fact to say that when he deems it necessary to lop off a head, he
does so, without consulting his master in Constantinople. It is all in
the business of a day. Next to his celebrated pearls and rose-diamonds,
the Pasha held as his most precious treasure, the Holy Yhiordes. And for
its loss Mahomed knew that his own head rested but insecurely upon his
lean neck. That his star was still in ascendancy he believed. The Pasha
would not be in Bagdad for many weeks. The revolution in Constantinople,
the success of the Young Turk party, made the Pasha's future incumbency
a matter of conjecture. While he pulled those wires familiar to the
politician, Mahomed set out bravely to recover the stolen rug. He was
prepared to proceed to any length to regain it, even to the horrible (to
his Oriental mind) necessity of buying it. He retained his travel-worn
garments circumspectly, for none would believe that his burnouse was
well lined with English bank-notes.

"Well?" said Ryanne, whirling his cane. He was by no means at ease.
There was going to be trouble somewhere along the road.

"I have come for the Yhiordes, effendi."

"The rug? That's too bad. I haven't it."

"Who has?" One fear beset Mahomed's heart: this dog, whom he called
effendi, might have sold it, since that must have been the ultimate
purpose of the theft. And if he had sold it to one who had left
Egypt.... Mahomed's neck grew cold. "Who has it, effendi? Is the man
still in Cairo?"

"Yes. If you and your two friends will come with me to the English-Bar,
I'll explain many things to you," assured Ryanne, beginning, as he
believed, to see his way forward. "Don't be afraid. I'm not setting any
trap for you. I'll tell you truthfully that I didn't expect to see you
so soon. If you'll come along I'll do the best I can to straighten out
the matter. What do you say?"

Mahomed eyed him with keen distrust. This white man was as strong in
cunning as he was in flesh. He had had practical demonstrations. Still,
whatever road led to the recovery of the rug must needs be traveled. His
arm, though it still reposed in a sling, was not totally helpless. It
stood three to one, then. He spoke briefly to his companions, over whom
he seemed to have some authority. These two inventoried the smooth-faced
Feringhi. One replied. Mahomed approved. Three to one, and in these
streets many to call upon, in case of open hostilities. The English-Bar
Mahomed knew tolerably well. He had known it in the lawless and reveling
eighties. It would certainly be neutral ground, since the proprietor was
a Greek. With a dignified sweep of his hand, he signed for Ryanne to
get into the carriage. Ryanne did so, relieved. He was certain that he
could bring Mahomed round to a reasonable view of the affair. He was
even willing to give him a little money. The three Arabs climbed in
beside him, and the journey to the hostelry was made without talk.
Ryanne pretended to be vastly interested in the turmoil through which
the carriage rolled, now swiftly, now hesitant, now at a standstill, and
again tortuously. Once Mahomed felt beneath his burnouse for his money;
and once Ryanne, in the pretense of seeking a cigar, felt for his. They
were rather upon even terms in the adjudication of each other's
character.

The English-Bar was not the most inviting place. Sober, Ryanne had never
darkened its doors. The odor of garlic prevailed over the lesser smells
of bad cooking. It was lighted only from the street, by two windows and
a door that swung open all the days in the year. The windows were
generally half obscured by bills announcing boxing-matches,
wrestling-bouts and the lithographs of cheap theaters. The walls were
decorated in a manner to please the inherent Anglo-Saxon taste for
strong men, fast horses, and pink-tighted Venuses. A few iron-topped
tables littered both room and sidewalk, and here were men of a dozen
nationalities, sipping coffee, drinking beer, or solemnly watching the
water-bubbles in their _sheeshas_, or pipes.

A curious phase of this class of under-world is that no one is curious.
Strangers are never questioned except when they invite attention, which
they seldom do. So, when Ryanne and his quasi-companions entered, there
wasn't the slightest agitation. A blowsy barmaid stood behind the bar,
polishing the copper spigots. Ryanne threw her a greeting, to which she
responded with a smirk that once upon a time had been a smile. He, being
master of ceremonies, selected a table in the corner. The four sat down,
and Ryanne plunged intrepidly into the business under hand. To make a
tool of Mahomed, if not an ally, toward this he directed his effort.
Half a dozen times, Mahomed dropped a word in Arabic to the other two,
who understood little or no English.

"So, you see, Mahomed, that's the way the matter stands. I'm not so much
to blame as you think. Here this man Jones has me in a vise. If I do not
get this bit of carpet, off I go, into the dark, into nothing, beaten.
I handled you roughly, I know. But could I help it? It was my throat or
yours. You're no chicken. You and that other chap made things exciting."

Mahomed accepted this compliment to his prowess in silence. Indeed, he
gazed dreamily over Ryanne's head. The other fellow wouldn't trouble any
one again. To Mahomed it had not been the battle, man to man; it had
been the guile and trickery leading up to it. He had been bested at his
own game, duplicity, and that irked him. Death, he, as his kind, looked
upon with Oriental passivity. Ah, well! The game was to have a second
inning, and he proposed to play it in strictly Oriental ways.

"How much did he give you for it?"

The expression upon Ryanne's face would have deceived any one but
Mahomed. "Give for it!" indignantly. "Why, that's the whole trouble. All
my trouble, all the hard work, and not a piaster, not a piaster! Can't
you understand, I _had_ to do it?"

"Is he going to sell it?"

"Sell it? Not he! He's a collector, and crazy over the thing."

Mahomed nodded. He knew something of the habits of collectors. "Is he
still in Cairo, and where may he be found?"

Ryanne began to believe that the game was going along famously; Mahomed
was sure of it.

"He is George P. A. Jones, of Mortimer & Jones, rich rug dealers of New
York. Money no object."

Though his face did not show it, Mahomed was singularly depressed by
this news. If this man Jones had money, of what use was his little
packet of notes?

"I must have that rug, effendi. There are two reasons why: it is holy,
and the loss of it means my head."

"Good riddance!" thought Ryanne, a sympathetic look upon his face.

"What have you to suggest in the way of a plan?" asked Mahomed.

Ryanne felt a tingle of jubilation. He saw nothing but plain-sailing
into port. But Mahomed had arranged to guide his craft into the
whirlpool. Unto himself he kept up a ceaseless reiteration
of--"Patience, patience, patience!"

Said Ryanne: "You do not care how you get the rug, so long as you do get
it?"

"No, effendi." Mahomed smiled.

"A little rough work wouldn't disturb you?"

"No, it would not."

"Well, then, listen to me. Suppose you arrange to take my friend Jones
into the desert for a little trip. Be his dragoman for a while. In fact,
kidnap him, abduct him, steal him. You can hold him in ransom for the
rug and a nice little sum of money besides."

"Can they do such things these days in Cairo?"

"Why not?"

"Truly, why not?" Mahomed sat thoughtfully studying the outrageous
prints on the cracked walls. Had he dared he would have laughed. And he
had thought this dog cunning beyond all his kind! "I agree. But the
arrangements I must leave to you. Bring him here at nine o'clock
to-night," he continued, leaning across the table impressively, "and I
will give you one hundred pounds English."

Ryanne quickly assumed the expression needed to meet such splendid news.
"I say, Mahomed, that is pretty square, after what has passed between
us."

"It is nothing," gallantly.

If Ryanne laughed in his sleeve, Mahomed certainly found ample room in
his for such silent and figurative cachinnations. He knew very well that
Ryanne had received a goodly sum for his adventure. No man took his life
in his hand to cancel an obligation which was not based upon
disinterested friendship; and already the man had disavowed any such
quality. Also, he had not been a seller of rugs himself, or guardian of
the Yhiordes all these years, without having had some contact with
collectors. Why, if there was one person dear at this moment to
Mahomed-El-Gebel's heart, it was this man sitting opposite. And he
wanted him far more eagerly than the rug; only, the rug must be
regained, for its loss was a passport into paradise; and he wasn't quite
prepared to be received by the houris.

"Mr. Jones, then, shall be here promptly at nine," declared Ryanne,
beckoning the barmaid. "What will you have?"

Mahomed shook his head. His two companions, gathering the significance
of the gesture, likewise declined.

"A smoke, then?"

A smiling negative.

"Beware of the Greek bearing gifts," laughed Ryanne. "All right. You
won't mind if I have a beer to the success of the venture?"

"No, effendi."

Ryanne drank the lukewarm beverage, while Mahomed toyed with his
turquoise ring, that sacred badge of an honorable pilgrimage to Holy
Mecca.

"The young lady, effendi; she was very pretty. Your sister?" casually
inquired Mahomed.

"Oh, no. She is a young lady I met at the hotel the other day."

The liar! thought the Moslem, as he recalled the light in Ryanne's eyes
and the tenderness of his smiles. Apparently, however, Mahomed lost
interest directly. "At nine o'clock to-night, then, this collector will
arrive to become my guest?"

"By hook or crook," was the answer. "I'll have him here. Cash upon
delivery, as they say."

"Cash upon delivery," Mahomed repeated, the phrase being familiar to his
tongue.

"Frankly, I want this man out of the way for a while."

"Ah!"

"Yes. I want a little revenge for the way he has treated me."

"So it is revenge?" softly. Traitorous to both sides.

"And when I get him here?"

"Leave the rest to me."

"Good. I'm off, then. Take him to Bagdad. It will be an experience for
him. But when you get him there, keep an eye out for the Shah Abbas in
the Pasha's work-room."

The affair had gone so smoothly that Ryanne's usual keenness fell below
the mark; fatuity was the word. There had been so many twists to the
morning that his abiding distrust of every one became, for the time
being, edgeless. The trick of purloining the cable had keyed him high;
the subsequent meeting of Fortune had depressed him. And besides, he was
too anxious to be rid of Jones to consider the possibilities of
Mahomed's state of mind.

He got up, paid his score, turned a jest for the amusement of the
barmaid, and went out to his carriage. His deduction still fallow, he
rode away. Lord! how easy it had been. Not a hitch anywhere. And here,
for days, he had imagined all sorts of things, and his dreams, a jumble
of dungeons, of tortures. He understood. The old rascal's own head hung
in the balance. That's what saved him. To Mahomed the rug was the
paramount feature; revenge (and he knew that Mahomed was longing madly,
fiercely for it) must wait. And when Mahomed turned his attention to
this phase, why, he, Ryanne, would be at the other side of the Atlantic.
It was very hard not to drop off at Shepheard's and confide the whole
droll conspiracy to a bottle with a green and gilded neck. But, no; he
had had no sleep the night before; wine and want of rest would leave him
witless when the time came to see that Percival was safely stowed away.
A fine joke, a monstrous fine joke! By-by, Percival, old chap; pleasant
journey. The United Romance and Adventure Company gives you this little
romance upon approval. If you do not like it, return it ... if you can!

Mahomed sat perfectly still in his chair. His two companions watched him
carefully. The mask had fallen, and their master's face was not pleasant
to see. Suddenly he laughed. The barmaid stopped at her work. She had
somewhere heard laughter like that. It gave her a shiver. Where had she
heard it? Yes, that was it. A man who had played the devil in an opera
called _Fawst_ or something like that. Would she ever see dear old foggy
London again? With a vain sigh she went on rinsing the glasses and
coffee-cups.

       *       *       *       *       *

When George rolled out of bed it was eleven. He bathed and dressed,
absolutely content, regretless of the morning hours he had wasted. Truth
to tell, he hadn't enjoyed sleep so thoroughly in weeks. He set to work,
ridding the room of its clutter of books and clothes and what-nots.
Might as well get the bulk of his packing out of the way while he
thought of it.

Why had he been in such a dreadful hurry to pull out? Cairo was just now
the most delightful place he knew of. To leave behind the blue skies and
warm sunshine, and to face instead the biting winds and northern snows,
rather dispirited him. He paused, a pair of trousers dangling from his
hand. Pshaw! Why not admit it frankly and honestly? Wherever Fortune
Chedsoye was or might be, there was the delectable country. He hadn't
thought to ask her when she was to leave, nor whither she was to go. The
abruptness with which she had left him the night before puzzled rather
than disturbed him. Oh, well; this old planet was neither so deep nor so
round as it had once been. What with steamships and railroads, the
so-called four ends were drawn closely together. He would ask her
casually, as if it did not particularly matter. In Naples it would be an
easy matter to change his booking to New York. From Naples to Mentone
was only a question of a few hours.

"It doesn't seem possible, George, old boy, does it? But it's true; and
there's no use trying to fool yourself that it isn't. Fortune Chedsoye;
it will be a shame to add Jones to it; but I'm going to try."

He pressed down the last book, the last collar, the last pair of shoes,
and sat upon the lid of the trunk. He growled a little. The lock was
always bothering him. It was wonderful how many things a chap could take
out of a trunk and how plagued few he could put back. It did not seem to
relieve the pressure if he added a steamer-trunk here or a suit-case
there; there was always just so much there wasn't any room for. Truly,
it needed a woman's hand to pack a trunk. However his mother in the old
school-days had got all his belongings into one trunk was still an
unsolved mystery.

Stubborn as the lock was, perseverance overcame it. George then, as a
slight diversion, spread the ancient Yhiordes over the trunk and stared
at it in pleasurable contemplation. What a beauty it was! What exquisite
blue, what soft reds, what minute patterns! And this treasure was his.
He leaned down upon it with his two hands. A color stole into his
cheeks. It had its source in an old confusion: school-boys jeering a
mate seen walking home from school with a girl. It was all rot, he
perfectly knew, this wishing business; and yet he flung into the
sun-warmed, sun-gilded space an ardent wish, sent it speeding round the
world from east to west. Fast as heat, fast as light it traveled, for no
sooner had it sprung from his mind than it entered the window of a room
across the corridor. Whether the window was open or shut was of no
importance whatever. Such wishes penetrated and went through all
obstacles. And this one touched Fortune's eyes, her hair, her lips; it
caressed her in a thousand happy ways. But, alas! such wishes are
without temporal power.

Fortune never knew. She sat in a chair, her fingers locked tensely, her
eyes large and set in gaze, her lips compressed, her whole attitude one
of impotent despair.

George did not see her at lunch, and consequently did not enjoy the
hour. Was she ill? Had she gone away? Would she return before he
started? He greeted the Major as one greets a long-lost friend; and by
gradations George considered clever indeed, brought the conversation
down to Fortune. No, the Major did not know where she was. She had gone
early to the bazaars. Doubtless she was lunching alone somewhere. She
had the trick of losing herself at times. Mrs. Chedsoye was visiting
friends at Shepheard's. When did Mr. Jones leave for America? What! on
the morrow? The Major shook his head regretfully. There was no place
like Cairo for Christmas.

George called a carriage, drove about the principal streets and shopping
districts, and used his eyes diligently; but it was love's labor lost.
Not even when he returned at tea-time did he see her. Why hadn't he
known and got up? He could have shown her the bazaars; and there wasn't
a dragoman in Cairo more familiar with them than he. A wasted day,
totally wasted. He hung about the lounging-room till it was time to go
up and dress for dinner. To-night (as if the gods had turned George's
future affairs over to the care of Momus) he dressed as if he were going
to the opera: swallow-tail, white vest, high collar and white-lawn
cravat, opera-Fedora, and thin-soled pumps; all those habiliments and
demi-habiliments supposed to make the man. When he reached what he
thought to be the glass of fashion and the mold of form, he turned for
the first time toward his trunk. He did not rub his eyes; it wasn't at
all necessary; one thing he saw, or rather did not see, was established
beyond a doubt, as plainly definite as two and two are four. The ancient
Yhiordes had taken upon itself one of the potentialities of its fabulous
prototype, that of invisibility: it was gone.




CHAPTER XI

EPISODIC


Fortune had immediately returned from the bazaars. And a kind of torpor
blanketed her mind, usually so fertile and active. For a time the
process of the evolution of thought was denied her; she tried to think,
but there was an appalling lack of continuity, of broken threads. It was
like one of those circumferential railways: she traveled, but did not
get anywhere. Ryanne had told her too much for his own sake, but too
little for hers. She sat back in the carriage, inert and listless, and
indeterminedly likened her condition to driftwood in the ebb and flow of
beach-waves. The color and commotion of the streets were no longer
absorbed; it was as if she were riding through emptiness, through the
unreality of a dream. She was oppressed and stifled, too; harbinger of
storms.

Mechanically she dismissed the carriage at the hotel, mechanically she
went to her room, and in this semiconscious mood sat down in a chair,
and there George's wish found her, futilely. Oh, there was one thing
clear, clear as the sky outside. All was not right; something was wrong;
and this wrong upon one side concerned her mother, her uncle and Ryanne,
and upon the other side, Mr. Jones. Think and think as she might, her
endeavors gave her no single illumination. Four blind walls surrounded
her. The United Romance and Adventure Company--there could not possibly
be such a thing in existence; it was a jest of Ryanne's to cover up
something far more serious.

She pressed her eyes with a hand. They ached dully, the dull pain of
bewilderment, which these days recurred with frequency. A sense of time
was lacking; for luncheon hour came and passed without her being
definitely aware of it. This in itself was a puzzle. A jaunt, such as
she had taken that morning, always keened the edge of her appetite; and
yet, there was no craving whatever.

Where was her mother? If she would only come now, the cumulative doubts
of all these months should be put into speech. They had treated her as
one would treat a child; it was neither just nor reasonable. If not as a
child, but as one they dared not trust, then they were afraid of her.
But why? She pressed her hands together, impotently. Ryanne, clever as
he was, had made a slip or two which he had sought to cover up with a
jest. Why should he confess himself to be a rogue unless his tongue had
got the better of his discretion? If he was a rogue, why should her
mother and her uncle make use of him, if not for roguery's sake? They
were fools, fools! If they had but seen and understood her as she was,
she would have gone to the bitter end with them, loyally, with sealed
lips. But no; they had chosen not to see; and in this had morally
betrayed her. Ah, it rankled, and the injustice of it grew from pain to
fury. At that moment, had she known anything, she certainly would have
denounced them. Of what use was loyalty, since none of them sought it in
her?

The Major was wiser than he knew when he spoke of the hundredth danger,
the danger unforeseen, the danger against which they could make no
preparation. And he would have been first to sense the irony of it
could he have seen where this danger lay.

Why should they wish the pleasant young man out of the way? Why should
Ryanne wish to inveigle him into the hands of this man Mahomed? Was it
merely self-preservation, or something deeper, more sinister? Think! Why
couldn't she think of something? It was only a little pleasure trip to
Cairo, they had told her, and when she had asked to go along, they
seemed willing enough. But they had come to this hotel, when formerly
they had always put up at Shepheard's. And here again the question, why?
Was it because Mr. Jones was staying here? She liked him, what little
she had seen of him. He was out of an altogether different world than
that to which she was accustomed. He was neither insanely mad over cards
nor a social idler. He was a young man with a real interest in life, a
worker, notwithstanding that he was reputed to be independently rich.
And her mother had once borrowed money of him, never intending to pay it
back. The shame of it! And why should she approach him the very first
day and recall the incident, if not with the ulterior purpose of using
him further? As a ball strikes a wall only to rebound to the thrower,
so it was with all these questions. There was never any answer.

Tired out, mentally and physically, she laid her head upon the cool top
of the stand. And in this position her mother, who had returned to dress
for tea, found her. Believing Fortune to be asleep, Mrs. Chedsoye
dropped a hand upon her shoulder.

Fortune raised her head.

"Why, child, what is the matter?" the mother asked. The face she saw was
not tear-stained; it was as cold and passionless as that by which
sculptors represent their interpretations of Justice.

"Matter?" Fortune spoke, in a tone that did not reassure the other. "In
the first place I have only one real question to ask. It depends upon
how you answer it. Am I really your daughter?"

"Really my daughter?" Mrs. Chedsoye stepped back, genuinely astonished.
"Really my daughter? The child is mad!" as if addressing an imaginary
third person. "What makes you ask such a silly question?" She was in a
hurry to change her dress, but the new attitude of this child of hers
warranted some patience.

"That is no answer," said Fortune, with the unmoved deliberation of a
prosecuting attorney.

"Certainly you are my daughter."

"Good. If you had denied it, I should have held my peace; but since you
admit that I am of your flesh and blood, I am going to force you to
recognize that in such a capacity I have some rights. I did not ask to
come into this world; but insomuch as I am here, I propose to become an
individual, not a thing to be given bread and butter upon sufferance. I
have been talking with Horace. I met him in the bazaars this morning. He
said some things which you must answer."

"Horace? And what has he said, pray tell?" Her expression was flippant,
but a certain inquietude penetrated her heart and accelerated its
beating. What had the love-lorn fool said to the child?

"He said that he was not a good man, and that you tolerated him because
he ran errands for you. What kind of errands?"

Mrs. Chedsoye did not know whether to laugh or take the child by the
shoulders and shake her soundly. "He was laughing when he said that.
Errands? One would scarcely call it that."

"Why did you renew the acquaintance with Mr. Jones, when you knew that
you never intended paying back that loan?"

Here was a question, Mrs. Chedsoye realized, from the look of the child,
that would not bear evasion.

"What makes you think I never intended to repay him?"

Fortune laughed. It did not sound grateful in the mother's ears.

"Mother, this is a crisis; it can not be met by counter-questions nor by
flippancy. You know that you did not intend to pay him. What I demand to
know is, why you spoke to him again, so affably, why you seemed so eager
to enter into his good graces once more. Answer that."

Her mother pondered. For once she was really at a loss. The
unexpectedness of this phase caught her off her balance. She saw one
thing vividly, regretfully: she had missed a valuable point in the game
by not adjusting her play to the growth of the child, who had, with that
phenomenal suddenness which still baffles the psychologists, stepped out
of girlhood into womanhood, all in a day. What a fool she had been not
to have left the child at Mentone!

"I am waiting," said Fortune. "There are more questions; but I want this
one answered first."

"This is pure insolence!"

"Insolence of a kind, yes."

"And I refuse to answer. I have some authority still."

"Not so much, mother, as you had yesterday. You refuse to explain?"

"Absolutely!"

"Then I shall judge you without mercy." Fortune rose, her eyes blazing
passionately. She caught her mother by the wrist, and she was the
stronger of the two. "Can't you understand? I am no longer a child, I am
a woman. I do not ask, I demand!" She drew the older woman toward her,
eye to eye. "You palter, you always palter; palter and evade. You do not
know what frankness and truth are. Is this continual evasion calculated
to still my distrust? Yes, I distrust you, you, my mother. You have made
the mistake of leaving me alone too much. I have always distrusted you,
but I never knew why."

Mrs. Chedsoye tugged, but ineffectually. "Let go!"

"Not till I have done. Out of the patchwork, squares have been formed.
What of the men who used to come to the villa and play cards with Uncle
George, the men who went away and never came back? What of your long
disappearances of which I knew nothing except that one day you vanished
and upon another you came back? Did you think that I was a fool, that I
had no time to wonder over these things? You have never tried to make a
friend of me; you have always done your best to antagonize me. Did you
hate my father so much that, when his death put him out of range, you
had to concentrate it upon me? My father!" Fortune roughly flung aside
the arm. "Who knows about him, who he was, what he was, what he looked
like? As a child, I used to ask you, but never would you speak. All I
know about him nurse told me. This much has always burned in my mind:
you married him for wealth that he did not have. What do you mean by
this simple young man across the corridor?"

Mrs. Chedsoye was pale, and the artistic touch of rouge upon her cheeks
did not disguise the pallor. The true evidence lay in the whiteness of
her nose. Never in her varied life had she felt more helpless, more
impotent. To be wild with rage, and yet to be powerless! That alertness
of mind, that mental buoyancy, which had always given her the power to
return a volley in kind, had deserted her. Moreover, she was distinctly
alarmed. This little fool, with a turn of her hand, might send tottering
into ruins the skilful planning of months.

"Are you in love with him?" aiming to gain time to regather her
scattered thoughts.

"Love?" bitterly. "I am in a fine mood to love any one. My question, my
question," vehemently; "my question!"

"I refuse absolutely to answer you!" Anger was first to reorganize its
forces; and Mrs. Chedsoye felt the heat of it run through her veins.
But, oddly enough, it was anger directed less toward the child than
toward her own palpable folly and oversight.

"Then I shall leave you. I will go out into the world and earn my o

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