In his tent the Sultan Casim Ammeh was waiting for the return of the party sent on to the old fort to capture Pansy.
So far there had been no hitch in his schemes. Sir George and his staff had proved an easy prey. Already one portion of his Arab following, with Barclay's officers, had set out on the long journey back to El-Ammeh.
Sir George and Pansy, the Sultan had arranged to take up himself, as soon as the girl was in his hands. For he had no desire to linger in British territory.
But it was not the punishment England would dole out to him if he were caught that filled Le Breton's mind as he sat cross-legged among the cushions, with the cruel lines about his mouth very much in evidence. His thoughts were all with Sir George Barclay's daughter.
What desert harem would be her future home? What wild chief would call that golden-haired girl his chattel?
Casim Ammeh had determined to carry out his vengeance to the letter, where Pansy was concerned. To sell her in the slave-market of his capital; and keep her father alive, tortured by the knowledge of his daughter's fate.
What would the girl say when she saw him? When she recognised him for the Sultan of El-Ammeh, the man her father had wronged past all forgiveness. Would that sweet, brave face go white at the knowledge of the fate before her? Would she try to plead with him or herself and her father? Would——!
Le Breton pulled his straying thoughts up sharply, lest they should go wandering down forbidden ways—ways that led to where love was.
He had determined to hate Pansy; a hatred he had to keep continually before him, lest he should forget it.
The afternoon wore on, bringing long shadows creeping into the glade. And the Sultan sat waiting for the full fruit of his vengeance. There might be peace in his heart once the wrong done to his father was righted. Peace in the restless heart that throbbed within him, that seemed always searching for a life other than the one he lived; a peace he had known just once or twice when a girl's slight form had rested upon it. His enemy's daughter!
The sound of approaching hoofs broke into his thoughts. He knew what they were. Those of the party sent on to capture Pansy.
When the cavalcade halted, his eyes went to the open flap of the big tent, a savage expression in them. He could not see the returned party from there; only the guards posted outside of the royal quarters.
Presently a couple of men in flowing white robes came into view; the two officers who had headed the expedition. They were challenged by the sentries, then they passed on towards the tent where their Sultan was waiting.
There was concern upon their faces, that deepened to resignation and despair when the royal gaze rested upon them.
"Where is the English lady?" their Sultan demanded coldly.
"Your Highness, there was a man of her colour with her, and——" one of the officers began.
Le Breton made an impatient gesture.
"Bring me the girl," he commanded.
The officers glanced at one another. Then one knelt before the Sultan.
"The instructions were carried out," he said. "But the English lady is dead."
There was a moment of tense silence. A feeling of someone fighting against an incredible truth.
Pansy dead! Impossible!
The Sultan sat as if turned into stone. The contretemps was one he had never anticipated.
"Dead," the echoes whispered at him mockingly through the silk-draped tent. "Dead," they sighed unto themselves as if in dire pain.
And that one tragic word stripped love of its garment of hate, and set it before him, alive and vital.
The tent suddenly became charged with suffering, and the feeling of a fierce, proud heart breaking.
"Dead!" the Sultan repeated in a hoarse, incredulous voice. "Then Allah have pity on the man who killed her, for I shall have none."
"Your Highness, there was a white man with her. He shot her," the kneeling officer explained.
Le Breton hardly heard him. For the first time in his wild, arrogant life he felt regret; regret for a deed of his own doing. The regret that is the forerunner of conscience, as conscience precedes the birth of a soul—the soul he had once laughingly accused Pansy of trying to save.
His schemes had brought her to her death. Morally his was the hand that had killed her. His hand!
The thought staggered him.
He got to his feet suddenly, reeling slightly, as if in dire agony. The officer kneeling before him bowed his head submissively. He expected the fate of all who bring bad news to a Sultan—the Sultan's sword upon his neck.
But Le Breton hardly noticed the man. He only saw his own deed before him. Love had leapt out of its scabbard of hate. The one fact he had tried to keep hidden from himself was shouting, loud-voiced, at him.
In spite of who and what Pansy was, he still loved her, madly, ragingly, hopelessly. But it had taken her death to bring the truth home to him.
"Where is the girl?" he asked, in a stiff, harsh voice.
"We brought her so that your Highness could see we spoke the truth," the officer replied.
"Let her be brought in to me then, and laid there," the Sultan said, indicating a wide couch full of cushions.
Glad to escape with their lives the officers hurried out to do the royal bidding.
There were no cruel lines about the Sultan's mouth as he waited their return, but deep gashes of pain instead.
A silent cavalcade entered the tent some minutes later: as silent as the Sultan who stood awaiting them; as silent as the girl with the red stain on her breast and the red blood on her lips.
A look from the Sultan dismissed the men.
When they had gone, he crossed to Pansy's side, and stood gazing down at her.
She lay limp and white, a broken lily before him,
His enemy's daughter! This still, white, lovely girl. This pearl among women, whom he had tried to hate. And now——!
Pain twisted his face.
He thought of Pansy as he had last seen her, that night on her yacht.
She had wanted to bring about an understanding between them. She had tried to see things from his point of view. She was prepared to make allowances, to find excuses for him. And he had treated her with harshness; wilfully set her at a disadvantage; purposely had misunderstood her; deliberately had said all he could to wound her.
He had done his best to hate her. He had put vengeance before love. Now he had his reward. His wild lust for revenge had stilled that kind heart that had lived to do its best for all.
A stifled groan came to his lips.
What a trick Fate had played upon him!
Leaning over the couch he took one of her limp, white hands into his strong brown one. The little hand whose touch could always soothe his restless spirit, that had once teased and caressed him, opening out visions of a Paradise that his own deeds had now shut out from him for ever.
The Fruit of the Tree of Vengeance is bitter. And this Le Breton realized to the fullest as he gazed at the silent girl.
"Pansy, don't mock me from beyond the Styx," he whispered. "For you know now that my heart is broken. There's nothing but grief for me here and hereafter."
Then it seemed to the tortured man that a miracle happened.
The girl's eyes opened.
For a brief second she gazed at him in a dazed, bewildered manner. Then her lids dropped weakly, as if even that slight effort were too much for her.
Blue-black night surrounded the Arab encampment. Here and there a red watch-fire punctuated the darkness.
Although well past midnight, a light burnt in the Sultan's tent. It came from a heavy silver lamp slung from the bar joining the two main supporting poles.
The light flickered on the couch where Pansy still lay, limp and white among the silken cushions, her curls making a halo about her pain-drawn face. She was no longer clad in her muslin frock, but in a silk nightgown with her namesakes embroidered upon it. A light silk rug covered her up to her waist; on it her hands lay, weak and helpless.
On discovering there was a spark of life left in his prisoner, the Sultan had sent post-haste to an adjacent tent for Edouard.
When the doctor arrived, Le Breton stood silent whilst the patient was examined, in an agony of tortured love awaiting the verdict.
"There's no hope unless I can get the bullet out," the doctor had remarked at the end of the examination. "It escaped her heart by about half an inch; but it means constant haemorrhage if it's left in the lungs."
"And if it's removed?" the Sultan asked hoarsely.
Edouard shrugged his shoulders in a non-committal manner.
"It'll be touch and go, even then. But she might pull through with care and attention. She's young and healthy. But if she survives, she'll feel the effects of that bullet for some time to come."
With that Edouard left to fetch his instruments, leaving the Sultan gazing down at the result of his own mad desire for vengeance—a red, oozing wound on a girl's white breast.
When the doctor returned, whilst he probed after the bullet Le Breton held Pansy with firm, careful strength, lest, in pain, she should move and send the instrument into the heart Cameron's shot had just missed. But she was unconscious through it all. Although the probing brought a further gush of blood, Edouard managed to locate the bullet and extract it.
After the wound was dressed, and Pansy bound and bandaged up, the doctor left.
With his departure the Sultan sent for Pansy's belongings, which his soldiers had brought up as plunder from the raid.
There was no woman among his following, so he sent one of the guards to inquire if there was one among the captives.
Presently Pansy's mulatto maid was brought to him.
Alice was a pretty brown girl of about seventeen, clad in a blue cotton slip, and she wore a yellow silk handkerchief tied around her black curls. With awe she gazed about the sumptuous tent; with admiration at her handsome, kingly captor.
He, however, had nothing to say to her, beyond giving her instructions to serve her mistress and warning her to use the utmost care.
When Alice set about her task he went from the tent to interview Edouard.
Pansy's condition had upset his plans. Even if the girl recovered, she could not be moved for a week at least, no matter how carefully her litter was carried. And a force as large as his could not stay a week in the neighbourhood without the fact becoming known.
When Le Breton returned he dismissed Alice, and he seated himself by the couch and stayed there watching the unconscious girl.
Evening shadows crept into the tent, bringing a deft-handed, silent servant, who lighted the heavy silver lamp and withdrew as silently as he had come. Dinner appeared; a sumptuous meal that the Sultan waved aside impatiently.
Then Edouard came again, to see how the patient was faring; to give an injection and go, after a curious glance at the big, impassive figure of his patron sitting silent and brooding at his captive's side.
Gradually the noises of the camp died down, until outside there was only the sough of the forest, the whisper of the wind in the tree-tops, the occasional stamp of a horse's hoof, the hoot of an owl in the glade, and, every now and again in the distance, the mocking laugh of hyenas. Mocking at him, it seemed to Le Breton; at a man whose own doings had brought his beloved to death's door.
Within the tent there was no longer silence. Faint little moans whispered through it occasionally, mingling with the rustle of silken curtains and the sparking of the lamp. And every now and again there were weak bouts of coughing; coughs that brought an ominous red stain to Pansy's lips; stains the Sultan dabbed off carefully with a handkerchief, his strong hand shaking slightly, his arrogant face working strangely, for he knew he was responsible for the life-blood upon her lips.
Every hour Edouard came to give the injection which held the soul back from the grim, bony hands of death that groped after it. Once or twice Pansy's eyes opened, but they closed almost instantly, as if she had not strength enough to hold them open.
But before daybreak her coughs had ceased. An hour passed, then two, without that ominous red stain coming to her lips. Edouard nodded to himself in a satisfied way as he left the tent. A little of the strained look left the Sultan's face.
The haemorrhage had stopped; youth and health were winning the battle.
Just as the first pink streak of dawn entered the tent Pansy's eyes opened again and stayed open, purple wells of pain that rested on the Sultan's with a puzzled expression.
Into the misty world of suffering and weakness in which she moved it seemed to her that Raoul Le Breton had come, looking at her as he had once looked, with love and tenderness in his glowing eyes.
She could not make out where she was or how he came to be there. She had no recollection of the horde who had broken into the guardroom where she and Cameron had been. She was too full of suffering to give any thought to the problem. Raoul Le Breton was with her, that was enough.
A wan smile of recognition trembled for a moment on her lips.
"Raoul," she said faintly.
It was more a sigh than a word. But his name whispered so feebly brought him kneeling beside her couch, bending over her eagerly.
"My darling, forgive me," he whispered passionately.
He bent his head still lower, with infinite tenderness kissing the white lips that had breathed his name so faintly.
Pansy's eyes closed again. A look of contentment came to mingle with the suffering on her face.
Outside the hyenas still laughed mockingly: derisive echoes from a distance. But Le Breton did not hear them. Despite his treatment of her, Pansy had smiled upon him. For the first time in his wild life he felt humility and gratitude, both new sensations.
When Edouard came again he pronounced the girl sleeping, not unconscious.
"With care and attention she'll pull through," he said.
"Thank God!" his patron exclaimed, with unfeigned relief and joy.
Edouard glanced at his master speculatively.
He had heard nothing about Pansy's existence until he had been hurriedly summoned to attend her, and he wondered why his friend and patron had made no mention of the girl.
"You never told me Barclay had a daughter," he commented.
"I did not know myself until quite recently," the Sultan replied.
"Is she to share her father's fate?" the doctor asked drily.
Tenderly the Sultan gazed at the small white face on the cushions.
"She's not my enemy," he said in a caressing tone.
With a feeling of relief, Edouard left the tent.
It was most evident that the Sultan had fallen in love with his beautiful captive. If the girl played her cards well, she would be able to save her father, and prevent his patron doling out death to a British official, thus embroiling himself still further with the English Government.
After the doctor had left, Le Breton sat on Pansy's couch. Yet he had not learnt his lesson.
Although he loved the daughter, he hated the father as intensely as ever. Now he was making other plans; plans that would enable him to keep both love and vengeance. Plans, too, that might make the girl forget his colour and give him the love he now craved for so wildly.
In one of the tents in the glade Sir George Barclay sat, an Arab guard on either side of him. There was an almost stupefied air about him; of a man whose world has suddenly got beyond his control.
The previous afternoon, without any warning, his party had been set upon and captured; but by whom, and why, he did not know. There was no rebellious chief in the district; no discontent. Yet he was a prisoner in the hands of some wild tribe; captured so suddenly that not one of his men had escaped to take word to the next British outpost and bring up a force to his assistance.
There was but one streak of consolation in his broodings—the knowledge that his daughter had not fallen alive into the hands of the barbaric soldiery.
Some little time after he had been brought a prisoner to the glade he had seen Cameron come in, white and shaking with fever.
On seeing his chief, the young man had shouted across the space:
"Thank God! the niggers haven't got Pansy alive."
They were given no time for further conversation, for one was hustled this way and one that.
As Barclay sat brooding on the fate that had overtaken his party and trying to find a reason for it, someone entered the tent.
In the newcomer he recognised the leader of the force that had waylaid and captured him and his party.
"So, George Barclay, we meet for a second time," a deep voice said savagely in French.
Barclay scanned the big man in the white burnoose who stood looking at him with hatred in his dark, fiery eyes.
To his knowledge he had never seen him before.
"Where did we first meet?" he asked quietly.
"Sixteen years ago, when you murdered my father, the Sultan Casim Ammeh."
Sir George started violently and scanned the man anew. He had a reason now for the untoward happenings.
"Do you remember all I promised for you and yours that day you refused to listen to my pleadings?" the savage voice asked.
Barclay remembered only too well. And as he looked at the ruthless face before him he was more than ever thankful for one thing.
"Thank God; my daughter is dead!" he said.
The Sultan smiled, coldly, cruelly.
"Your daughter is not dead," he replied. "She is alive; just alive. And you may rest assured that she'll have every care and attention."
The news left Barclay staring in a stricken manner at his captor.
"My doctor assures me that she will live," the Sultan went on. "And you will live, too, to see her sold as a slave in the public market of my city."
Sir George said nothing. The thought of Pansy's ghastly fate placed him beyond speech. At that moment he could only pray that she might die.
Three days elapsed before Pansy returned to full consciousness, and even then the world was a very hazy place. One morning she woke up, almost too weak to move, with a feeling that she must have had a bad attack of fever. She tried to sit up, but Alice, her mulatto maid, bent over her quickly, pressing her back gently on the pillows.
"No, Missy Pansy," that familiar, crooning voice said with an air of authority. "De doctor say you stay dere and no move."
Pansy was not at all anxious to move after that one attempt. The effort had brought knife-like pains cutting through her chest, and she had had to bite her lip to keep herself from crying out in agony.
All day she lay in silence, sleeping most of the time, when awake, thankful just to lie still, for even to talk hurt her; grateful when Alice fed her, because she would rather have gone hungry than have faced the pain that sitting up entailed.
Sometimes, from outside, came the rattle of harness, the stamp of a hoof, men's voices talking in a strange language. But Pansy was used to such sounds now, and thought nothing of them; they had been around her all the time she had been on tour with her father.
The next day the mist had cleared considerably. Pansy realised she was in a big tent, not an affair of plain green canvas, such as she had lived in quite a lot during her expedition into the wilds, but a place of barbaric splendour. Silk hangings draped the canvas walls; rich curtains heavily embroidered with gold. The very poles that held the structure up were of silver, and a heavy silver lamp was suspended from the central bar. Priceless rugs covered the ground, and here and there were piles of soft, silk cushions. There were one or two little ebony tables and stools inlaid with silver and ivory. Her bed was a low couch of soft silk and down cushions. And on the floor beside her was a beaten gold tray where jewelled cups reposed, and dishes with coloured sherbets and other tempting dainties.
Pansy's gaze stayed on Alice in a puzzling manner.
Alice looked much the same, as plump and pretty as ever, but with an even more "pleased with herself" expression than usual upon her round smiling face.
From her maid Pansy glanced towards the entrance of the tent. The flap was fastened back, letting in a flood of fresh, gold-tinged morning air. Just outside, two dark-faced, white-robed men were stationed, and, beyond, were others, and a glimpse of trees.
Pansy's eyes stayed on the Arabs guarding her quarters.
In a vague way they were familiar.
With a rush came back the happenings of the afternoon when she had been having tea with Cameron in the old guardroom.
Men such as those outside had burst in upon them when the brave old door had given way.
A wave of sickly fear swept over the girl.
Was she a prisoner in the hands of that wild horde?
But, if so, what was she doing in the midst of all this splendour, this riot of luxury, with the softest of cushions to lie on, the choicest of silk rugs to cover her, and Alice sitting contentedly at her side?
Perhaps Bob could give her the key to the situation.
"Alice," she said weakly, "run and tell Captain Cameron I want to speak to him."
"He no be here, Miss Pansy," the girl replied. "He go to de Sultan Casim Ammeh's city."
Alice pronounced the Sultan's name with gusto. The desert ruler with his barbaric splendour and troop of wild horsemen had impressed her far more than the English governor and his retinue. She did not at all mind being his prisoner. Moreover she was a privileged person, told off specially by the Sultan to nurse her mistress.
For some moments Pansy pondered on what her maid had said.
"The Sultan Casim Ammeh," Pansy repeated presently, with an air of bewilderment.
"Dat be him," Alice assured her. "A great big, fine man, awful good-looking. I see him. An' my heart go all soft. He so rich and proud and grand. But he no look at me, only at you, Miss Pansy," she finished, sighing.
Pansy hardly heard this rhapsody over her captor.
His name was familiar but half forgotten, like the fairy tales of her childhood.
Then she suddenly remembered who and what he was.
The youthful Sultan who, long years ago, had sworn to kill her father and sell her as a slave!
The man Alice mentioned must be the boy grown up! It must have been his hordes who had swept down on her and Bob that afternoon.
But it was not of herself that Pansy thought when the truth dawned on her with vivid, sickening force. In anxiety for her father she forgot the fate promised for herself.
"My father! What has happened to him?" she asked in quick alarm.
"De Sultan, he catch Sir George too," Alice answered coolly.
Pansy's heart stood still.
"Is he still alive?" she asked breathlessly, horror clutching at her.
"Sir George he go also to the city of El-Ammeh, de Sultan's city."
A feeling of overwhelming relief swept over Pansy on hearing her father was still alive.
For some minutes she lay brooding on the horrible situation and how she could best cope with it, all the time feeling as if she were in some wild nightmare. Then she remembered her own vast riches.
All these Arab chiefs knew the value of money. She might be able to ransom her father, herself, the whole party.
"Where is the Sultan? Tell him I want to see him," she said suddenly in a weak, excited way.
"He no be here. He go back to El-Ammeh. You go, too, Miss Pansy, an' I go wid you, when Doctor Edouard say you be fit to move."
Pansy clutched at the name of Edouard. After that of the Sultan Casim Ammeh it had a welcome European sound.
"Where is Doctor Edouard? Can I speak to him?" she asked quickly.
She hardly noticed the pain within herself now, torn as she was with anxiety for her father and friends.
Alice rose, ready to oblige.
"I go fetch him," she said.
Leaving the tent, she interviewed one of the guards. Then she passed on beyond Pansy's view.
She reappeared some few moments later accompanied by a short, stoutish man with a pointed, black beard, unmistakably of French nationality, who was dressed in a neat white drill suit and a sun helmet.
Anxiously Pansy watched him approach, with no room in her mind to think how he came to be there, a person as European as herself, in this savage Sultan's following.
"Do tell me what has happened!" she said, without any preliminaries, the moment he halted at her bedside.
However, Edouard did not tell Pansy much more than she had already culled for herself. But she learnt that the whole of her father's party were prisoners in the hands of this desert chief and were now on their way back to his capital.
"But can't you do something?" she asked in despair.
"I'm virtually a prisoner, like yourself," Edouard replied in a non-committal tone.
He was not a prisoner, but he was paid a good price for his services and his silence; and he had no intention of playing an excellent friend and patron false.
"But is there nothing I can do?" Pansy asked, aghast at her own utter helplessness.
Edouard smiled, remembering the Sultan's concern for the beautiful captive girl.
"Yes; there's one thing," he replied in a soothing tone. "Don't worry about the matter just at present. But when you get to El-Ammeh use all your personal influence with the Sultan. In the meantime you can rest assured that no harm will happen to Sir George and his staff. Afterwards I rather fancy everything depends on you."
With this Pansy had to be content.
In Bathhurst, the deputy Governor awaited news of Sir George Barclay. More than a month had passed since he had left the town, and during most of the time letters had come through regularly to official headquarters. The deputy knew that the furthermost point of the tour must now be about reached; but nearly a week had passed without any communication, official or otherwise, coming from the party. The fact was not alarming; the part Sir George must now be in was the wildest in the colony, and a week might easily pass without any message coming through.
But when another day or so passed without bringing any news, the deputy began to wonder what had happened.
"The letters must have gone astray," one of the officers remarked.
"Or some leopard has gobbled up the postman," another suggested.
For a couple of days longer the deputy and military officers waited, hourly expecting some message from the Governor's party, but none came. There was no reason to think that harm had befallen them, for the colony was in perfect order.
Then they sent up for news to the next town of any importance, only to hear that nothing had been heard there either.
The answer astounded them.
An expedition was sent off post-haste to find out what had happened to the party.
They were nearly a fortnight in reaching the old fort, the last spot where any message had come from. And there they found the British flag still flying over the official headquarters, but both the bungalow and the fortress were deserted. In the old guardroom and the compound were a few gnawed human bones; but there was no other trace of the missing expedition, although there was every sign that disaster had overtaken it.
The officials were aghast. Sir George and his staff had completely disappeared. That there had been fighting was evident. The bones in the guardroom and compound told them that much, but all trace of their identity had been gnawed off by prowling hyenas.
The country around was scoured, but it brought no clue. The French Government was communicated with, but it could throw no light on the affair.
When the news reached England it caused a sensation, for Society culled that Sir George Barclay's daughter, the lovely twenty-year-old heiress, Pansy Langham, was among those missing—dead now, or perhaps worse; the chattel of one of the wild marauders who had fallen so swiftly and silently upon her father's party.
And in a pleasant English country house Miss Grainger wept for the bright, brave girl who had always been such a generous friend and considerate mistress.
By the time the news of the disappearance of Sir George Barclay's party reached England, Pansy was well on her way to El-Ammeh.
She arrived there one night after dark, a darkness out from which high walls loomed and over them strange sounds came; the thin wail of stringed instruments; a tom-tom throbbing through the blue night; the plaintive song of some itinerant musician, and the shuffle of crowded human life.
She was not given much time to dwell upon those things. Her escort skirted the high walls. A big horse-shoe arch loomed up, with heavy iron gates; gates that clanged back as they approached. And the flare of torches showed a long passage leading into darkness.
Into the passage her litter was carried with a swaying, somnolent movement. Then the gates closed with a clang behind her, leaving the escort outside; and she and Alice were alone with the flaming torches, the black, engulfing passage, and half a dozen huge negroes in gorgeous raiment.
With a sickly feeling, Pansy slipped from her litter.
Her journey's end!
The journey had lasted over six weeks. Under other circumstances Pansy would have enjoyed it. It could not have been more comfortable. She had travelled in the cool of the morning and in the cool of the evening. Always for the long midday halt the same sumptuous tent was up, awaiting her reception, taken down again after she had departed, and up again before she arrived at the next halting place.
The country she travelled through was an interesting one, park-like and grassy at first, as the weeks passed becoming ever more sandy and arid, with occasional patches that were wonderfully fertile. Until, finally, like a glowing, yellow sea before her, she had her first glimpse of the Sahara on its southern side—billow upon billow of flaming sand, stretching away to a tensely blue sky, with here and there a stunted bush, a twist of coarse grass, or a clump of distorted cacti with red flowers blazing against the heated, shimmering air—a vast solitude where nothing moved.
For a week they had journeyed through the desert. Late one evening a lake came into view, with fruitful gardens growing around it, where date palms, olives, and clustering vines flourished. On the far side a walled city showed.
It lay golden in the misty glow of evening, its minarets standing out against a shadowed sky. Even as she approached it had been swallowed by darkness. Softly the lake lapped as they skirted it, and the world was filled with a constant hissing sigh, the sound of shifting sand when the wind roamed over it—the voice of the desert.
Much as Pansy dreaded her journey's end, she welcomed it.
She lived for nothing now but to see the Sultan; to plead with him for her father, her friends, herself. And she buoyed herself up with the hope that her own riches would enable her to ransom them all.
But if she failed!
She grew sick at the thought. And the thought was with her as she stood in the stone passage, her strained eyes on the gigantic negro guards who had come to escort her to her new quarters. They were attired from head to foot in rich, brightly coloured silks, and they literally blazed with jewels.
The man who was their master might have so much money that he would prefer revenge.
This thought was in Pansy's mind some minutes later when she sat alone with her maid in one of the many apartments in the palace of El-Ammeh.
It was a big room with walls and floor of gold mosaic, and a domed ceiling of sapphire-blue where cut rock-crystals flashed like stars. Five golden lamps hung from it, suspended by golden chains; lamps set with flat emeralds and rubies and sapphires.
It was furnished very much as her tent had been, except that there were wide ottomans against the gilded walls, and the tables and stools were of sandalwood. In one corner stood a large bureau of the same sweet-scented wood, beautifully carved. Three heavy, pointed doors of sandalwood led into the apartment. The place was heavy with its sensuous odour.
In a little alcove draped with curtains of gold tissue the negroes deposited Pansy's belongings. Then they withdrew, leaving the girl and her maid alone; Pansy with the depressing feeling that money might not have much influence with the Sultan Casim Ammeh.
Two of the doors of her gilded prison were locked, Pansy quickly discovered. Outside of the one she had entered by a couple of negro guards were stationed, who refused to let her pass.
On learning this, she went out into the fretted gallery. Below a garden lay. She stood at the head of the steps leading into it, anxious to get away from the dim scented silence of the great room, in touch with the trees and stars and the cool, rose-scented breath of night that she understood.
She tried to argue that all the splendour and luxury placed at her disposal boded well for the future, that her captor might not be going to carry out his threats.
Her gaze turned towards the room, with its wealth and luxury—a fit setting for a Sultan's favourite.
Pansy shivered.
What price might she not have to pay for her father's life?
Then she thought of Raoul Le Breton. The dark blood in him seemed nothing now, compared with the thought of having to become the chattel of this wild, desert chief.
Slight sounds in the big room roused her from her reverie.
She started violently, expecting to see the Sultan coming to make his bargain.
But only a couple of white-robed servants were there.
The biggest of the inlaid tables was set for dinner; a dinner for one, set in a European way. And the meal that followed was the work of a skilled Frenchchef.
But the sumptuous repast had no charm for a girl worried to death at the thought of her own fate and her father's. To please Alice she made some pretence of eating.
Leaving her maid to revel in the neglected dainties, Pansy went back to her vigil in the arches.
In course of time, the lamps burning low, Alice's prodigious yawns drove her to lie wakeful among the soft cushions of one of the ottomans.
From fitful slumbers Alice's voice roused her the next morning. Alice with the usual early morning tea, a tray of choice fruit, and a basket full of rare and beautiful flowers.
Distastefully Pansy looked at the choice blossoms. She felt they were from the Sultan to his unwilling visitor; a silent message of admiration; of homage, perhaps.
"Take them away, Alice," she said quickly. "And put them where I can't see them."
With a curious glance at her mistress, the girl obeyed.
Pansy drank her tea, all the time pondering on her future.
If she had to go under, she would go under fighting. If this wild chief were prepared to give her her father's life in exchange for herself, she would see that he got as little pleasure as possible out of his bargain. If he were infatuated with her as Alice and Dr. Edouard seemed to think, so much the better. All the more keenly he would feel the lashes her tongue would be able to give.
Pansy knew he spoke French, for this fact had come into the story her father had told her in years gone by.
In thinking of the cutting things she would be able to lay to her captor, Pansy tried to keep at bay the dread she felt. Since he was not there to hit at in person, she hit at him with sneers at his race to Alice.
"I don't suppose there's anywhere I can have a bath," she remarked when her tea was finished. "Cleanliness isn't one of the virtues of these Arabs."
"Dere be one," Alice assured her. "De most beautifullest one you eber saw."
Pansy agreed with her maid some minutes later when she was splashing about in its cool waters.
Alice had pointed out the place to her. In dressing-gown and slippers, Pansy had passed through the wide gallery, a lacy prison of stone it seemed to the girl, for although it gave a wide view of the desert, there was not one spot in its carved side that she could have put her hand through.
Immediately beneath lay a garden, surrounded by a high wall.
Pansy had seen many gardens, but none to equal the one before her in peace and beauty. It was a dream of roses. In the middle was a sunken pond where water-lilies floated and carp swam and gaped at her with greedy mouths when her shadow fell across them, as if expecting to be fed. Vivid green velvety turf surrounded the pond, a rarity in that arid country. There was nothing else in the garden but roses, of every shade and colour. They streamed in cascades over the high walls. They grew in banks by the pond, in trellised alleys and single bushes. The garden was a gem of cool greenness, scent and silence, and over it brooded the shadows of gigantic cypresses.
The bath-room lay beneath the stone gallery, with fretted and columned arches where more roses clung and climbed, opening directly on the scented quiet of the garden. It was a huge basin of white marble, about thirty feet across and deep enough to swim in, with a carved edge, delicate as lace.
Pansy was in no mood to appreciate her fairy-like surroundings. And the beauty of her prison in no way softened her heart towards her captor.
As she splashed about in the bath, over the high walls came the sound of bells, like church chimes wrangling in the distance on an English Sunday.
Wistfully Pansy stopped and listened to them. She was travelled enough to recognize them as camel bells; some train coming to this barbaric city.
When she returned to the dim, gilded room, breakfast was awaiting her; an ordinary Continental breakfast.
She pecked at it, too sick at heart to eat. Then she sat on, awaiting Edouard's appearance. He had parted with her the previous night, promising to come and see her when she was installed in the Sultan's palace.
It was evening before he came. Pansy greeted him eagerly. All day she had dreaded that her captor might appear. But she wanted to see him, to satisfy herself about her father.
Edouard's visits to her were purely professional, and brief. Always his idea was to get away, for his conscience pricked him where Pansy was concerned. He was used to his patron's wild ways, and he knew the girl's position was not of her own choosing.
"Will you tell the Sultan I want to see him?" she said when he rose to go.
"Hasn't he paid you a visit yet?" the doctor asked with surprise.
"No, and I'm so worried about my father."
Edouard left, promising to deliver her message. But he came the next day, saying the Sultan had refused to grant her an interview.
"I wonder why he won't see me," she said drearily.
Edouard wondered also.
That evening he dined with his friend and patron, not in a gorgeous Eastern apartment like Pansy's, but in one that was decidedly Western in its fittings and appointments. And the Sultan was attired as Pansy had seen him several times in Grand Canary, in black dress-suit, white pleated shirt and the black pearl studs.
Dinner was over before Edouard approached the subject of the girl-prisoner.
"If I were you I'd see Miss Barclay," he said. "This suspense won't do her any good. She frets all day about her father."
"It's not in my plans to see her just yet," the Sultan replied.
Edouard glanced at him.
Then he did what for him was a bold thing, fat and comfortable and fond of his easy berth as he was. He challenged his royal master concerning his intentions towards the captive girl.
"What are your plans with regard to Miss Barclay?" he ventured. "She's not one of the sort who can be bought with a string of pearls or a diamond bracelet."
"I'm going to marry her," the Sultan said easily.
Edouard experienced a feeling of relief, on his own account as much as Pansy's.
The doctor studied her with renewed interest the next day when he paid her his usual visit.
"If I sent a note to the Sultan, do you think it would be any use?" Pansy asked him anxiously, the moment he had done with professional matters.
"It would do no harm at any rate," he replied.
Pansy got to her feet quickly.
She knew Edouard was in touch with her captor—a prisoner like herself she imagined, but free to come and go because of his calling. She did not know he was a man so faithful to his master that the latter's smallest wish was carried out to the letter.
Going into the alcove where her belongings were, Pansy seated herself on the edge of a couch, with a writing-pad on her knee. For some minutes she stayed frowning at a blank piece of paper. It was so difficult to know what to say to this savage chief who held the lives of her father and friends in his hands.
After some minutes thinking she wrote: