"It's the pig man," said a childish voice. "The man what lifted me out of the way of the boar."
Aylmer blinked. Himself in the shadow, he was aware of a figure opposite him in the center of a circle of light. He lay, apparently, in a circular and unfurnished room, lit by an unglazed skylight alone. The figure, which sat cross-legged on a lump which his returning senses discovered to be a dead horse, wore the whitehaikand the bournous of a Moor. The hood was drawn back, showing bronzed aquiline features and a brown beard, but the man's eyes were blue. Aylmer studied the face with a feeling of bewilderment which gradually became irritation. He was stunned, but consciousness had so far returned that he knew himself stunned, and knew, also, that his brain was confronting a problem which his normal powers would have grappled with easily. He ought to be able to recognize his visitor; there was familiarity, there was recognition in the man's sneering smile. And yet, who was he? Aylmer moved restlessly, petulantly. An excruciating pang leaped up through his shoulder and made him gasp. The man shrugged his shoulders.
"Dislocated, I fear," he said in level English accents. "And the collar-bone most certainly fractured."
Aylmer's ear served him where his eyes had failed. The voice was Landon's. It was his cousin who sat opposite him, smiling evilly from the shadow of thehaik.
Something touched the wounded shoulder lightly, but not so lightly but that Aylmer winced again.
"Poor—poor!" said the childish voice again commiseratingly. "Is it badly hurted? When I fell off my pony they rubbed me wiv butter."
It was his little namesake, swaddled in white flowing garments, who stood at his elbow, peering into his face with anxious eyes.
Aylmer pulled himself into a sitting position, not without intense pain. But the throb of his wounded arm seemed to awake his dulled consciousness. He looked from father to son without bewilderment. His understanding had fully regained command of the situation.
His first action was typical of the man; he fumbled with his left hand at his holster.
Landon laughed.
"Empty, my dear John," he said. "Fogs, gales, the menacing hand of nature I do not pretend to have my remedy for. But I retain the common-sense which deprives my enemy of a weapon, when opportunity is my friend."
Aylmer was still silent. Landon gave a self-satisfied little nod of the head, a little motion which implied the insolence of triumph fully enjoyed.
"And by opportunity, please understand that I do not refer to mere chance," he went on. "The littleruse de guerreby which you and your associates were drawn into this trap was the product of an active brain, not mine, I grieve to say. A friend who has seen much of desert bickerings did not invent but adapted it. I don't think many of your beautiful Goumiers escaped him and his allies."
There was something more than disgust and repulsion in the glance with which Aylmer regarded his cousin. It was, perhaps, wonder.
"Libertine—blackmailer—spy—and thief—you have proved yourself all of these within the space of half a dozen years," he said quietly. "And now, traitor, and, I suppose, assassin. It puzzles me. Clean living isn't so hard, and yet, you have never tried it, never!"
A queer line showed in Landon's cheek, as his lips tightened against each other. And then he laughed again—a harsh, unconvincing little laugh.
"Is the first line of attack an appeal to my better nature?" he asked. "Omit it, my friend. However good your aim, you cannot reach a target which, to be frank, is non-existent. Appeals to my self-interest find me alert, but to my conscience, chill as ice. We may chaffer, you and I, but on strictly business lines."
He settled himself back upon the dead horse's shoulder, pulled out a silver case, and selected a cigarette. He lit it, talking slowly, between puffs.
"My apparently unkinsmanlike conduct in offering no attention to your wound is easily explained. It is a small matter, involved in far larger issues. If you meet my terms, our limited resources in that and other matters will be at your service. If not—" He shrugged his shoulders placidly. "Well, I do not suppose a prison governor pays attention to the condemned's complaints of his breakfast egg on the morning of execution."
He moved, leaning forward at last, his elbows on his knees, his palms supporting his chin. And he looked down at Aylmer malignantly.
"And I have you here to make or break as I will," he said. "By God! Opportunity doesn't call me twice. I clutch her!"
The child turned with a little start, looking at his father with puzzled but not apprehensive eyes. The note of malice in that voice was evidently strange to him, and Aylmer, as he understood this fact, breathed a tiny sigh of relief. The child, at any rate, did not suffer ill-treatment.
Landon saw the motion and his features relaxed into something like affection.
He held out his hands.
"Come here, my son," he said. "Go and find Muhammed."
As the child ran forward, he caught him deftly and without a pause of energy tossed him up and out into the sunlight. Aylmer heard the boy's cry of welcome and laugh of delight, as his footsteps pattered over the roof of the cellar and were lost. Muhammed, whoever that might be, was evidently not far away.
His father settled down upon his seat again.
"That," he said, with an upward jerk of the shoulder towards the opening above his head, "that is one of the things I have been robbed of. Also my comfort, my credit, my security, my ease. I have had to endure unpleasantness. I have had to descend, though as a mental exercise I do not count it a descent, to crime. Life, in fact, has been difficult for me lately, owing to the action of certain people—with whom you appear to have allied yourself. You and they have to get matters in a different perspective. Your efforts in future must be for, not against, me. They must, indeed, be directed to effacing unfortunate circumstances in the past which are detrimental to my well-being. That must be fully understood before we even begin to talk of terms."
He looked up at Aylmer with a sudden quick, speculative flash of the eyes. The other met it steadily and equably.
"Have we begun—to discuss terms?" he asked.
"No!" Landon snapped the monosyllable with contemptuous emphasis. "No! I don't discuss them, let me tell you. I make them!"
Aylmer met the announcement with a smile.
"Ah," he said quietly, and something in his tone seemed to whip Landon's restrained spite over the border-line of fury.
"Damn you!" he cried, "do you think I can't and won't humble the lot of you; do you think I'm to be robbed of the winning ace now, when I've got it in my hand? I tell you there isn't a thing in me you can appeal to. I've shunted notions; I'm out for the stuff; I'm in business for myself, for me!"
He swayed to and fro upon the carcase, his face livid, his fingers unconsciously twining and plaiting the dead animal's mane. His teeth flashed, attracting, as it were, the core of the little light which reached the gloom—attracting it to intensify his fierce animal fury. For, as he swayed, and swore, the teeth shone behind his red lips like the fangs of a cornered wolf.
And then, suddenly, darkly, the emotion was planed from his face. His features became mask-like in their imperturbability.
"You had better listen carefully," he said. "First, I keep the boy. That goes without saying. I've got him. Secondly, they give me their engagement under bond not to molest me in my possession of him if I choose to visit America or England, or even if I marry again. Thirdly, old man Van Arlen pays me ten thousand pounds—pounds, mind, not dollars—within a week from now, and on the same date every year. Fourthly, you explain away the matter of the book I borrowed from your library. Explain it as you like; say I was drunk or insane or any sort of lie which suits you best. You'll have to give me your word of honor to do your best about that; I'll take it, because I know you believe in these shibboleths. Lastly, they're to keep quiet while I have a free hand with Despard."
Aylmer gave an involuntary start, and Landon snarled—there is no other word for it—with savage rage.
"By God, they've got to stand by and see me break him! He's hunted me through the courts and through the press of two hemispheres. He shall have his turn. Not all in a moment, either. A word here and a word there. A paragraph or two where they can't well be missed. Then rumors, and then a circumstantial story. Rush him into action and then, slowly, thoroughly, and perfectly plainly, bowl him out. Eh, that will be the gilded roof on the whole thing. Despard down in the mud—Despard ... broken!"
His fingers ceased their wandering. He sat motionless, his eyes staring gloatingly into the gloom over Aylmer's head. It was as if he saw visions of evil triumph limned upon the walls.
Aylmer lay very still. The sense of inertia which had been overpowering when consciousness first revived was passing away. His brain was clear. He realized that for all practical purposes he was in the hands of a madman, or of a man so far enthralled by a very possession of wickedness that he might be reckoned insane. There was nothing to do but await events.
Landon dropped his eyes.
"Do you see?" he asked. "That's your job. To go to them and tell them. Do you understand?"
Aylmer shook his head.
"I hear your price—for what?" he asked. "It's a one-sided bargain, so far."
"The goods that I have to deliver," said Landon, slowly, "are what I put safely out of your way a moment ago. That boy's health, and mental and—moral, too, if you like—strength. Do you get the notion?"
For a moment the silence remained unbroken. Then Aylmer spoke.
"You devil!" he said slowly. "You incarnate fiend!"
Landon laughed again, with complacent satisfaction.
"You do get the notion," he said. "Let your mind dwell upon it, give it deliberation. I sha'n't kill the boy, oh, not for a long time. I shall keep him alive; he'll even enjoy the process. I'll bring him up carefully, very carefully. There isn't a form of life as I've seen it that he sha'n't be familiar with. You may hunt me from England; you may make it hot for me in Europe and America. There are plenty of lively resorts in this good old continent of Africa which will amply fulfill my purpose. I'll put him through the mill; I'll begin early, too. I sha'n't leave much to luck. If by any chance you brought about my death, and I credit you with grit enough to attempt it, you'll find the kid well-grounded. He shall be his father's son, and a bit more. I hadn't the advantages he's going to have."
The flush of anger which had mounted to Aylmer's face was gone now. He looked at Landon keenly, indeed, but with more curiosity than wrath. His voice was quite controlled.
"And in the alternative?" he asked. "In any case you keep him. What do we gain by meeting your terms?"
Landon shrugged his shoulders.
"He has his chance, then, against the World, the Flesh and the Devil with the rest of them. I sha'n't pose as a saint before him, but I'll see that he behaves himself decently and plays the game. He'll go to Eton and Balliol, if he has the sense. I sha'n't send him to Sunday-school but he'll attend church on Sundays—once. I'll choose his tailor and put him in the way of things. He'll learn, in fact, how to conduct himself as an ordinary English gentleman."
Aylmer nodded.
"From whom?" he asked quietly.
And then Landon flinched. The eyes which had been bent on his cousin with eagerness, with greed alight in them, quivered. He gave a little intake of the breath.
"You cursed prig!" he breathed thickly. "You cursed prig!"
Aylmer smiled.
"You've been out of it too long, Landon," he said. "For over a year I suppose your only familiars have been Bowery ruffians or Soho blackmailers. Did you think this could be done? Did you really make yourself believe that I was likely to be an easy intermediary for such a proposition? And I imagine that you forget that it was entirely for your wife's sake that your father-in-law dealt gently with you during your married life. There's no need for any restraint in that quarter now."
Landon made a gesture of contempt.
"Are you making threats for that old tame cat?" he sneered.
"He's got claws that will reach out to scratch you at the world's end, my amiable cousin. They're made of dollars. And they'll be sharpened with American grit. Uncommon unpleasant, you'll find them."
Landon snapped his fingers.
"That for his dollars and his grit!" he cried. "It's no good raising your bluff on me. I'll see you every time, see you and take it! Leave it out; don't waste time over it. Are you going to carry my message to them, or are you not?"
"No," said Aylmer. "You knew perfectly well what my answer was going to be, but if it's any satisfaction to you to have it—No!"
Landon leaned forward.
"I guessed what your high falutin' ideas would answer," he said, "but I'm talking to you—to you about yourself." He pointed to the well-like opening above his head. "Do you believe that you could climb out of there with a broken collar-bone?" he asked.
Aylmer glanced quickly in the direction of the extended finger.
"Perhaps not," he answered.
Landon nodded.
"You don't know what superhuman exertions a man will contrive when he is perishing—of thirst," he said. "But even he couldn't move the slab of stone which ten men will drag over that opening, if I bid them. And that will be now, if you don't come off your high horse. This isn't a healthy place for my friends of the Beni M'Geel. We have to be moving on immediately."
A sudden quiver that perhaps was nearly akin to fear pulsed up into Aylmer's brain, showed, indeed, in his eyes. The fever of his wound was already upon him; his lips were parched, his tongue swollen. To be left in that pit—to be sealed in—to die?
Landon grinned.
"Eh?" he questioned. "Are second thoughts best? Do you begin to understand?"
For a moment or two the stillness remained unbroken, and in Aylmer's gaze there was little still but wonder—wonder that things like Landon should continue to exist in this prosy work-a-day world of ours. Opportunities for unleashing a real lust of cruelty and evil come to few of us. We argue therefore that they do not occur. A common error. A glance at the pages of half a dozen reports of philanthropic societies will refute it, but we, who are not engaged in social reform, are lost in amazement at the monsters when we meet them. It was incredulity which was in Aylmer's mind, and incredulity Landon imagined to be deliberation.
"There are no two ways to it!" he cried sharply. "Don't think that. It's yes or no, now and here!"
Aylmer made a wearily contemptuous gesture.
"Haven't you had your answer?" he said. "It's no; it would be no if I had a thousand chances to say it—no—no—no!"
Landon rose. He looked down at the man at his feet malignantly, suspiciously. He shouted in Spanish to some unseen listener outside. The end of a rope was dropped down through the opening. Methodically Landon knotted it about the dead horse's neck and forelegs.
"No, my friend," he said, as if in answer to some unspoken question, "you aren't going to exist by munching this dead brute's flesh or sucking its blood till help comes, if it comes at all. You are going to be left in here with no more company than your own obstinacy, alone."
He shouted again. The rope tautened. Landon seized it, and with a couple of energetic jerks swung himself up into the sunshine. And then the carcase rose, dragged a little on the floor, and in its turn was hauled out of sight. The cellar loomed larger, gloomier, emptier when it was gone. There was another dragging sound. Half the light which filtered through the opening was eclipsed.
Landon's voice rang hollow in the underground echoes.
"Is it no, still, you fool?" he snarled.
There was no answer.
With a curse, Landon made a significant motion of the hand. The brawny Arab shoulders were bent and their thews tightened. The great slab slid into its appointed place.
A full mile out in the offingThe Morning Starswung at her anchorage, dipping and swerving lazily over the incoming rush of the Atlantic swell. The dawn-light was soft behind the white bastions of the town's sea-wall; the harsh glare of the fully risen sun was yet to come. A little boat put out from the shore, zigzagging across the wide lake which is bounded on the south by the headland and on the north and west by the ring of transports, merchantmen, and cuirassés of the French Marine. She tacked and came about at short intervals as if those who sailed her had need of haste, or at any rate of the distraction of attempting speed even if it could not be attained. She sidled, at last, towards the yacht's companion ladder.
Claire Van Arlen rose from her deck chair as the boat's sail dropped. She walked towards the taffrail and looked down. She had used her binoculars upon the little craft ever since its start from the shore, and had finally recognized Daoud. His companion, a uniformed man, whose long limbs seemed to occupy the whole of the space between stern and stem, had his head swathed in bandages.
Daoud was the first to scramble aboard. He stood before her with bent shoulders, the picture of dejection.
She breathed a little quickly.
"Yes?" she asked. "You have brought news—of what?"
The tall man swung himself off the ladder, drew himself upright, and saluted.
"Mademoiselle, I am Sergeant Perinaud, attached to the office of the military police here. I attended M. Aylmer during our ride in pursuit of the man named Landon, who was escaping with certain desert knaves of the Beni M'Geel. We overtook them—"
She interrupted with an exclamation of delight.
"You have the boy?" she cried. "You recovered him?"
He shook his head.
"No, Mademoiselle. We were betrayed into an unfortunate ambush. We lost five men out of ten in addition to further losses at an earlier date in the proceedings. Monsieur le Capitaine has been badly hurt."
He looked at her keenly with a sort of speculative curiosity. And Daoud frowned. For there was no sign of commiseration in her glance. She showed annoyance, almost disgust.
"You had your hands upon these men and they escaped you?" she cried.
"We were within a very little of arresting them, Mademoiselle, but by an Arab trick in which I regret to say they showed more intelligence than we were capable of divining, they defeated us. I am directed by Major d'Hubert to report to you fully on the incident if you desire it."
She made a vehement gesture.
"If!" she cried. "If!"
With an accession of woodenness in his demeanor, the sergeant drew himself up yet more stiffly, repeated his salute, and in a few precise words gave the story of the pursuit. But, as he described Aylmer's fall, it was to be noted that his voice and bearing relaxed. A tinge of the dramatic colored his level tones. His eyes—his hands were called upon to emphasize the description of the headlong plunge into the black trap of the silo—indicated the feelings of an onlooker rather than a mere reporter, as he described the sealing of the prison mouth. And as she listened, she gave a little gasp. In the background Daoud flung his colleague a little nod of approval.
"And then?" she asked breathlessly. "And then?"
"I was unhorsed, Mademoiselle, and somewhat beaten about the head, as is evident. I found shelter in a neighboring patch of mallow, where, after a season, I was joined by my friend here. The Beni M'Geel having departed, we watched their route as a matter of precaution for a mile or two, and then returned. We were unable to deal with the slab upon the cellar mouth."
This time his voice had been level enough, but he made his pause effective.
She gasped again.
"You left him there?"
He smiled.
"Yes, Mademoiselle, but not without rendering him assistance. Not being able to remove the stone, we merely dug another entrance. The outer earth was hard and baked, but after pecking off a few inches with our knives we fetched water from the river and easily softened it. We fashioned a couple of wooden shovels. Thus we dug down into the prison in an hour or two. We found the captain delirious."
"Yes?" she said again, eagerly. "You brought him away?"
"Mademoiselle forgets that we had no horses. Daoud remained with him. I walked to our nearest outpost—at Ain Djemma—to fetch assistance."
His tones were absolutely matter of fact, but some instinct of comprehension made her look at him yet more keenly and thus note the weariness which his voice could hide, but not his drawn features.
"You walked, how far?" she questioned.
"I have no exact idea, Mademoiselle. For some hours. I could not obtain a surgeon; there was but one at the post and his hands were full. An orderly of the ambulance came with me with acacoletand a small escort of Chasseurs. But we have not dared to remove the captain, whose fever has reached a serious height. The orderly advised that I should come direct to the town and obtain either medical help, or, if possible, one of theDames de la Croix Rouge. But there is an epidemic of fever at the hospital and an influx of wounded from the Tirailleurs' foray of four days back. Neither surgeon nor nurse can be spared for one man."
For a moment there was silence again. Perinaud looked at her with a sort of questioning apathy, with the detached air of one having done his duty and awaiting the decrees of fate. But Daoud moved restlessly, and then broke into speech, as if some irresistible impulse moved him.
"I think my master is likely to die, Mademoiselle," he said.
And then he, too, waited, in a sort of queer, hushed expectancy, as if his words must result in some definite action.
"We have medical comforts on board," she said quickly. "We will put anything we possess at Captain Aylmer's service."
Perinaud nodded again solemnly.
"The dislocated shoulder has been dealt with, Mademoiselle, and the broken bone set. The orderly, also, has quinine for the fever, which is high. We might be doing right, perhaps, in taking back any other remedies which your intelligence can suggest."
His tone was meditative and judicial, and intimated quite distinctly that this was a side issue and not the objective of his present mission. He continued to stare at her steadily, without any tinge of offence, but with a questioning directness which spoke volumes. "I am waiting," it seemed to say. "I have given you your cue. Speak your part."
She looked from him to the Moor, read the same message in the latter's air of anticipation, and then spoke, desperately.
"What is it?" she demanded. "You want—something?"
The man looked not exactly embarrassed but disconcerted, surprised. His eyebrows rose a fraction, he flashed a swiftly inquiring glance at the Moor. The other nodded.
"The captain's fever and delirium is very great, Mademoiselle," he said slowly. "We thought—" He hesitated. "The captain, in his wanderings, used your name frequently."
She understood in a moment. Aylmer, in his fevered unconsciousness, had—what had he done? Placed himself, and her, in a false position? These stolid, unimaginative men, at any rate, regarded her as his fiancée! She was not eager, vehement, to rush to her lover's side! No wonder they showed astonishment.
She stood silent, perturbed, at a loss. And the two impassive faces watched her. And again a tiny spasm of fear throbbed through her. Fate was fighting for this man, it seemed. Helpless, unconscious, cast away in this rat-hole in the wilderness, his plight worked for him where his own powers could not. His very helplessness appealed to her. Could she refuse the duty which was being plainly forced upon her by the mute message of those four watching eyes? Her imagination began to work. She saw a gloomy pit, a white face wasted with fever, heard a voice which, unconsciously, perhaps, but still appealingly, called upon her name. And this was the debonair soldier who had ridden out three days before to do—what? Her bidding, no less. A flush rose to her brow.
"I have not a nurse's training," she assured Perinaud quietly, "but I will come with you, if you will wait."
The sergeant saluted.
"At Mademoiselle's service," he said placidly, and then turned towards his colleague and sighed, a deep suspiration eloquent of relief.
At the door of the saloon she hesitated. She could see her father at his desk, bent over his papers, writing methodically. A sudden irritated sense of shyness fell upon her. Surely he, too, could not misunderstand.
He looked round at her entrance. Without preamble she repeated the sergeant's report, speaking in level, matter of fact tones. She announced her decision to return with Perinaud and his escort.
Her father's first comment was no more than his usual deferential little nod. But there was a slightly strained silence between them as she finished speaking—a silence which gave him time for reflection.
"You think your presence necessary, likely to benefit him?" he said questioningly.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"He has been wounded in our service," she said. "These men seem to expect much of my nursing—I who have never nursed. I hardly see a way to refuse graciously."
Again her father made his little obeisance of assent.
"I could charge myself with an explanation," he said gravely. "There is no reason for you to go against your wishes. I fear there is little prospect of our being of real help."
Then a sudden throb of protest surged up in her. The vision of the dark cellar and of the fevered lips which called constantly upon her name became vivid, more vivid than before. To her own amazement she realized that she wanted to go, that the thought of those two horsemen riding out into the wild with their message of repulse had become abhorrent to her. She felt suddenly pitying, protective. The feminine, indeed, the maternal, instinct gripped her.
The blood rose to her cheeks.
"I should prefer to go," she said quietly.
Van Arlen made a little gesture of finality.
"The sooner, then, the better," he said, and moved briskly towards his own cabin, summoning the steward to his councils as he went.
The dusk was falling over them with grateful coolness as, eight hours later, they rode over the brink of the gorge and saw below them the black spectral shape of camel's-hair tents and the white dwellings of theduar. A lantern newly lit twinkled a welcome. A stallion neighed a greeting from his pickets as he heard the sound of advancing hoofs, and a couple of men in white uniform came to the door of a white-domed hovel and stood awaiting them.
One, a dapper, black-moustached little man with the Geneva Cross upon his sleeve, hastened to help Miss Van Arlen to alight.
"Monsieur sleeps, Mademoiselle," he informed her, as she reached the ground. "It is a matter of temperatures—and the subsequent weakness. Mademoiselle may have good hope that matters will yet go well."
His smile was reassuring and, in spite of his obvious youth, almost paternal. At the tent door he turned and laid his finger upon his lips. There must be no feminine want of self-restraint, he implied. The sight of one dear to her in his hour of helplessness must not leave her unstrung. She must be brave.
She followed with her father into the shadows within.
He lay with his arms outflung. A light coverlet was over him, but the damp of perspiration gleamed upon his forehead and neck. He moved restlessly, breathing with a panting sound.
"We poise much on Monsieur's recognition of Mademoiselle when he wakes," explained the orderly, and offered a smirk of intelligent sympathy to Mademoiselle's father.
She looked down, and a strange sense of unreality in the situation seized her. The white, fever-stricken face on the pillow seemed a spectre—a caricature of something familiar. A queer sense of anger, as if some well-liked possession had been meddled with and defaced by outsiders, rose in her heart. An instinct which she could not explain set her kneeling beside the pallet bed, her eyes fixed on its occupant.
Wearily, drowsily, Aylmer opened his eyes.
And then his smile dawned, slowly, incredulously, till the glory of assurance had become convincing. He pronounced her name.
In the background, emotional thrills travelled across the orderly's foolishly sentimental countenance. He took mental notes of a situation which bulked largely and enticingly in a letter to an apple-cheeked damsel in far-away Provence a few days later. "Such are the rewards of the soldier, my soul," he explained. "Love? Its cords are strong to drag its devotees even across this waste wilderness of Africa!" Wherein he did one of the most fertile lands upon the habitable globe a vile injustice. But your true lover is invariably a poet and girdled with merely a poet's limitations, while the apple-cheeked demoiselle's romantic sensibilities were quickened to the point of tears.
Mr. Van Arlen moved forward to his daughter's side with a suddenly instinctive motion. And she understood it. The embarrassment of the situation had at once become plain to him; his desire was to clear it, he was framing words—courteous, no doubt, but without any trace of sentiment—to assist her in this. He would do it admirably; his tact was beyond question.
And she?
Again she felt a sudden thrill of protest. No, how could they deal coldly with this man, now? It would be less than womanly—would it even be common fair play? He was down. Surely till he was up again, the indomitable soldier she knew and feared, honor forbade their striking even at his self-assurance.
Her hand was laid upon her father's arm, pressing it in gentle remonstrance. Then she leaned towards the bed.
"We have come to thank you," she said quietly. "You have suffered much for us, too much."
His smile was fading while she spoke.
"I—I failed," he muttered. "I had my hands upon him, and failed."
"Ah, but you mustn't think us unjust, always," she answered. "What you intended—that is what we look at. You have worked for us ceaselessly. And now you suffer for us. You must accept our gratitude for that."
He shook his head slowly, and his gaze wandered past her to Van Arlen's face.
"It is a check," he said slowly, "but only a check. He is not going to win." His eyes grew suddenly clear and his lips grim. "I shall follow him to the end," he said.
The orderly moved forward and rearranged the coverlet. He looked significantly at a flush which had risen to Aylmer's cheek.
"It is better that Monsieur should not excite himself," he explained amiably. "Mademoiselle is here; matters are going well. Monsieur will convalesce all the quicker if he avoids emotion."
Aylmer pushed at the rearranged coverlet with a gesture of irritation. He drew himself into a sitting posture.
"Don't think that I have flung up the sponge!" he cried. "Before, before this weakness came over me I arranged for the future. Daoud has seen to that; he has put matters in train. Landon will be watched—if necessary, followed. And when I am up again—" he smiled savagely—"when I take the trail for the second time, he will pay in full, as I promised he should."
And his voice rang firm as he caught sight of the Moor silhouetted against the evening light at the tent door.
"That is so?" he demanded. "You have seen to this among your friends?"
Daoud came forward a couple of respectful paces.
"Be assured, Sidi," he said, "that this man will not move a yard but I shall have due knowledge of it, in time. He cannot leave North Africa, and I be ignorant of it. Our hands may lag, but they will grip him at the last."
Aylmer gave a little sigh of satisfaction and lay back. And his eyes rose to Van Arlen's half appealingly, half defiantly.
"You see?" he said. "At any rate, I am doing—my best."
The other bowed, but not his automatic, courteous little bow with which he punctuated his everyday conversation. There was a moisture in his eyes. He leaned forward and took the hand which moved restlessly across the coverlet.
"If I had had a son," he said, "he could have done no more. Take my thanks, Captain Aylmer, for all that you are and have been; take them in full."
Aylmer gave a little nod of content.
"I'll take them," he smiled, "for what I have been to you, and that is less than nothing. But for what I am going to be—I'll earn them for that, earn them!"
About the aspect of the port of Melilla there is only one thing wholly admirable. That is the curving bay which sweeps eastward from the town towards the frontier blockhouse. This last is an eyesore; the untethered camels which pasture in herds beside it have little attractiveness; the wide plateau which stretches up to the distant hills is desolate and often arid. But the bay is a perpetual delight. Curved like a scimitar, it shines in the sunlight as a tempered blade shines, ringed by white tresses of foam, banked by its parapets of sand.
Two men sat in the shadow cast by a stranded boat and watched half a dozen Moors and Spaniards who bent their shoulders and swelled out their muscles to haul at a couple of ropes. The ropes slanted down to and were lost in the rush of the breakers. Those who dragged at them panted, the perspiration raining off their faces. The men who sat and watched seemed to find a whet to the enjoyment of their siesta in reviewing so much energy. One of them sighed—a contented little sigh, drew a cigarette from the breast of hisdjelab, lit it, and began to smoke with stolid satisfaction.
A child who was sitting between the two rose suddenly and ran down the sand. The men at the ropes had come to a halt. They stood gasping, wiping their faces. Impulsively the child laid his little hands upon the rope and stood in an attitude of tension, ready to use his tiny strength when operations were resumed. The men welcomed him with a glance of good-humored toleration.
The cigarette smoker laughed.
"The restlessness of youth, Sidi. Repose? They have no knowledge of the meaning of the word, these children. Now I? The last three weeks have brimmed with such toil that I could sit here and contentedly drowse a week, a month, nay, a whole year, if Allah willed."
The other nodded and stretched his limbs. The movement expressed the lethargy which is earned by fatigue.
"To-night we shall eat real food," he murmured. "We shall sleep in beds of sorts. We can even be amused, if we find thecafés chantantswhich attract these poor devils of Andalusian conscripts amusing. It's all a matter of contrasts—life. After the experiences we have endured among our friends the M'Geel, this doghole appears alluring. This!"
He waved his hand with a significant gesture towards the town, in which the mean houses appear to hustle the citadel and the citadel the houses, without either the one or the other gaining advantage.
The smoker blew out a cloud and spat towards the flagstaff which dominates the sea bastion.
"May Allah relegate it and its inhabitants shortly to the Abyss!" he aspired devoutly. "Is it permitted to ask how long, Sidi, you purpose using its hospitalities?"
"It is always permitted to ask, my friend. The answer is another matter. Bluntly, till the Gibraltar boat arrives."
The other lifted his shoulders into a tiny shrug.
"For the Sidi Jan this is a place not to be recommended. There is a smell, do you notice, especially at night—murk which rises from the fort ditch. And the vermin! His little skin is pitted with them!"
Landon moved irritably. He looked at his son. The men at the ropes were hauling again by now, and the small back was bent and the little arms tautened with efforts to emulate them. The first few meshes of a laden net appeared above the surface of the breakers.
Little John gave a squeal of delight, promptly deserted the toilers, and capered joyously down the beach. Scales began to shine silvern in the sun as the tangle of the nets rose slowly, but higher and yet higher. His voice rose in shrill outcry; he clapped his hands.
As the great bag of the net was hauled little by little up the shelving beach, he flung himself into the hurtle round the wriggling catch. The mackerel were there in their hundreds—in their thousands. He tripped and fell into the center of the heap of fishes, wriggling as they wriggled, and to little more purpose.
Muhammed rose, paced slowly forward, and plucked him into safety. But the child met his good offices with scorn.
"I wish to help; I wish to gather them up!" he cried petulantly. "I am going to be a fisherman. I shall take the yacht to the fishing grounds and catch millions—millions!"
"There must be a catching of a yacht first," said Muhammed, amiably. "Where wilt thou obtain it, little lord?"
Little John Aylmer turned puzzled eyes up to his questioner. Then he wheeled and pointed eastward towards the anchorage below the headland.
"It is there!" he explained. "Did he," he pointed towards his father, who still lay comfortably reclined in the shadow of the boat, "not send for it?"
Muhammed's eyes followed the direction of the child's hand. He stared, gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stared again, incredulously. The next moment he was back at his employer's side, twitching excitedly at the folds of his bournous.
"Sidi—Sidi!" he exclaimed. "While we drowse we are betrayed. Look! Look!"
Landon scrambled to his feet and saw what the timbers of the shadowing boat had hidden before. A white vessel, drifting slowly in from the headland abreast the market quay. As he watched, a white spout of foam and the rattle of the hawse-pipes told that the anchor had been dropped.
She rounded to, the American flag waving lazily from her stern, the burgee of the New York Yacht Club from her peak. They could not read her name across two miles of water, but they did not need to. It wasThe Morning Star.
Landon went white beneath his tan. He swore.
"We have been here three days—three days, by God! Not a soul in the place knows me or knows that I am not what I profess to be—a Moor from El Dibh. And yet—this! It can't be a coincidence. They know—somehow!"
He looked at Muhammed in sudden fierce suspicion.
"That infernal Jew of yours has sold us!" he cried.
The Moor made a tolerant gesture, the sort of motion a nurse offers a wilful child.
"Sidi! You do not understand. A Jew to sell me! Not this side of the Mediterranean. It means death! Yakoob knows it; it is knowledge that he has sucked in with his mother's milk, chewed with his daily bread, seen written in letters of blood in a score of towns between this and Mequinez. No, Yakoob Ihudi is not in this business. Some other is the instrument of—fate!"
He stooped, lifted little John carefully in his arms, and nodded towards the town gate.
"We must use haste, Sidi," he said calmly, avoiding the protests the child was making with his closed fists. "Show wisdom, little lord. Why do you not wish to return to the town, wherein are special delights for the eye in the booths of the market-place?"
Landon hesitated. Then he joined the Moor, running. And the other was covering the ground with huge strides which forced his companion to continue the run to keep pace with him. He panted out a question.
"My plan, Sidi?" returned the Moor. "It lies in the hands of Allah. Here when inquiry begins to be made, we are the mark of a hundred eyes. In Yakoob's hovel a means of escape may be found."
The two reached the dusty road which leads from the drill ground, followed it into the shadows of the town gate, mounted the steep on which the citadel stands, and gained a row of squalid wooden hovels which fringed the rampart above the fort ditch. Into one of these they disappeared.
A man looked up as they entered, a dark-skinned, low-browed Israelite, who greeted them with an obsequiously furtive air. He sat cross-legged upon a turned-up chest and plied his needle upon an exceedingly ragged pair of trousers. A heap of other garments lay at his elbow. His trade was evidently that of mending tailor.
"This deposit for contraband of which you spoke last night?" asked Muhammed, without preamble. "Where is it?"
The look of furtive expectancy in the tailor's eyes became active alarm.
"What do you fear?" he asked shrilly. "A search? There are fifteen thousand cartridges awaiting transport."
"The search will not be for those, but for these," said the Moor, pointing to Landon and his son. "And there is as great a ruin attached to the finding of the one as the other. You must prevent that."
The Jew rose quickly and barred the door. With alert movements he gathered up the smoking ashes from the hearth and emptied them into a shallow pan. He covered his hand with a cloth, seized the pothook which hung from the entrance of the chimney, and moved it laboriously aside. As he did so the hearthstone moved slowly downwards as if on a hinge. A flight of steps led into the darkness.
Muhammed indicated the opening with a shrug.
"The best we can do, Sidi," he deprecated. "Till matters adjust themselves you must keep company with Yakoob's contraband."
Landon shrugged his shoulders.
"Air?" he questioned laconically. "It is supplied—how?"
Muhammed passed on the question. The Jew pointed to the bosom of his bournous, which rose and fell in the draught which rose from below.
"There are innumerable crevices which open through the wall of the fort ditch," he said. "For this reason the Sidi must not use a light—at night."
Landon shrugged his shoulders pessimistically, and took his son by the hand. "Come, my boy," he said. "We are going to play that childhood's favorite and most successful comedy—the Robbers in the Cave. You and I are to be the leaders of the gang."
Little John peered doubtfully into the darkness.
"And Muhammed?" he asked, looking at the Moor with expectant, trusting eyes.
There was a queer intensity in the Moor's glance as he bent over the small figure hesitating at the head of the steps. His smile was kindly and reassuring.
"I am the robber who goes abroad, prowling to find wicked rich men who deserve robbing," he said. "I return shortly, little lord. Have no fear."
Little John nodded gravely and took his father's hand. The two paced solemnly down into the cellar. The hearthstone was replaced, the cinders set smoking upon it again. With a sigh Yakoob took up another deplorable pair of trousers and bit off a length of thread. Muhammed passed out into the street.
Five minutes later he stood on the quayside, watching the motor launch which slid out of the shadow cast on the still waters byThe Morning Star.
Three figures sat upon the cushions at the stern, and Muhammed, as he watched them from under the hood of hishaik, examined one of them with startled intensity. Miss Van Arlen he recognized. Aylmer, whose face was partially disguised by bandages, he debated over for a moment. But this third? This gray-clad elder? This was not the owner ofThe Morning Star. It was—whom?
Surprise as much as relief erased the wrinkles from the watcher's face as the unknown stepped ashore, turned to assist his companion, and disclosed the features of the Moor's former employer, Mr. Miller.
Muhammed emphasized his amazement with an oath. "One God!" he swore, and for a moment hesitated. Then, as the gray-clad man strolled past him, talking, the Moor pushed back thehaikwhich shadowed his face and met the other's glance squarely.
Mr. Miller made no sign.
Muhammed dropped back into the shadow of the quayside booths, and sauntered carelessly up the citadel ramp. The three preceded him. At the top of the ramp a causeway leads to the drawbridge which spans the fort ditch. Mr. Miller had apparently eyes for nothing but his fair companion. He failed to notice, at any rate, the dilapidated state of the iron rails which fence the bridge. The dust cloak he was carrying caught in a jagged piece of iron and was most unfortunately torn. A sudden appreciative gleam burned in Muhammed's eyes as he noted the incident. Thehaikhood concealed a smile.
He could not hear, but he could see the expressive pantomime which was accompanying Mr. Miller's apologies. He motioned his companions forward towards the bridge and the dark entrance through the casemate into the citadel. As for himself, his finger explained, he would return to the town and get the damage repaired. After a minute's discussion, matters followed the course indicated. Aylmer and Miss Van Arlen passed on—to seek the government offices, as Muhammed told himself, to interview the head, no doubt, of the military police.
The Moor slid forward deferentially as the gray figure turned.
"I can direct the Sidi to asastreof incredible skill," he explained. "The Sidi has no need to return to the town if he desires such an one. He is to be found within a hundred paces, if the Sidi so will."
Mr. Miller made an affable gesture of acquiescence.
"You are certainly quick to seize a business opportunity, my friend," he said amiably. "Lead on."
Two minutes later the two stood behind Yakoob's well-barred door, and the hearthstone had been raised. Landon offered his visitor a tribute of surprise tinged with humor.
"I understood, my friend," he said, as he took the other's hand, "that the mail came in from Gibraltar to-morrow. For you, it seems, the age of miracles is not past?"
"I hope I am an alert servant of opportunity," said Miller. "I got your letter yesterday morning."
"That does not entirely explain your presence in Melilla to-day."
Miller nodded.
"Your father-in-law has been anchored in Gibraltar Bay for the last fortnight. He has had information of your movements, my friend—good information, and I have not been able to determine the source of it. I made it my business to get introduced to him at the house of mutual friends. A humble client of mine, a ship's chandler, acquainted me with the fact thatThe Morning Star'sanchor and steam were being raised, and with the name of her port of destination. A couple of good boatmen and a little tact did the rest. I told Mr. Van Arlen that I had an urgent business necessity to visit these possessions of the King of Spain. Result—a warm invitation to anticipate the mail boat by a day."
"Excellent!" commended Landon. "And the business necessity? You have brought the means of relieving it?"
Mr. Miller dilated his nostrils. Perhaps the reek of the fort ditch reached him. Very carefully and methodically he lit a cigarette.
"Yes—and no," he answered at last, and with deliberation. "I have money with me, my dear Lord Landon. But my employers give me no commission to apply it to—charity."
Landon's eyes grew suddenly ominous.
"The price of that book was to be five hundred pounds," he said. "I have received one hundred so far."
Miller made a gesture of assent.
"You obtained for me a certain book. Subsequent investigations proved it to be a mere dummy—a book made, in fact, to be stolen. You remain in my debt to the extent of that score of five-pound notes which I gave you."
Landon laughed a dry little laugh.
"Then I concede that I shall remain in your debt—permanently. The bungling is yours, not mine. I demand the balance of my fee. For suppose, my dear Miller, that I gave your game in Gibraltar away?"
"Suppose you did," said Miller, placidly. "It would be a question of your word against mine, would it not?"
There was nothing sneering in his tone, but its bald self-assurance seemed to whip Landon's temper into fury. He swore wickedly.
Miller watched him as the weasel might be expected to watch the trapped rat. And the dark, unpleasant little room had, indeed, many of the attributes of a cage.
And then there was an energetic gesture from the gray-clad arm.
"You bungled the matter—not in stealing the wrong book," said Miller, "but in the manner of your escape. It was then that you lost your value to my employers. You are liable to be arrested in any of the British dominions. Till that matter is settled, you are a weapon without an edge, for us. That error must be repaired."
Landon stared up at him curiously.
"How?" he asked.
Miller made a significant gesture towards the child. There was no intention of menace in it, but the child shrank back, turning, not towards his father, but with a sudden instinctive outstretching of his hand to Muhammed. The Moor grasped the little fingers silently and smiled—a smile which faded as he turned his keen, watchful eyes again upon the visitor.
"You must renounce your detention of your son," said Miller. "You must bargain with his grandfather. Your price must be a certain competency, if you will, but above all the right to return unquestioned into your proper place in society. In this way alone can you continue to be of use—to me."
There was a silence. Landon, still a-squat upon the floor, his elbow on his knee, the heel of his fist supporting his hand, stared up at his mentor with impassive eyes. In the shadow on his right Muhammed stood, still holding the child's hand, his glance hovering over Miller with a speculation which was almost distrust. Behind him the tailor stitched apathetically at his dilapidated wares.
Suddenly Landon turned to the Moor.
"You have heard?" he questioned sharply.
"I have heard, oh, Sidi."
"And understood?"
The man hesitated.
"There is a purpose of surrendering the Sidi Jan?" he murmured, and his voice conveyed not so much protest as incredulity.
Landon nodded.
"This month of toil, all our leagues of weariness and pain among the men of the M'Geel are things lost, then," went on the Moor impassively. "An order has come and we must leap to obey it. The Sidi Jan, too? His voice is not to be heard in the matter." He shrugged his shoulders apathetically. "Only a child," he added, and touched the golden curls with a caressing hand. "Only a bale of merchandise, a thing to be bought and sold."
Miller turned and looked at him keenly. The Moor met the glance with a droop of the head which spoke eloquently of submission. But a queer smile began to harden Landon's lips. He rose slowly to his feet.
"A bale of merchandise," he repeated slowly. "And, as I am reminded, we toiled to bring it uninjured across the wilds of the Beni M'Geel. Will that be reckoned in the value of it?" he asked, and wheeled suddenly towards Miller with a savage, cat-like motion. "Will they pay me for my sweat and thirst and pain?"
The gray man was silent for a moment. There was something electric in the atmosphere, something menacing, something—and this was perhaps what his machine-like mind shrank from most—something human and passionate. These were not among the goods which Mr. Miller sought to purchase.
"You will do your own bargaining," he said, in a level, dispassionate tone. "But the child must be delivered. The price? There you are master of your own affairs."
For the second time Landon's eyes dwelled on Muhammed's face.
"I shall answer him—how?" he asked quietly.
"Thus!" said the Moor, and flung his arms round Miller's elbows and smothered his lips upon his breast, while Landon, laughing a queer, excited laugh, snatched up a garment from the dismal heap on the floor, tore off a liberal patch, and deftly wound it in gag-wise between the prisoner's teeth. Shackled with ragged waist-cloths at ankle and wrist, the gray figure was lowered down the steps into the darkness. Muhammed spoke rapidly and incisively for the space of a minute to the Jew, who listened in impassive silence. Then, with a last commanding gesture, the Moor opened the door and went out again alone into the swiftly falling dusk.
Muhammed's steps were bent away from the town towards the row of dilapidated hovels which fringe the bank of sand below the nearer blockhouse. And he walked quickly; there was definite purpose and no sign of hesitation in his stride. He came to a halt before a dwelling, half burrow, half barn, round the entrance of which were clustered half a dozen ragged figures.
The Moor's face was dark in the shadow of hishaikhood, but he appeared to need no introduction. He raised a finger and beckoned. One of the lounging figures rose grudgingly and drew aside with him.
"I have it from Yakoob, Signor Luigi, that you leave to-morrow. That must be altered. It may be necessary to make a start to-night."
The other raised a dark Italian face towards the Moor and eyed him questioningly. He shrugged his shoulders.
"I have no charter from Yakoob," he said. "I return home to Salicudi—to await the sponge-fishing season. I need a holiday; this contraband running frets the nerves, do you see? I wish to forget the need of having eyes—and a telescope—at the back of one's head."
For a moment Muhammed was silent, debating, as it seemed, something in which memory or experience gave him no assistance.
"Salicudi?" he questioned.
"In the Lipari group," said the other, laconically. "My home."
"An island?" said the Moor. "And your home? What is it? A house—a hut—a castle? Give me particulars. My chiefest need would be privacy. Can you guarantee it?"
The Italian pondered.
"You flee from—what?" he demanded.
"From a curiosity which still seems to dog my footsteps," said the Moor, drily. "Let it be sufficient for you to know that with three friends I desire to vanish from Melilla to-night. We might find it convenient to remain temporarily on Salicudi. It depends on your neighbors' thirst for information and your capabilities of defeating it."
Signor Luigi gave an expressive and contemptuous wave of the hand.
"On Salicudi are six families—cousins of mine, all of them. I and my brother Sandro alone possess boats or money. The others work for us and are fed. We do not encourage them to think; they do not tire their magnificent brains except under our direction."
Muhammed nodded appreciatively.
"The priest?" he suggested.
"Father Sigismondi serves six islands besides mine," said the smuggler. "He visits us by favor of my boat, when Christian offices are in special demand. It is a matter I regulate myself."
"Carabineers, tax collectors?"
"Of the former, none; we have leave to cut our own throats. Of the latter, one yearly. He is due in about eight months' time."
"Food?"
"Polenta—fish—beans; at times offestaarisottoof kid. We have goats, and therefore milk."
The Moor nodded.
"I am empowered to offer you for your hospitality for myself and friends twentylireper head per week during our stay on your boat or island," he said slowly.
Luigi scratched his head.
"One hundredlirefor the lot?" he temporized. "You have appetites, you Moors; that is notorious."
"We have appetites—for food," agreed Muhammed. "The bill of fare you quote contains little that would be dignified as such in my way of thinking. You will take eightylireper week, or lose this trade of Yakoob's. Choose quickly."
For the second time the Italian's shoulders rose in a shrug.
"What you will," he said apathetically. "You hold a pistol to my head."
"Try to remember that it remains always loaded," replied the other, and turned briskly towards the port. "You had better see to your arrangements instantly."
He passed across the sand towards the dirty little Marina which fronts the shipping offices and ship-chandlers' booths, leaving his companion staring after him with a frown. Then, for the third time, Signor Luigi shrugged his shoulders and followed, to enter finally a ship's dingy which was tied to the Marina steps. In this he gained a large lateen-rigged boat which swung at her moorings in the bay.
The motor launch floated idly on the ripples at the landing stage immediately below the citadel. The engineer had come ashore and sat on a bench beneath the tarpaulin which had been roughly erected to protect some perishable government stores. In the shadow of the Marina booths, Muhammed halted and looked thoughtfully at the man and then at the launch and finally at the setting sun. The birth of a new and up-lifting emotion could be seen working in his expressive eyes.
"Bismillah!" he exclaimed softly. "The one! Why not the three!"
He drew himself up; a deep breath escaped him. He slipped around the back of the line of booths and reappeared coming as from the citadel. And he had the aspect of haste and importance.
He walked straight up to the waiting engineer.
"I bring an order that you do not await your mistress but return for her in three hours' time," he said in excellent English.
The man looked up in stolid surprise.
"Eh?" he questioned.
"Your mistress has accepted an invitation to dine with the governor," said Muhammed. "You are to return for her at ten o'clock."
The man got up and shook himself lazily as he strolled towards the launch.
"Nice hospitable old cock—what?" he hazarded. "Didn't send me down a small bottle of beer and a sandwich, now did he?"
Muhammed shook his head. The man grunted pessimistically, gave a surly little nod, and sat down behind the launch's steering wheel. A moment later he was grooving a white trail of foam out into the bay.
Muhammed sighed—a sigh which expressed relief, content, and the expansion of a hitherto unleashed excitement. He turned and ran rapidly back along the shore. A second visit to the hovels below the blockhouse resulted in a conference with another of their deplorably clad inhabitants. A taciturn fellow this, of apparently Spanish extraction. But the fact that he wore the remains of an extremely dissolutehaikover a pair of remarkably tattered frieze trousers hinted at a cosmopolitanism which was buttressed by his speech. He used thelingua francaand moved amid an almost palpable reek of garlic.
After the exchange of a few rapid sentences, he relapsed into silence but not into inactivity. He paced solemnly down the sand and motioned the Moor to help in the launching of a boat. In it they pulled round the sweep of the bay into the inner port and moored themselves in the berthing which the motor launch had vacated.
The dusk had now become darkness. Lights shone in the booths; the distressing clangor of a gramophone sounded from onealbergar, the thrumming of a mandolin from another. There was a clink of spurs as half a score of artillerymen clattered down the citadel ramp, eager for the squalid debaucheries of the port. Aguardia civilesauntered along the quayside edge and looked down into the waiting boat.
"Profitable evil-doing is surely at a low ebb when I find El Avispa trying to make an honest penny," he meditated.
Muhammed's companion turned.
"Why do you term me The Wasp, Señor?" he asked with a grin of complacence. "Have I been known to sting?"
Theguardiamade a jerky motion of his thumb in the direction of the great convict establishment upon the hill.
"I don't know,amigo. Your exploits are scheduled up there; have a care that I do not need to refer to them. Whom do you await?"
"The Señor and the Señora who landed from the yacht," said the boatmen. "They visit the Señor Intendente."
Theguardialooked doubtful.
"They landed from a boat, a motor boat," he objected.
"Precisely," agreed the other. "It appears that something affected the engine of this, some leak of the jacketing which I do not understand, but which I am informed cools the cylinders. The engineer returned while he could, enlisting my services to await and explain matters to his employer."
"Humph!" grunted the uniformed man. "His choice showed little discretion. See to it that you do not disgrace your opportunity. That seat is bespattered with fish-oil and scales. Wipe it!" He made a commanding gesture towards the offending stain, and walked majestically away.
At the far end of the Plaza he was seen to halt and observe two newcomers, who appeared leisurely descending the citadel ramp. A gold-braided official was in attendance on them, and his gestures were rapid and deferential. Theguardia civilesaluted and spoke. Muhammed, watching keenly, gave another sigh. Fate was on his side. The very guardians of law and order were unconsciously buttressing his plan. This officiousguardia civilewas already explaining the situation to Miss Van Arlen and her companion. The onus of explanation—and possible suspicion—was thus being lifted from shoulders possibly less capable of bearing it. He muttered his satisfaction in a hurried undertone.
The girl and Aylmer advanced towards the quayside, the gesticulating official still in attendance. The latter eyed the waiting boat disdainfully.
"Let me demonstrate, Señora," he cried, "that our port can supply something less deplorable in the way of shore boats. Let me summon a pinnace and crew from the naval arsenal."
Muhammed's heart stood still. But fate smiled on him yet.
Miss Van Arlen protested that the boat would do well enough, that it was hardly fair to have kept this man waiting by the instructions of her own engineer, as it appeared, and then refuse to engage him. With a smile and bow of farewell she took her seat in the stern, while theguardia civilemuttered stern instructions to the rowers anent their duty. They received them in stolid silence. Aylmer took the yoke lines, and amid a renewed demonstration of respect from the men of gold braid, the boat shot out into the darkness.
A slight mist hung over the water, but the riding lights of the yacht were plain enough and Aylmer headed directly for them. He leaned forward and asked a question of the man who pulled stroke oar.
"The Señor who came ashore with us?" he queried. "Did you mark him? Did he return in the motor boat?"
The man shrugged his shoulders.
"I did not see it," he said laconically. "Have the goodness to steer well to the right. Your present course will foul a line of net buoys."
Aylmer pulled the line and swerved as directed. And then Claire spoke, with a hint of something in her voice which was nearly akin to suspicion without exactly attaining it.
"Mr. Miller frankly puzzles me," she said.
Aylmer gave a little nod in the darkness.
"Yes," he agreed. "There is a sense of—of estrangement about him. He is good company, amondain, intelligent, but not—human. One feels that at every turn."
The girl made a gesture towards the shore.
"What can he have to do in that—that ash heap?" she asked. "A man who poses as aflâneur, adilettante."
"Pottery?" suggested Aylmer. "He collects; I have seen his collections. They are sound and in good taste, without being remarkable."
"That is what I think," she acquiesced. "For the life-work of a man they are petty. It is mysterious; he is mysterious! Why did he not rejoin us this evening at the governor's office as he promised?"
Aylmer smiled.
"The ardors of the chase," he hazarded. "He is probably sitting in the sanctum of some Jew huckster, chaffering for the least worn of a collection of Rabat rugs or old Mequinez steel-work. He will come on board to-morrow to explain and bid us farewell, and we shall hear all about it."
"About what?" asked the girl enigmatically.
Aylmer smiled again.
"About—what he chooses to tell us," he answered, and jerked the yoke-line energetically, as a couple of oval dark objects loomed up on the surface just ahead.
There was a swish and a dragging sound, and the dark objects disclosed themselves alongside as net buoys. They hung below the gunwale persistently; the boat was obviously brought to a standstill.
"In spite of my warning the Señor has fouled the fishing nets," growled the boatman.
"On the contrary," retorted Aylmer, "your directions carried us straight into them. A direct course would have avoided this."
The man shipped his oar and stood up.
"The Señor will permit me to pass him?" he said. "The rudder itself must be unshipped to clear us."
Aylmer shifted his seat to one side as the man leaned over him. The next instant he had cried out—a choking cry, smothered under the folds of the sail which the man had heaped bodily upon his head. His hands were grasped and drawn together in the loop of a rope. Lashings were knitted about his limbs with almost miraculous rapidity. Stark and inert, he felt himself rolled into the bottom of the boat, his rage and horror almost suffocating him as he heard the quickly stifled cry which told him that his companion was suffering like treatment. And then, for half a minute, the rapid rumble of the rowlocks was evidence that the boat was being furiously rowed—whither he could not guess.
There was a shock of wood meeting wood. They had run alongside another vessel, or possibly the piles of a landing place. Whispered voices joined those of their captors.