MUSTY ALE, A LOW, UNSCRUPULOUS FELLOW.
MUSTY ALE, A LOW, UNSCRUPULOUS FELLOW.
“#$%&) )$’’’’&&&%***’!!!!†(Chesty Redhead!) murmured Musty Ale when he was well out of range.
Suddenly a white figure, big as a circus tent and looking the same, detached itself from the other roughriders, whirled up to Musty and the black whiskers of this new demon parted widely showing a very superior set of sharply pointed white fangs.
“Hollerwoller, hippolo, jazzamarabi zop zing!â€
“I wouldn’t care if you did,†replied Musty promptly. “How much?â€
“Eighty-six beans!†said the big feller. And before the other’s eyes he bobbed a large goatskin purse which jingled.
“Marks or francs?â€
“O, my well-known Allah! Better’n ’nat! American pennies! How’s that hippolohit yer?â€
“Gimme that bag! She’s yours.â€
Musty Ale shoved the coin of treachery next to a half loaf of bread under his sandy jelab.
As the other wheeled his magnificent charger to spur it to a violent gallop, Musty suddenly called:
“Hup!†(Halt!)
“What?â€
“She likes to be called ‘Queen.’â€
“And who is she that I—but thanks for the tip. Allah keep the fleas off you, me lad.â€
“Thanks yourself,†answered Musty, “although he never has yet.â€
But the white circus tent on the plunging black beastie was already far away.
Verbeenahad thought when Musty Ale held back to have a talk with the large gentleman in the white wrappings her sulky retainer was doubtless obeying her order to tell the person who seemed to be the Admiral Beattie of the desert ships, that in the matter of her joining his particular caravan there would be nothing the whatsoever doing.
She was very much annoyed therefore to discover that this man in the prominently large turban had evidently refused to take Musty’s word for it and meant to talk the matter over with her in person. It would seem so. His black horse—Verbie could see it was no dog—was doing about 1,59-1/2 in her direction.
There might be a whole lot that Verbeena did not know about the other sex.
But she was fully cognizant what Arabic bargaining meant. Starting to dicker at one inthe afternoon of a perfect day in June one continued to the following Shrove Tuesday.
They always had as much to say about a shilling purchase as Joseph Conrad did about Lord Jim.
We who have witnessed the scene of tragic treachery against her on the part of Musty Ale in conspiracy with the hard rider now abaft the oasis in the rapidly diminishing offing, must tremble now for Verbeena Mayonnaise. Although even we cannot as yet suspect the half of what is coming to her.
And of all persons Verbeena!
So unprepared, untrained and sure to be boyishly baffled at finding herself the object and victim of a large consignment of fiery, wild, untamed, hectic and rrrrrrred-hot desert passion now being swiftly shipped to her on horseback.
The sun was beating relentlessly on the roof of Verbeena’s white helmet and she did not propose to wait and let this big goof attempt to sell her any fake rugs, bangles, beads or poor caravan accommodations.
She gave the spurs, therefore, right heartilyto her beloved steed and he proceeded to cut down a large section of the Sahara ahead.
Let Musty and his gang follow. Unquestionably this person on his way toward her would have sufficient Oriental subtlety to take the hint. He would doubtless rein up his horse and save oats.
But—there was a loud crack of a whip behind her.
Verbeena was very much astonished when her noble Berb, Al Dobbin, stopped nearly dead in his tracks, stood up on his hind legs and did some waltz steps.
During the whirl she noticed that the big white chap was still coming toward her.
She gave Al Dobbin the spurs again and once more he moved into a fast gallop over the dunes.
Again the whip cracked behind her! And again! (Two cracks.)
Al Dobbin stood on his hind legs neatly and pawed gracefully.
Plainly he was bidding for a lump of sugar.
And all she could possibly have offered him was a cigarette!
Once more Verbeena spurred him to a start.
“A blooming circus creature,†she gasped, “and in pursuit must be his trainer. And where the deuce is Musty? He must have stolen this fancy ballet horse from the husky white ulster now so rapidly approaching! The rotter! I suspected Musty from the first but didn’t care to mention it to Tawdry. Wisht I had! Still, when one adventures, why——â€
Crack! Crack! Crack! (Three cracks.)
Immediately Al Dobbin knelt to pray.
Verbeena, not knowing the signals, smacked her helmet hard against the desert of Sahara, matted her curls and stretched motionless, a lighted cigarette in her hand.
One could read a symbol in its curling smoke of the fiery spirit yet existent in the lithe, young, prone, boyish body as well as the indubitable indication of an unbreakable habit.
But there was so little time for reading anything, although it must be admitted that the light was excellent for even an Edison cannot vie with that real thing which you get on the Sahara.
But to get back to Verbeena. And high time too!
For the big, brown devil had her! Right inhis arms. Across his horse! And wrapped up in his great, long white cloak. Not any too white either.
She—already she was beginning to feel she was she—Verbeena Mayonnaise, was caught, trapped, trussed up in the folds of that white cloak of his, utterly helpless and like a week’s wash!
It was horrible, awful, terrible and very uncomfortable.
Moreover, the humiliation of it was meticulously genuine.
And what could she do? Jiu jitsu she had but it wasn’t worth a jitney to a person in a cocoon! By the same token all her gymnasium and other athletic perfections which had trained her fit to give Georges Carpentier or Jacques Dempsey a stiff battle now went blah.
Additionally, this big heap Arab chief that had snared her she knew—thrillingly knew—was hefty.
He was managing his fiery steed one-handed, beautifully, better than any stableyard virtuoso she had ever known at ’ome.
His other arm about her was like a hoop of steel.
Or a lobster’s claw.
She felt pinched. And, in truth, she was. She was in the hands of the Shereef.
She tried to scream. But when she did so she only succeeded in eating a section of his flowing white robe.
She tried to think. But she might as well have been her brother, Tawdry.
She tried to smoke. And that was worst of all. Her arms were so encumbered she couldn’t get at any of her cigarette cases.
Not that she was left entirely without tobacco. The Sahara lady-snatcher’s garments rang with the odor of it.
To add to her agony, her snippy little nose smarted keenly and she knew it must be red as a beet from sunburn. And she was helpless to get out her powder puff.
Despite her manly training, the powder-puff habit was one which she had always practiced in common with all the other Cambridge girls and fellows.
Cumulatively upon these conditions of despair, she began to wonder what the deuce this bally coot meant to do with her!
One thing certain was that he was seriously, perhaps permanently upsetting her scheme, her plan, her idea for junketing forth by her lonely into the desert. Such a perfectly good plan! One that would forever end her being dependent on Lord Tawdry’s luck at bridge and forever relieve her of the necessity of getting Americans at the foreign hotels to stake her at games of stud poker.
Ah—it had been no idle journey—no mere whimsy! It had been designed to bring her wealth, fame, and a glory the most transcendent of her times.
The marriage of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had suggested it.
For had she not the pulchritude of Mary?
And girlishness could be acquired.
And had she not the athletic prowess to cut the didoes of Doug?
Thus she could go into the movies—if she could get in—like a sort of one-person band.
She could double in sex.
Perhaps draw two salaries of $1,500,000 a week each! One lady and one gentleman salary.
How to get in? That was the question Verbeena had demanded of herself to answer. And answer it she had.
She would disappear into the desert. She would pick up with some nice caravan at a fair rate for board and mileage and stick along with it indefinitely.
She had been careful to announce all around the Biscuit that she would be gone exactly one month.
When the month was up and no Verbeena she could depend on the Knitting Needle Dearies to start their jaws awagging concerning her and run away and leave them.
The foreign correspondents would soon get going on the cable regarding the missing young, daring, delightful, ingenuous, adventurous, amazing, remarkable, willful, bewitching bobbed haired beauty of Mayfair who had recklessly essayed to navigate the Sahara without a male rudder of her own, to journey far and alone save for an escort of wicked and lowering Arabs!
As the days passed and the mystery deepened how the columns and columns would accumulate in the dailies and weeklies and on the timely topics movie films! The American papers particularly would rave.
Lord Northcliffe would begin by offering a good camera to any person finding trace of her and end by setting up a reward of 1,000,000 pun. No question of it. Hearst would offer the pick of his newspapers to any reporter who could rescue her.
But if any reporters got around her caravan it would be so easy to disguise herself. She would not even have to take off her ridin’ britches. Just slip a lady jelab around her and bring one end of it up over her nose and get by.
Or if the hue and cry got the French Government so all-fired distrait that they ordered a ruthless search of the caravan harems, she had only to show up in her usual ridin’ pants, paste a little blackberry jam on her lip and chin for a glossy black Oriental beard and fool ’em all.
Perhaps it would be wise to mix camel hair with the jam.
But that would be a matter to be decided upon when the emergency arose.
Of course, there might be no jam in the caravan commissary. But surely there would never be a lack of gum Arabic.
And when she, Verbeena, had thus vaulted into the top skies of notoriety, she would communicate secretly with the largest of the movie concerns.
What would they bid to star the “mystery girl of the Sahara†in a magnitudinous thriller with her own company of devil-riding, thrilling, stirring, fierce, wild, startling, arousing Arabs?
She saw herself getting a flood of checks from these sources blank of everything but signatures.
Or a procession of 2000 camels laden with the gold of the Americas if she preferred to do business that way.
“Just name your price, girlie,†would inevitably be the message.
And here was this Arab rotter grabbing her around the girdle and taking her somewhere west of Suez!
And what for?
What was the idea?
Not till then did it occur to Verbeena that it might be because she was a woman. Naturally, this notion filled her with astonishment and disgust. And rage, touched most lightly with the erotic.
She got madder and madder!
Indeed, Verbeena became virtuously vibrant with a revolt virginally volcanic. Her eyes shone virescent with hatred and the tiny blue veins on her white forehead under the tawny clubbed curls became varicose.
Besides, she was getting kind of scared.
There was a nifty strangle hold she knew which, could she ever get free of that tail end of his Arabian wrapper, she would love to try out on this rough bird. Her fingers, her small, lithe, delicate, steel-like fingers, tingled at the thought.
Even if her nose was red, she determined to try and poke it out into the air. She would gather new strength and see what the chances were for coming out further. Cautiously she screwed her bobbed head about and finally, poor little snail, managed to thrust her face forward and out of the folds that were stifling her. Sheopened her mouth wide. She took in great gulps of air.
Ah, it was good!
But next she took in several deep gulps of sand as it arose from the flying hoofs of her captor’s single footer.
Ah, not so good!
She became aware of a big, glaring face above her. How terribly it frowned!
“Duckmong, Kid, duckmong!†her captor said sternly and pushed her head back as though she was an India rubber doll.
Such was the awful strength of the man!
And then he squeezed her to him till she feared that Bertie Butternut’s fate would be her own. She felt crushed to the consistency of malted milk.
Who could he be, this demon? Certainly nothing less than the local Zabysko of Biscuit. And it was marvelous the way he managed at the same time his great, big horse and herself as if she were the smallest pony of a ballet.
She didn’t faint. You’d never catch Verbeena Mayonnaise doing that. But really she felt an awful lot like it!
He changed her position again. This time he hung her head down.
She looked up into his eyes. (There was no help for it.) The monster laughed at her—laughed!
He was now, she saw, not only driving the horse with one hand and holding her upside down with the other, but had inserted a cigarette into an eighteen-inch amber holder clinched in his teeth.
And then, just to show her his class, he bent low until the end of his cigarette touched the tip of her fiery little sunburned nose, lighted the cigarette and all over again he laughed at her.
“You ——, ——!†she cried to him with a rush of words Brother Tawdry himself, could not have excelled.
“By Allah!†he smiled back at her, “what a game little divvle!â€
Not being able to get a look at her wrist watch, Verbeena then lost all sense of time. She knew only that the sun was still up and burning her nose ingloriously. But she would resist to the last pulsation of her strong, young heart this desert creature of the strangely, burning passionateorbs. They were rather nice eyes but, he would find resistance to the last recalcitrant tissue of her turbulent nature.
He might use her as a cigar lighter.
But just let him try anything else and——
Themad, passionate ride was over about supper-time.
The next thing Verbeena’s intelligence became immersed in she was standing within a big tent brilliantly lighted by respectable old candles inside of two hanging lamps.
But she didn’t have much chance to look over these things. They hung too high.
What was solely in her mind, to faithfully reproduce its own process accurately was the thought:
“Where’s that sapadillo that brought me here?â€
Right in front of her was he standing and she got a good, unfurtive look at him. Sure enough he was as big as he felt when he had her grabbed to him on horseback.
The thing that struck her immediately, stirred her curiously amidst her emotions of hitherto unknown fear and would there be a place in thetent to wash-up properly, was that his hair didn’t match. His whiskers were black, his face was really red, not brown as she saw because he had brushed some of the dust off, whilst his head hair was some kind of color or other.
Just what she couldn’t tell.
It wasn’t red and it wasn’t yellow.
Was it as of the cornflower in tassel?
She caught her breath. This was no time to become romantic. She was an icicle, she told herself, and must continue to recall that fact.
He was looking at her with burning eyes. No wonder. Her own were burning as savagely as her nose. The sand does it.
But besides he had a curiously mad and giddy gaze.
It was as if he’d caught her in bathing with her clothes on a hickory limb. And wouldn’t have the gentlemanliness, the decency to go away.
She liked it not a little bit and was so nervous she didn’t know whether to throw off her coat and start for him or button it up. She buttoned it up. She wondered why. But, of course, itwas the way he was looking at her and kept looking at her. She wished she had more buttons on her coat. And that her clothing generally was fastened more firmly. His malevolent eyes had such a dismantling expression.
Certainly the burly wretch wasn’t showing any false smoke-stacks.
She could see he meant business.
And such a business!
Verbeena steadied herself on a cigarette.
“Frapjous ass!†she said yet well-knowing that her old boyish nonchalance had gone fazizz. “Who are you?â€
“I am——â€
Ah, the organ tones of his voice! A little gritty on account of the desert sands perhaps, but deep, thrilling, throbbing. It tickled the very roots of her clubbed curls.
Verbeena vibrated.
“I am the Sheik Amut Ben Butler!â€
The name conveyed nothing to her.
She had never heard of Ben Butler.
He turned the full force of his fifty-two candle power passionut glance upon her.
“The notion of this game is,†he said in hisdeep, devilish voice, “‘Give and Take.’ You give or I take!â€
Verbeena immediately gave a shriek!
And she’d never done anything like that before in her life!
“Did you hear that?†she demanded tensely.
“And that!†and shrieked again.
“That’s what you look like to me! A Shriek, Amut Ben Butler—it’s what you are too! And a pretty loud and silly one!
“You let me right out of here! When my big brother hears of this, he’ll be out this way and kick the fol de rols out of you! That’s what’ll happen. The nerve of you with your banana-skinned face and black licorice whiskers! Stand back, miscreant, I would pass!â€
“May Allah bust eggs on my turban!†hissed the Sheik Amut Ben Butler, “but this is a saucy baggage!â€
With that he threw off his magnificent, flowing white cloak and he hopped her.
He had her in a mad, palpitant chancery but Verbeena put up some great infighting. She gave it to him good—right and left into thekish-kish(ringside and Yiddish for breadbasket) andnow and again sought the point of the chin with a left uppercut that had hitherto always served her well. It had beautifully in that fight with the policeman.
But in all the many other bouts in which Verbeena had been engaged, kissing was strictly foul. It was sometimes permitted at the ringsides, she had observed, at the end of a fight, but never in the mix-ups.
Unsportsmanlike brute!
For as she let go a wild, desperate uppercut it shot harmlessly past an adroitly lowered chin and the next instant he had smacked her full upon the mouth.
A terrific, scorching smack!
It knocked Verbeena wuffy.
She could almost hear a referee, a misty, intangible wraith-like referee, giving her the full count, for the hot mouth pressed against hers was superlatively soporific, nicotinically, garliciously narcotic.
“First fall!†grinned the Sheik Amut Ben Butler the while he chucked the giddy girl through some heavy curtains upon a stack ofsoft yellow, pink, red (dark and light) gold, silver green and mauve cushions.
Yet Verbeena, remember, had verve!
Besides, she well knew the ha-ha the world ever handed a fallen champ or lady who claimed to have been drugged.
Realizing she was up against a losing fight, yet she arose for more trouble. Yep, up she came defiant if saggy. Nobody had ever put her in such a bait before! She would go on with it—on—on—on with it!
She’d get him yet!
Yet only too well she knew that one more fragrant kiss like that which she had just put over and she must go whiff-whaff.
It had been a soul-numbing smack. And she felt her knees knockier than she ever had known them.
Also she seemed to have had just then a glimpse of her moral stamina and the vision was as of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in a high wind.
Her face ached, her left ear ached and more awfully than either her peculiar temperament ached.
Her face showed pain in every lineament.
“I ask you,†said the Sheik Amut in his slow, awful drawl, twirling the tassel of his magenta sash, “what’s the idea of kicking up all this shindy? Aw—take off your necktie! Do you expect me to be your valet as well as lover?â€
“You——†she began in crashing opposition to any tomfoolery of a dark, questionable nature.
“Spaghetti!†snapped the Sheik.
She observed that he looked over her shoulder. She turned. She saw then a little fat man behind her just as he was answering reverently:
“Aye—aye, Monseigneur!â€
“The——,†the Sheik nodded fiercely at the little man.
She hadn’t a chance. She knew it.
She saw the arm of Spaghetti only as it was descending. The hand held a canvas jacket of the size and shapely proportions of a corpulent bologna. And it was stuffed with Sahara.
“See here!†cried Verbeena. “This is rotten. It’s not cricket. I——â€
“Not cricket perhaps, but quite clubby,†said Amut Ben Butler with his brutal smile.
The blow fell.
Verbeena vertigoed.
WhenVerbeena came to she was the only one present. Outside she could hear the Sheik’s horses whinnying among their oats and the incessant chaffing of his men. They swarmed outside there. And inside were other swarms. These were of flies and sandfleas. She was more or less grateful to them. They kept her for some little time from thinking of anything else.
But, of course, eventually she had to begin to draw a few conclusions. The design of these proved cubistic and the coloring all to the palpitant pink, Gaugin green and yammering yellow.
She sought pushing herself around on the divan trying to get away from herself, but always returned.
Finally she sat up with her chin between her knees and her arms around her ears in a postureknown to her blithesome boyish days as the “caterpillar crouch.â€
But by no mental arrangement could she devise for herself a dittology regarding the cataclysmic cropper attendant upon her career and felt herself, therefore, thoroughly unmanned as well as fatally deladyized.
She knew she’d never be able to look anybody in the face again. Especially a camel. Camels always had such nasty, disdainful expressions.
From thought of camels she passed to that of Lady Speedway, and this caused Verbeena to do a full pinwheel on the cushions.
If this affair ever got out wouldn’t it just be pickled walnuts for old putty-faced, jabberwocking Speedway! O God! What a position she was placed in! O, gosh!
She gave one of her old time boyish leaps from the couch and seized the small object she saw on a nearby tabaret.
The object was the stump of a cigarette—a pretty long one. Thank heavens, indeed, that it hadn’t burned itself to naught in the night!
She remembered sticking it down there when she began the first round of her terrific battlewith Amut Ben Butler. She remembered, too, that it had been her last fag.
But fate had been good to her.
Apparently the ciggy had gone out the same time she did.
She scuffled her britches for a match. She lighted up. She took a deep inhale. It was tonic. She filled her lungs again.
A “V†now formed between her black eyebrows.
Verbeena was coming back!
She hopped into her pants. She began to stir about looking for other things to put on. Just then a swarthy, black-haired young creature, a slip of a girl about six feet tall, entered.
“Look here——†began Verbeena.
“Ay bane Hulda, the maid,†said this little Arab girl. “You could have a wash for yourself back of that curtain over there. It’s a bath in it. And your trunks bane come.â€
“Three cheers for both those things at least,†murmured Verbeena. And soon she had tossed her clothes back through the curtain and was splashing about in her usual vigorous fashion.
When a little later she thrust her head through the curtain she saw that Hulda had neatly arranged her riding britches and jacket, her military brushes and her cigarette cases out upon the divan and was digging deep in one of the satchels that was part of Verbeena’s luggage regarding which it would seem Sheik Amut Ben Butler must have sent a retrieving party to grab it back from Musty Ale.
“What are you doing in that satchel?†asked Verbeena sharply.
“Ay bane looking for your razor, kiddo,†said Hulda deferentially.
Verbeena laughed bitterly.
“My girl,†she said, “don’t you know there’s no safety in this awful place?â€
By this time Hulda had a trunk open. It contained the pretty dresses Verbeena had brought along for girlish evenings on the Sahara. Girlish evenings! She choked back a sob.
Aw, gee! Why couldn’t she have been let alone to swagger about always in her cute boyish britches!
Hulda looked again and studied Miss Mayonnaise’s head and shoulders as they stuck before the curtain.
She stared more closely.
“Oho,†cried Hulda, “Allah bane knock me dead for a dumbkopf! I git it now what is it you is. Wait—I git a Turkish towel—we got lots of ’em, we have—and I give you a Swedish massage.â€
“Hulda, my desert child, I thank you,†said Verbeena gratefully.
By the way, all this time they had been talking French as they did later when Hulda was arranging Verbeena’s clothing anew.
HULDA, AN AFRICAN MAID.
HULDA, AN AFRICAN MAID.
She looked up at her mistress, her big black Swedish eyes puzzled as she asked:
“Hommeorfemmethis morning?â€
“Homme,†said Verbeena decidedly, “excepting that after I’ve got my long boots on and everything, you can go into that third trunk to the right and pass me a hatpin.â€
“There!†said Verbeena stamping into one boot heartily. “There,†said she stamping into the other. “Now, Hulda the hatpin.â€
She saw that Hulda watched her suspiciously as she handed up the weapon.
“That will be all,†said Verbeena.
But Hulda held on.
“Out you go,†said the proud captive brusquely.
“But——†Hulda still watched to see what disposition Verbeena meant to make of the hatpin.
“Off with you,†repeated Verbeena. “What? Now, then, will you go!â€
The distrait girl used the hatpin lavishly on Hulda.
“Yumping Yiminy Allah!†shrieked the Arab girl and hit the desert with abandon.
Verbeena was rummaging her luggage for cigarettes when a soft voice sounded behind her:
“Madame is doubtless ready for lunch?â€
The voice was pleasant, indeed, operatic and even before she turned to face him Verbeenaknew she was about to get her second view of the villain, Spaghetti.
“Don’t you call me Madame,†she said fiercely, “you cowardly sandbag specialist. Don’t you call me anything less than Sheika Verbeena. There’s going to be a wedding around here as soon as I lay my hands on that unprincipled hoo-hoo of a Sheik of yours. And don’t you forget it.â€
With lithe, strong fingers she proceeded to put a Grecian bend in Spaghetti’s Roman nose.
“Do you hear?â€
She followed up with a little hatpin treatment while the faithful fellow let forth a coloraturo lyrico outbursto for the intervention of from twelve to fifteen hundred saints.
“Hop about and get me about fifty boxes of cigarettes, one hundred each, long, fat ones, do you hear? What’s that? Remember, once for all, Spaghetti, I want none of your sauce.â€
Outside the tent Spaghetti kissed his fingers with a fierce smack, made a noise like a buzz saw through his teeth while drawing a forefinger across his throat.
It was the high sign that in matters of terrible vengeance the Black Hand never muffs.
“Gott in Himmel!†he snarled under his breath. “Joost wait teel da padrone, da boss, de beega da fel’ geet back! You catcha sometang. See like maybe you, sapristi, don’t!â€
Despite his feelings, however, he hot-footed a return with the cigarettes and it was to be noticed that when he bowed low and handed them to her he said:
“Here, Queen.â€
Well aware was he that he would remember that hatpin at meals for days to come and, expert chef that he was, he regarded with horror the idea of a future in which he would figure as Spaghetti enbrochette.
But—aha! let the big fellow handle her! The padrone, the grand demon, him, the goldo fellow, Monseigneur, he’d mighty quick show her who was the real frito misto of that establishment!
Though why in the world the boss wanted to dally with adonnathat looked and acted more likewallyo, presented a mystery Spaghetti sadly admitted to himself was too much for him to un-ravioli. So he stirred himself in her behalf for the nonce and fetched her somecous cousinto which he let go the red pepper with a lavish, fine Italian hand.
For if she strangled to death he could always pretend he had got mixed and thought it was the cinnamon.
WhatSpaghetti was wishing for Verbeena was wondering concerning. Whereabouts now was this bold devil, Amut? And when would he be home? To be sure, Spaghetti had said, she sort of remembered, that the Sheik would be home for dinner and that he ate at eight. But he might come in any old time and surprise her. For, cogently considered, wouldn’t that be just like him? That he was a nasty feller, how could she doubt it? Of the Machiavellian character of the black-whiskered, tow-headed mazib hadn’t she right then sufficient evidence to swing any jury?
“Boo-hoo, Boo-hoo!†sobbed Verbeena entirely in the feminine gender.
But six or seven cigarettes, the knowledge of the hatpin stick beneath the left breast of her Norfolk jacket with the right hand fully informed about it and something else that she had up her sleeve (I can’t tell you yet—no, really, honest, I can’t, for it wouldn’t be fair to Verbeena—might give her away in a critical moment) something else that she had up her sleeve reassured her mightily.
And if I could only tell you what she was thinking about doing just then! “Durn it!†your heart would surely go out to the cute bantam! Gaw, bless her!
Remembering as well that Britains never shall be slaves!
And that, moreover, if you are not that kind of a girl and are truly indignant why then, my dear, your ship of Fate gathers no moral barnacles.
Although, of course, in the matter of just what kind of a girl Verbeena was, if any, a palpable ambiguousness veers to the verge of anguish.
But while this juncture is pending in which passion is scheduled to bridle and burst into tongues of flame high as a gas tank in eruption, gave Verbeena a chance.
That is to look around Sheik Amut Ben Butler’s wicked desert diggin’s.
Huh—not that they were so much!
Some Oriental hangings showed up as if theywere embroiderd by blacksmiths and colored by accident and chewed by rats.
There were two silver inlaid Moorish stools that would hold you if you were careful. There was a fine-looking, hand-carved chest, big and impressive, that Verbeena peeked into thinking it would reveal perhaps, wondrous stores of Bagdad lace curtains or—heaven alone could tell!—perhaps the corpse of his former victim!
She opened it and then shut it in a hurry. A person may fairly be curious. But not about somebody else’s old shoes.
However, a splendid collection of ivory and silver and ivory and gold and ivory and brass and ivory and tin and ivory and goodness-knew-what cigarette cases, hit Verbeena right in the eye. She selected about sixteen she thought she might like and put them aside in one of her trunks to be called for later.
Should Amut miss ’em.
Although according to her designs, even if he did—even if he did——
Excuse me, for holding off a bit longer. No fault of the author truly.
He’s coming is Amut. But you see he is doinga Sheridan on a flashing steed and is as yet several miles away. Two at least.
Just let him gallop a few minutes because Verbeena has started examining his book case and that if anything should tell her what kind of a bibliophile, Francophile or Swissoup this strong-armed philanderer was.
It was a surprise to Verbeena to find there this case of books for she had always thought that all to be expected of the Sahara was volumes of dates.
However, she stood corrected so she scanned the titles. At the very first she drew back with a shudder having read: “Poems of Passion†by Ring Lardner.
Then “The Children’s Hour†by Ghee de Maupassant.
Pshaw, she’d read that!
Kraft-Ebing also was old stuff.
And she passed over without interest a corpulent tome entitled “Der Vaw; Vhy Ve Dit Id Bad†by Ludendorff.
Then she came upon “Manly Beauty, Its Dangers and Temptations,†by Irvin Cobb and Paul Swan.
Two other titles, however, fascinated her.One was “Florinda of the Furnished Rooms†by Robert W. Chalmers, and the other “Maurice of the Monkey Glands†by Elinor Flynn in collaboration with the author of “Arzan of the Apes.â€
“Eeny, meeny, minee, mo—†began Verbeena when another title clattered against her vision. “The Passion Worm of the Sahara, an Account of its Discovery,†by Robert S. Hitchings.
At first she derived about ten degrees of comfort from the discovery that Amut wasn’t exactly a raw native, that he was probably half-baked at least. She felt that it would be logically safe to presuppose that she was mixed up with a king of the desert, who might be found to be superficially coated with a veneer of civilization that was tenuous.
And yet dared she find comfort in that? Might it not make him the more horrible, sinister, intolerable, cheekier and fresher than ever, this desert devil in whom passion dictated the methods of a chiropractitioner?
“O, hum!†screamed the distrait and fearful Verbeena doing a backfall among the cushions.
There was one good thing she could say forhim anyway—his cigarettes were smokable. They were, she had seen by the boxes, of the famous brand of Bull Camel.
Of one thing she was convinced. There would be no sandbagging this evening.