SPAGHETTI.
SPAGHETTI.
She had reduced Spaghetti to where she had only to show him the hat pin and he would run right out and sit in the sand. She had made him produce the sand-bag too, had ripped it open and poured the contents back into the desert.
Also she had asked Spaghetti numerous questions about the Sheik Amut and as far as she could make out his chief business was that of a breeder, trainer and trapper of horses of a high-class character.
Nothing in the trucking way but mostly for society and circus uses. The business offemme-snatching,her informant had assured her, was totally new to him.
Did he have a harem?
No, Spaghetti thought not. It was very hard to keep one these days. Especially when your business had you out on the desert running an ambling horse farm. You were so likely to return to Biscuit or Orange or Ammonia and find the harem had run out on you, bobbed its hair and got jobs as manicure girls in Constantinople.
“That will be all,” then had remarked Verbeena and had further taken a tuck in Amut’s devoted servant by saying:
“It is absurd; don’t you think, for you to call yourself Spaghetti? You’re much too fat. Macaroni would be infinitely more suitable.”
“Aw, Queena Verbeena!” protested Spaghetti.
“That will do. You may go, Mac.”
He had backed out as becomes one departing from royalty and a hat pin.
Hulda she had entirely won over during the afternoon. She had given the little six-foot thing one of her old evening gowns, yet a modest garment withal, hanging well below Hulda’s shoulder blades.
Dependably Verbeena was to be suspected of having something other than sawdust under those clubbed curls of hers!
She was just wondering if she could go so far as to appoint Hulda policewoman of the tent and entrust her with a sand-club when there came loud yells without of “Hip hoy, hip hoy, hip, hip, hip! Allah, Allah, Allah! AMUT!”
Three more “Allahs” were being heartily given still yet without when the Sheik Amut Ben Butler strode haughtily into the tent, threw off his creamy cloak and with a careless motion tossed his bejeweled classy turban among the old gold and silver cushions, thus displaying his shock of Sahara colored hair above his stick licorice black chin muff.
Verbeena savagely and swiftly lighted nine cigarettes and faced him peagreen with pyromania.
He touched off a cigarette himself.
“I hope Spaghetti didn’t lay down on his job,” said the Sheik. “Do you know what we’re going to have for dinner?”
He pushed Verbeena out of the way and stretched himself on the divan.
His cold manner was like a dash of water of the same temperature against her face. Verbeena broke into a watery perspiration, her eyes got watery with rage and her mouth watered to bite him the more so that she could see, despite the nonchalant manner in which he was looking at her, he was yet significantly appraising this outburst as a valuable asset on any desert.
His presence was an offense and she would concede no amelioration of it due to the nature of his occupation among horses. She wished with passionate fierceness that she could dye his hair to match his whiskers or his whiskers to match his hair. And the dreadful, cool way he was lying there staring at her, the princely thing! My—such airs!
“You seem to think everything’s nicely settled,” said Verbeena icily. “But when King and Lloyd George hear of this, they’ll put such a flea in the ear of the French Government, they’ll be after you with a hoop-la and a full set of gendarmerie armed with guillotines!”
“A pea for the French Government! And holler-woller for the Georges, King and Lloyd.”
“You seem very confident of immunity.”
SHEIK AMUT BEN BUTLER, THE TERROR OF THE SANDS.
SHEIK AMUT BEN BUTLER, THE TERROR OF THE SANDS.
“Of a certainty,” said the Sheik. “I’m depending on Queen Mary. She’s an awful stiff one for the proprieties, you know, and when she hears the way you defied conventions and went journeying out into the desert without so much as a chaperon, if I know Mary, she’ll say it served you jolly well right. Anyway, what’s one of those countries you speak of got to do with it?”
He gave her the point of a finger—slightly cigarette stained, but very stern.
“You forget, hussy,—I am the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. I’m the Grand Monarch, the Monseigneur of this entire sand-patch—put that in a cigarette paper and smoke it!
“There’s another Sheik in these parts, one Abraham O’Mara who goes around as if he cuts some didoes until he hears I’m in the neighborhood and then, Allah behold him bolt for his simoon cellar!
“Besides, he’ll soon be going back to Ireland or Palestine now and I’ll be taking over all his sandlots as well. So you can see for yourself what a grass-cutter I am.
“Don’t stand there shaking your sassy red curlsat me or I’ll get up to you, do you understand?”
Verbeena gulped grandiloquently.
The Sheik sneered at her violently.
“See here,” he said, “you’d have made a fine chorus boy but it was not as a chorus boy or any other kind I saw you in Biscuit. So shake those Reginald fixings and get yourself into something with fancy trimmings, something decolleté and dashy. I’m surprised to find you so prone to forget that you are a lady.”
“In Biscuit—in Biscuit? You saw me in Biscuit, you underbred loafer?” gasped Verbeena.
“That cat you chased off the balcony fell on a brand new, very natty turban I was wearing as I passed the hotel.”
“It was then that I first saw you, cutey! And when I heard you were going to make a desert hike alone—well, here you are, little one,mon chit, hale and hearty if a bit high-strung, my sweet ukelele.”
“Love—love! You speak of love! ’Twas for a ransom you rifled me of my liberty and what not, you big, hulking rotter!”
He regarded her scornfully.
“As a man who gave up eighty-six centsAmerican cash to Musty Ale for your possession—and this I did—shall you accuse me of kidnapping you for ransom?”
“Then why—why—O, gosh, if only your hair and whiskers matched! But I know Spaghetti lied.”
“‘Bout what?”
“He said he didn’t know of your ever having any other girl but me.”
“Well, naturally,” the Sheik frowned dangerously, “Spaghetti knows better than to do any gossipin’ while I’m gone. Still it is true, Verbie, that you are the first one I have ever taken caravaning. As for the others——”
“The others! O, golly, golly me!” she sobbed. “Listen to him—the way he says it—the others—the others! Just like that!”
“Why, of course,” he said with a light insouciance that was paramountedly the pinnacle of intense impropriety. “Let’s see—there have been Ayah and Beeyah, Ceeyah and Deeyah, Eeyah, Effa, Geeyah, Aicha, Aihyah, Jayah, Kayah, Ella, Emma, Ennapeayah, Queahra, Essatee, Dubla, Exa, little Whyzee and,” the Sheik Amut sent a thin stream of supercilious,insolent cigarette smoke at the trembling Verbeena, “so forth. But you notice there was a ‘V’ missing from the collection.”
“And so you——”
“Partly—partly. But there was another, by Allah, a deeper reason.”
“What?”
He gave her a look that was awful sneery.
“That’s something I’m keeping under my turban just now, Verbie. The way you go ’round here asking questions you’d think we were really married you know.”
“And are we not to be?”
“Har-har!” laughed the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.
His manner of laughter was ingrainedly and corruscatedly ironic.
“Har-har!” he laughed anew.
Evidently without even so much of the savor of intention that might take a favorable skid in the direction of the morganatic!
Again with flaring teeth—two touched with gold—he laughed:
“Har-Har!”
Neverwas any girl in all her life so grateful for a good, stiff boyish training as in that moment found herself Verbeena Mayonnaise!
She thought of all the swimmin’, rowin’, ridin’, boxin’, runnin’, fightin’, wrestlin’ she had done in the past with exultation. She even conjured up the long, sad face of Lord Tawdry with its sable curtains and experienced a wave of gratitude. In the nomenclature of Fate she felt that at this moment she had come Seven. Had not her life been one long, mystically symmetrical training for such a situation, such an emergency as this?
So he sat there lawffing at her, did he? He sat there making nasty eyes at her expecting her to quiescently quiver—that soon he would have her where he would be feeding her cigarettes from his hand.
She’d show this Shreik Amut with the molassestaffy hair and licorice whiskers a thing or two!
THE BIG SCENE IN WHICH VERBEENA WITH SPURS AND HATPIN TRIUMPHS OVER THE AWFUL SHEIK.
THE BIG SCENE IN WHICH VERBEENA WITH SPURS AND HATPIN TRIUMPHS OVER THE AWFUL SHEIK.
Yes, and three and four and five!
Perhaps six.
Seven, eight, nine and ten!
And that counts “Out!”
“Allah, O, Allah., HEY, Allah!” suddenly shrieked Amut Ben Butler. “What in the name of the howling hoptoads of Heligoland is—is—OW!”
You will recall I hope there was hereinbefore mentioned that Verbeena had something up her sleeve? Well, I really wasn’t in a position for Verbeena’s sake to give the real information then. As a matter of fact she had it in one of the patch pockets of her dashing little riding jacket. It was thecous cousthat had been so overloaded with red pepper by the vengeful Spaghetti. She hadn’t eaten a speck of it. She’d saved it all for Amut.
When he would have staggered blindly up from the cushions she was on him with a whirlwind of left and right hand hooks. Then came jabs, swings, swats, wallops, biffs and bangs! And hammerlocks, half Nelsons, strangle and toe-holds! This way and that!
All Tawd and the other fellows had ever taught her she was using. She wouldn’t leave enough of him to crawl through a rat-hole.
A vamp of violence and vengeance working at top form was then Verbeena Mayonnaise!
“Spaghetti!” squealed the Sheik Amut ardently.
His faithful servant’s pallid face appeared in the flapway.
Only to see his august, beloved chieftain on all fours with Verbeena just mounting his back.
“O, momma! O, polpetteenies!” gasped Spaghetti.
“You keep out of this, Mac, or you’ll get yours!” warned the fightin’ flapper with flashing eyes which shone from her face.
“Sapristi, Queena Verbeena! Escusa! I come only to maka aska what you lika for eata? What da nica, sweeta lady she lika for deener, eh?”
“Duck!” said Verbeena.
Silently, swiftly the perfect servant withdrew.
The while Verbeena had not for an instant paused in massaging Sheik Amut. She was all dressed, you remember, for riding and when she got on the back of the once proud devil of the desert she gave him the spurs.
And then the hat-pin.
His screams to Allah could have been heard in Mecca. His wild horses strained at theirtethers, neighing piteously at the frightful cries arising from the canvas abbatoir that had once been the happy bachelor apartments of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.
The humps of the camels grew pale with fright and misery.
The swash-buckling horde of Amut’s men, after getting what strings of information they could from the gasping Spaghetti, took to the palm trees from whence they tried to make it plain to Allah that their beloved master had gone up against asheitana, which the same is a lady devil of the first water, and that really something should be done to save him but that nothing—nothing short of heaven could really avail.
Meanwhile, the proud Verbeena just roweled that lofty, haughty boy to rags.
And ever, ever, ever, ever, always the hatpin! The more he reared to plunge the fairer the mark.
Truly now had he become what first she had called him—a Shriek. But as not less than a thousand shrieks sounded the plentifully punctured passionut of the Sahara!
Besides ordinary damage his proud soul goosefleshed with horror.
His hauteur became hiatic.
And yet—and yet how wonderful she was!
What a marvelously active Verbie!
He felt the stirrings in his heart of a love, ponderose, grandiose, glamorous, stupendous!
It was indeed very dominant in his veins just about the time she slammed him back on the cushions and slapped his face for him good.
Her vibrant tones in spite of the inner cries of protest of his desiccated manhood he found adorable as to him then she said:
“You multi-colored, flashy, hieroglyphic son of a spavined grandsire, you stalking, frowning, sneering, swaggering imitation of something that is which amounts to something, you that are nothing whatsoever at all! Rotter, bounder, boob—you blurb, blip, you—don’t you dare to answer me back or I’ll set fire to your whiskers, you flea-bitten—why, what in the world’s happened to ’em? Amut, where’s your whiskers?”
“Over there on the floor, back of you, my Queen,” said the Sheik in strange, shivered accents due to swollen lips.
“I don’t seem to remember pulling them out.”
“O, I’m quite sure you didn’t. You see——”
“Good God,” said Verbeena, “more treachery! Even his whiskers are false!
“Tosh—I might have known—Lillian Russell top hair and Trotsky chin trimmings!
“What was the idea of this face screen anyway? So’s I wouldn’t be able to identify you I suppose after you’d squeezed me dry and threw me over at Orange with all the rest of your amorous alphabet? Was that it, hey?”
“No, by Allah, no,” he sobbed, his haughty head tumbled among the silver, black, green, blue, pink and twilight yellow cushions.
She drew forth the hatpin which is so much deadlier than the scarfpin of the species.
“I swear! No—no, Queenie, no!”
“Then why the Hawkshaws?”
“Allah defend me—I cannot tell you—not if you kill me, my sweet wand of affliction!”
“I don’t know what I’ll do later,” said Verbeena. “But anyway, I’m going to make you marry me first.
“Mac!” she called. “Hulda!”
They came humbly.
“Listen to this, both of you!”
“Yea, O Queen,” they answered.
“Sheik Amut Ben Butler, you say you are king of this tail-end of the desert?”
“With your kind permission, Verbeena, the First.”
“And Parliament and everything?”
“Yes’m.”
“Well, Amut, old thing, right now you are in session. Pass a common law.”
“I—I——”
“Stupid—like they have in America. A common law for marriage. If a man and woman agree to live together as husband and wife—that settles it. It goes, hook, line, sinker and breakfast cereals. But it is made all the more binding when there is a written agreement between them.
“All in favor,” she said with her eyes firmly on the passion-purged orbs of Amut, the non-abductor, “will say ‘Aye!’”
“Aye!” said the Sheik Amut Ben Butler in a loud, firm voice.
But biting the while a quivering underlip, he soon burst into tears.
Immediately Verbeena whipped out a paper from the breast of her Norfolk jacket and laid it before him. (That girl had just thought of everything! She even had a fountain pen right ready for him!)
“Sign,” she said simply.
The red pepper wasn’t all out his eyes by any means, but the broken, quivering creature was able to read:
“I, Sheik Amut Ben Butler of Oasis No. 4 Sahara, and I, Verbeena Mayonnaise of London and lots of other places, on this day do take each other unto each other as man and wife, the party of the first part and the party of the second agreeing not to part unless through the intervention of an undertaker or a divorce judge in which latter case alimony to the tune of fifty horses, ten camels and seventeen tons of dates a month shall be promptly and persistently paid unto the party of the second part together with fifty-fifty on the proceeds of any caravan holdups hereinafter possibly to occur.”
“I, Sheik Amut Ben Butler of Oasis No. 4 Sahara, and I, Verbeena Mayonnaise of London and lots of other places, on this day do take each other unto each other as man and wife, the party of the first part and the party of the second agreeing not to part unless through the intervention of an undertaker or a divorce judge in which latter case alimony to the tune of fifty horses, ten camels and seventeen tons of dates a month shall be promptly and persistently paid unto the party of the second part together with fifty-fifty on the proceeds of any caravan holdups hereinafter possibly to occur.”
“You will see that it’s dated yesterday,” said Verbeena, “but that’s only a technicality.”
The Sheik Amut signed. She signed. Spaghettisigned. Hulda hurled her mark on the document.
“There,” said Verbeena, “that’s that! I’d like to see Lady Speedway open her ole fish-mouth when our caravan pulls into Biscuit again, hey, Amut?”
“Har-har-har!” exclaimed the Sheik with well-timed, impromptu heartiness.
“Spaghetti,” next said Verbeena, “you can serve dinner now. And go light on the use of the Italian national flower in your cooking or you’ll hear from me.
“Hulda, rip down that bunch of moth-eaten hangings. They’re an eyesore. I’ll get some decent chintz curtains as soon as we get to town. And pick up all those revolvers and daggers and such truck and throw them into the store tent.”
She turned again to the Sheik.
“You’ll have to get up and get out early to-morrow, Mutty, dear, because I shall simply have to start housecleaning first thing in the morning.”
“As Allah wills, my love.”
“Nonsense. I’m sick of this stuff of puttingeverything up to Allah. You’ll just get up and do it on your own account, do you hear?”
“You betcher,” said Sheik Amut Ben Butler right on the dot.
“May I have another cigarette, Verbie?” came the honeyed accents of the Sheik Amut as, dinner finished, coffee was being served.
“Just one. Too much smoking will affect the steadiness of your hand in horse-training. I must look into the condition of the herd myself to-morrow.”
“Yes, do,” he assented. “I’m afraid I’ve been pretty slack but you know how a bachelor is—sporting around a good deal, he is likely to forget business.”
She reached for her handbag and got out a tin of candied violet leaves.
She fed him about ten which he chewed as delicately as he might—much more delicately, Verbeena noticed, than the camels chewed gum.
Verbeena was pleased.
“Under the extraordinary circumstances,” she finally stated, “and the legal steps having beenduly taken and perfected, there is not in so far as I can see, any valid reason why marital relations may not with perfect propriety eventuate.”
“Allah, oh, Allah!” sobbed the Sheik softly beating his turban profusely.
“Amonth. A little more than a month! Thirty-one days to be exact! O, Allah, it seems a life time!” sobbed the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. “A month since I grabbed her hot off the Biscuit! Would that then I had developed butter fingers! And yet!”
He buried his face deep in the cushions and ate at them. He didn’t cry out. It wouldn’t have done the least good.
Nobody would have answered. His horses, camels and men were all scared positively puerile and near to death of Verbeena. Whenever they saw her coming they hurried like the deuce in every other direction.
And yet!
Hypothetically considered, the situation was not extraneously alarming. But otherwise it was vicariously vazink.
The Sheik tossed and tossed around and around.
She was certainly the hottest penny he’d ever picked up in his life, this little red-head.
“The first thing you know,” he told himself, “you’ll be falling in love with this athletic young squidge. And then won’t you be ashamed of yourself!”
Because if he did really he should.
The way she bossed him!
Dawn couldn’t begin on the desert without the Sheik Amut being turned out with a slim cup of coffee to break horses. Or direct the currying of camels. And camels require infinite currying. If you want to live around the same oasis with them it has long been decided that this is quite essential.
And in all his former experiences he had never known that a camel could laugh. But now he knew they all did whenever he passed by.
Besides he was losing money, for in breaking horses he’d acquired a habit of killing them while thinking of Verbeena.
And yet!
O, Allah, she had such a fascinating way of displaying romantic womanhood when he most expected the hatpin!
But still he knew his men were beginning to call him “Tame Turban” and “Shakes” instead of Sheik.
The incumbrance of their pitying glances was getting his cosmic lizard.
He never, these days, slung on his flowing, dashing, romantic white cloak without feeling like a whipped cream.
Conjurically he considered himself a storm-tossed palm branch hopelessly missing its dates.
He didn’t have a pillow he felt he had a right to pile on.
He’d been in the habit of sprawling around on his cushions whenever he blamed felt like it. But not so no more! Verbeena could become so exceedingly vituperish and so conspicuously arousing. So different was she, he considered, than varinol.
Hashish had given him some relief but his stock of that was gone and Verbeena hadn’t.
The way she wound Spaghetti around her little finger was utterly farnicaceous. And Hulda was eating out of the hollow of her cute, steel-like fingers.
He could only draw comfort from knowingthat he and Verbeena had the cigarette habit intolerably.
“Shades of memory, O, Allah, those days when I was cock of the walk!”
He squirmed bitterly to recall the fact.
He fumbled about among the pillows well-knowing that not a tail feather remained. In plain words, of his masculine dominance he realized he was hirsutically tweezered.
There was nothing left for him to Sheik but escape.
Verbeena, he saw, was fast asleep and for this he gave several still, small praises unto Allah.
There among the cushions he kicked himself softly for never having thought things clearly out before.
But now—aha! His horse, Sunstroke, would stand by him! That is to say run with him as he must if it was to do any good. And pretty fast, too, he conjectured, Sunstroke must.
Sheik Amut Ben Butler made just about then a cold sneak from the side of Verbeena. Toes and finger tips were clammy with apprehension.
At this time, deep down, his torn and tortured pride was crying to the astral heights:
“O, Allah, Allah, Allah, is it never going to end? Am I ever going to get away from her?”
And things like that.
He had, as a matter of verity, long felt that he should take to the woods, but how could he on the Sahara!
Either Oasis No. 3 or 5 was a heck of a distance.
Yet——
Verbeena stirred.
That decided him.
Swiftly he filtered through the flap in the tent and out under the stars.
He stepped carefully over Spaghetti but Spaghetti was so nervous these times he awakened very easily.
“Shush, not a word!” quavered the Sheik.
Pathetically Spaghetti ostriched anddonna-mobilay.
With stupendous caution Amut stalked among the steeds. His ego was so inherently erased that he touched the nose of Sunstroke apologetically, fearsome that even his own horse might say him nay.
But Sunstroke laughed good-naturedly. A horse laugh, to be sure, yet nevertheless nothingnasty in it. Sunstroke was only a kid and full of larks. He was all for the notion of churning the desert in the small hours of the night and whizzled his tail gayly to indicate it.
For that, the Sheik kissed him.
He was so very grateful to meet one in whom the urge of travel was prevalent.
Taking the saddle like a lamb, Sunstroke nevertheless hopped forth as of a piece of cyclone.
On the Sahara even a horse is granted rubber heels.
Noiseless the departure.
“Fare well, well, well, Verbeena!” shunted the Sheik Amut softly to the handsome stars.
The stars are really very handsome on the Sahara. And so close. One feels like picking them. On some kinds of drinks one often tries.
But Sheik Amut Ben Butler knew that he must not linger to become so engaged.
With Allah quiescently concurring, Sheik Amut hoped ere morn to pull Sunstroke up, lathered with foam necessarily, in Tipzaza or perhaps Tlemcen although in a vague way he dreamed of Fez because there was a big, stonewall around that, and gladsomely he killed many miles of the desert but——
Alas! Allah would have appeared to have quit him altogether.
His dreams of freedom were due to detonated dispersal.
There was the crack of a pistol!
Sunstroke sat down ultimately.
From the sandpile where Amut found himself sitting on a troubled head the Sheik began to reason that Verbeena was arrived.
Counsel couldn’t help him he very well knew.
It was positively she. Because he heard her voice demanding:
“How dare you? What do you mean by it? Answer me this instant! Who were you making off to see—Ayah or Beeyah or——”
“Aw, what the dickens,” said the Sheik Amut, with a half show of spirit. “All you caught me was a horse!”
She slung him across her saddle as even once he had slung her and she frequently held him head down on the journey for as she said to him, this sends the blood to the head and he could the better therefore think of the atrocity he hadplanned. Now and then she would dip his head in the sand to brush up his repentance.
That same night at home, the Sheik made a harrowing error. His diplomacy proved catastrophical. For he dug up a treasure bag and out of it drew a necklace of gorgeous, pallid greenstones, and dangled them before her eyes.
“After all,” said he, “it is you only I can ever love, Verbeena! Ah, Verbeena! You fascinating baby mine! Here—take it—this small token of the burning regard of my Sahara disposition!”
Instead of graciously accepting she nearly drove his turban through the north wall of the tent. His head was in the turban.
“I get your Oriental subtlety, you wild Eastern oaf!” cried Verbeena her red curls straightening and standing upright. “You think I’m a jade, do you?”
On the Sahara has passed into song and story the family simoon which then blew across, in, out, about, over and under tent of Amut Ben Butler.
Couscoushad given way to good old English bacon and eggs and marmalade on the breakfast table of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.
“Chief,” said the Sheik half-heartedly to Verbeena, slipping a piece of bacon to his big, dangerous Persian hound that Verbeena was in the habit of kicking around so freely, “would you mind if I had a friend come and stay for a bit?”
“What kind of a character may this be?” demanded Verbeena.
“A literary light, one nearly as large as a moon. He sells an awful lot of books.”
“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Queen Verbeena readily inducting the atmosphere.
“Robert,” the Sheik paused because he was very sure of his grounds, “Hitchings.”
“Literary men,” said Verbeena, “are usually terrible loafers and like late breakfasts but as to Mr. Hitchings I am agreeable. I am fullyconfident as regards Mr. Hitchings, I don’t mind saying. He is always interesting. I think it was reading his works which started me on this trip.”
“It rejoices me to have you so inclined,” said the Sheik. “And Bob will be pleased.”
“That’s up to him,” smiled Verbeena, taking a heavy smash at the marmalade. “Although I have every confidence that he will give little trouble. From his tales of passion I am certain he is well-behaved. But in view of the event I think, Amut, we should really move to a larger oasis. It’s possible he carries his adjectives with him.”
“Wonderfully thoughtful,” murmured the Sheik.
“What did you say?” asked Verbeena.
“I said, ‘Hello, kid!’”
“Hello,” said Verbeena.
To the Sheik her affability was immeasurably amazing.
The Ben Butlers had moved to Oasis No. 12.This was a suburb of Oudjda from whence, if you were out of things, you could always get breakfast at Guercif.
For three days Mr. Hitchings had been taking his meals and notes with the Ben Butlers.
His observations of the Sheik and Verbeena had moved his heart to pity. So that he had very little left when the Sheik was carried in by two men. A horse had refused to be trained and the Sheik A. Ben Butler was therefore invested with six broken ribs.
He breathed like a dice-box in full cry.
THE ALLEGED MR. HITCHINGS.
THE ALLEGED MR. HITCHINGS.
Verbeena prodded the Sheik somewhat and, deciding that he wouldn’t die, came into the outer tent and caused Mr. Hitchings to pausein the taking of his notes by pulling his chair from under him.
“Did you wish to speak to me?” said Mr. Hitchings under the chair and circumstances.
“A little, Robert. Who, you know, after all, is he?”
“You mean Sheik Amut?”
“I certainly,” said Verbeena, “am not discussing Velasquez, Amerigo Vespucci or Jack Dempsey. The yellow hair and the black whiskers are noticeably incompatible, don’t you think?”
“To be sure,” assented Mr. Hitchings. “Well then——” and he got red in the face. “I’ll tell you. It was this way:
“In the first place he hates the English.”
“I hadn’t noticed that,” said Verbeena.
“But he does—really. And why?”
Verbeena lifted her clubbed curls well off her ears.
“Why?”
For some reason or other she saw that Mr. Hitchings looked greatly distressed.
“Because—well, you see, his father was the Earl of Glucose but not a sticker for the proprieties.I might even say he drank freely. That was not a habit clearly to take into the Sahara. And when thus bedizened he sometimes failed in courtesy. Especially toward his wife. She was Spanish but unquestionably all her life long had walked normally. She was a bit of a Moor too. But new to sand-dunes. One evening the Earl of Glucose feeling like kicking about a bit selected his wife. He busied himself thus for some time.
“Then it would seem he kicked her so far that he couldn’t find her nor could she find herself and thus it was she happened upon the suburban oasis of Sheik Ben Butler, senior.
“A boy was born. Kicking just like his father.
“The Sheik did not send her to his harem but kept the Spanish lady with him hanging right around his neck until she died in his arms. Not promptly but nearly so.
“The truth now,” said the distinguished novelist, “is on the point of bursting forth!
“Amut is that woman’s son!”
“Mr. Hitchings!”
“I don’t wonder that you are surprised. Amutwas too when he heard it. We all were! You see my father was in America at the time and the Sheik was in China and so they met. By the same chain of circumstances, Amut and I were both educated in Siberia. You understand? But even if you don’t, I don’t either. Still it is explanatory, is it not?”
“Mr. Hitchings!”
“Beg pardon.”
“Let me get you a fresh green carnation.”
She pinned it on him. They grow freely in the desert.
But she said emphatically:
“The story, sir, is wholly unworthy of you.”
“Good heavens!” said Mr. Hitchings in ineffable alarm. “This isn’t my stuff! How could you think it? How ridiculous of me to have permitted myself to be persuaded by Amut to try and put this over! I regret the attempt abysmally. Right now, hear me, fair lady: I wash my hands of the Hull thing!”
“Friendship may excuse this conduct of yours,” said Verbeena coldly. “But how, if you are also English, is it that Amut makes a friend of you?”
“Now, there’s something else again, isn’t it? Just as if a rebellious Sheik around here for an instant would make a bosom friend of a Frenchman. It’s a desperately silly story all the way through and I surely apologize and—O—what?”
Verbeena had seized both hands and just wouldn’t let go.
“Forget it,” she was saying. “I’ve something much more important.”
Her eyes flamed.
“Will you—O, will you, my dear Mr. Hitchings, do a moving picture for me?”
“I most certainly will,” replied Mr. Hitchings, “immediately—of a man packing his grip.”
“But I beg of you, who is he? For God’s sake, listen to a woman’s plea! Solve this mystery of me lord’s true identity!”
By this time, however, Mr. Hitchings had engaged the drawing room of a camel and was navigating the Sahara by means of the good, old, honorable North Star.
Mr.Hitchings was in such a hurry hurtling off the Sahara with a broken climax that he left some things behind.
There were two collar buttons, a large piece of dignity and a newspaper clipping.
The collar buttons Verbeena knew she would be able to use, she kicked the lost dignity aside but stood interested in the newspaper clipping.
Logically too. It was about her.
“MISS MAYONNAISE MUCHLY MISSING.”
Such was the headline in the BiscuitBismallah.
And the article went on to say:
“The world is in stupendous alarm over the disappearance of Miss Verbeena Mayonnaise who left the Hotel Biscuit here without her bacon and eggs more than a month ago or givingthe clerk her forwarding address. She even forgot to pay her bill.“Her intention was to take a jaunty junket into the far wild places of the Sahara and it would appear that she has.“Not a squeak has been heard from Miss Mayonnaise since.“Miss Mayonnaise, indeed, is as thoroughly missing as sauce Neuburg from American life.“She was a grand girl in a gentlemanly way and things really don’t look so good as to her fate.“It is deplorable that the sands of the desert carry no wireless and the palm trees in this regard are also imperturbable.“The terribly alarmed world has spoken to the British authorities demanding an immediate search but the discouraging reply has been: ‘What can we do? The Sahara is so much larger than Scotland Yard!’“Lord Tawdry, the magnificently-mustached brother of Miss Mayonnaise, is concerned to distraction.“He stopped playing bridge long enough to say so.“A hotel porter of the Biscuit whom she forgot to tip, it is understood, has instituted a search for her but found no trace of the daring young adventurer in a seventy-mile trip out on the desert beyond 86,000 cigarette stumps.“And some scattered Arabs running around the Sahara asking Allah to alleviate their condition in the matter of a she-demon who is banginga great and well-known Sheik about haphazardly.“They have given her the name of ‘Jinny.’“Although this clue is, of course, unpromising it was learned by cable late last night that Sherlock Holmes has telephoned Doctor Watson to come on over to Baker street, he’s got something interesting on.“Confidence has been hopefully and freely expressed that if Mr. Holmes doesn’t find Miss Mayonnaise he will, at any rate, lose Watson.”
“The world is in stupendous alarm over the disappearance of Miss Verbeena Mayonnaise who left the Hotel Biscuit here without her bacon and eggs more than a month ago or givingthe clerk her forwarding address. She even forgot to pay her bill.
“Her intention was to take a jaunty junket into the far wild places of the Sahara and it would appear that she has.
“Not a squeak has been heard from Miss Mayonnaise since.
“Miss Mayonnaise, indeed, is as thoroughly missing as sauce Neuburg from American life.
“She was a grand girl in a gentlemanly way and things really don’t look so good as to her fate.
“It is deplorable that the sands of the desert carry no wireless and the palm trees in this regard are also imperturbable.
“The terribly alarmed world has spoken to the British authorities demanding an immediate search but the discouraging reply has been: ‘What can we do? The Sahara is so much larger than Scotland Yard!’
“Lord Tawdry, the magnificently-mustached brother of Miss Mayonnaise, is concerned to distraction.
“He stopped playing bridge long enough to say so.
“A hotel porter of the Biscuit whom she forgot to tip, it is understood, has instituted a search for her but found no trace of the daring young adventurer in a seventy-mile trip out on the desert beyond 86,000 cigarette stumps.
“And some scattered Arabs running around the Sahara asking Allah to alleviate their condition in the matter of a she-demon who is banginga great and well-known Sheik about haphazardly.
“They have given her the name of ‘Jinny.’
“Although this clue is, of course, unpromising it was learned by cable late last night that Sherlock Holmes has telephoned Doctor Watson to come on over to Baker street, he’s got something interesting on.
“Confidence has been hopefully and freely expressed that if Mr. Holmes doesn’t find Miss Mayonnaise he will, at any rate, lose Watson.”
Verbeena’s hopes and aims went vaunting in a very triumphant manner on the reading of this clipping.
It was mean, however, she thought of Mr. Hitchings not to have shown it to her.
Yet leaving it behind may have been one of his subtleties.
Anyway, hooray!
Obviously she sensed palpably that it was all highly intriguing.
Mad emotions stirred the Sheik to follow her with an admiring eye when to show how pleased she was she went forth on the newly leased oasis and threw herself among the tops of the palm trees indiscriminately.
In swift palpitation that made his heart beatthe Sheik hugged his bandaged ribs and watched her.
She moved gracefully among the tree tops snapping branches off heartlessly. She radiated, also, he saw, mercilessly among the verbiage.
In spite of a week’s notice, for Verbeena meant to can Spaghetti, the faithful fellow had drawn up to the Sheik’s side and Amut turning wonderingly toward him asked wildly:
“Are they the Willies she’s got or what?”
“O, Monseigneur, merely angelically acrobatic,” said Spaghetti with a touch of reverence that was reverberating.
Suddenly Verbeena vamoosed from the palm trees, fell thirty feet with a happy turn which landed her directly on the shampoo bandage which was the Sheik’s native headgear.
“My dear, your exuberance fascinates as well as flattens me,” said the august Amut in his fall. “May I ask the cause? Mind you, I do not insist. You well know, I am too proud to fight.”
“You will learn in time, my dear,” laughed Verbeena airily, her thoughts running ragingly in the line of movie contracts, of a day soonwhen she would excel the gilded harvestings of Queen Mary herself.
“Aw—please, O, clashing cadence of my soul’s innermost adoration, let your Sheiky know what gives you such happiness divine!”
“Nix-nix!” said Verbeena with excessive laughter, “my conquering devil! Have you fed the camels yet? If not, spill that toga and hump yourself!”
“Immediately, O, exquisite creature of Allah’s greatest favor! And yet, if you’ll pardon me, this night I had planned taking a smack at my old enemy, Sheik Abraham O’Mara. He’s been cutting into the borders of our sandpile considerable lately. E’er this, Queenie, he has always been scared of me. But now he rides about the wide places, the narrow and the circumambient without fear or dread of Amut Ben Butler.
“Once his goat was mine but now he thinks nothing of grabbing my horses and camels any old time.”
“Go right over and attend to him this evening,” said Verbeena. “You have my full permission. If he gets giddy with you just tell himI’ll be over myself. I’ve heard too that he is uncommonly cussed among the women. And him a black Sheik at that—the old Ace of Spades! Tell him——”