CHAPTER XIV
MAHOMED OFFERS FREEDOM
Fortune had slept, but only after hours of watchful terror. The slightest sound outside the tent sent a scream into her throat, but she succeeded each time in stifling it. Once the evil laughter of a hyena came over the dead and silent sands, and she put her hands over her ears, shivering. Alone! She laid her head upon the wadded saddle-bags and wept silently, and every sob tore at her heart. She must keep up the farce of being brave when she knew that she wasn't. The men must not be discouraged. Her deportment would characterize theirs; any sign of weakness upon her side would correspondingly depress them the more. She prayed to God to give her the strength to hold out. She was afraid of Mahomed; she was afraid of his grim smile, afraid of his mocking eyes; she could not sponge out the scene wherein he had so gratuitously kicked Horace in the side. Horace! No, she did not believe that she would ever forgive him for this web which he had spun and fallen into himself. Two things she must hide for the sake of them all: her fear of Mahomed and her knowledge of Ryanne's trickery.
What part in this tragedy had the Arab assigned her? Her fingers twined and untwined, and she rocked and rocked, bit her lips, lay down, sat up and rocked again. But for the exhaustion, but for the insistent call of nature, she would never have closed her eyes that night.
And her mother! What would her mother believe, after the scene that had taken place between them? What could she believe, save that her daughter had fulfilled her threat, and run away? And upon this not unreasonable supposition her mother would make no attempt to find out what had become of her. Perhaps she would be glad, glad to be rid of her and her questions. Alone! Well, she had always been alone.
The only ray of sunshine in all was the presence of Jones. She felt, subtly, that he would not only stand between her and Mahomed, but also between her and Ryanne.
"Hush!" whispered George. "Don't let her see you like this. She mustn't know."
"You don't understand," replied Ryanne miserably.
"I believe I do." George's heart was heavy. This man was in love with her, too.
Ryanne struck the tears from his eyes and turned aside his head. He was sick in soul and body. To have walked blindly into a trap like this, of his own making, too! Fool! What had possessed him, usually so keen, to trust the copper-hided devil? All for the sake of one glass of wine! With an effort entailing no meager pain in his side, he stilled the strangling hiccoughs, swung round and tried to smile reassuringly at the girl.
"You are better?" she asked.
There was in the tone of that question an answer to all his dreams. One night's work had given him his ticket to the land of those weighed and found wanting. She knew; how much he did not care; enough to read his guilt.
It appeared to George that she was accepting the situation with a philosophy deeper than either his or Ryanne's. Not a whimper, not a plaint, not a protest so far had she made. She was a Roland in petticoats.
"Oh, I'm bashed up a bit," said Ryanne. "I'll get my legs in a day or so. Fortune, will you answer one question?"
"As many as you like."
"How did you get here?"
"Don't you know?"
George wasn't certain, but the girl's voice was cold and accusing.
"I?"
"Yes. Wasn't it the note that you wrote to me?"
Ryanne took his head in his hands, wearily. "I wrote you no note, Fortune; I have never written you a note of any kind. You do not know my handwriting from Adam's. In God's name, why didn't you ask your mother or your uncle? They would have recognized the forgery at once. Who gave it to you?"
"Mahomed himself."
"Damn him!" Ryanne grew strong under the passing fit of rage. "No, don't tell me to be silent. I don't care about myself. I'm the kind of a man who pulls through, generally. But this takes the spine out of me. I'm to blame; it's all my fault."
"Say no more about it." She believed him. She really hadn't thought him capable of such baseness, though at the time of her abduction she had been inclined to accuse him. That he was here, a prisoner like herself, was conclusive evidence, so far as she was concerned, of his innocence. But she knew him to be responsible for the presence of Jones; knew him to be culpable of treachery of the meanest order; knew him to be lacking in generosity and magnanimity toward a man who was practically his benefactor. "What does Mahomed want?"
"The bally rug, Fortune. And Jones here, who had it, says that it is gone."
"Vanished, magic-carpet-wise," supplemented George.
"And Jones would have given it up."
"And a thousand like it, if we could have bought you out of this."
"Jones and I could have managed to get along."
"We shouldn't have mattered."
"And would you have returned to Mr. Jones his thousand pounds?"
"Yes, and everything else I have," quite honestly.
"Don't worry any more about the rug, then. I know where it is."
"You?" cried the two men.
"Yes. I stole it. I did so, thinking to avert this very hour; to save you from harm," to George, "and you from doing a contemptible thing," to Ryanne. "It is in my room, done up in the big steamer-roll. And now I am glad that I stole it."
Ryanne laughed weakly.
Said George soberly: "What contemptible thing?" He recollected Mahomed's words in regard to Ryanne as the latter lay insensible in the sand.
Ryanne, quick to seize the opportunity of solving, to his own advantage, the puzzle for George, and at the same time guiding Fortune away from a topic, the danger of which she knew nothing, raised a hand. "I bribed Mahomed to kidnap you, Jones. Don't be impatient. You laughed at me when I laid before you the prospectus of the United Romance and Adventure Company. I wished to prove to you that the concern existed. And so here is your adventure upon approval. I thought, of course, you still had the rug. Mahomed was to carry you into the desert for a week, and by that time you would have surrendered the rug, returned to Cairo, the hero of a full-fledged adventure. Lord! what a mess of it I've made. I forgot, next to his bally rug, Mahomed loved me."
The hitherto credulous George had of late begun to look into facts instead of dreams. He did not believe a word of this amazing confession, despite the additional testimony of Fortune, relative to Ryanne's statements made to her in the bazaars.
"The biter bitten," was George's sole comment.
Ryanne breathed easier.
"Why not tell Mahomed at once, and have him send a courier back for the rug?" suggested Fortune.
"By Jove, that clears up everything. We'll do it immediately." George felt better than he had at any stage of the adventure. Here was a simple way out of the difficulty.
"Softly," said Ryanne. "Let us come down to the lean facts. If that rug is in your room, Fortune, your mother has discovered it long before now. She will turn it over to your estimable uncle. None of us will ever see it again, I'm thinking. The Major knows that Jones gave me a thousand pounds for it." Struck by a sense of impending disaster, Ryanne began to fumble in his pockets. Gone! Every shilling of it gone! "He's got that, too; Mahomed; the cash you gave me, Jones. Wait a moment; don't speak; things are whirling about some. Over nine hundred pounds; every shilling of it. We mustn't let him know that I've missed it. I've got to play weak in order to grow strong… But they will at least start up a row as to your whereabouts, Fortune."
"No," thoughtfully; "no, I do not think they will."
The undercurrent was too deep for George. He couldn't see very clearly just then. The United Romance and Adventure Company; was that all? Was there not something sinister behind that name, concerning him? He looked patiently from the girl to the adventurer.
Ryanne stared at the yellow desert beyond. His brain was clearing rapidly under the stimulus of thought. He himself did not believe that they would send out search-parties either for him or for Fortune. He could not fathom what had given Fortune her belief; but he realized that his own was based upon the recollection of that savage mood when he had thrown down the gauntlet. Now they would accept it. He had run away with Fortune as he had boldly threatened to do. The mother and her precious brother would proceed at once to New York without him. He had made a fine muddle of it all. But for a glass of wine and a grain too much of confidence, he had not been here this day.
Mahomed, himself astir by this time, came over to the group, leisurely. The three looked like conspirators to his suspicious eye, but unlike conspirators they made no effort to separate because he approached. He understood: as yet they were not afraid of him. That was one of the reasons he hated white men; they could seldom be forced to show fear, even when they possessed it. Well, these three should know what fear was before they saw the last of him. He carried a kurbash, a cow-hide whip, which he twirled idly, even suggestively. First, he came to George.
"If you have the Yhiordes, there is still a chance for you. Cairo is but fifty miles away. Bagdad is several hundred." He drew the whip caressingly through his fingers.
"I do not lie," replied George, a truculent sparkle in his eyes. "I told you that I had it not. It was the truth."
A ripple of anxiety passed over Mahomed's face. "And you?" turning upon Ryanne, with suppressed savageness. How he longed to lay the lash upon the dog!
"Don't look at me," answered Ryanne waspishly. "If I had it I should not be here." Ah, for a bit of his old strength! He would have strangled Mahomed then and there. But the drug and the beating had weakened him terribly.
"If I give you the rug," interposed Fortune, "will you promise freedom to us all?"
Mahomed stepped back, nonplussed. He hadn't expected any information from this quarter.
"I have the rug," declared Fortune calmly, though she could scarcely hear her own voice, her heart beat so furiously.
"You have it?" Mahomed was confused. Here was a turn in the road upon which he had set no calculation. All three of them!
"Yes. And upon condition that you liberate us all, I will put it into your hands. But it must be my writing this time."
A white man would have blushed under the reproach in her look. Mahomed smiled amiably, pleased over his cleverness. "Where is the kisweh?"
"The kisweh?"
"The Holy Yhiordes. Where is it?"
"That I refuse to tell you. Your word of honor first, to bind the bargain."
Ryanne laughed. It acted upon Mahomed like a goad. He raised the whip, and had Ryanne's gaze swerved the part of an inch, the blow would have fallen.
"You laugh?" snarled Mahomed.
"Why, yes. A bargain with your honor makes me laugh."
"And your honor?" returned Mahomed fiercely. He wondered why he held his hand. "I have matched trickery against trickery. My honor has not been called. I fed you, I gave you drink; in return you lied to me, dishonored me in the eyes of my friends, and one of them you killed."
"It was my life or his," exclaimed Ryanne, not relishing the recital of this phase. "It was my life or his; and he was upon my back."
Fortune shuddered. Presently she laid her hand upon Mahomed's arm. "Would you take my word of honor?"
Mahomed sought her eyes. "Yes. I read truth in your eyes. Bring me the rug, and my word of honor to you, you shall go free."
"But my friends?"
"One of them." Mahomed laughed unpleasantly. It was an excellent idea. "One of them shall go free with you. It will be for you to choose which. Now, you dog, laugh, laugh!" and the tongue of the kurbash bit the dust within an inch of Ryanne's feet.
"What shall I do?" asked Fortune miserably.
"Accept," urged Ryanne. "If you are afraid to choose one or the other of us, Jones and I will spin a coin."
"I agree," said George, very unhappy.
"Have you any paper, Jones?"
George searched. He found the dance-card to the ball at the hotel. In another pocket he discovered the little pencil that went with it.
"You write," said Mahomed to Fortune.
"I intend to." Fortune took the card and pencil and wrote as follows:
"Mother:
"Horace, Mr. Jones and I are prisoners of the man who owned the rug, which you will find in the large steamer-roll. Give it to the courier who brings this card. And under no circumstances set spies upon his track." In French she added: "We are bound for Bagdad. In case Mahomed receives the rug and we are not liberated, wire the embassy at Constantinople and the consulate at Bagdad.
"Fortune."
She gave it to Mahomed.
"Read it out loud," he commanded. While he spoke English fluently, he could neither read nor write it in any serviceable degree. The note he had given to Fortune had been written by a friend of his in the bazaars who had upon a time lived in New York. Fortune read slowly, slightly flushing as she evaded the French script.
"That will do," Mahomed agreed.
He shouted for one of his boys, bade him saddle the hagin or racing-camel, which of all those twelve, alone was his, and be off to Cairo. The boy dipped his bowl into the kettle, ate greedily, saddled the camel, and five minutes later was speeding back toward Cairo at a gait that would bring him there late that night.
Fortune and George and Ryanne watched him till he disappeared below a dip and was gone from view. In the minds of the three watchers the same question rose: would he be too late? George was cheerful enough thereafter, but his cheerfulness was not of the infectious kind.
At noon the caravan was once more upon its way. Ryanne was able to ride. The fumes of whatever drug had been administered to him had finally evaporated, and he felt only bruised, old, disheartened. An evil day for him when he had set forth for Bagdad in quest of the rug. He was confident that there would be no rug awaiting the courier, and what would be Mahomed's procedure when the boy returned empty-handed was not difficult to imagine. Mahomed was right; so far honor had not entered into the contest. According to his lights, the Arab was only paying coin for coin. But for the girl, Ryanne would have accepted the situation with a shrug, to await that moment when Mahomed, eased by the sense of security, would naturally relax vigilance. The presence of Fortune changed the whole face of the affair. Mahomed could have his eyes and heart if he would but spare her. He must be patient; he must accept insults, even physical violence, but some day he and Mahomed would play the final round.
His past, his foolish, futile past: all the follies, all the petty crimes, all the low dissipations in which he had indulged, seemed trooping about his camel, mocking and gibbering at him. Why hadn't he lived clean like Jones there? Why hadn't he fought temptation as he had fought men? Environment was no excuse; bringing-up offered no palliation; he had gone wrong simply because his inclinations had been wrong. On the other hand, no one had ever tried to help him back to a decent living. His mother had died during his childhood, and her influence had left no impression. His father had been a money-maker, consumed by the pleasure of building up pyramids of gold. He had never reasoned with his youngest-born; he had paid his bills without protest or reproach; it was so much a month to be written down in the expense account. And the first-born had been his natural enemy since the days of the nursery. Still, he could not acquit himself; his own arraignment was as keen as any judge could have made. Strong as he was physically, brilliant as he was mentally, there was a mortal weakness in his blood; and search as he might the history of his ancestors, their lives shed no light upon his own.
In stating that his face had been granted that dubious honor and concern of the perpetrators of the rogues' gallery, he had merely given rein to a seizure of soul-bitterness. But there was truth enough in the statement that he had been short in his accounts many thousands at his father's bank; gambling debts; and in making no effort to replace the loss, he was soon found out by his brother, who seemed only too glad to dishonor him. He was given his choice: to sign over his million, due him a year later (for at this time the father was dead), or go to prison. The scandal of the affair had no weight with his brother; he wanted the younger out of the way. Like the hot-headed fool he was, he had signed away his inheritance, taken a paltry thousand and left America, facing imprisonment if he returned. That was the kind of a brother he had. Once he had burned his bridges, there came to him a dozen ways by which he could have extricated himself. But once a fool, always a fool!
Disinherited, outcast, living by his wits, ingenious enough; the finer senses callousing under the contact with his inferiors; a gambler, a hard drinker periodically; all in all, a fine portrait for any gallery given over to rogues. And he hadn't worried much over the moral problem confronting him, that the way of the transgressor is hard. It was only when love rent the veil of his fatuity that he saw himself as he really was.
Love! He gazed ahead at Fortune under the mahmal. That a guileless young girl as she was should enchain him! That the sight of her should always send a longing into his soul to go back and begin over! His jaws hardened. Why not? Why not try to recover some of the crumbs of the fine things he had thrown away? At least enough to permit him to go again among his fellows without constantly looking behind to note if he were followed? By the Lord Harry! once he was out of this web of his own weaving, he would live straight; he swore that every dollar hereafter put in his pocket should be an honest one. Fortune could never be his wife. He came to this fact without any roundabout or devious byways. In the first place, he knew that he had not touched her; she had only been friendly; and now even her friendship hung by a thread. All right. The love he bore her was going to be his salvation just the same; and at this moment he was deadly in earnest.
It was after nine when they were ferried across the two canals, the fresh-water and the salt, several miles below Serapeum. The three weary captives saw a great liner slip past slowly and majestically upon its way to the Far East. She radiated with light and cheer and comfort; and all could hear faintly the pulsations of her engines. So near and yet so far; a cup of water to Tantalus! At midnight they made camp. There were no palms this time; simply a well in the center of a jumble of huge boulders. The tents were pitched to the southwest, for now the wind blew, biting from the land of northern snows; and a fire was a welcome thing. This was Arabia; Africa had been left behind. Here they awaited the return of the courier, who arrived two days later, dead tired. The persons to whom the card had been sent had sailed for Naples with the steamer Ludwig. Mahomed turned upon the three miserables.
"I have you three, then; and by the beard of the Prophet, you shall pay, you shall pay! You have robbed and beaten and dishonored me; and you shall pay!"
"Am I guilty of any wrong toward you?" faltered the girl. Her mother had gone. She had hoped against hope.
"No," cried Mahomed. He laughed. "You are free to return to Cairo … alone! Free to take your choice of these two men to accompany you. Free, free as the air… Well, why do you hesitate?"
CHAPTER XV
FORTUNE'S RIDDLE SOLVED
Fortune, without deigning to reply, walked slowly and proudly to her tent, and disappeared within. She looked neither at Ryanne nor at George. She knew that George, his soul filled with that unlucky quixotic sense of chivalry which had made him so easy a victim to her mother, would not accept his liberty at the price of Ryanne's, Ryanne, to whom he owed nothing, not even mercy. And if she had had to ask one of the two, George would have been the natural selection, for she trusted him implicitly. Perhaps there still lingered in her mind a recollection of how charmingly he had spoken of his mother.
She could have set out for Cairo alone: even as she could have grown a pair of wings and sailed through the air! The fate that walked behind her was malevolent, cruel, unjust. She had wronged no one, in thought or deed. She had put out her hand confidently to the world, to be laughed at, distrusted, or ignored. Was it possible that a little more than a month ago she wandered, if not happy, in the sense she desired, at least in a peaceful state of mind, among her camelias and roses at Mentone? Her world had been, in this short time, remolded, reconstructed; where once had bloomed a garden, now yawned a chasm: and the psychological earthquake had left her dizzy. That Mahomed, now wrought to a kind of Berserk rage, might begin reprisals at once, did not alarm her; indeed, her feeling was rather of dull, aching indifference. Nothing mattered now.
But Ryanne and George were keenly alive to the danger, and both agreed that Fortune must go no farther.
Ryanne, under his bitter raillery and seeming scorn for sacred things, possessed a latent magnanimity, and it now pushed up through the false layers. "Jones, it's my funeral. Go tell her. You two can find the way back to the canal, and once there you will have no trouble. Don't bother your head about me."
"But what will you do?"
"Take my medicine," grimly.
"Ryanne, you are offering the cowardly part to me!"
"You fool, it's the girl. What do you and I care about the rest of it? You're as brave as a lion. When you put up your fists the other night, you solved that puzzle for yourself. For God's sake, do it while I have the courage to let you! Don't you understand? I love that girl better than my heart's blood, and Mahomed can have it drop by drop. Go and go quickly! He will give you food and water."
"You go. She knows you better than me."
"But will she trust me as she will you? Percival, old top, Mahomed will never let me go till he's taken his pound of flesh. Fortune!" Ryanne called. "Fortune, we want you!"
She appeared at the flap of the tent.
"Jones here will go back with you. Go, both of you, before Mahomed changes his mind."
"Miss Chedsoye, he is wrong. He's the one to go. He was hurt worse than I was. Pride doesn't matter at a time like this. You two go," desperately.
Fortune shook her head. "All or none of us; all or none of us," she repeated.
And Mahomed, having witnessed and overheard the scene, laughed, a laughter identical to that which had struck the barmaid's ears sinisterly. He had not studied his white man without gathering some insight into his character. Neither of these men was a poltroon. And when he had made the offer, he knew that the conditions would erect a barrier over which none of them would pass voluntarily. So much for pride as the Christian dogs knew it. Pride is a fine buckler; none knew that better than Mahomed himself; but a wise man does not wear it at all times.
"What is it to be?" he demanded of Fortune.
"What shall I say to him?"
"Whatever you will." Ryanne was tired. He saw that argument would be of no use.
"All or none of us." And Fortune looked at Mahomed with all the pride of her race. "It is not because you wish me to be free; it is because you wish to see one of my companions made base in my eyes. I will not have it!"
"The will of Allah!" He could not repress the fire of admiration in his own eyes as they took in her beauty, the erect, slender figure, the scorn upon her face, and the fearlessness in her great, dark eyes. Such a woman might have graced the palace of the Great Caliph. He had had in mind many little cruelties to practice upon her, that he might see the men writhe, impotent and helpless to aid her. But in this tense and dramatic scene, a sense of shame took possession of him; his pagan heart softened; not from pity, but from that respect which one brave person gives free-handed to another.
Mahomed was not a bad man, neither was he a cruel one. He had been terribly wronged, and his eastern way had but one angle of vision: to avenge himself, believing that revenge alone could soothe his outraged pride and reëstablish his honor as he viewed it from within. Had the courier returned with the Holy Yhiordes, it is not impossible that he would have liberated them all. But now he dared not; he was not far enough away. To Bagdad, then, and as swiftly as the exigencies of desert travel would permit. One beacon of hope burned in his breast. The Pasha might be deposed, and in that case he could immediately dispose of his own goods and chattels and seek new pastures. It would come hard, doubly hard, since he never could regain the position he was to lose.
Nine hundred pounds English, and a comfortable fraction over; the yellow-haired dog would have nothing in the end for his pains. It would be what the Feringhi called a good joke.
A week passed. Christmas. And not one of them recalled the day. Perhaps it was because years had passed since that time when it meant anything to them. The old year went out a-lagging; neither did they take note of this. Having left behind civilization, customs and habits were forgotten.
Sometimes they rode all day and all night, sometimes but half a day, and again, when the water was sweet, they rested the day and night. Never a human being they saw, never a caravan met or crossed them. In this week, the secret marvels of the desert became theirs. They saw it gleam and waver and glitter under skies of brass, when the north wind let down and a breeze came over from the Persian Gulf. They saw it covered with the most amazing blues and greys and greens. They saw it under the rarest azure and a stately fleet of billowy clouds; under the dawn, under the set of sun, under the moon and the stars; and unfailingly the interminable reaches of sand and rock and scrubby bush, chameleon-like, readjusted its countenance to each change in the sky. George, who was a poet without the gift of expression, never ceased to find new charms; and nothing pleased his fancy more than to see the cloud-shadows scud away across the sands. Once, toward the latter end of day, Fortune cried out and pointed. Far away, palely yet distinctly, they saw an ocean liner. She stood out against the yellowing sky as a magic-lantern picture stands out upon the screen, and faded similarly. It was the one and only mirage they saw, or at least noticed.
Once another caravan, composed wholly of Arabs, passed. What hope the prisoners had was instantly snuffed out. Before the strangers came within hailing, Mahomed hustled his captives into his tent and swore he would kill either George or Ryanne if they spoke. He forgot Fortune, however. As the caravan was passing she screamed. Instantly Mahomed clapped his hand roughly over her mouth. The sheik of the passing caravan looked keenly at the tent, smiled grimly and passed on. What was it to him that a white woman lay in yonder tent? His one emotion was of envy. After this the prisoners became apathetic.
Upon the seventh day, they witnessed the desert's terrifying anger. The air that had been cool, suddenly grew still and hot; the blue above began to fade, to assume a dusty, copperish color. The camels grew restless. Quickly there rose out of the horizon saffron clouds, approaching with incredible swiftness. Little whirlwinds of sand appeared here and there, rose and died as if for want of air. Mahomed veered the caravan toward a kind of bluff composed of sand and precipitous boulders. All the camels were made to kneel. The boys muffled up their mouths and noses, and Mahomed gave instructions to his captives. Fortune buried her head in her coat and nestled down beside her camel, while George and Ryanne used their handkerchiefs. George left his camel and sought Fortune's side, found her hand and held it tightly. He scarcely gave thought to what he did. He vaguely meant to encourage her; and possibly he did.
The storm broke. The sun became obscured. Pebbles and splinters of rock sang through the pall of whirling sand. A golden tone enveloped the little gathering.
Had there been no natural protection, they must have ridden on, blindly and desperately, for to have remained still in the open would have been to await their tombs. It spent its fury in half an hour; and the clearing air became cold again. The caravan proceeded. The hair of every one was dimly yellow, their faces and their garments.
When camp was made that night it found the captives untalkative. The girl and the two men sat moodily about the fire. Fatigue had dulled their bodies and hopelessness their minds. The men were ragged now, unkempt; a stubble of beard covered their faces, gaunt yet burned. George had lost his remaining pump, and as his stockings were now full of holes, he had, in the last flicker of personal pride, wound about them some cast-off cloths he had found. There was not enough water for ablutions; there was scarcely enough to assuage thirst.
By and by, Ryanne, without turning his head, spoke to George. "You say you questioned the courier?"
"Yes."
"He says he showed the note to no one?"
"Yes."
"And so no one will try to find us?
"No."
Ryanne had asked these questions a dozen times and George had always given the same answers.
Up and away at dawn, for they must reach the well that night. It was a terrible day for them all. Even the beasts showed signs of distress. And the worst of it was, Mahomed was not quite sure of his route. Fortunately, they found the well. They drank like mad people.
Ryanne, who had discovered a pack of cards in his pocket, played patience upon a spot smoothed level with his hand. He became absorbed in the game; and the boys gathered round him curiously. Whenever he succeeded in turning out the fifty-two cards, he would smile and rub his hands together. The boys at length considered him unbalanced mentally, and in consequence looked upon him as a near-holy man.
Between Fortune and George, conversation dwindled down to a query and an answer.
"Can I do anything for you?"
"No, thanks; I am getting along nicely."