Opening the note, I had a shock of surprise. The paper had the name and crest of my New York hotel upon it; and the few lines scrawled in pencil were signed "John Hasle." So well was the writing imitated, that my best friend would have sworn it was mine.
The letter began abruptly (perhaps the forger didn't know how I was accustomed to address Maida): "Something has happened. I am sending a closed automobile to take you away and your friend also. Get her to consent. It is necessary for the safety of your future. The chauffeur and an assistant will carry down the mummy-case if you ask them. They have my instructions already, and will bring a packing-box in which it can be placed in the hall downstairs, in order not to be conspicuous. The mummy will no longer be safe where it is. I'll explain when we meet. I am called away from America at once, on official business, and the man with the chauffeur knows the ship on which I sail this afternoon. I beg you will do what he asks, as you may depend on him as my mouthpiece, and I have time now for no more. Yours ever and in haste, John Hasle."
Underneath, Maida had scribbled, also in pencil, "Your letter has been handed me just outside the door of this house. I don't understand it. Though I suppose it's genuine, so many strange things have happened, I am a little afraid. If there's any trick, and you come to look for me, I earnestly pray you may find this in time. I shall leave a tiny end of paper showing behind my mother's portrait, where I'll hide it."
Rameses I believed to be far away, out of reach: but the assistant he had left behind was worthy of him. She had reason to know the New York hotel I frequented: the note-paper was easy to get: only the forgery business needed an expert. And what a clever idea that the summons should come from me! The Head Sister had known how hard, perhaps impossible, it would have been to make the girl break her promise. Now I saw why consent had been given to my calling on Maida at her brother's house. Unconsciously I had been but a catspaw: and had not my darling girl felt vaguely suspicious, I might never have guessed how she had been enticed away.
The message told little: but at least it confirmed my theory that the two had gone on board ship. How Maida had been induced actually to sail, was another question, but even that might be answered some day.
In the morning, Teano was surprised, instead of receiving word from Nance, to see her in person. She had been sent on an errand from Sisterhood House to the nearest village, and rather than return had simply – as she expressed it – "taken French leave." The Head Sister had gone, leaving everything in charge of a woman next in authority. The inmates, sisters, lay sisters, and protégées (women and children) were told that the directress had news of a near relative's illness; she was obliged to be absent for a few days, perhaps longer. Unless later instructions arrived, all was to go on as if she were at home. Nance knew that the grey automobile used by the Sisters had come back from New York with a bundle in it; a bundle composed of two grey uniform cloaks and bonnets with veils. Somehow the two ladies had changed their outer garments, probably in that "closed motor" mentioned in the forged letter: and the bundle had been transferred from one car to the other, by the man with the chauffeur, doubtless a servant of the Head Sister.
Nance, prying for other details, had found and pieced together a few torn scraps of paper – the remains of a letter – stuck between the braided wicker-work and ribbon of a waste-paper basket in the directress's study. There were three of these bits, the largest no larger than a child's thumb nail, the smallest not half that size; but patching them together Teano was able to show me the mutilated words "meet – possible – Cair – "
This strengthened my conviction that the Head Sister, with Maida and Maida's mysterious mummy-case, was on the way to Egypt, where she would meet Rameses in Cairo. The two must have been on board the ship sailing for Naples, in some disguise not easy to penetrate. I determined to act on this supposition, explain the circumstances as best I could to our Ambassador, trying with his aid and, that of the cable, to get leave for Europe. If leave were refused, rather than abandon Maida to the mercy of her enemies, I would "chuck" the army. Eventually I could volunteer again, when strong enough to serve. But leave was not refused. My affairs were settled with lightning speed, and I sailed a few days later.
At Naples I got no definite news; but it appeared that, on board the suspected ship, there had been a number of nurses wearing a navy-blue uniform, with long veils attached to their small bonnets. Most of the nurses wore their veils thrown back, but a few covered their faces on leaving the ship. This gave me a clue – and a hope. The costume of a nurse afforded the necessary concealment. I guessed that the Head Sister had adopted it for herself and Maida, and that, through Rameses' influence, she had obtained passports.
No nurses in uniform had, so far as I could learn, lately left Naples for Egypt; but with the aid of the police I learned that three days before my arrival a tall, elderly woman, heavily cloaked and veiled, accompanied by a beautiful blonde girl, had sailed for Alexandria. Their papers described them as the wife and daughter of a French doctor in Cairo, and though permission for women to enter Egypt was difficult to obtain from British authorities at that time, they had it.
Whether or no this "Madame and Mademoiselle Rameau" were the Head Sister and Maida Odell, I could not be sure: but in any case my destination must be Cairo. On arriving there I could hear of no such person as Doctor Rameau: but I found army friends: help from "high up" was forthcoming. I learned what non-military persons had travelled during the last week, and what direction they had taken. Among the few women on the list there were only two who might be those for whom I searched; and they were Egyptian ladies. The sister and aunt of an official in Government employ had left Cairo by rail for Asiut, whence they were to do some days' desert travel, to reach the country house belonging to their relative.
I determined to follow; and at Asiut I engaged a small caravan. The little oasis-town near which I had been told to find the house was two days' journey from "The City of Sacred Cats"; and when we reached the place, the servants of Ahmed Ali Bey were surprised by the questions of my interpreter. Their master was in Cairo with his family, and they had not been warned of the arrival of visitors. They were discreet and guarded in their answers, after the first moment of blank astonishment: but I realised instantly that the women I had followed from Cairo were not bound for this place. I had come up against a blank wall, and had only my own deductions to go upon. Were the supposed aunt and sister of Ahmed Ali Bey, Maida and her companion, or had I taken a false trail? Something within myself said that I was right as to their identity, but that the two (protected by the name of some friend of Doctor Rameses) had never intended to come to his house. Where, then, should I look for them?
They must, I thought, have come as far as Asiut, otherwise their passes would not have availed them in these days of military supervision. But beyond Asiut the desert stretched wide and mysterious. My only hope lay in the fact that caravans could be tracked, and that there were only certain directions in which stopping-places could be found. My camel-leader, who spoke a little English, described to me the three or four routes, one of which all travellers must choose in order to reach a desert inn or "borg" on the way to distant oasis villages or towns. But which should I choose?
In any case, we were obliged to retrace our steps for ten or twelve miles, as far as a certain well, and there I should have to decide definitely. It was late in the afternoon when we reached the spot again, and a wind which threatened simoom had covered the heart-shaped footmarks made by our own and other camels, as with a tidal wave. The sky was overcast, and of a faint copper colour, clouded with greyish veils of blowing sand. The desert was empty, or so I thought at first; but as I turned my field-glasses north, south, east and west, I saw something very far off which moved uncertainly towards us. Presently I made out that this something was a camel, alone, and without pack or rider: yet he must, it seemed, have broken loose from a caravan.
As he came nearer – perhaps sighting us from afar off and wishing for our company – we saw that he was white, or a very pale grey. He was not an ordinary pack-camel, but was of the aristocratic type, a mehari, well bred, with graceful swaying movements and long slender legs. My first year in the army I had spent in Egypt, where I'd picked up some Arabic and Turkish, and had been enough impressed with the strangeness of native life to remember many customs and superstitions. As the white mehari approached, a timid air of wildness mingling with its longing for society, I realised that it had been a pampered beast, dear to the heart of its vanished owner. Round its neck was an elaborate collar of beads and shells, with dangling fetishes of all sorts: brass and silver "Hands of Fatma," metal tubes for texts from the Koran, horns of coral and lumps of amber.
It seemed to me that there was something strange about the beast. It held its head in a singular way, shaking it from time to time, and my camel man thought as I thought. "This animal has been looked on by the Evil Eye," he said. "It brings misfortune where it goes. Perhaps it has had a fit of madness, and how comes to us in a quiet interval, only to deceive and then attack us. I have seen such things in the desert. A camel goes mad, kills its master, and seeks other victims for the demon that has entered into it. I will drive it off."
"No," I said, as the Arab would have threatened the camel with his stick. "Keep out of the creature's way if you like. I'm going to see if it will let me touch it."
Very cautiously, in order not to frighten the wild-looking beast, I urged my own mount a few steps forward, and held out a handful of dates. The camel eagerly fixed its eyes on the food and moved towards me as if magnetised. It stretched its neck so that the queer, purse-like nostrils and loose lips quivered above the dates: it hesitated: in another instant it would have snatched a mouthful had I not exclaimed aloud at a thing I saw.
Among the tubes and horns and Hands of Fatma hung a gold bangle with the name "Maida" in emeralds, Madeline Odell's birthstone. I recognised the ornament at a glance. She wore it always, even with the uniform of the Grey Sisterhood. I knew she had ridden this camel and that this was her call for help. She had hoped desperately that I might follow, and feeble as was the chance that I should ever see the bangle, she had snatched it because there was no other.
"Good God!" I cried sharply – and foolishly, for the camel took fright, and went loping away into the cloud of sand. "Come along!" I yelled to my man, and rode after it. "We must keep up with the beast. We must see where it goes."
I explained no more. Doubtless the Arab thought me as mad as the white camel, but I didn't care. The mehari had come to me as a messenger from Maida, and to lose sight of it would be, I felt, to lose her.
Fortunately, after the first sprint, the creature slackened speed, even turning its long neck now and then to see if we followed. So we went on, behind the shadowy form in the sand-cloud, until we came to the high adobe wall of a desert inn, a borg which my camel-man knew well. Outside the closed gate our quarry paused: as we drew closer it bounded away, stopped and hovered as if watching to see whether the gate would be opened to let us in. It was opened; and we were greeted by the landlord, a dull-faced fellow, half Arab, half French, who looked as if his favourite tipple were absinthe. In the act of letting us into the big, bare courtyard he spied the white camel in the distance. "Oh, it's you again, is it?" he muttered, and would have shut the gate quickly as my camel leader and I with the three animals of our tiny caravan entered.
"Is that white mehari yours?" I inquired.
The landlord shook his head. "But no!" he protested. "It is mad. It is a beast of evil omen."
"What did I tell the honoured gentleman?" said my man, delighted. But I was obstinate. "Don't shut the beast out," I directed. "It doesn't seem dangerous. I will pay you well to let it in, and for its food – or any damage it may do."
The landlord shrugged his shoulders; and when we had passed into the courtyard, he left the gate standing open. A moment later the white camel walked in, and instead of joining my animals, or another which was squatting on the ground to munch a pile of green alfalfa, it moved with a queer air of purposeful certainty to a window of the inn. The shutters of this window were closed, but the camel pressed its face against them as if it were trying to peer in.
"Ah, that is what the brute always does!" exclaimed the landlord in his patois of Arabic and the worst Marseillais French. "One would say his master was there. But the room is empty."
"Tell me about this animal and what is the matter with it?" I said, when I had got off my mount and it had been led away with the others by my Arab.
"All I know I will tell willingly," replied the man. "This white camel was one of a caravan that stopped here perhaps ten days ago. There was no other mehari. The rest were of the ordinary sort. I noticed this one and wondered, for such fine animals are rare among my clients. But soon I saw it was not right in its head. It was not mad in the dangerous way, which kills; but it was restless and strange. As we say, it had been looked on by the Evil Eye. Perhaps the leader of the caravan had got the brute cheap for that reason. Unless he wished some misfortune to fall upon the person who rode the white camel."
"What sort of person rode it?" I asked.
The man shrugged his shoulders. "I cannot remember which one rode it, coming here. There were several men and several ladies, the family of the leader. They stopped here for the night – a night of simoom."
"One of the ladies may have ridden the mehari?" I suggested.
"May have: yes, monsieur."
"And did one of the ladies occupy that room with the closed shutters?" I persisted.
"I do not know," said the landlord. "It was one of the rooms taken by the party. We do not pry into the arrangements of a family when they are clients for a night."
I divined from his manner, despite an assumed carelessness, that on the night in question something had happened to set that night apart from other nights: so I carried on my catechism. I learned that the travelling company had consisted of two Egyptian women, one possibly a maid, under the protection of an elderly, bearded man who was in bearing and speech a gentleman though his costume was that of a well-to-do Bedouin; a long cloak and hood such as Arab camel-leaders wear. His face had hardly been visible. Food had been sent to his room, also to the women, one of whom seemed to be weak and ill. They were both veiled and cloaked. She who was ill had not spoken. She had been helped into the house by her companion. There had been a scream, and some commotion in the night caused no doubt by the illness of this lady. The landlord had been out attending to a sick camel in the fondouk, and returning he saw the shutters of a window thrown back. The window itself was open, and this mad mehari was staring in. Then the window had been suddenly closed, in the camel's face. The creature had seemed frightened, and had galloped wildly about the courtyard, refusing to rest in the fondouk with its fellows, even when food was offered as an inducement. It had returned again and again to the same window, as if determined to look through the shutters. Early in the morning, the travellers had made ready to start. The sick lady had been worse. The old gentleman and his servants, of whom there were several, all negroes, had to make a kind of couch for her on the mehari's back, but the brute kept jumping up and refusing to be touched. At last the old gentleman grew angry and struck the animal on the head and face. It "went for" him furiously, and had to be caught and chastised by the negroes. No further attempt was made to use it after that. The leader of the caravan bought a good, steady pack-camel from the landlord, and left the white aristocrat at the borg. At first the proprietor thought that he was in luck to come into possession of such a fine creature, but it soon proved worse than useless. It refused food: it would not sit down. It was constantly at the window into which it had previously stared, or else at the gate trying to escape. After a day or two the Arabs employed about the fondouk said it was accursed, and asked the patron to get rid of the brute, lest misfortune fall upon the place. Accordingly the once valuable mehari was driven out into the desert, disappearing in the distance. But apparently it had not gone far. Since then it had returned several times with caravans, entering the courtyard with them, and walking at once to the window in which it was so strangely interested. "That is why," explained the landlord, "I now keep the shutters closed. I fear this accursed animal may break the glass before we have time to drive it away. There is not much travel at this time of year, and we have plenty of other rooms."
"All the same I should like to be put into that room to-night," I said. "And as you tell me the white mehari is not wicked, there can be no danger in your letting it stay in the courtyard till morning. I'm curious about the creature, and should like to see what it will do."
The man tried to persuade me that there was nothing in the seeming mystery. He had rooms more comfortable than the one with the closed shutters. That had not been properly cleaned since the last occupation. As for the white camel, it would probably roar and make a disturbance in the night. I silenced these objections, however, in the one effectual and classic way: and I refused to wait for the room to be swept and dusted. I wished to go in immediately, I said, and later the bed could be got ready while I dined. Reluctantly the landlord gave his consent to this arrangement, and himself escorted me to the room in question, bringing my bag and a lighted lamp. I watched him as we entered, and noticed that he glanced about anxiously as if he feared I might see something which it would be better for me not to see. But, either he found nothing conspicuously wrong, or else he decided that it was a case of "kismet."
When he had gone, I didn't open the shutters at once. I wanted to have a look round, unobserved. Indeed, I took the precaution of stuffing paper into the keyholes of the two doors: one which opened into the corridor; another which communicated with the next room.
I knew it would be useless to ask the fellow whether the room had been occupied since the departure of the caravan which first brought the white camel. He would lie if it suited him to lie: and if there were anything to find out, I must find it out for myself. Never in my life, however, had I felt so strong an impression as I felt now that Maida's wish, Maida's prayers, had brought me to this place. I was certain that she had at last suspected treachery in the woman she had worshipped: that she had prayed I might follow and search for her: that she had made friends with the white camel in order to add a souvenir of herself to his neck-adornment: that she had some reason to hope he might be left behind at this desert borg when she continued her journey: that she had been in this room (where I seemed distinctly to feel her presence) and that something had happened there which the landlord either knew or suspected. Anyhow, the white camel knew, and I said to myself that I would give all I had in the world if the animal's half-crazyed intelligence could communicate its knowledge to me.
This borg, like most crude desert halting-places for men and beasts, was a one storey building which enclosed a large courtyard on three sides. The fourth side of the yard was composed of an ordinary wall nearly as high as the roof of the house. One wing of the latter contained a row of bedrooms for travellers, each room having a window that looked on the court. The middle part, or main building, consisted of dining-room and kitchens: the remaining wing was the dwelling-place of the landlord's family, and at the end had a large open shed for camels and horses. My room, therefore, was on the ground floor. It was roughly paved with broken tiles, and had in front of the bed a strip of torn Spanish matting with a pattern of flowers splashed on it in black and red. There was very little furniture: a tin wash-hand stand: a deal table: an iron bedstead: and two chairs; but what there was had been left in a state of disorder since the flitting of the last occupant. Both chairs had fallen: the table, which had evidently stood in the middle of the room, was pushed askew, its cotton covering on the floor, its legs twisted up in a torn woollen rug: and – significant sign of a struggle – a curtain of pink mosquito netting had been wrenched from its fastenings and hung, a limp rag, at the side of the window.
The wretched paraffin lamp served only to make darkness visible; but taking it in my hand I walked round, examining everything: and my heart missed a beat as I saw that, among the scarlet flowers on the matting, were spots of brownish red – that tell-tale red which cannot be mistaken. They were few and small, and therefore had passed unnoticed, perhaps, by the landlord: yet to me they cried aloud. I tried to tell myself that the stains might be old: that I had no reason to connect them with danger for Maida: that as she had been brought so far, doubtless there was a further destination to which it was intended to take her. But as I finished my examination of the disordered room, turned out the light, and threw open the shutters my soul was sick.
"What happened here?" I asked myself for the twentieth time; and as if in answer to my question the white camel came glimmering towards me through the dusk. It stopped at my window, and thrusting its neck through the opening, stared into the room. The faint light gleamed in its yellow eyes, and gave the illusion that they moved as if following with emotion something they saw. The creature paid no attention to me, though it could have seen me standing near the window. Even when I spoke, coaxingly, it did not turn its head; and when I walked back and forth, it remained indifferent. Its gaze concentrated on that part of the room nearest the door leading to the corridor; and a shiver ran through my nerves to see the white head float from right to left on its long neck, as though eagerly watching a scene to me invisible. I felt the impulse to chase the beast away, but I checked myself. I had a queer conviction that what it could see I ought to see also: that if it remained it might make me see.
I turned up the wick of the lamp, and walked slowly towards the door, glancing back to see what the camel would do. Its head was poked far into the room. It looked like a queer white ghost, with glinting eyes. For the first time they seemed to meet mine, and I felt that the animal had become conscious of my presence in the picture its memory constructed. Close to the door, in a crack between red tiles, I saw something round and white which I took for a button; but picking it up, it proved to be an American ten cent piece. Not far off lay an Egyptian piastre, but it was the "dime" which thrilled me. The tiny silver coin proved that an occupant of this room had lately come from the United States. A little farther away I discovered broken bits of a small bottle, with a torn label. Matching scraps of paper together I made out part of a word which told its own sinister story. "Morph": the missing syllable was not needed. And the label had the name – or part of the name – of a New York druggist:
"C. Sarge – " "Broadw – "
Already I began to visualise what the scene near the door might have been. I went out hastily and questioned the landlord again as to the destination of the white camel's caravan. I offered him so big a bribe for information that, if he had known anything definite, he could hardly have resisted the temptation to tell. But he had only vague suggestions to make. Perhaps the party might have been bound for Hathor Set, a small oasis-town with one or two country houses of rich men on its outskirts. It was twenty miles distant, and he could think of no other place within a day's march where persons of importance lived. Farther away, however, there were oases where merchants and officials owned houses which they occupied now and then, and where their families sometimes stayed for months.
If it had been possible I would have travelled on that night, but to do so would have been madness. I must wait till dawn: and though I did not expect to sleep I went back to my room when I had eaten some vile food, and arranged for the start at five o'clock.
"Weather permitting," added the landlord, with an ear for the moan of the sickly south wind.
"Weather must permit," I answered.
My side of the house was somewhat sheltered from the blowing sand; still, on such a night most desert dwellers would have shut their windows. I kept my window open, however; and lying on the bed, the lamp burning dimly, I faced it. The head of the white camel, on its long, swaying neck, was always framed in the aperture. I had brought from the dining-room a plateful of dates to tempt the animal, but it refused to touch them; and the landlord had told me that, so far as he knew, the mehari had eaten no food for ten days, since it first appeared at the borg. This accounted in a normal way for its thinness and the wild look of its eyes; but according to the man and his servants the "mysterious curse" upon the beast was destroying it. "A camel accursed can live twice as long as others with nothing to eat, and even with no water," the landlord had announced gravely, as if stating a well-known fact. "Then, suddenly, when the evil spirit is ready to leave its body, the creature will fall dead."
I was anxious that the mehari should not fall dead until I had finished making use of it: therefore I was glad to see it staring bleakly through the window, hour after hour. I hoped that, in the morning, it might lead me along the way its lost caravan had gone, and whereever it went I intended to follow. It was making me superstitious.
Now and then I dozed for a few minutes, to wake with a start and look for the watching face at the window, but at last I fell heavily asleep; and I dreamed.
I dreamed of the camel: and it seemed as if I dreamed into it. My intense wish to see what it had seen, no doubt accounted for this impression, but it could not account entirely for what followed. It was as though the light of the lamp burned down, and blazed suddenly up in the brain of the animal. I saw through its eyes, as by two searchlights illuminating the sordid room.
Maida Odell was led in by a taller woman. Both wore Arab costumes, with cloaks and veils, as if they had been travelling. Maida moved languidly. She let her companion take off her wraps. Her face was white, her eyes dazed. I knew, in the dream, that she had been drugged, and I hated the woman who touched her. The girl walked unsteadily to the window and threw it open, drawing in long breaths; and then the white camel came. I felt that it had been waiting for this moment: that it loved and was grateful to the girl for kindness, as no camel save a mehari ever can be. She took lumps of sugar from her pocket and fed it. The animal accepted them daintily. The woman ordered it away, closed the shutters, and drew the ragged mosquito curtain across the window. Darkness fell between me and the two figures. I saw no more; but after an interval of blankness I was conscious that Maida, left alone in the room, had opened the shutters, leaving only the mosquito-netting between her and the night. The camel, which had refused to rest with its fellows in the fondouk, came sliding towards the girl and let her caress it. Apparently they were the best of friends. She slipped a bangle from her arm, and tied it to the mehari's collar. She patted the white head, and whispered in the flat ear. The animal was in an ecstasy. At last Maida pushed it away gently, and leaning out of the window searched the courtyard. I had the impression, in my dream, that she thought of climbing out and attempting to escape on the mehari whose confidence she had gained for that very purpose. But at this moment a tall, bent figure in a hooded cloak walked slowly past, and turning his head, looked at Maida. His face was so deeply shadowed by the hood that I could not see the features. There was a glimpse of venerable whitish beard tucked into the cloak; but I knew, in my dream, that the man was Rameses posing as the leader of the caravan. I tried to speak, to call Maida's name, to ask her how it was that she had trusted these people: but I was powerless to make the girl feel my presence. "I must wait," I said to myself. "Some day she will explain why she consented to sail for Naples, and why she went on to Egypt."
"Some day!" the words echoed in my brain. Would the day come in this world, or must I solve the greatest secret of all before I solved Maida's?
The dream went on, but I saw nothing when the girl closed the shutters. Soon, however, she flung them wide again; and though she had put out the light, the moon was shining in. I could see her moving about. She listened at the door, as if she heard something in the corridor. She had fastened the bolt, but now she discovered that it was broken. The door could be opened from the outside. She placed a chair against it, with the back caught under the handle. Then she went and sat down close to the window. The camel was there, and she spoke to it, as if she were comforted by its nearness. For a time she was very still. Her head drooped; but it was impossible to sleep for long in the high, uncomfortable chair. Now and then the girl started awake, always turning to glance at the door: but at last she fell into a deeper doze. Slowly the door opened, almost without noise. Maida remained motionless: but the watching mehari uttered a snarl. The girl sprang to her feet, not knowing what to do. A cloaked figure which had slipped in attempted to hide behind the open door, but was too late. Maida saw the gliding shadow, shrieked, and would have run into the corridor, but the man in the Arab cloak caught her on the threshold, and muffled her head in his mantle. She struggled in his grasp, and almost escaped. Chairs were overturned: the rug under the table was twisted round the man's feet: I thought that he would trip and fall, but he saved himself. Holding Maida with one hand, with the other he drew a bottle from some pocket, and pulled out the cork with his teeth. The girl freed an arm, but before she could push the bottle away the man emptied a quantity of the liquid over the cloth that covered her face. A sickly scent of chloroform filled the air. Still she fought bravely, her freed hand seized the bottle, and dashed it on the floor, where it broke with a crash. At this instant a woman in Arab dress came swiftly into the room. She was very tall, as tall as the man, and I noticed a likeness between their figures, a remarkable breadth of shoulder, something peculiar in their bearing. The woman's face was unveiled, but in the darkness I could not make out its features.