The rope ladder was still there, blown free at the bottom now and waving merrily in the wind. He snatched at it, dropping his knife in his pocket, praying that the top hooks had not become dislodged, and after him came the other man, hand over hand. Billy drew up his legs in a horrid fear of having them gripped or hacked at, and gained the top just as the other's head appeared below, his knife gleaming in his teeth.

Like a flash Billy drew out his knife and cut the rope. There was a wild yell from below and a screech of curses and imprecations following a rather sickening sounding thud, which persuaded Billy, peering down from above, that the victim's lungs at least were unimpaired, and then to his great amazement a shot went winging up past his ear.

"Had a gun all the time—too fighting mad to think of it—knife more natural!" he thought amazedly, sliding down the other side in a jiffy and then jerking his ladder down flat on the ground.

Out in the shadows the one-eyed man was paddling earnestly to safety. The shot so close at hand had been his sign for departure; he did not look back at Billy's shrill whistling nor his wilder shouts, and as the yells on the other side of the wall were bringing the inmates of the palace upon him, Billy had no more time for persuasion.

Off went his shoes and out into the canal he flung them, then headlong he plunged into the dark and uninviting water and struck out to the right, in the same direction in which the canoe was going, keeping carefully in the shadow of the bank, on the other side.

In a few moments the canoe was lost from sight and Billy was left alone, swimming between two steep walls of old palaces, weighed down by his tweeds, and maddened through and through with his inability to wring the neck of the one-eyed canoeist. The distance seemed unending to his slow progress but at last the palms of the cemetery appeared upon the right hand bank, and he struck across the widening waters and climbed out on the first foot of the graveyard that presented itself.

A dozen rods farther on the Arab was awaiting him in the canoe. Billy's mood did not invite conversation and he did not linger now for the other's explanations, but calling to him to wait he made in through the cemetery, dodging warily from tomb to tomb, till he reached the entrance of the main road.

The motor was gone. He satisfied himself of that, and a wave of rejoicing surged through him. That motor was to wait till one or the other arrived with the girl and then leave with all speed, while the other was to be left to the slower canoe. He was sure, now, that Falconer had succeeded in carrying the thing through and Billy's heart warmed to him. Then, for the first time, he felt something numb and queer about his left arm and putting his hand on it he found the sopping sleeve was torn and a warm ooze of blood welling through the cold water from the canal.

"Gosh, the chap winged me!" was his startled exclamation. "Feels as if it's going to sleep—glad it didn't go back on me in the ditch, there." Then he pressed back into the shadows for he saw a figure edging forward beyond the corner of a tomb. After a moment's hesitation it came directly toward him. He saw it was Robert Falconer.

Foreboding gripped him and he could scarcely keep himself from shouting his eager question, but he hurried forward till the two stood face to face and then, "Where is she? Did you get her?" burst from him, and "Have you got her? Is she all right?" came at the same instant from Falconer.

Blankly they stared at each other and a cold sense of failure went over and over Billy like a sea. His voice shook with this new, sickening fear. "Didn't you see her at all?"

"Did you?" counter-demanded Falconer, and Billy stammered, "Why no I—I found the room empty. And I thought you were safely off with her."

"Safely off!" said Falconer grimly. "I got in all right, though there must be a new lock on the door of that room up top, but I made some noise about it and ran plump into a fellow half way down the stairs. I threw him the rest of the way down, and he fired and brought a couple of others swarming up at me but I got out on the roofs again and gave them the slip. They went tearing back along the wing toward the garden the way I'd come and I went toward the street and got down."

"Got down! How did you get down?"

"Over those bay-window places," said the Englishman briefly. "I tied that cord I had to one of the doddering old cornices to start with. It wasn't any trick at all."

"Three stories," Billy shot in.

"And you'd no better luck, it seems?" Falconer inquired.

"No, I came up from below and found the room empty—but disheveled, so I thought you were off with her sure. And just then the Captain came in the panel places—just back from chasing you along the roof, I guess, for I'd been hearing the racket—and another fellow with him and we had a scrimmage and I got away through the men's wing."

"You're wet."

"That was a bit of canal bathing—our Arab put off with the canoe when I was needing it badly. I left him waiting here all right, however, and came here to find the motor gone."

"Naturally—being paid in advance."

"Only half paid."

"Half pay was enough for him. I knew it would be.... The thing was all rot in the first place."

Billy was too bitter of soul to reply. He was remembering what he ought to have done. He ought to have put that pistol to the Captain's head and forced him through the palace inch by inch.... He wondered if it would do any good to go back. His arm was rousing from its numbness, however, and raising a little racket all its own.

"We might as well get out of this," the Englishman advised, and Billy's reason acquiesced in spite of his rage. In silence they went down to the water's edge and embarked. The homeward course, from caution, was not past the palace but upstream through a remote and unknown region where they finally landed upon a bank and struck through unfamiliar and unfriendly looking byways toward the city.

Their walk was silent. Fierce gloom enveloped Billy; furious chagrin bestrode him. Chump that he was to have jumped at such positive conclusions! He ought to have stayed there. If only that second Turk had not been coming up behind him! He could think now of a number of brilliant ways out of his difficulties.... Morosely he trudged on through the interminable streets, his chilly wetness like an outward aspect of his gloom-soused mind.

He could not bear to think of Arlee. He felt now that, warned by Falconer's approach from above, they had snatched her from her room and hidden her away. He wondered if he deceived the Captain about the motives for his presence. He wondered what in the world could be done now—if all effort was to resolve itself into the futility of an official search-party. He wondered where in all that baffling prison Arlee was hidden.

Upon that tormenting question he unlocked his lips. "Where is she?" he muttered worriedly. "That's the question—where is she?"

"In Alexandria."

Plainly the Englishman's wrath had been smoldering. Billy turned upon him fiercely.

"In that palace, I tell you."

"So you say."

"And I say, too," and Billy's exasperation strained its bonds, "that if you don't believe she was there—if you think I got up this little party to while away an idle evening, why it was most uncommonly good of you to come! But I can't think why you did it if you weren't convinced of the necessity. Certainly it was not from love of me."

"Rather not."

"That goes double.... But you couldn't deny the facts and you did come. Because we failed doesn't change the facts at all. She's there—only where? Had we better go straight to the consul now?"

"I think," said Falconer coldly, "that we had better telegraph the Evershams to see if they have had any word from her before we stir up any hue and cry."

"All right," said Billy, and then he gave a short laugh. "Lord, we shall be quarreling like a couple of backyard dames next ... Of course, we're chagrined. It's poor satisfaction to reflect that we did our best—and if you are still uncertain about Miss Beecher's danger there I can't blame you for seeing the folly of the business."

After this effort of pleasantness Billy subsided into the cab that was most welcomely discovered, rousing after some minutes of violent progress to change their direction to the English doctor's.

"Winged," he said briefly, to Falconer's question. "Watchman chap as I was getting over the wall. Nothing wrong, I know, but it feels like—fire," he substituted.

Falconer was instantly concerned, but his sympathy went against the grain. Billy was too stirred for consolation. At the doctor's he refused to have Falconer enter with him.

"No use in having both of us traced if there is to be any trouble about this," he said with decision. "Go ahead and telegraph the Evershams and get an answer as soon as possible."

He had no earthly belief in that answer, and great, therefore, was his astonishment when, as he was walking the floor with his tingling arm in the early morning hours, a telegram was sent to him which Falconer had just received. His wire had caught the boat at Rhoda where it tied up for the night and Mrs. Eversham had promptly answered.

"We have heard from Miss Beecher," she said, "and she may join us later. Her address just Cook's, Alexandria."



CHAPTER XV

ON THE TRAIL

Breakfasting, a little one-handedly, that Monday morning, Billy was approached by his companion of the night. The young Englishman looked fresh and fit and subtly triumphant.

"Good news—what?" he said with a genial smile.

"If authentic," said the dogged Billy.

"Of all the fanatic f——!" The sandy-haired young man checked his explosiveness in mid-air. He gave a glance at the bulge of bandage beneath Billy's coat sleeve and dropped into a chair beside him. "How's the arm?" he inquired in a tone of restraint.

"Fine," said Billy without enthusiasm.

"Glad of that. Afraid the canal bath wouldn't do it any good. Beastly old place, that." Then the Englishman gave a sudden chuckle. "It's a regular old lark when you come to think of it!"

"Our lack of luck wasn't any great lark." Savagely Bill speared his bacon.

"Luck? Why we—Oh, come now, my dear fellow, you can't pretend to maintain those suspicions now! Of course the letter is authentic!" Falconer spoke between irritation and raillery. "That Turkish fellow could hardly fake that letter to them, could he? No, and we will have to acknowledge ourselves actuated by a too-hasty suspicion—inevitable under the circumstance—and be grateful that the uncertainty is over. That's the only way to look at it."

"We don't know that the Evershams have received a 'letter.' It might be another fraudulent telegram that was sent them from Alexandria."

"That is a bit too thick. You're a Holmes for suspicion!" Falconer laughed. "I believe if Miss Beecher herself walked into this dining room you would question if she were not a deceiving effigy!"

"I might question that anyway." Billy's tone was dry. "And I daresay I am a fool. But that dancer's story is pretty straight if she didn't know the names, and it fits in disasterously well with my limousine story."

"You're not the first man to be staggered by a coincidence," Falconer told him. "And that woman's yarn was convincing enough, though all the time I was dubious, you remember. But now that the Evershams have heard," and the young Englishman's deep note of relief showed how tormenting had been his uncertainty, "why now we have no further right to put Miss Beecher's name into the affair. There is evidently some other girl concerned who may or may not be as guileless as she represented to the Baroff girl, and I shall lay that story before the ambassador and leave her rescue to authentic ways."

He laughed a little shamefacedly at the unauthentic ways of last night, and added, looking off across the room, "My sister and Lady Claire are going to Luxor to-night, and I expect to accompany them. If you should have any word about Miss Beecher's return here I should be glad if you would let me know."

"If she is safe in Alexandria she'd never think of writing me," said Billy bluntly. "Our acquaintance is distinctly one-sided."

"I quite understand. She was your countrywoman in a strange land and all that."

"And all that," Billy echoed. "What time is your train?"

"Six-thirty."

"Then if I don't see you before that here's good luck and good-by."

Billy rose and shook hands and the two young men parted after a few more words.

"You have an idee-fixe—beware of it!" was Falconer's caution, serious beneath its air of banter, and on the other hand Billy perceived in the cautioner a latent uneasiness considered so irrational that he was doing his sensible best to disown it.

So Falconer took himself off about the preparations for departure and Billy B. Hill was left to face his problem alone. Black worry plucked at him. He did not know what under the sun he could do next. Already that day he had done what he could. He had been out early and run down the one-eyed factotum loitering about the corner and under cover of a transaction over a scarab he had made a number of plans.

He wanted the Captain followed every instant of the day. There were enough active little Arabs greedy for piastres to do that well and send back constant word to him. There was coming that day, he felt, an interview between him and that Captain. Then he wanted the one-eyed man to insinuate himself into the palace. He must find out things. He could use his connection with the eunuch who was uncle of his brother's wife.

So much Billy had already arranged and now after a hasty breakfast he was off to the consul, where he proceeded to unfold his story while the consul drew little circles on his blotter and looked out of the corners of his eyes at this astonishing young man.

He made no comment when Billy paused. Perhaps he could think of none adequate, or perhaps, after all, he had ceased to be amazed. He merely said slowly and thoughtfully, "Of course the dancer's story is all you really have to go upon. You had better bring her here."

"Nothing easier," Billy declared, and thinking a cab as prompt as a telephone he drove briskly off.

The hotel held a shock for him. Fritzi Baroff was gone. She had gone the evening before, the clerk reported, consulting the register, and she had paid her bill. As he had not been the one on duty then he knew nothing more about it. She had left no address.

Ultimately the clerk who had been on duty was unearthed in the labyrinths of the hotel's backgrounds, but he could supply very little further except the certainty that she had paid her bill in person, and the vague belief that she had been accompanied. This belief was companioned by a hazy notion that some one had called on her that evening.

Even Billy's sense of humor was unstirred by the half-cynical sympathy of the night-clerk's gaze; Billy didn't feel a laugh anywhere within him. He was balked. The dancer had vanished with her story, and that story was essential to the consul. Like a fool he must return empty-handed with this yarn of her disappearance and the consul would be justified in declaring that he had no actual proof to act upon. Which was precisely what the consul did, but he offered, impressed with Billy's earnestness, "to take the matter up," with the proper authorities.

It seemed the best that could be done. Billy urged him to prompt action, and to himself he promised some prompt action of a totally unofficial character. He knew now what he was going to do, or rather he thought he did, for the day still held its unsettling surprises for him, and as he set forth on business bent that afternoon he found himself besieged by a skinny little boy in tattered blue robes, who danced around him with a handful of dirty postcards.

"Be off," said Billy, in vigorous Arabic, and the little boy answered proudly, in most excellent English, "I am a messenger, sir. I am the boy who held the canoe that night. Buy a postcard, sir? Only six piastres a dozen, six piastres, Views of Egypt, the Sphinx, the Nile, the——"

Impatiently Billy cut him short.

"Never mind the bluff. No one is listening. What's your message?"

"The streets have ears, sir. Buy a postcard?... I have come from the palace. I brought in the bread. I—I got in under their nose while the big Mohammed was turned away without sight of his uncle," bragged the little Imp. "I am a clever boy, I. No one else so clever to find out things. The American man did well to come to me."

"What the devil, then, did you find out?"

"Five piastres a dozen, then, only five.... Go on walking, sir, I will run alongside. Keep shaking your head at me—very good.... I find out where she are."

"Where who are?"

The little braggart had roused Billy's suspicions. He determined to be wary.

"The young girl with the very light hair. Mohammed send me to ask of her. You know, sir," the little fellow insisted, hopping up and down beside him. "Only four a dozen—very cheap!" he screeched at him in a tone that must have carried for blocks. "I run in with the bread and take it to the kitchen where women are working. And I pretend make love to one very pretty girl, tell her how I come marry her when I old enough and make enough, and hold up piece money to show how rich I am. And the rest they think I just make game, but I whisper to her quick how much you pay her for news of that lady upstairs with the fair hair, and I give her some money. It are not much, sir. I promise her to come back with more."

"Go on," demanded Billy, stopping short. "What did she tell you?"

"Walk along, sir, walk along. Just half a dozen then—very cheap, very beautiful!" cried the little rascal with deep enjoyment of his role. Billy found his hands clenching frenziedly. The Imp proceeded, "She are much afraid, that girl, to say things, but I tell her how safe it is an' I tell her you great big rich man who pay her well. I make her honest promise to come back with money—and she very poor girl. She whisper quick what she know, looking backward over shoulder like this." Turning his face about after this dramatic illustration the Imp caught sight of Billy's countenance, and rolled the rest of his narration into one speedy sentence.

"She are gone," he cried.

"Gone?"

"Took away.... Take these cards, sir, stop and look at them.... Yes, she are took away. It happen very quick; early that morning after the other lady go in the night. Everyone much excited that night, great noise about, and no one know just what happen. But the Captain give orders quick, and early the motor car is ready and the strange girl go away. Old woman go, too. Nobody know where."

"That would be Sunday morning," Billy cried excitedly. "Are you sure there is no mistake? There were lights in that room on Sunday night."

"I tell what the girl tell. She are very honest girl," the Imp insisted. "She say the other lady run away with her lover an' Captain afraid the new lady has a lover so he send her away quick."

"But he didn't go himself?"

"No, he have something with his reg-reglement," gulped the Imp hastily, "that day and he stay and he there now—but now he sick."

"What's the matter?"

"I don't know, sir, but I know the doctor comes because she say to me to come back and say I am boy from doctor with medicine, and if I don't see her I must say I lost that medicine and go away, and come again as I can till I bring that money to her. She are very much afraid, sir."

Billy shuffled the postcards with absent hands and stared down at them with unseeing eyes. She was gone—and the Captain was not with her! That much at least was gain. And the fellow was here sick from his shot hand, apparently. "I hope gangreen sets in," he said between his teeth.

"You are pleased with me, sir?" the Imp was demanding. "You are glad of so much clever boy? And you give me that money now to give that girl? I make her most honest promise—and you see, sir, I am very honest boy, I tell you all I know and I ask nothing of price yet. I know that you are honest American man."

At that Billy came out of his brown study and praised the tattered little Imp with hearty earnestness. He saw no reason to doubt the boy's story. If he had been trying to invent something in order to make capital out of him he would hardly have invented that story of Arlee's departure, for that put an immediate end to further remunerative investigations in the palace. Of course Billy might be mistaken, and the boy might be mistaken, but one had to leave something to probabilities. He was very generous with the boy, and the droll little brown face was lined with grins. Most naively he besought that the American would not reveal the extent of his donations to Mohammed, the one-eyed man, as the boys had promised their employer a just one-half.

It was the first laugh Billy had enjoyed in a long time. His spirits were vastly lightened by the news that Arlee was out of the palace where the Captain was staying. Fritzi had optimistically informed him that the Turk's courtship could be made most lengthy, but that had been a sadly slender hope and the picture of Arlee playing such a fearful game was simply horrible to him. So his relief at her departure was intense, although it complicated more and more the hope of speedy rescue.

For where was she now? In Cairo? In some of the outlying villages? He felt swamped by the number of things were to be found out immediately. He must find where that big gray motor went so early on Sunday—surely there were people who had remarked it if they could only be found and induced to talk! And he must find where the Captain had other homes or palaces where he would be likely to hide a girl. And he must find out where the Captain was every instant of the day and night.

That was the most important thing of all. For the Captain unless delayed by extreme illness, or held back by a caution which Billy judged was foreign to his nature, would not wait long before he joined Arlee. He had evidently stayed behind for some review of his troops and also to be au courant of whatever stir would result from Fritzi Baroff's reappearance in the world, and be on hand to disarm whatever further suspicions would result from it. The lights in the rose room that last night and the used look of the room, puzzled Billy, but he concluded that the Captain liked the room and there was a good deal in that palace that had better be left to no imagination whatever.

So back to the hotel went Billy to enter upon a period of waiting that frayed his nerves to an utter frazzle. Inaction was horrible to him, and now it was inevitable. He must wait for word from that agile web of little spies which the one-eyed man was weaving about the Captain's palace, and be ready to start whenever the word came.

He slept with his clothes on that Monday night, but he slept heavily for he was tired and his arm was no longer painful. The tear of wound he called a scratch was healing swiftly.

Tuesday morning passed in the same maddening suspense. Captain Kerissen rode out that morning but only to the parade ground, where he took part in a review with his troops. It was noticed that his right hand was bandaged, but the injury could not have been severe for his thumb was free from the bandage and he occasionally used that hand upon the reins. It was the bright eyes of the Imp that were sure of that.

In the afternoon the Captain went again to the barracks and then to the palace of one of the colonels in his regiment. Then he went home.

Utterly disgusted with this waiting game Billy began to dress for dinner. All lathered for a shave he stood testing his razor on a hair when his unlocked door was violently opened and a panting little figure darted across to him. It was the Imp.

"Sir, he goes, he goes upon the minute," he panted out. "He is in the station. Quick!"

Like a streak of lathered lightening Billy went for his clothes. A centipede could have been no more active. He jerked up his suspenders; he jerked on a shirt; he jerked on a coat; he was wiping his face as he darted through the halls and down the stairs. No lift had speed enough for his descent. At the desk he flung some gold pieces at the clerk, cried something about being called out of the city, and asked to have his room kept; then he was down the steps and into the carriage that the Imp had magically summoned.

The drive to the station was a series of escapes. Between jolts the Imp gasped out the rest of the story. The Captain had ridden out in the automobile. The Imp had given chase and so had the one-eyed man, also on guard, and by dint of running for dear life they had kept the motor in sight until the crowded city streets were reached and a series of delays enabled them to catch up with it. As soon as they saw the motor stop before the station the boy had rushed for Billy while the Arab remained to shadow the Captain and learn his destination.

They themselves were at the station now, and Billy was still tying his cravat. Now they jumped down and pressed through the confusion, dodging dragomans, porters, drivers and hotel runners and making a vigorous way past hurrying travelers and through bewildered blockades of tourist parties. Suddenly over the bobbing heads they saw the face they sought. A single eye glared significance upon them. An uplifted hand beckoned furiously.

"Assiout," whispered the one-eyed man as Billy reached him. "Assiout. That one goes to Assiout on the night express."

"My ticket? Got a ticket for me?"

Upturned palms bespoke the absence of ticket and the Arab's deep regret. "The price was much. I waited——"

Billy was off. There was no chance of his getting past that stolid guard without a ticket and he charged toward the seller's window, where a line of natives was forming for another train.

"Siut!" he shouted over their heads, and scattering silver and smiles and apologies he crowded past the motley line to the window and fairly snatched the miles of green ticket from the Copt's quick fingers.

He was the last man through the gate, and as he darted through the clicking of compartment doors was heard with the parting cries of the guards and the shouts of dragomans and porters. It was a train de luxe where the sleeping sections had long been reserved, but to accommodate the crowded travel ordinary compartment cars had been added at the last minute, and it was at one of these that Billy grasped, as the wheels were moving faster and faster. A gold piece caused a guard to unlock the first compartment door, although it said, "Dames Seules," and "Ladies Only" in large letters.

It was not a corridor train and the compartment was already filled, and as Billy wormed his way, not into the nearest corner, for that was not yielded to him, but into the modicum of space accorded between two stout and glaringly grudging matrons, he became aware from the hostile stares that his entrance had not been solitary.

Between his legs the Imp was coiling.

"I made a sneak with you," the boy whispered. "I say I your dragoman, sir. You will be glad. You need such bright boy in Assiout."

Billy thought it highly probable that he would. But the ladies neither needed nor desired him now, and ringed in by feminine disgust the two scorned intruders sat silent hour after hour while the train went rushing south through the increasing darkness of the night.



CHAPTER XVI

THE HIDDEN GIRL

Hour after hour the little boat held its steady course; hour after hour the distant banks flowed past in changing scenes. Forward on the narrow deck a girl sat in a lounge chair beneath a striped awning and gazed out over the water. Squatting in the shade behind her an old woman stared up out of half-closed eyes with pupils as keen and bright under their puckered lids as the eyes of a watching hawk.

No disturbing consciousness of this incessant scrutiny muffled the serenity of the girl's appearance. Her hands lax in her lap, her blue eyes quietly intent upon the view, she lay back in her chair with as much confident unconcern as she might have shown in an opera box. As a matter of incredulous fact she was feeling incredulously at ease.

The terrible tension of those days in the palace was over—for the time, at least. She did not understand this new move, she had been bewildered ever since that early dawn, on Sunday, when the old woman and the eunuch had rushed her into the limousine, driven her swiftly through the empty streets to a landing place on the river beyond the bridge, and hurried her on board this little boat, an old dahabiyeh reconstructed and given a new engine.

The Captain had not appeared except for a brief interview in the vestibule where he had told her that the quarantine was prolonged and that he was going to try to escape out of Cairo where the authorities would not be aware, and would first try to smuggle her out of the city, too. She must do exactly as the old woman indicated and everything would be all right.

And she had said, "How exciting!" and "What fun!" with lips that smiled pluckily in apparent acceptance of this flimsy excuse.

She had connected this flight with the pandemonium she had heard in the palace the night before, and she guessed that in some way her presence there had become embarrassing for the Turk. Perhaps her friends had traced her! Perhaps Robert Falconer—for after all it would only be Robert Falconer's flouted devotion, she thought, that would interest itself in her. He mistrusted Kerissen; he would suspect.

So hope rose high in her, and hopeful, too, was this new glimpse of freedom. Somewhere, soon, she thought confidently, the chance to escape would come. The old woman could not watch forever. The big eunuch was occupied with the boat. She could hear him now muttering angrily to the little brown boy at the engines, while over the sound of his muttering rose the rhythmic, unconcerned chant of two other boys marching up and down the narrow passageways of deck outside the little staterooms with a scrubbing brush under each left foot. "Allah Illeh Lessah," they chanted monotonously, with a scrub of the brush at each emphasis. "Allah Illeh Lessah."

"Allah help me," thought Arlee Beecher.

All day Sunday she had sat there in that chair watching the pyramids, at first so sharp-cut against the cloudless blue, wane imperceptibly and fade from sight, watching the golden Mokattan Hills and the pearly tinted Tura range slip softly from the horizon and all the old landmarks of the Egypt that she knew disappear and be replaced by strange, new sights. Other pyramids showed like child's toys upon the horizon; dense groves of palm trees appeared along the banks, then the banks grew higher and higher and upon them, silhouetted against the bright blue sky, showed a frieze-like procession of country folk driving camels or donkeys or bullocks.

All night long they had steamed, a search-light on the bow, and Arlee had lain in the little stateroom trying to sleep, but continually aware of the breathing of the old woman huddled outside against her door, of the soft thudding of bare feet about the deck, of the pulse of the engine, beating, beating steadily, and of quick, muffled commands, of reversals, grinding of chains as some treacherous shallow appeared ahead, then of the onward drive and the steady rhythmic progress again.

Where were they taking her? South to some haunt where she would be farther than ever from the civilization which had flowed so unheedingly past that old palace of darkened windows, south toward the strange native cities and tiny villages and the grain fields and the deserts. But it was all better than that stifling palace and the absence of the Captain gave her a sense of temporary security.

Sunday had been hot and dry, but this Monday was cooler and the north wind, blowing freshly over the wide Nile, broke the amber-brown of the water into little waves of sparkling blue edged with silver ripples. The river was beautiful to her, even in her sorry plight, and to-day there were little clouds in the sky, furtive, scuddy little clouds with wind-teased edges, and they cast soft shadows over the river and over the tender green of the fields and the flat, mirroring water standing level in the trenches. In the fields brown men and women were working, and on the river banks the half-naked figures of fellaheen were ceaselessly bending, ceaselessly straightening, as they dipped up the water from the shadoufs to feed the thirsty land. Sometimes in the fields Arlee saw the red rusty bulk of the old engines, which the Mad Khedive had tried to install among his people, to do away with this back-breaking work, now lying useless and ignored. God forbid that we do otherwise than our fathers, said the people.

Across the water came the monotonous chant of their labor song, and sometimes the creak and squeak of some inland well-sweep drawn round and round by some patient camel. She felt herself to be in another world, as she sat in that boat guarded by that old woman and an eunuch, a world strange and remote, yet desperately real as it enmeshed her in its secret motives, its incalculable forces....

As she watched, as the surface of her mind reflected these sights and was caught in the maze of fresh impressions, the back of that mind was forever at work on her own terrifying problem. She thought confidently of escape, not able to plan it but waiting intently upon opportunity, upon the passing of a boat perhaps, or the moment of tying to some bank.

There was in her a high spirit of undaunted pluck and an excitement in adventure, which made her heart quicken instead of flag at the odds before her. Only the thought of the desperate stakes and the reality of her hidden fears would often draw the color from her cheeks and stop an instant the beating of that hurrying heart.... If those hawk-like eyes were watching then they might see the slim hands pressed feverishly together before warning self-control turned them lax again.

So hour after hour the boat went on. On the left now the long mountain of Gebel-el-Tayr stretched golden and tawny like a lion of stone basking in the sun. They passed Beni-Hassan, where a Nile steamer lay staked to the shore, the passengers streaming gaily out and starting off on donkeys for an excursion to the tombs. If only it had been a little nearer, close enough to risk a desperate hail—! But the very sight of it was comforting.

Toward dusk the engine failed. That night the boat lay by the bank, tied to long stakes which the boys had driven in. The big Nubian sat at one end, cross-legged, a rifle on his knees. At the stern sat a brown boy. And so Arlee sank into the tired sleep that claimed her, and did not wake until the warm sunshine in her tiny window and the ripple of water against the sides told her that another morning was at hand and that they were on the move again.

Stepping out on deck for breakfast, she found the boat was sailing. Two lanteen sails were hoisted; a great one in the bow, a small one in the stern, and the boat was running swiftly before the north wind that blew fresher than ever. But the course was variable now as the river curved and as sand-banks threatened, and Arlee watched the waters eagerly for a near-passing boat. But when they did draw close to a dahabiyeh upon whose deck she saw some white-clad loungers, the Nubian gave a low order to the old woman who rose and gripped Arlee on the wrist and led her to the stateroom, sitting in silence opposite her like a squat gargoyle, till the Nubian's voice permitted them to emerge.

And now they came to a city upon the right bank and the domes and minarets, the crowded building and high flat roofs pierced Arlee with a terrible sense of loneliness. And when her eyes caught the gleam of flags over a building and she saw her own stars and stripes blowing against this Egyptian sky, the tears could not be fought back. With wet eyes and working mouth she stood there and looked and looked. She thought she could endure no more and that her heart was breaking.

Leaden discouragement was upon her as the boat made in toward the shore. It did not approach the city landings; it came in south near a shallow bank, and one of the brown boys jumped overboard and splashed to the shore while the boat went on. But by and by it turned in its course and came beating back against the wind till opposite it was the city; then it tacked in to that same place near the bank, and there the boy was waving at them. Skillfully the dahabiyeh was brought about close to the high bank; and ropes thrown from bow and stern were quickly staked and made fast.

A plank was put over the side and with the eunuch ahead and the old woman behind Arlee was taken ashore and mounted on one of the camels the boys had brought, with the old woman behind, gripping her about the waist. The eunuch, on another camel, held the bridle rope, and led them at a terrific pace along the river road and then across the fields, thudding down the narrow, beaten paths, till the lush green was past and the dry desert lands began.

Ahead of them a low, tawny mass of mountain seemed to shimmer and waver in the hot sun, and as they drew nearer and nearer the mass was resolved into many masses broken into small foothills at the base, through which the Nubian threaded a rapid, circuitous way that led out on a rolling ground. A wide detour, still at the same urgent speed which jolted the breath from the girl and made her cling to the carpeted pummel of the saddle with both hands, led them at last within sight of palm trees and mud walls.

Arlee had no means of guessing whether these houses were the outskirts of that city she had glimpsed or whether they were a separate village. She only saw that they were being taken to the largest house of the place, which stood a little apart from the others and was half-surrounded by mud walls. Into this walled-in court her camel was led and halted and jerkingly it accomplished its collapsing descent, and Arlee found herself on her feet again, quite breathless, but very alert.

Her fleet glance saw a number of black-robed figures about a stair; the next instant a mantle was flung over her head and that compelling hand upon her wrist urged her swiftly forward, and up a flight of steps. Within were more steps and then a door. Thrusting back the mantle she found herself in the sudden twilight of a small, low-ceiled chamber. There was no other door to it but the one she heard bolted behind her; there was one window completely covered with brown mashrubiyeh. She flew to it; it looked out over wide sands, with a glimpse, toward the right, of a mud wall and pigeon houses. The room was musty and dusty and dirty; but the rugs in it were beautiful, and a divan was filled with pillows and hung with embroidered cotton hangings. Other pillows were on the floor about the walls. A green silk banner embroidered in gold hung upon one of those walls and a laquered table stood by the divan.

And as Arlee Beecher stood there in that strange, stifling room, the mutterings of foreign voices, the squeals of the camels, the bray of a donkey coming through that screened window, a sudden rage came over her which was too hot to bear. Her heart burned; her hands clenched; she could have beaten upon those walls with her helpless fists and screamed at the top of her unavailing lungs. It was a fury of despair that seized her, a fury that she fought back with every breath of sanity within her. Then suddenly the air was black. The room seemed to swim before her eyes and the ground came swaying dizzily up to meet her, and receive her spent unconsciousness.

* * * * *

Water had been brought; she woke to find herself upon the couch, the old woman woodenly sopping her head and hands. She smiled weakly into that strange dark face; it was as unchanged as if it had been carved from bronze. The business of reviving finished, the old woman left her a handkerchief damp with a keen scent and went about the work of unpacking a hamper that she brought in.

Dully, Arlee saw the preparations for a meal advancing. She shook her head at it; a cup of tea was all that she could touch. A lethargy had seized her; even the anger of revolt was gone. She closed her eyes languidly, grateful when the old woman went away, grateful when the darkness deepened. When it was quite night, she thought, she would break open the wooden screen and fling herself through the wood into the sands. She lay there passively waiting; her heavy eyes closed, and she slept.



CHAPTER XVII

AT BAY

Voices sounded below; footsteps hurried; a door slammed. Then feet upon the stairs, and a hand at the door. Arlee struggled to her feet in sudden terror; the candle was out and the room was in darkness. Outside a gale was blowing. The door opened, but the figure which hurried in was not the one her fright anticipated.

It was the old woman again, bustling with haste. She brought more candles for the table, and then a tray with a bottle and glasses and dishes covered with napkins. Then she bestowed her attention to Arlee, bringing her a mirror and a comb from the hamper she had left upon the floor, and a cloth thick with powder. Then Arlee was sure.

She stood rigid a moment, listening to that low buzz of voices from below, then desperately she shook out her tangled hair and combed it back from her hot face. It was still damp from the water that had been dashed upon her, and as she knotted it swiftly, soft strands of it broke away and hung in wet, childish tendrils. She brushed some powder on her face; she bit her bloodless lips, and stared into the glass, to see a wan and big-eyed girl staring back affrighted.

Then the door opened, and desperately calling on her courage, Arlee heard the Captain speaking her name and saw his smiling face advancing through the shadows.

"A thousand greetings, Mademoiselle. Ah, I am glad to see you." A strained emotion quivered through the false assurance of his tone.

She stood very straight and tense before him, a childishly small figure there in the dusk, the blowing candles making strange play of light and shadow over her. Steadily she answered, "And I am very glad to see you, Captain Kerissen."

"And I am glad that you are glad." But his ear had caught the hardness of her voice, for answering irony was in his. Some devil of delay and disappointment seemed to enter into him, for his face, as she saw it now in his advancing, struck fright into her. The four fingers of his right hand were wrapped in a bandage and he extended his left to her, murmuring an apology. "A slight accident, you see."

"There is so much I do not see that I do not feel like shaking hands," gave back Arlee. "Captain Kerissen, this is too strange a situation to be maintained. You must end it."

"It is a very delightful situation," he returned blandly, looking about with dancing eyes. "To be again your host, even in so poor a place as this old house of the Sheik—and the place has its possibilities, Mademoiselle. It is romantic. Your window overlooks that desert you were so anxious to see. The sunsets——"

"Captain Kerissen, I must say that you use a very strange way to keep me your guest!"

"I might respond that any way was justifiable so that it kept you a guest.... But you wrong me. Did I not bring you safely out from that quarantine, as you besought me?" His smile was mockery itself.

"But you did not bring me to my friends. I do not like your sending me here, without explanation," she returned, trying to be very wise and speak quietly and not rouse him to anger. "We passed a city where the American flags were flying over a house, and I could have gone there."

"I am sorry you do not care for my hospitality. I did not know that I was displeasing to you."

"It is those ways that are displeasing to me. I——"

"Then you shall change them," he laughed. "That will give me pleasure.... But I did not come in the dead of this night, half sick and fatigued, to find such welcome. Come, you must smile a little and sit down at the table with me. Here are delicacies I sent from Cairo."

Smilingly he seated himself at the divan by the table and lifted the covers from the plates, nodded satisfaction at the food, and began to help himself, while she stood there, motionless.

Without looking up, "Will you not help me to the Apollinaris, Mademoiselle?" he suggested. "My right hand, you see, is not as it should be. There is a bottle opener on the tray."

Feeling a fool, but unwilling to provoke a crisis, Arlee tugged at the cork and poured him a glass of the sparkling water and then a glass for herself, which she thirstily drank. "How did you hurt your hand?" it occurred to her to say.

"By playing with fire—the single pastime of entertainment!" He spoke gaily, but his lips twitched. "But will you not sit down and join me? This caviar I recommend."

"I do not care to eat."

"No?" He finished his sandwich and drained his glass, talking banteringly the while to her. She did not answer. Something told her that the time of explanation between them was coming fast; he had ceased to play with his good fortune, ceased to feel he could afford to wait and look and fancy. He had come urgent, in the dead of night. His mood was teasing, mocking, but imperative.... Slowly she moved toward the unlatched door.

Alertly he was before her; the bolts shot home. "Ah, pardon, but I was negligent! We might be interrupted—and also," he laughed, as if deprecatingly, "I have foolish fears that you are so dream-like that you will vanish like a dream without those earthly bars. Locks are for treasures.... And now where is that welcome for me? I came in that door on fire to see you, and your eyes froze me. I came to love—you made me mock. Shall we begin again? Will you be nice now, little one, be kind and sweet——"

"Captain Kerissen, you make it impossible for me to like you at all! Why do you treat me like this? You shut me in this house like a prisoner. If you—if you care for me at all," stammered Arlee, "you would not treat me so!"

"And how, then, would I treat you?" he inquired slowly.

"You would—you would take me to my own people and give me back my independence, my dignity. Then there would be honor in your—your courtship. I——"

"Would you come back to me?"

"I——"

The lie choked her. And the passion of anger which had flared in her that afternoon sprang up in flame again; the candlelight showed the hot blood in her cheeks. "I shall not come to you if you keep me here!" she gave back fearlessly.

"But here I can come to you. And the preliminaries are always stupid—I have no desire to reenact them. I am well content with where we have arrived. Be content, also."

She stared back at his smiling face. And all she thought was, "Shall I defy him now, or try to hold him off a little longer?" She had ceased to feel afraid; her blood was on fire; it was battle now between them; perhaps a battle of the wits a little longer, then——

"In America men do not make love by force," she flung at him. "You are mad, Captain Kerissen! You will be sorry if you go on like this. If you wish to marry me you must give me the freedom of choice. You must give me time. I must have a minister of my own faith. Do you think I will submit to this? You make me hate you!"

"Hate is often love with a mask," he laughed, his eyes fixed on the spirited, flushed face, the flashing eyes, the defiant mouth. "And do not quote your America to me. You are done with America."

"You say that? You forget who I am! My brother—I tell you my brother will——"

"Do I not know the risks?" His eyes narrowed. "But your brother will ask in vain. He will not see you—until we reappear as husband and wife. I will take you to the Continent, then I will give you everything a woman wants, luxury and jewels—the pearls of my ancestors I will hang on you. These have no woman of mine worn. You shall be my adored, my dearest—— Oh, you must not turn from me," he pleaded, his voice sinking softer and softer as he stole closer to her. "You know that I am mad for you. You have bewitched me, little Rose, you have made me strong and weak in a breath. I am clay in your hands. Be sweet, be kind, be wife to me——" His hot hand gripped her arm. He bent over her, and she sprang back, her hands flung out before her.

"Oh, wait!" she cried beseechingly. "Wait—please wait."

"Wait? I have waited too long!" His voice was a snarl now. The mask of indolent mockery was gone; his face was stamped with cruelty and greed. "Nom d'un nom, I am through with this waiting!"

She sprang back before his approach, then whirled about to face him, trying to beat him back with words, with reason, with appeal. Insanely he laughed and clutched at her as she flew past his outstretched arms; in the corner he pinioned her against the wall and gripped her to him.

Terror gave her the strength of two—and his hand was bandaged. Desperately she attacked it, and as his laughter changed to curses, she wrenched free once more and flew across the room. With both hands she seized the candles and flung them into the pillowed divan; holding the last two to the draperies. Like magic the little flames zigzagged up the cotton hangings.

He threw himself upon the fire, dragging down the hangings, beating on the cushions, but the corner was ablaze. Overhead the flames seized cracklingly on the dry wood and darted little red tongues over the dry surface and a scarlet snake ran out over the carved ceiling.

In utter wildness Arlee had carried the last candle to the open hamper and the garments there caught instant fire. She was oblivious of the sparks falling about her, oblivious of the increasing peril. When Kerissen ran to the door, tearing open the bolts, furiously cursing her, she gave him back the ghost of his earlier mocking laughter and threatened him with a blazing cloth as he turned to drag her from the room.

But the fire reached her fingers and she flung the cloth at him, to have him trample it under foot as he sprang toward her again.

"Would you be burned—be marred?" he shouted at her. "You are mad, you——"

Behind him the door opened. Behind him a tall figure appeared through the thickening smoke. She saw a face she knew; a voice she knew cried out her name:

"Arlee!"

"Oh, here!" she cried and flung herself toward him.

"Not unless you want another?" said Billy B. Hill to the Captain, turning his gun suggestively.

One tense instant the three faced each other in that flaming room, then with a sound of impotent fury, Kerissen turned and darted out the door. But as Billy turned to follow, his hand on Arlee's, there was a sound of sliding bolts.

"Burn, burn, then! Burn together!" called a hoarse voice through the wood.

Hill flung himself against the door; it was unyielding. On the other side the taunts continued. He ran to the window, catching up the little table as he ran, and rained a fury of blows with the table against the close-carved screen. The wood splintered and broke; he wrenched a side away, and dropping his gun in his pocket he crashed through the hole and hung on the outside by his hands.

"Climb out on my shoulders," he commanded, and Arlee climbed—how, she never knew. For one instant she had an impression of hanging out over an abyss with fire crackling in her face; the next instant the soles of her feet were smarting and her eyes still seemed to see stars.

There was a run, stumbling, with Billy's hand sustaining her, and then she was on a camel, clutching the saddle as the beast rose swiftly in response to urgent whacks, and beside her Billy was on another. Some one on foot goaded the beasts into a startled run, and behind them yells and screeches were growing louder and louder.

Over her lurching shoulder she had one last glimpse of a burning building and saw flames pouring from the roof, and the room where she had been an open furnace, and then she turned her face toward the dark ahead.

"Hang tight," Billy was calling to her, and she saw him lean over and lash both camels into furious speed. "Some one is riding after," and then he turned and shot his gun warningly into the air.

The yells behind them stopped. But after some moments they heard a camel snarl, and knew that some one was still back there in the darkness, hanging on their trail. So they rode hard ahead, into the enveloping night, over the rolling dunes, with the wind leaping and tearing and hurling the sand in their faces, as if the very elements were fighting against them.

It was a strange chase and a hot one, pounding on and on, racked with the wild, lurching flight, deeper and deeper into the yellow-gray night that welcomed them with more strident blasts and more stinging particles of sand.

"It's a storm," Billy shouted at her, raising his voice above the wind. "It's been blowing up this way for an hour now—they won't follow long in the face of it. Can you hang on a little longer?"

"Forever," she cried back, gripping the pommel tight and bending her head before the whirling particles. There was sand in her hair, sand on her lashes and in her eyes, sand on her face and down her neck, and sand in her mouth when she wet her lips, but she heard herself laughing in the night.

"By and by we'll get off," he called back, and by and by when the hot, stifling, stinging, choking, whirling gale was too blinding to be borne, he checked the camels in one of the hollows of the desert dunes from which the wind was skimming ammunition for its peppery assaults, and the beasts knelt with a haste that spoke of gladness.

"It's the backbone of it now; cover your head and lie down," Billy commanded, and Arlee covered it with what he thrust into her hands—his overcoat, she found—and tucked herself down against him as he crouched beside the camels.

"I should think—it was—the backbone," she gasped, unheard, into her muffling coat. For the wind howled now like a rampaging demon; it tore at them in hot anger; it dragged at the coat about her head, and when her clutch resisted, it flung the sand over and over her till she lay half buried and choking. And then, very slowly and sulkily, it retreated, blowing fainter and fainter, but slipping back for a last spiteful gust whenever she thought it finally gone, but at last her head came out from its burrow, and she began cautiously to wipe the sand crust off her face and lashes.

"In your eyes?" said a sympathetic voice.

In the darkness beside her Billy Hill was sitting up, digging at his countenance.

"Not now—I've cried—that all gone," she panted back.

He chuckled. "I'll try it—swearing's no use."

She sat up suddenly. "Are they coming?"

"Not a bit. No use, if they did. You're safe now."

"Oh, my soul!" She drew a long, long breath. "I can't believe it." Then she whirled about on him. "How—why—why is it you?"

He looked suddenly embarrassed, but the darkness hid it from her. He became oddly intent on brushing his clothes. "Oh, I guessed," he said in a casual tone.

"You guessed? Don't they know? What did they think? Oh, where did everyone think I was?"

He told her, dwelling upon the misleading details; the hasty message of farewell from the station, the directions about luggage, the money to pay the hotel bill. "You see, his wits and luck were just playing together," he said.

"Then the Evershams are up the Nile?"

"Of course. They never dreamed——"

"They wouldn't." Arlee was silent. She wondered confusedly—she wanted to ask a question—she wanted to ask two questions.

"But—but—no one else——?" she stammered.

There was a particularly large lump of sand in Billy B. Hill's throat just then; he cleared it heavily. "Oh, yes, some one else guessed, too," he said then. "That English friend of yours, Robert Falconer, he and I had a regular old shooting party in the palace last Sunday evening. If you'd been there then he would certainly have had you out."

"So he knows." She said it a little faintly, Billy thought, as if she was disappointed and troubled. She would know, of course, by intuition, how the Englishman would think about a scrape of that sort.

"But he doesn't know now," he said eagerly. "He is sure you are all right in Alexandria, because the Evershams received another fake telegram from you from Alexandria. The Captain was stalling them along, apparently, keeping everything under cover as long as possible. And when Falconer heard about that, his suspicions were over. He thought we'd made fools of ourselves in going to the palace."

She was silent. Looking at her, after a while, Billy saw her staring out obliviously into the darkness; her hair was hanging all about her.

His glance seemed to recall her thoughts. She started and then brushed back her hair; the sand fell from it and she took hold of one soft strand. "Look out, I'm going to shake this!" she warned, and he half shut his eyes and underneath the lids he saw her shaking her head as vigorously as a little terrier after a bath.

"Isn't it awful?" she appealed.

"I could scratch a match on my face," he confirmed.

"But tell me," she began again, "how did you know I was in that palace? And I must tell you how I happened to go and how I was kept there."

"You were told there was a quarantine, weren't you?" Billy supplied, as she hesitated.

Her astonishment found quick speech. "Why, how did you know that?"

"The Baroff told me—that Viennese girl who came into your room."

"Why, you know everything! How did you?"

"Oh, I carried her over a wall, thinking it was you."

"But how could you think it was I? And what were you doing at the wall? I don't see how——"

"Oh, one of the palace maids gave me a message in Arabic and I thought it was from you. You see, I suspected—I had seen you drive off in that motor——"

"But how could the maid bring you a message? Where were you? Where did she see you?"

"I was painting out in front of the palace." Billy sounded more and more casual.

"You said you were an engineer," said Arlee. His heart jumped. At least she had remembered that!

"So I am—the painting was just a joke."

"And you happened there," she began, wondering, and after he had opened his mouth to correct her, he closed it silently again. Gratitude was an unwieldy bond. He did not want to burden her with obligation. And he suspected, with a rankling sort of pang, that he was not the rescuer she had expected. So he made as light as possible of his entrance into the affair, telling her nothing at all of his first uneasiness and his interview with the one-eyed man which had confirmed his suspicions against the Captain's character, and the masquerade he had adopted so he could hang about the palace. Instead he let her think him there by chance; he ascribed the delivery of Fritzi's message to sheer miracle, and his presence under the walls that night to wanton adventure, with only a half-thought that she was involved.

Stoutly he dwelt upon Falconer's part in the attack the next night, and upon the entire reasonableness of his abandonment of the trail. He put it down to his own mulishness that he had hung on and had learned through the little boy of her removal from the palace.

He interrupted himself then with questions, and she told him of her strange trip down the Nile in the dahabiyeh, under guard of the old woman and the Nubian. "But how did you come?" she demanded.

"Well, I just swung on to the same train he was in," said Billy. "And I got out at Assiout because he'd bought a ticket there, but I couldn't see a thing of him in the darkness and confusion of the station, and I had a horrid feeling that he'd gone somewhere else, the Lord knew where, to you. But the Imp—that's the little Arab boy who adopted me and my cause—went racing up and down, and he got a glimpse of the Captain tearing off on a horse and behind him a man loping along with a bundle on a donkey, and the Imp raced behind him and yelled he'd dropped something. The man went back to look, and the Imp ran alongside him, asking him for work as a donkey boy. The fellow shook him off, but that had delayed him, and though we lost the horseman we kept the donkey-man in sight and followed him on to the village. I reconnoitered while the Imp stole these two camels—jolly good ones they are—and while I was trying to make out where you were, for there were lights in several windows, I suddenly heard your voice and then I saw a glare of fire. Well, my revolver was a passport.... Now, how about that fire? What started it?"

"I did; he—he was trying to make love to me," she answered breathlessly, "and I just got to the candles."

"Are you burned at all? Truthfully now? I never stopped to ask."

"If I am, I don't know it," she laughed tremulously. Then, "Isn't this crazy!" she burst forth with.

"It's—it's off the beaten track," Billy B. Hill admitted. "It's a jump back into the Middle Ages." His note of laughter joined hers as they sat staring owlishly at each other through the dark of the after-storm.

A little longer they talked, their questions and answers flitting back and forth over those six strange days; then, as the excitement waned, Billy heard a sleepy little sigh and saw a small hand covering a yawn. The girl's slender shoulders were wilting with incalculable fatigue.

Instantly he commanded sleep, and obediently she curled down into the little nest he prepared, pillowing her head upon his coat, and almost instantly he heard her rhythmic breathing, slow and unhurried as a little child. His heart swelled with a feeling for which he had no name, as he sat there, his back against a camel, staring out into the night, an unknown feeling in which joy was very deep and triumph was merged into a holy thankfulness.



CHAPTER XVIII

DESERT MAGIC

He had meant but forty winks, but it had been dark when his eyes closed and he opened them to the unreal half-lights of early dawn. The sky was pearl; the sands were fawn-colored; the crest of a low hill to the east shone as if it were living gold, and the next instant it seemed as if a fire were kindled upon it. It was the sun surging up into the heavens, and great waves of color, like a sea of flame, mounted higher and higher with it.

Impulsively Billy bent over the little figure sleeping so soundly at his side, speaking her name gently. And Arlee, waking with a start and a catch of her breath that went to his heart, opened her eyes on a wild splendor of morning that seemed the outer aspect of the radiant joy within her.

They looked and looked while the east flamed like a burning Rome, and then the glow softened and paled and dissolved in mysteries and miracles of color, in tender rose and exquisite shell pinks, in amethysts and violets and limpid, delicate, fair greens. All about them the sands were turning to gold, and the rim of the distant horizon grew clearer and clearer against the brightening blue of the sky, like a great circling tawny sea lapping on every side the arch of the heavens.

As they looked their hearts stirred and quickened with that incommunicable thrill of the desert, and their eyes turned and sought each other in silence. The gold of the sun was on Arlee's hanging hair and the morning-blue of the sky in her eyes; her face was flushed from sleep and a tiny tendril still clung to the pink cheek on which she had been sleeping. Somehow that inconsequent small tendril roused in Billy a thrill of absurd tenderness and delight.... She was so very small and childish, sitting there in the Libyan desert with him, looking up at him with such adorable simplicity.... In her eyes he seemed to see something of the wonder and the joy in his. It was a moment of magic. It brought a lump into his throat.... He wanted to bend over her reverently, to lift a strand of that shining hair to his lips, to touch the sandy little hands....

Somehow he managed not to. The moment of longing and of glamor passed.

"It's exactly as if we'd been shipwrecked!" said Arlee, looking about with an air of childish delight.

"On a very large island," he smiled back, and felt a furtive pain mingling with his joy. He was just her rescuer to her, of course; she accepted him simply as a heaven-dropped deliverer; her thoughts had not been going out to him in those long days as his had gone to her.... Decisively he jumped to his feet and said breakfast. Where was it? What was to be done?

Directions were vague. They had come south on the edge of the desert, and the Nile lay somewhere to the east of them, and to the east, therefore lay breakfast and trains and telegraph lines and all the outposts of civilization.

To the east they rode then, straight toward the tinted dawn, and as they went they laughed out at each other on their strange mounts like two children on a holiday. Their spirits lifted with the beauty of the morning, and with that strange primitive exhilaration of the desert, that wild joy in vast, lonely reaches, in far horizons and illimitable space. The air intoxicated them; the leaping light and the free winds fired them, and with laughing shouts and challenges they urged their camels forward in a wild race that sent the desert hares scattering to right and left. Like runaways they tore over the level wastes and through the rolling dunes, and at last, spent and breathless, they pulled back into a walk their excited beasts that squealed and tossed their tasseled heads.

Their eyes met in a gaiety of the spirit that no words could express. When Arlee spoke she merely cried out, "I've read the camel had four paces, but mine has forty-four," and Billy gave back, "And forty-three are sudden death!" and their ringing laughter made a worried little jackal draw back his cautious nose into his rocky lair.

They were in broken ground now, more and more rocky, leading through the low hills ahead of them, and great clumps of grayish mit minan and bright green hyssop dotted the amber of the sands. Here and there the fork-like helga showed its purple blossom, and sometimes a scarlet ice-plant gleamed at them from a rocky crack. Across their path two great butterflies strayed, as gold and jeweled as the day. High overhead, black against the stainless blue, hung a far hawk.

At last the way entered a narrow defile among the rocky hills, and a sharp curve led them finally out upon the other side, looking down into green fields, as straight and trim as a checker board in their varying tints, and off over the far Nile. The fertile lands were wide here, and fed with broad canals that offered the surprise of boats' white wings between the fields of grain. Not far ahead, before the desert sands reached that magic green rose a group of palms, and near them some mud houses and a pigeon tower.

"Breakfast," said Billy triumphantly, and gaily they rode down on the sleeping village.

* * * * *

Back toward the Libyan hills runs the canal El-Souhagich, and as it curves to the north a reach of sand sweeps down from the higher ground, interrupting the succession of green fields. Several jagged rocks have tumbled from the limestone plateaus above and increased the grateful bit of shade which the half dozen picturesque palms do not sufficiently bestow.

Here the runaways breakfasted upon the roast pigeon, dates and tangerines they had bought from the curious villagers, and here Billy, his back against a rock, was smoking a meditative cigar over the situation. Beside him, tied to a palm, knelt the camels, and before him, nibbling a last tangerine, Arlee was sitting.

"We have to rest the beasts a bit." This from Billy, suggestive of a conscience pricking at this holiday delay. "And then——"

"Then—?" echoed Arlee cheerfully.

"Then, what in the world am I going to do with you?"

"With me?"

"Yes. It's simple enough, I suppose, getting back to the city—-but if you don't want your friends to know——"

The quick shadow in her eyes distressed him. "I don't," she cried sharply. "At first—I might have made a lark out of it—but afterwards.... No, I don't want to go explaining and explaining forever and ever. Can't I just reappear?"

"You can reappear from Alexandria," he said. "He, himself," his tone changed as he reluctantly brought Kerissen into the beauty of that morning, "has arranged it very neatly for you. You can just have been camping in the desert—and true enough that is!—with those friends of yours whom the Evershams don't know. Only your reappearance has to be—managed a bit."

Very carefully she tore the tangerine skin into very little bits, her head bent over it. Then she flung the fragments far from her with a gesture of rebellion. "I hate fibs," she said explosively. And then, "But I hate explanations more!" She hesitated, stealing a quick glance under her lashes at his frowning face.

"And some people," she stammered, "might—might not—understand—they would feel that—some people would——"

"Some people are great fools, undoubtedly," Billy promptly agreed. But back of the some people he saw Falconer in her mind, and Falconer's instinctive distaste of all strangeness and sensation.

"I have a perfect right to keep it from—them," she went on argumentatively, and then with an upward glance, "Haven't I?"

"Good Lord, yes! It was your adventure; it doesn't concern another soul in this wide world."

"You know," said Arlee, locking and unlocking her fingers, "you know, some people wouldn't take it all for granted the way—you do.... And it was very horrid."

"It's over," said he crisply, "except I'd like to pound him to a jelly."

"I couldn't bear to speak of him before," said the girl, "but now it seems all far away and nightmarish.... And I'd like to tell you how it was—a little."

"You needn't."

"I know I needn't." Arlee's tone was suddenly proud. Then she melted again. "But I want you to know. He was—he was trying to make me care for him.... He wasn't really as dreadful as you might think him, only just insane—about me—and utterly unscrupulous. But he did want me to like him and so, when I found out, when Fritzi told me I was in a trap, I tried to play his game. I flirted one day in the garden, at lunch, and made him think—— You see, I had to gain time and try to get word to people. But I hated him so I——" She broke off, the pupils of her fixed eyes big and black with the memory.

"You know I can't—I can't think of you—alone there," came huskily from the young man.

"He never dared to touch me—really—till last night," she said fiercely. "He tried, but I—I held him off. Only he talked to me—Oh, how he talked. Like a river of words.... I hate all those words.... If ever again a man asks me to marry him I don't ever want him to talk about it. I want him just to say two words, Will you?" Her laugh caught quiveringly in her throat.

It taxed all the young man's control to keep his tongue off the echo.

"He just raved," she went on after a pause, "and I had to listen—but last night he was horrible. I could never have got to the candles if his hand hadn't been hurt."

"I wish I'd shot his hand off," said Billy bitterly.

"Oh! Was it you who——?"

"When we were in the palace." He told her again about the raid and she nodded delightedly over it.

"It's so wonderful for you to have done all this," she said with sudden shyness. "You had just met me——"

The things on Billy's tongue wouldn't do at all. None of them. What he did say was absurdly stiff and constrained. "You were my countrywoman—and alone."

"So are the Evershams," said Arlee, with sudden bubbling laughter, and then as suddenly checked herself. Her fleet glance at him was half-scared. "You—you are very good to your countrywomen in distress," she got out stammeringly.

Billy contemplated his cigar. It was safer.

Presently she reverted to the topic of discovery. "But about Mr. Falconer? Are you sure his suspicions are over now?"

"Perfectly sure. Or they will be the moment he sees you. You'll have to laugh at him if he mentions them, of course;" Billy spoke with heartiness.

"He'd hate it," the girl said musingly. "The talk and all—about me—Oh, after being such a fool I'd never be the same to them!" she broke out passionately.

The furtive pain was bolder now; Billy felt it worming deeper and deeper into his sorry consciousness. It mattered so much to her what Falconer thought—so much....

"But I'll do anything you say," she said meekly, looking up at her rescuer with those big eyes whose blueness always startled him like unsuspected lakes. He saw then that she meant to be very grateful to him. Somehow that deepened the pang. He didn't want that kind of bond....

"Then you will bury even the memory of this time and never whisper a word of it," he told her stoutly. "The talk and explanation will be over five minutes after your return. The thing is, to manage that return. Now the Evershams left Friday and this is Wednesday—six days."

"Only six days," she echoed with a ghost of a sigh.

"Now let me see where were we on the sixth day? When I was on the Nile?" He knitted his brows over it. "Why, the steamer leaves Assiout at noon of the fifth day—that was yesterday."

"Oh! I must have passed them on the Nile," cried Arlee.

"Maragha is where they stopped last night. To-day they'll be steaming along steadily and stop to-night at Desneh. To-morrow night they'll be at Luxor."

"And they stay three days at Luxor?"

"The steamer does, I believe. I left the steamer there and went to the hotel for a while and spent another while at Thebes with a friend of mine."

"The excavator!" cried Arlee quickly.

"Then you do remember," said Billy with a direct look, "that dance and——"

"And our talk," she finished gaily. "And your being Phi Beta Kappa. Oh, I was properly impressed! And I didn't know then that you were a regular Sherlock Holmes as well."

"I didn't know it either," said Billy grinning. But he knew that she didn't know now how much of a Sherlock Holmes he had managed to be for her.

"That seems ages ago," she declared, "and in an altogether different world. The only real world seems to be this desert——"

"Bedouin breakfast and camel races," finished Billy. "And it's so much of a lark for me that I can't keep my mind on the problem of the future. But I have to get you to Luxor by to-morrow night——"

"And I can't arrive in the rags and tatters of a white silk calling gown," mentioned Arlee cheerfully, surveying her disreputable and most delightful disarray. "I must have trunks and a respectable air—and a chaperon, I suppose."

"And I won't do at that. But if you get to Luxor you'll be all right. You can go to the hotel and to-morrow night the Evershams' boat will get in about seven in the evening."

"Did you say my trunks were sent to Cook's?"

He repeated the story of the telegram to the Evershams. Over the arrival of the boy with money for her hotel bill she wrinkled her brows in perplexity. "I suppose he thought there would be less discussion about me if my bills were paid," she said finally. "But I'd like to get that money back to him."

"I'll see he gets it—with interest," responded Billy.

"And you——?" She looked up at him with a startled, vivid blush that stained her soft skin from throat to brow. "You must have been to a great deal of expense——"

"Not a bit. Please don't——"

"But I must. When I get to a bank. I still have my letter of credit with me," she said thankfully, "but it didn't do me any good in that wretched palace. It was just paper to them. I showed it to the girl once and tried to make her understand."

"The first station we find we'd better wire for your trunks to be sent by express to Cook's at Luxor—or to the Grand Hotel. And then you can take the train straight to Luxor and buy some clothes there."

"But the train—I can't travel in this! And there would be people on it who would talk——"

"Had we better make it to Assiout then?" said Billy doubtfully. "Once in the city, of course, you'd be safe——"

"How far is Assiout from Luxor? Where are we now?"

"We're Alice in Wonderland about that. Somewhere about twenty-five or thirty miles south of Assiout, I should say. It must be nearly a hundred and twenty, as the crow flies, from Assiout to Thebes—that's right across from Luxor, you know."

Arlee was silent a moment. She lifted a handful of shining sands and let them run down from her fingers in fine dust. "It's such a pity," she mused, "when we've such a good start——"

Billy stared.

"And I never rode a camel," she went on. "I may never have such a chance again."

"You don't mean——?"

"It would make my story a little truer, too.... And wouldn't it be quicker?"

"Quicker? The quickest way is to go back to Assiout and catch the middle-of-the-night express there and get to Luxor to-morrow morning."

Arlee sighed. "I always wanted to be a gypsy," she murmured regretfully, "and now I've begun it's such a pity to stop.... And I'm afraid to go back!" she cried, "They will be out looking for us—they are probably now on the way. And they'll shoot at you and carry me off—Oh, do let's go on! Don't go back to that city! We can catch the train another place. Oh, it's so much more sensible!"

"Sensible?" Billy repeated as if hypnotized.

"Why, of course it is. And safer. For all those people back there must be in that tribe of the sheik whose house I was in, and they are dangerous, dangerous. I want to get as far away from them as possible. I'd rather ride all the way to Thebes than run the risk of falling in their traps."

Billy was silent.

"And I'm sure the camels could make the trip in a couple of days," she continued, sounding assured now, and pleasantly argumentative. "I used to read about their speed in my First Reader.... That is, if you don't mind the trouble," she added apologetically, "and being with me that day more?"

Billy choked. She looked entirely unconscious, and his dumfounded gaze fell blankly away. "There isn't anything in the world I'd like better," he said slowly, sounding reluctance in the effort not to sound anything else, "but from your point of view—if we should meet——"

"Only fellaheen on the banks," she returned unconcernedly. "Not half as awkward as people on trains."

"But the—the chaperonless aspect of this picnic——?"

"Oh, that!" She was mildly scornful. Then she giggled. "I think a chaperon would look very silly tagging along behind on a camel.... Besides we've gone so far already. You took the liberty of rescuing me, you know, and then the sand storm and this breakfast a deux—What's a few meals more?"

There was truth in that—and truth in what she said about the danger of returning to the city. They were already lingering overlong and Billy jumped up and packed their supply of food in sudden haste. It was folly, of course, to dream of the entire trip to Thebes on camelback, but Girgeh was about fifty miles south, and it would be safer and almost as near to push on there or to the next town, wherever that was, and there get the train as to return to Assiout....

Oh, Billy, Billy! What specious argument! And why must every bright delightful fruit be forbidden by dull care or justified by flagrantly untenable artifice? Who but a fool would boggle over this chance, this gloriously deserved crown of the adventure, this gay, random ride over the deserts with Arlee?... To her it was nothing but a prolonging of the lark into which the affair had miraculously been turned. Billy was Big Brother—the American Big Brother with whom one might go safely adventuring for a day or a year.... And suddenly Billy felt a warm gladness within him. Not even her escapade with the unspeakable Turk had been able to shake her dear faith in her own countrymen.... He was not man to her; he was American. Billy waved the flag loyally in his grateful thoughts.

Aloud he said, "There's risk in trying to go back, of course. That's what they're expecting of us. But there will be uncertainty in going on——"

"I rather like it. It's the certainty that frightens," she gave back eagerly. "I want the way that puts the greatest distance between me and that man.... I don't care what else happens so he doesn't find us."

* * * * *

It is utterly astonishing how unastonishing the most astonishing situations become at the slightest wont.

Nothing on the face of it could have been more preposterous to Billy B. Hill's imagination than trotting along the banks of the Nile on a camel with a gossamer-haired girl trotting beside him, two lone strays in a dark-skinned land, and yet after a few hours of it, it was the most natural thing in the world!

It was all color and light and vivid, unforgettable impressions. It was all sparkle and gaiety and charm. They were two children in a world of enchantment. Nothing could have been more fantastic than that day.

Sometimes they rode low on paths between green dhurra fields, sometimes they rode high along the Nile embankment, watching the blue waters alive with winged fleet, black buffaloes splashing in shallows under charge of little bronze babies of boys, watching all the scenes about them shift and change with magic mutability.

They lunched beside an old well, they dined by the river bank, and then as the velvet shadows deepened in the folds of the Arabian mountains across the river and the first stars pricked through the lilac sky above them, they pressed on hurriedly into the southwest that glowed like molten gold behind the black bars of the palms.... And by and by when even the after-glow had ceased to incarnadine the far horizon and the path was too black and strange for them, they turned off across the fertile valley into the edging desert again and saw the new moon rise like an arrow of fire over the rim of the world and pour forth a golden flood that lightened the way yet farther south for their tired beasts.

Arlee rode like a fairy princess of mystery, the silver shawl which they had bought at a village to shield her from the sun, drooping in heavy folds from her head, its metal threads glimmering in the moon rays.... Her eyes were solemn with the beauty and the wonder, of the night, and the strange solitude and isolation; her look was ethereal to Billy and mystically lovely.

But Girgeh seemed to retreat farther and farther into the unknown south, and at last it was no fairy princess but only a very tired girl who slid stiffly down from the saddle, and pillowed a heavy head on Billy's coat. And it was a very tired young man who lay beside her, listening to the deep breathing of the beasts and the faint breath that rose rhythmically beside him. Yet for a time he did not sleep. His heart was full of the awe and mystery of the moonlit world about him—and the awe and mystery of that little bit of the living world curled there so intimately in the dark....

With a reverent hand he drew the wraps he had purchased closer over her. The night was growing cold. Far off the jackals howled.... With his gun at hand he slept at last, and slept sound, though sand is the hardest mattress in the world and a camel's back not the softest pillow....



CHAPTER XIX

THE PURSUIT

"But I shall die," said Arlee. "I shall simply die if I have to go another step upon that creature."

She said it cheerfully, but firmly, a sleepy, sunburned little nomad, sitting cross-legged in the sands, slowly plaiting her honey-colored hair. "Even this," she announced, indicating the slight gesture of braiding, "is agony."

"It's the morning after," said Billy, testing his shoulder with wry grimaces. "It's yesterday's speed—and then this infernally cold night. No wonder we're lame. Why, I have one universal crick wherever I used to have muscles. But let me call your attention to the fact that we are in the wilds of Egypt and that tangerines are hardly a lasting breakfast. Something has to be done."

"Not upon camels," said Arlee fixedly.

"They say it doesn't hurt after an hour or so more."

"I shouldn't live to find out."

"A walk," he suggested, "a slow, swaying, gently undulating walk——?"

"A long, lingering, agonizing death," the young lady translated. She tossed the curly end of her braid over her shoulder and rose, with sounds of lamentation. "I ought to have known better than to sit down again when I was once up," she confided sadly.

"Just what," inquired her companion, "is your idea for the day? How do you expect to reach Girgeh? It can't be very far away now——"

"Then we'll walk—we'll walk," she emphasized, "and tow those ships of the desert after us. That will be bad enough, but better—what's that?"

Like a top, for all his stiffness, Billy spun about to stare where her finger pointed. Over the crest of a hillock, far to the north—yes, something was hurrying their way.

"A man on horseback," said Arlee anxiously. "They can't have traced us, can they, all this way——?"

"Of course not—but we'll take no chances," returned Billy briskly; "no more talk of pedestrian tours now!" and promptly he helped the girl, no longer demurring, into the saddle, and thwacked her camel into arising, just dodging the long, yellow teeth that the resentful beast tried to fasten upon his shoulder.

They started at no soothing walk, but at a hurrying trot.

Worriedly, her delicate brows knitting, "It's absurd, but," said Arlee, "they could have traced us, I suppose, from my telegraphing at that little native station for my trunks to be sent."

"And mine," said Billy. "And from my trying to get my letter of credit cashed."

"That Captain could have telegraphed to all the places down the line to know if we'd been seen——"

"Even if we hadn't wired or tried to get money, our presence alone and our buying food would have aroused talk. I told everybody," the young man continued, "that I was an artist and you were my sister, and that passed all right—but if Kerissen has been making inquiries——"

"I'm desperately glad we didn't go back toward Assiout," she thrust in. "We'd have walked right into some trap of his!"

"Lord knows what we ought to have done! Lord knows what we ought to do now!"

"Just keep on going," she encouraged. "We can't be very far from Girgeh, can we?"

"I don't know," said Billy soberly. "It may be half a day or a whole day more—you remember how vague that old woman was last night...!" Bitterly he added, "And I'm afraid you've got a chump of a guide."

"I've the best one in the world!" she flashed indignantly.

But her assurance brought no solace to the young man's troubled soul. He reflected that they could have taken a train the day before. To be sure, he had not money enough for tickets to Luxor, yet he had enough for two to Girgeh. But Arlee had shrunk from entering a train in her dishevelled costume, fearful of watching eyes and gossiping tongues, and had advised riding on to Girgeh, where shops and banks would help them, and he had yielded apparently to her desires, but in reality to his own secret self that clung to every joyful contraband moment of this magic time with her. Sincerely he had thought their danger ended.... But those trailing horsemen—"Brute!" he raged dumbly at himself. "Dolt! Idiot!"

Anxiously Billy looked at Arlee. It was an ordeal of a ride.

They had ridden on in silence, occasionally glancing back over their shoulders. At last Arlee said, quietly, "Do you see anything—over there—to the left?"

Billy had been seeing it for fifteen minutes.

"Another horseman, isn't it?" he carelessly suggested.

"He seems to be riding the same way we are."

"Well, we've no monopoly of travel in this region."

She answered, after a moment, "There's another close behind him. I just saw him on top of a little hill. I suppose they can see us?"

"Probably." Billy's face was grave. If they continued their winding path in from the desert to the intervening hills that shut them from the Nile valley, and the horsemen continued their course along the base of those hills, they would soon meet.

"Do you mind speeding up a little?" he asked. "I'd rather like to cross to the Nile ahead of that gentry."

But as they speeded up the pursuers did the same, and from mere dots they grew to tiny figures, clearly discernible, furiously galloping over the sands.

Billy thought hard about his cartridges, wishing he had more in his clothes. When he had left the hotel that Tuesday evening he had thrust the loaded revolver in his pocket, but he had already discharged it twice at the beginning of their flight.... And then he startlingly reflected that the Captain could easily cause their arrest for stealing those camels, and wild and dreadful thoughts of native jails and mixed tribunals darted into his harassed and anxious mind. As a long ridge of sand intervened between them and their pursuers he made a sudden decision.

"Let's turn off," he said quickly, and from the little winding path, edging southeast, they struck directly south over the trackless sand.

"You see, they'll expect us to make a railroad station as soon as possible," he explained, "and they are probably trying to nab us on the way to it—if those men have anything to do with us at all." He said nothing about his vivid fear of arrest for the camels and the tool such an arrest would be for Kerissen's designs. He merely added, "I think we'd better try to give them the slip and steer clear of all the little native joints until we get to Girgeh, which is big enough to give us some protection. There must be an English something-or-other there.... I really think we ought to go as fast as we can now, and when the way is clear, hurry across the hills into the Nile valley."

But the way did not become clear. Disconcerted by that unexpected dash off the path, and reduced for a time to mere dots again, the horsemen, three in a row now, hung persistently upon their left flank, keeping a parallel course between them and the hills.

The day had dawned with a promise of sultry heat, and as the sun rose higher and higher in the heavens the heat grew more and more intolerable to their ill-protected heads and thirsty tongues. The gaiety of yesterday was gone; the enchantment had vanished from the waste spaces, and the desert was less a friend now than an enemy. Chokingly the dust rose about them, and glaringly the gold of the burning sands beat back the glare of the down-pouring sun. From such a heat the landscape seemed to shrink and veiled itself with a faint and swimming haze.