It was a Monday morning about two months later and the Sheik was
helping Hulda hang out the wash in the back of the Big Tent, his soul
pondering in trepidation, even worry as one might say, regarding what
Verbeena was contemplating, what she was ruminating with such open
evidences of liking it, in her masterful, little, red-capped noodle.
Fear suddenly clutched him clamorously by the heart.
It rang in his brain--ding-a-ling, ding-a-ling-a-ling!
They were now stopping at the Sahara Golf club oasis which is really a
mere suburb of Orange, very popular because the golf club oasis was
the wettest on the desert. So near Orange! She could, she would----
"Allah save my skin," whispered the Sheik as best he could on account
of the clothes-pins in his mouth as he was spearing Verbeena's
B.V.D.'s to the line hanging low between the stately palms.
From time to time as the reversal of the rôle he played in her life
came to his quivering lips in cries of "Allah, O, Allah, let up on
me!" he had managed to steal a horse-whip or two and bury it in the
sand until nearly all of them had disappeared. It was not
consideration for the horses which had led to those depredations. And
now the thought had come to him that they were so near Orange she
might ride in herself or send forth a blindly obedient equerry thence
to fetch a new supply of first quality, sturdy horsehide lashes.
"O," cried Sheik Amut fervently, "Allah, have a heart!"
But just about then other things happened to make his heart tick
harder--like a grandfather's clock.
He and Hulda dropped the wash to rush to the front of the tent where
had arrived a messenger. Sure, on horseback.
"From Orange!" said the carrier dismounting.
"A communication for me?" asked the Sheik in his soft, mild tones.
"For you?" laughed the messenger, scornfully unloading two big bags.
"You! By Allah, stand aside and don't make the sandworms laugh!
Where's Queen Verbeena?"
"By the same Allah," returned the Sheik with a show of spirit, "unless
your business is of prime importance I would not disturb her now. She
is at her daily exercise within and cares never then to be
interrupted."
"Why doesn't she exercise with a horse?"
"Idiot, forbear lest she overhear. Besides, it's not that sort of
exercise at all. For three hours each morning she now spends her time
making faces in the looking glass. For what purpose when I ask her of
it, she orders me back into the open as being none of my Oriental
damned business. What's in the bags?"
"Letters--letters--thousands--all for her."
"Yet, by Allah, it is not Valentine's day."
"True."
"No, but by Allah, it's near the first month. I wonder what bills
she's been running up!" faltered the Sheik.
Now the letters--there is no use keeping a person's readers
waiting--were in reality, in response to an advertisement she had
secretly placed in several theatrical newspapers. It had read:
"Famous Lost Lady on Sahara Open for Moving Picture Engagement.
No triflers. Address P. Oasis Box No. 17 via Orange."
The messenger was now bearing to Mrs. The Sheik Amut Ben Butler thirty
thousand and forty-six communications from all the choicest open-air
murder colonies in the country.
But true enterprise, real enterprise, enterprise in the magnificent,
was incarnated in the person of the celebrated Mr. Cyril Gristmille
for on that very instant he descended grandly in person in an
aeroplane. Slightly on his ear but soon readjusted himself. He had
faced this small accident without turning a hair. He hadn't any.
"See here," cried the Sheik Amut, "what the hellah do you mean by
swooping down this way on these grounds? Don't you see what you've
done? You've scared the horses and camels and scattered them all over
the desert! And, may Allah's curses crack your skull, you've knocked
down the week's wash and if you knew my wife----"
Mr. Gristmille gracefully drew a slender cigarette case from a lower
waistcoat pocket--yep, he had the habit too--and said:
"Well, then, don't stand there like a fathead looking at them run
away, my man. You and your other ragbags get busy and catch 'em again.
I may need 'em shortly."
"Need 'em? What do you want?"
"My business is not with you. But unless I am improperly informed this
tent harbors the famous lost English desert girl, Miss Verbeena
Mayonnaise?"
"That was," said Sheik Amut sticking up his nose at this haughty
stranger. "She's my wife now."
[Illustration: CYRIL GRISTMILLE, THE GREAT WOMAN TAMER.]
"Go in the tent then and tell her to come out to me--Mr. Cyril
Gristmille--immediately. I would do business with her."
"You would?"
"Hasten. Go right in and tell her to come out promptly."
"Go in and tell her yourself," said Amut. "I'm tired trying to tell
her to do anything."
"Very well," said Mr. Gristmille and stalked toward the main tent.
Sheik Amut and Spaghetti who was being given another trial by Verbeena
after his complete surrender of his garlic supply, and the Sheik's
other two pals, Yusef and Hamandaigs, looked one another keenly in the
eyes and began openly holding their ribs.
But to their surprise no pistol reports or manly howls for help arose
from within the tent.
Instead the elegant, pallid-faced Mr. Gristmille who had changed from
his aeroplane cap into a high hat before entering the tent--instead
then of Mr. Gristmille emerging with a scimitar wrapped around his
neck or his hat jammed down over his eyes--instead of this, O, Allah,
his haughty intrusion into the tent of the doughty little Sheik tamer
passed off in most perfect quiet and presently--hands up to Allah
again!--he emerged with Verbeena--with Verbeena!--why they hardly
recognized her! the way she was acting!
Her sturdy, cocky boyish nonchalance was gone, no longer did she
swagger and scowl, the little roughneck. Instead she had become as
feminine as a powder puff!
A mincing, smiling, trusting-eyed little red-headed dear!
She was looking up into the cameo profile of the illustrious and
bill-postered countenance of Cyril Gristmille as one might gaze into
the eye of a golden idol or a $10,000,000 check.
Every little trick of ingenuous girlhood was in everything that little
Verbeena did and the wondering Amut, Spaghetti and Hulda and Yusef and
Hamandaigs ran around telling the tribe about it. And they all agreed
they just simply couldn't believe it was Verbeena.
They all said it was if it were some female member of her family.
But had these innocents ever seen Mary Pickford they would have known
where Verbeena was getting her stuff. Little did they know she'd been
practicing up on it this many a day.
And the while in accents as honeyed as her glances she was saying:
"O, Mister--Mister Gristmille, it has been so good of you to come!
With all that money!
"And do you really think you can make an actress of me? Really?"
"I?--Why I," said Mr. Cyril Gristmille, "could make an actress of a
doughboy to say nothing of so perfect a little gentleman as you."
"How adorable! What do I do first?"
"The first thing you do," he said, and suddenly took her by the
shoulder and shook her thoroughly, "is to understand that you do every
little damn thing I tell you without making any fuss or faces about
it. Do you get me?"
He shook her again till her curls rattled.
Verbeena listened breathlessly and breathless isn't much of a word for
it. Her heart wobbled.
"You are always to remember _I_--_I_ am boss.
"And don't you try to carry out any notions of your own while you are
acting around me.
"You are to look, walk, talk, eat, weep, whimper, smile, sob, stalk,
twirl, mince, mope, wriggle, squirm, turn, stand, run, race, limp,
love, lallygag, or any old other darn thing I mention and demand just
as you hear me give the orders to do it or I'll take you and your
movie aspirations and bury them for once and all ten thousand feet
deep right in here in the sands of the Sahara!
"Once again," he fixed her with his piercing eye, "I ask--do you get
me?"
What Verbeena got was very hot under her boyish Eton collar and meant
to answer him scornfully but she felt her heart beating as if it meant
to beat it altogether.
However, the Movie Maharajah was not paying the slightest attention to
how she took it at all. He was giving his attention to a flock of
camera men, actors and such like arriving in 2,000 aeroplanes that
left for the Sahara that morning from Los Angeles.
She could not fight down the thrill that came at the study she then
began somewhat surreptitiously to make of the commanding figure of the
Movie Monarch among his men. The way he talked to them was a shame.
The way they took it, cringing, cowering, fawning yet with adoration
in their eyes, was a wonder.
He seemed suddenly to remember her.
"What are you standing there goofing for and staring that way at me?
Don't you know that you are to be a girl in the first reel?"
"I--I," hot shame mantled Verbeena's cheek. Why was it she did not
step straight forward and punch him in the nose? But somehow, he made
her so acutely conscious of her sex, or, rather, of what sex he wanted
of her.
"You are to be a girl in this first reel I tell you. Get back into
your tent and take that football suit off and put on something close,
clinging, and when you get it on work up a good, hippy walk--hippy and
a bit slouchy. Go on instantly, and get _him_ off and put _her_ on."
The man was simply terrible. With dragging feet she retreated to her
tent and for the boy's clothes that somehow made her feel good and
tough and ready to take chances with both hands, she submergedly
substituted a frock that she was fiercely angry with herself to find
herself, indubitably she herself, hoping would please him.
And it didn't--no chance.
Not with that movie mahout.
"In the name of all that's horrible!" he cried at her. "Is that the
best thing you've got to offer in clothes? It doesn't fit you--it
flops! Here--that skirt wants shortening and it wants tightening too,
and you can only see the half of the small of your back. Away with
that flock of rags! Got any others--in heaven's name, answer!"
"Yes--yes, sir."
"Go in and put another one on then and for the love of Pete, try to
pick something that looks like something above a dollar ninety-eight
on a bargain counter. Take that off--quick! Must I be your dressmaker
as well as your director?"
"O, sir," sobbed Verbeena Mayonnaise.
"And hurry up about it," came his slow but icy tones as she hurried
tentwards to hurry up just as fast as she hasten well could.
"Let's see," he conceded on his second sight of her, "that's awful as
the other but--O well--come here then--here is him whom is to be your
leading man in this heart-stirring and world-thrilling romance of my
forthcoming creation. He is to be your leading man, but I will attend
in all respects as to where he will lead you."
Verbeena saw as she was introduced to this young man that he was
exquisitely handsome, his face only saved from effeminacy by a firm
chin. He was tall, lithe, slender as a wand. Although she had never
been introduced to him before she recognized him instantly for it was
Fatty Arbuckle!