Mohammed the dragoman, with two hotel servants, came upon Graham some
time later, gagged and bound behind a sand hillock less than five
hundred yards from Mena House. They had him on his feet in an instant,
unbound; and his face was ghastly--for he knew too well what the outrage
portended.
"Quick!" he said hoarsely. "How long is she gone?"
Mohammed was trembling wildly.
"Nearly an hour, Effendi--nearly an hour. Allah preserve us, what shall
we do? I heard it in Cairo to-night--it is all over the bazaars--the
Sheikh El-Suleym with the Masr-Bishareen is out. They travel like the
wind, Effendi. It is not four days since they stopped a caravan ten
miles beyond Bir-Amber, now they are in Lower Egypt. Allah preserve
her!" he ran on volubly--"who can overtake the horsemen of the
Bishareen?"
So he ran on, wildly, panting as they raced back to the hotel. The place
was in an uproar. It was an event which furnished the guests with such a
piece of local colour as none but the most inexperienced tourist could
have anticipated.
An Arab raid in these days of electric tramways! A captive snatched from
the very doors of Mena House! One would as little expect an Arab raid
upon the _Ritz_!
The authorities at headquarters, advised of the occurrence, found
themselves at a loss how to cope with this stupendous actuality. The
desert had extended its lean arm and snatched a captive to its bosom.
Cairo had never before entirely realised the potentialities of that
all-embracing desert. There are a thousand ways, ten thousand routes,
across that ruin-dotted wilderness. Justly did the ancient people
worship in the moon the queenly Isis; for when the silver emblem of the
goddess claims the sands for her own, to all save the desert-born they
become a place of secrets. Here is a theatre for great dramas, wanting
only the tragedian. The outlawed Sheikh of the Bishareen knew this full
well, but, unlike others who know it, he had acted upon his convictions
and revealed to wondering Egypt what Bedouin craft and a band of
intrepid horsemen can do, aided by a belt of sand, and cloaked by night.
Graham was distracted. For he was helpless, and realised it. Already the
news was in Cairo, and the machinery of the Government at work. But what
machinery, save that of the Omniscient, could avail him now?
A crowd of visitors flocked around him, offering frightened consolation.
He broke away from them violently--swearing--a primitive man who wanted
to be alone with his grief. The idea uppermost in his mind was that of
leaping upon a horse and setting out in pursuit. But in which direction
should he pursue? One declared that the Arabs must have rode this way,
another that, and yet another a third.
Some one shouted--the words came to him as if through a thick
curtain--that the soldiers were coming.
"What the hell's the good of it!" he said, and turned away, biting his
lips.
When a spruce young officer came racing up the steps to gather
particulars, Graham stared at him dully, said, "The Arabs have got
her--my wife," and walked away.
The hoof-clatter and accompanying martial disturbance were faint in the
distance when Mohammed ran in to where Graham was pacing up and down in
an agony of indecision--veritably on the verge of insanity. The dragoman
held a broken gold chain in his hand, from which depended a big
turquoise that seemed to blink in the shaded light.
"Effendi," he whispered, and held it out upon trembling fingers, "it is
her necklet! I found it yonder,"--pointing eastward. "_Sallee 'a-nebee!_
it is her necklet!"
Graham turned, gave one wild glance at the thing, and grasped the man
by the throat, glaring madly upon him.
"You dog!" he shouted. "You were in the conspiracy! It was you who sent
the false messages!"
A moment he held him so, then dropped his hands. Mohammed fell back,
choking; but no malice was in the velvet eyes. The Eastern understands
and respects a great passion.
"Effendi," he gasped--"I am your faithful servant, and--I cannot write!
_Wa-llah!_ and by His mercy, this will save her if anything can!"
He turned and ran fleetly out, Graham staring after him.
It may seem singular that John Graham remained thus inert--inactive. But
upon further consideration his attitude becomes explainable. He knew the
futility of a blind search, and dreaded being absent if any definite
clue should reach the hotel. Meanwhile, he felt that madness was not far
off.
"They say that they have struck out across the Arabian Desert, Mr.
Graham--probably in the direction of the old caravan route."
Graham did not turn; did not know nor care who spoke.
"It's four hundred miles across to the caravan route," he said slowly;
"four hundred miles of sand--of sand."
V
The most simple Oriental character is full of complexity. Mohammed the
dragoman, by birth and education a thief, by nature a sluggard, spared
no effort to reach Cairo in the shortest space of time humanly possible.
The source of his devotion is obscure. Perhaps it was due to a humble
admiration which John Graham's attempt to strangle him could not alter,
or perhaps to a motive wholly unconnected with mundane matters. Certain
it is that a sort of religious fervour latterly had possessed the man.
From being something of a scoffer (for Islam, like other creeds, daily
loses adherents), he was become a most devout Believer. To what this
should be ascribed I shall leave you to judge.
Exhausted, tottering with his giant exertions, he made his way through
the tortuous streets of Old Cairo--streets where ancient palaces and
mansions of wealthy Turks displayed their latticed windows, and, at that
hour, barred doors to the solitary, panting wayfarer.
Upon one of these barred doors he beat. It was that of an old palace
which seemed to be partially in ruins. After some delay, the door was
opened and Mohammed admitted. The door was reclosed. And, following upon
the brief clamour, silence claimed the street again.
Much precious time had elapsed since Eileen Graham's disappearance from
the hotel by the Pyramids, when a belated and not too sober Greek,
walking in the direction of Cairo, encountered what his muddled senses
proclaimed to be an apparition--that of a white-robed figure upon a
snow-white camel, which sped, silent, and with arrow-like swiftness,
past him towards Gizeh. About this vision of the racing camel (a more
beautiful creature than any he had seen since the last to carry the
Mahmal), about the rider, spectral in the moonlight, white-bearded,
there was that which suggested a vision of the Moslem Prophet. Ere the
frightened Greek could gather courage to turn and look after the phantom
rider, man and camel were lost across the sands.
Mena House was in an uproar. No one beneath its roof had thought
of sleep that night. Futile searches were being conducted in every
direction, north, south, east, and west. Graham, feeling that another
hour of inactivity would spell madness, had succumbed to the fever to
be up and doing, and had outdistanced all, had left the boy far behind
and was mercilessly urging his poor little mount out into the desert,
well knowing that in all probability he was riding further and further
away from the one he sought, yet madly pressing on. He felt that to
stop was to court certain insanity; he must press on and on; he must
search--search.
His mood had changed, and from cursing fate, heaven, everything and
every one, he was come to prayer.
He, then, was the next to see the man on the white camel, and, like
the Greek, he scarcely doubted that it was a wraith of his tortured
imagination. Indeed, he took it for an omen. The Prophet had appeared
to him to proclaim that the desert, the home of Islam, had taken Eileen
from him. The white-robed figure gave no sign, looked neither to the
right nor to the left, but straight ahead, with eagle eyes.
Graham pulled up his donkey, and sat like a shape of stone, until the
silver-grey distance swallowed up the phantom.
Out towards the oasis called the Well of Seven Palms, the straggling
military company proceeded in growing weariness. The officer in charge
had secured fairly reliable evidence to show that the Arabs had struck
out straight for the Red Sea. Since he was not omniscient, he could not
know that they had performed a wide detour which would lead them back
an hour before dawn to the camp by the Nile beside the Temple of Horus,
where El-Suleym waited for his captive.
It was at the point in their march when, to have intercepted the
raiders, they should have turned due south instead of proceeding toward
the oasis, that one of them pulled up, rubbed his eyes, looked again and
gave the alarm.
In another moment they all saw it--a white camel; not such a camel
as tourists are familiar with, the poor hacks of the species, but a
swan-like creature, white as milk, bearing a white-robed rider who
ignored utterly the presence of the soldiers, who answered by no word or
sign to their challenge, but who passed them like a cloud borne along by
a breeze and melted vaporously into the steely distances of the desert.
The captain was hopelessly puzzled.
"Too late to bring him down," he muttered, "and no horse that was ever
born could run down a racing camel. Most mysterious."
Twenty miles south of their position, and exactly at right-angles to
their route, rode the Bishareen horsemen, the foremost with Eileen
Graham across his saddle. And now, eighteen miles behind the Bishareen,
a white camel, of the pure breed which yearly furnishes the stately
bearer of the Mahmal, spurned the sand and like a creature of air gained
upon the Arabs, wild riders though they were, mile upon mile, league
upon league.
Within rifle-shot of the camp, and with the desert dawn but an hour
ahead, only a long sand-ridge concealed from the eyes of the Bishareen
troupe that fleet shape which had struck wonder to the hearts of all
beholders. Despite their start of close upon two hours, despite the fact
that the soldiers were now miles, and hopeless miles, in their rear, the
racer of the desert had passed them!
Eileen Graham had returned to full and agonizing consciousness. For
hours, it seemed, her captives had rode and rode in silence. Now a
certain coolness borne upon the breeze told her that they were nearing
the river again. Clamour sounded ahead. They were come to the Arab
camp. But ere they reached it they entered some lofty building which
echoed hollowly to the horses' tread. She was lifted from her painful
position, tied fast against a stone pillar, and the bandage was
unfastened from about her head.
She saw that she was lashed to one of the ruined pillars which once
had upheld the great hall of a temple. About her were the crumbling
evidences of the sacerdotal splendour that was Ancient Egypt. The moon
painted massive shadows upon the debris, and carpeted the outer place
with the black image of a towering propylæum. Upon the mound which once
had been the stone avenue of approach was the Bedouin camp. It was
filled with a vague disturbance. She was quite alone; for those who had
brought her there were leading their spent horses out to the camp.
Eileen could not know what the hushed sounds portended; but actually
they were due to the fact that the outlaw chief, wearied with that most
exhausting passion--the passion of anticipation--had sought his tent,
issuing orders that none should disturb him. Many hours before he knew
they could return, he had stood looking out across the sands, but at
last had decided to fit himself, by repose, for the reception of his
beautiful captive.
A sheikh's tent has two apartments--one sacred to the lord and master,
the other sheltering his harem. To the former El-Suleym had withdrawn;
and now his emissaries stood at the entrance, where the symbolic spear
was stuck, blade upward, in the sand. Those who had thrown in their lot
with El-Suleym, called the Regicide, had learnt that a robber chief
whose ambitions have been whetted by a sojourn in Europe is a hard
master, though one profitable to serve. They hesitated to arouse him,
even though their delicate task was well accomplished.
And whilst they debated before the tent, which stood alone, as is usual,
at some little distance from the others, amid which moved busy figures
engaged in striking camp, Eileen, within the temple, heard a movement
behind the pillar to which she was bound.
She was in no doubt respecting the identity of her captor, and the
author of the ruse by which she had been lured from the hotel, and now,
unable to turn, it came to her that this was _he_, creeping to her
through the moon-patched shadows. With eyes closed, and her teeth
clenched convulsively, she pictured the sinister, approaching figure.
Then, from close beside her, came a voice:
"Only I can save you from him. Do not hesitate, do not speak. Do as I
tell you."
Eileen opened her eyes. She could not see the speaker, but the voice was
oddly familiar. Her fevered brain told her that she had heard it before,
but speaking Arabic. It was the voice of an old man, but a strong,
vibrant voice.
"It is the will of Allah, whose name be exalted, that I repay!"
A lean hand held before her eyes a broken gold chain, upon which
depended a turquoise. She knew the voice, now: it was that of the old
pedlar! But his English, except for the hoarse Eastern accent, was
flawless, and this was the tone of no broken old man, but of one to be
feared and respected.
Her reason, she thought, must be tricking her. How could the old pedlar,
however strong in his queer gratitude, save her now? Then the hand came
again before her eyes, and it held a tiny green phial.
"Be brave. Drink, quickly. They are coming to take you to him. It is the
only escape!"
"Oh, God!" she whispered, and turned icily cold.
This was the boon he brought her. This was the road of escape, escape
from El-Suleym--the road of death! It was cruel, unspeakably horrible,
with a bright world just opening out to her, with youth, beauty, and----
She could not think of her husband.
"God be merciful to him!" she murmured. "But he would prefer me dead
to----"
"Quick! They are here!"
She placed her lips to the phial, and drank.
It seemed that fire ran through every vein in her body. Then came chill.
It grew, creeping from her hands and her feet inward and upward to her
heart.
"Good-bye ... dear...." she whispered, and sobbed once, dryly.
The ropes held her rigidly upright.