"What have you seen? ..." A fierce breath beat on Katharine's cheek,
and a steel-strong grip was on her arm, as Essenian's swift whisper
assailed her ear: "Deny not that you saw!--the stone splits--that is
enough!--it means the end for me! I am deceived--" the shrill voice
cracked despairingly--"I to whom They promised Life--Life prolonged
beyond the age of elephants--Youth that should keep its freshness
like the flower in the block of ice. Speak, woman, say what you have
seen, or by Eblis! I will make you! I am strong yet, and if
Azrael's hand be at my throat, you shall feel mine at yours!"
Even as he leaped, Katharine swung out a long arm, striking him
across the body, breaking the force of his leap, as she remembered to
have once done when a savage cat, crossed with the wild breed, had
crept up behind, unnoticed, and sprung upon her to bite.
"You native cad!" rang her clear disdainful voice. "Are you out for
murder?"
"I am out to make you tell me--" Breathing unevenly, he stood back
from the divan, his supple body tense for a second spring, his
glittering eyes watching her: "What have you seen in the beryl?
Answer!--it is my right to hear!"
"But not your right to lay hands upon an Englishwoman," Katharine
retorted, tingling with insulted pride. "Do not attempt it again,
because I carry a revolver, and like most women who have served in
this War, I have learned to use it well!"
Brave words, yet her head was swimming as she spoke, and her heart
throbbed suffocatingly, and the hand that gripped the butt of the
little Colt's revolver, shook with the rigor of fear. The strange
and terrible experiences of the night--horror of Essenian's vicinity
and touch, the strain of long anxiety and protracted fasting--were
beginning to tell upon Katharine. She despised women who fainted at
dreadful sights or in perilous situations, and yet--she realised
herself not far from fainting now....
Air--she was famishing for want of air! though the room was open to
the stars and the night-winds--though the curtains behind that
tigerish orange-red figure were bellying and parting, blown inwards
under their pointed triple arches by a gale she could not feel. She
could see the branches of the thronging trees--the lateral limb of a
towering moss-cup oak swaying strangely under the weight of a
climbing brown figure. She caught the flash of eyes and teeth in a
shadowy face topped by a white sun-helmet--and ran towards the
archway as a man leaped into the room....
Others followed, dropping from the great elbowed tree-limb to the
wall, and jumping through the archway.... Men in the well-known
khaki drill, with sun-browned or pale European faces under their
sun-helmets--and the red brassard of the Military Police....
"Sorry, but I have to arrest you, Major Essenian, in the name of the
King...."
A young Lieutenant of M.P. with a tooth-brush moustache of undeniable
ginger was pressing a folded paper on Essenian and mopping his own
dripping face....
"Warm work, shinning up trees in this muggy Egyptian climate. But I
fancy we've dropped in just at the right time... Certainly for the
lady. Sergeant Whitmore, look to the lady. Handcuff the prisoner,
Corporal Rose. And, Major, remember that anything you say will be
used against you in evidence."
"There will be--there will be a formal Court Martial?" He raised his
face, the grey face, pinched and sweat-dabbled, that Katharine had
seen in the vision of the Stone: "I demand it!--I demand it!
Whatever the charges on this warrant which I have not read,
remember!--I can disprove them--I can confute them--establish my
honour in the face of the world."
"You'll be lucky if you do! No, you can't change into uniform. One
of your servants can pack a kit-case, and leave it for you at the
Military Clink. That's your address--while you require one. Hit
that tin gong, will you, Corporal? It'll fetch some of these Gyppo
fellows to show the way to the hall-door."
"I can guide you, Mr. Martyn!"
"Holy Smoke, it's Miss Forbis from Montana! How in the wide-- I beg
your pardon!"
The Lieutenant--not so long ago a convalescent patient at the
Hospital, broke off the end of the question, reddening, but Katharine
answered with her broad, sweet smile, looking in the boyish face with
candid cairngorm eyes:
"How in the wide did I come here? Well, I'll tell you strictly in
confidence--in return for a lift back to Alexandria. Can do? ..."
"Can do! Off duty--as soon as I've delivered the goods at the M.P."
His glance at the goods was highly expressive: "_'Hê intē!
Ya rajîl!_" This to an elderly Mohammedan servant with a much-ridged
forehead of anxiety--Nasr Ullah, summoned in haste to the Pavilion by
an alien stroke upon the Presence's gong. "Oh, you! Show us the way
downstairs!"
"I will go, I will go! Do not handle me roughly.... Remember that I
am an old--a very old man! Miss Forbis, I knew your father once!
Speak for me! Use your influence! Remember," the quavering voice
broke in a fit of senile coughing, the manacled hands extended to
Katharine in supplication, looked like those of a mummy, so
discoloured and shrunken were they: "You do not answer? You triumph
in my downfall?" The narrow eyes glimmered hatred out of their
deep-dug caves. "Do not forget your brother, and your friend, Mr.
Hazel--whose fate is practically in my hands!"
"Their fate is in the Hands of God," Katharine answered gently,
moving beyond the reach of the withered, trembling clutch. "Like
yours and mine, and that of every other creature. Good-bye, Major
Essenian...."
He made no reply. He was muttering to himself, and looked, indeed,
an old man. His head fell on his breast as the word to move was
given--and the party of policemen, with the orange-robed figure
tottering in their midst--tramped over the white bridge in the
bluish-pale light of the small hours, and followed by Katharine and
the Lieutenant, went down through the airless house....
When the tail-light of the last of the string of the four Military
Police cars had winked past the turn in the avenue, and the _porte
cochère_ was closed, Nasr Ullah went back to his "house" and found
her waking. She hastened out of the inner apartment and ran to him
in alarm.
"Oh, my eyes! Oh, my husband! _Alhamdolillah_ thou hast returned to
us! Little sleep have we had this night. Strange scrapings at the
back of the house, and whistles as of Afrits talking.... The
children woke and wept, and I scarce had wits to lie to
them--thinking the Servants of Eblis were carrying the Presence away!
..."
"The Presence hath gone, sure enough, but Inglizi soldiers took him.
Always I have known," said Nasr Ullah, "that some day the soldiers
would come. They followed the woman secretly, climbing the trees
like monkeys, and leaped in upon the Presence when she cried out....
Perhaps she was a spy--God knows! ..."
"Praise be to Him the soldiers took thee not also! Tell me--in this
matter of the pigeons.... Didst thou--"
Nasr Ullah shook his head:
"My heart was straitened when I left thee,--but Allah enlightening
me--I dealt wisely. For at the compound of the Commandant--at the
Headquarters of Intelligence and at Garrison Headquarters--one grain
of barley threw I at each place,--and picked it up again! Then,
burying the pot and the grain in a place where none will find them--I
returned at the fourth hour, and said to the Presence--'Lo! I have
done thy bidding, in the casting of poisoned barley.' And in this I
spake the very truth, yet Nûh's birds are safe for me!"
"It is well. The Compassionate shielded thee. Think you, my
husband, the Presence will return?"
"I think not, but if he does, he will not find Nasr Ullah. The Eye
of Radiance is broken, so even did he look in it he could not find
me. The Englishmen have opened his _maktabs_ and taken all his
papers. Come, let us take the children, and thy jewels, and our
money and the best of the clothing and go away from here!"
"When the fleas leave the cat, he is dead!" said Fatimeh acutely.
"No flea am I!" denied Nasr Ullah stoutly. "Forty-two years have I
served The Presence, and by Allah! I have served him well and
faithfully. Now, I shall serve Allah, Who is the better Master, and
my sons shall grow up without knowledge of ink-pools and wizardry...."
"And the bag that is buried under the bed hath enough in it to buy
thee a homestead. Verily the Beneficent hath hearkened to my
prayers. Go we by day, or now?"
"Now. Make haste and dress the children--hide thy jewels about
thee." He looked round for something to dig with, and picked up a
big brass ladle. "Strange, how a man may feel like a thief in
digging up his own hoard!"
"Will there--is there likely to be a Court Martial?" Katharine asked
the Lieutenant, as some hours later, a Police Ford Car, diverted from
official use for the purposes of chivalry, ran between green fields
of fodder on the road by the Canal, and the Lieutenant--having fed
his charge with sandwiches of cold chicken, hard eggs, ripe figs and
bananas, and hot coffee out of a thermos--was pressing Turkish
cigarettes on her and offering a light.
"Something in the nature of one, possibly. But precious short, and
to the point. I'm not broaching official secrets!--but the evidence
is solid. We've had quite a cloud of witnesses to prove that the
Pasha has been playing the kind of trick with the British Government
that he tried to play on you. There were two of our Secret
Intelligence men, in Shechem, one of 'em a prisoner in the Barracks
and the other in disguise. And he was twice seen by these chaps to
shed despatches into the town-square...."
"But weren't the despatches dummies?" Katharine asked.
"That was the tale he fed 'em with at H.Q., but it won't wash!"--the
owner of the ginger toothbrush shook his head: "We've got hold of the
last lot and they're genuine enough. Seditious propaganda--from
centres in the Far East--that's the sort of stuff he's been dropping
in Palestine.... What's more--it has just come out that he murdered
his observer--the S.I. man who was shut up with the other War
Prisoners in the Barracks saw the thing done--in mid-air over
Shechem--just as he'd focussed his binnics on Essenian's machine.
'The Two-Faced Nightingale,' the War Prisoners used to call
her--because of her transferable number and colour-plates--a clever
invention of the Pasha's, you see...."
"But I thought they'd approved of the invention at Headquarters? ..."
Said the Lieutenant, with a shrewdness that went curiously with his
youthful face:
"Oh, right enough, the Brass Hats approved of the invention! But
they didn't approve of its being approved of," he twinkled at the
alliteration--"by the fellows on the other side. The man's a dud!
And he's jolly well earned what's he's going"--he looked at his
wrist-watch--"what he's bound to get--half-an-hour after morning gun."
"_Boom!_"
Even as the Lieutenant spoke, the radiant air vibrated, and flocks of
swallows, newly arrived, scared by the detonation, rose and wheeled
shrieking over the Fortress of Alexander's Town....
The Hospital was already astir as Katharine passed in. She did not
go at once to the sleeping-tent she shared with Lady Wastwood, but
passed the white rows of canvas dwellings, and turned into the dewy,
deserted gardens, where odours of Eden breathed from the newly opened
roses, and all the thrushes and blackbirds and bulbuls were singing
in chorus to greet the birth of another day.
Her glance sought the table where she had left the card and the
letter. They were not there. Lady Wastwood must have taken them.
One could always count on Trixie for such kind, considerate acts.
She threw down her hat and the serge uniform-cape on the table and
stepped out upon the terrace to drink in the sweet coolness, resting
her hands on the balustrade as she looked out over the gardens, and
the Khedive's boasted tennis-lawns of rafia--beyond the belt of
palms, evergreen oaks, tamarisks and stone pines and rustling
casuarinas, that clothe the slopes of Montana, to the changing blues
and beryls of the classic Western Sea.
Among the cistus-blossoms at her feet, the early bees were humming;
orioles were busy weaving their nest in the overhead vine. A light
step sounded on the mosaic floor behind her. Trixie had come out to
look for her. No--not Trixie! A sudden shock passed through her.
Her heart leaped and seemed to stop, then went on beating furiously.
She felt, without knowledge, that Edward Yaill was near....
Waves of carnation swamped her creamy fairness. Great waves of joy
surged in her heart. She held her breath and looked down at the
white hands folded before her on the creamy stone of the balcony....
The hand that lay uppermost wore the ancient gem of Hercules. Now a
breath fanned upon her neck, the subtle scents of the Desert
surrounded and enveloped her, an arm in a khaki sleeve gently stole
round her, and a familiar hand covered the onyx ring.... Yaill's
hand. Beautiful and strong, masculine and soldierly even in its
slimness, scorched to the colour of lion-hide by savage Asian suns.
"O! Edward.... O my man of men! God gives you back to me! ...."
"Sweetheart! Dear woman! I had not hoped for this! ..."
Wonderful, unexpected boon. Heaven's manna to the starving. His
Katharine's heart upon his own, her lips as freely yielded as though
the hateful barrier had never risen between.... Soon he would wake,
Yaill told himself--to aching desolation. But for a little he would
take what Katharine granted him.
"Julian? ..." She started in his arms.
"Julian is safe, my sweetheart, but not yet fit to travel. I left
him in the best of care, at G.H.Q. at Lydd. The General got me a
passage down by one of their coasting sea-planes. A Sopwith from the
'Raquin'--and she did it in splendid time, too! Another kiss! ...
For a fellow who has lived on memories of kisses--since that day we
parted at Kerr's Arbour, Katharine! How your letter brought the
whole thing back, when it came to me at the Khan at Shechem...."
"By John Hazel? ..."
"A woman brought it, certainly--but Hazel sent it me...."
"Dear Edward, where is he? You do not answer! ..." She drew away
from Yaill, looking in his troubled face. "Where is John Hazel? ..."
"I would give much to tell you! ..."
"You mean that he is dead? ..."
"Frankly, we fear the worst. When we escaped from Shechem, Hazel was
lame through an accident. He would not hamper us--he stayed behind
to keep the road. The road to Kir Saba.... It runs through a defile
among the mountains--just where a Turkish ammunition-lorry had broken
down...."
"Go on! ..."
"For long after we had passed we heard bombs bursting. There seemed
to be any amount of fighting going on at that point on the road.
Then there was an explosion--the lorry had blown up sky-high. We
learned that the day after, when a British scouting-'plane came back
from reconnaissance in the neighbourhood. There were--human _débris_
upon the road--and several dead horses. If Hazel is dead--and I fear
he is--he died as a man should die...."
"But if he is not dead?" Her great eyes held his: "If he were
imprisoned in--a wooden hut, chained down upon a native bed--"
"What do you mean?" Yaill started. "Have you dreamed you saw him
so? There was a wooden hut in the War Prisoners' Wired Enclosure at
Shechem. Julian was there when we found him--chained as you
describe!"
"It was not Julian whom I saw--somewhere between midnight and two
o'clock this morning--but John Hazel...." She shuddered, "John
Hazel, so brutally ill-used--so frightfully disfigured, that the
thing chained to the _anghareb_ was like anything but a man.... Yet
I knew him. You cannot mistake his eyes, once you have seen them.
He is alive--and a prisoner. O Edward, it was no dream!--I tell you
that I saw!--"
"Since you feel like that," Yaill caught fire at the flame of her
intense conviction, "I'll go back--in another skin--and fine-comb the
Front for him."
"Dear, dear Edward! That would be great of you!"
"Not it. I am the man's debtor. He brought me word of you at
Sheria, and afterwards at Shechem. Shall I ever forget the thrill it
gave--the sight of that envelope with your handwriting!"
"Ah, but there were two letters...." Remembrance flooded her.
"Didn't you read the other? I don't believe you have!"
"Frankly, there was no time. But I have it here upon me."
He felt in a baggy side-pocket of his khaki Service jacket, pulled
out a crumpled buff envelope, and held it out to her.
"Read it now, Edward! O Edward, read it! ..."
He looked at her whimsically, and opened Nurse Pidge's letter. When
he began to read, Katharine was standing. When he looked round, she
was seated in a chair. He crossed the floor and knelt by her, and
her yearning arms went out to him, and drew him home from exile, to
the shelter of her breast.