IN THE ROSE ROOM
Candles flared on the table but not a figure greeted his eye. The
room was deathly still; nothing stirred but the long draperies
fluttering in the wind.
"Arlee!" he whispered in a voice strained with excitement. "Arlee
Beecher, are you here?... Arlee!"
No voice answered. No motion revealed her. Only the candle flames
danced drunkenly in a puff of air, flaunting their secret knowledge
of the tenant they had lighted.
He darted to the tumbled bed and flung aside the covers; he looked
beneath it and beneath the couch; he sent a candle's light traveling
about the empty whiteness of the bath. No little figure, pitifully
silenced, was, hidden there. The room was empty. And all the while
that din sounded somewhere beyond them--running feet and strident
yells.
"He's got her!" thought Billy, and first his heart leaped and then
it sank. For very dear to that boy's heart had been the dream of
rescuing her himself. And then he hated himself for that base envy.
For what did it matter as long as little Arlee was safe, and that
she was gone with Falconer, the empty room and the signs of hasty
departure all spoke in witness. He wondered sharply how they had
gone and whether he had better try to follow them and then thought
it was shrewder to go back the way he had come and from below to try
to guard whatever descent they must make.
He turned swiftly and crossed to the door. With a hand outstretched
toward it he caught suddenly, beneath all the distant din, the click
of a sliding lock, and he whirled about, dropping his right hand
into his pocket, to see a pale face staring at him from the other
side of the bed.
"Not a move--or you drop!" said Captain Kerissen. The candle lights
glinted on the muzzle of a gun leveled steadily at him.
"Stay where you are," the Captain added, and Billy stayed, and
through the dusk the two men stood eyeing each with a glare of
hatred. But Kerissen's eyes held hatred triumphant.
"So, Monsieur," said the Turk. "This is the midnight call you
gentlemen pay--in the chamber of my wife."
"Your wife!" Billy gave a snort of unbelief. "She says you did not
marry her!"
"When you are found dead--if you are found," the other continued,
looking lovingly along the sight, "there will not even be a question
into the cause. You will be carted off like carrion--carrion that
prowled too near."
"Just the same you've made a mistake," said Billy in a dogged and
argumentative tone. "I'm not interested in visiting any wife of
yours. The lady I'm representing says you didn't marry her. But she
says you did keep back most of her jewelry and she's giving the
story to the papers to-morrow unless I return with the stuff
to-night."
He could not guess what impression this speech was making.
"I am not interested in your stories, Monsieur," the Turk returned
blandly. "I am interested only in your dispatching--which I feel
should be prolonged beyond the mercy of a shot."
"Look here, I'm not a common robber and you know it," said Billy,
and his voice sounded rough and angry. "I'm here to collect the
property of the lady you detained here, while she was under contract
in Vienna. I don't want anything more than _belongs_ to her. She
left----"
"With a great deal more upon her than she brought! But am I to
suppose, Monsieur, that you have made your way here, at some
personal inconvenience, I should say, to discuss the generosity of
my remuneration to the lady?" There was a tense silence and the
Captain continued in a low, almost purring voice, "You do not
appear, even now, to comprehend the thing you have done. I shall do
my best to make you comprehend--and before I have finished it may be
that I shall have a clearer explanation of this impulsive call. You
have no notion, Monsieur, how certain things unloose the tongue--but
you shall discover."
Billy saw his white teeth show in a deadly smile. Back of him a
dark, heavy figure appeared and the Captain, without turning his
head or moving his eyes or his gun from Billy, gave some rapid
directions in Turkish and the figure disappeared. It occurred to
Billy like a flash that from that secret passage where the figure
had appeared there was a panel into the room on the right and that
room had a door opening into the hall outside. The next moment he
felt the door behind him open.
Then he pulled the trigger of that gun in his pocket in which his
hand had been so lightly resting. The Captain seemed to fire the
same instant, but Billy had jumped aside as he shot his own gun and
he heard the bullet singing past his ear, and now, with his revolver
out of his pocket, he shot again with an aim so true that the other
man's right hand gave a spasmodic jerk and the revolver went
spinning to the ground.
Across the room he hurled himself, springing from the onslaught of
the assailant entering behind him, and thrusting the cursing Captain
from his path he leaped through the sliding panel. The lock clicked
home and he paused even in that moment of hammering pulses and
pounding heart to fumble in the darkness to shut that other panel
into the next room, remembering Fritzi's warning that those locks
needed a key to open them from within. The minute's delay for the
key would mean many minutes for him.
He stumbled against the tiny stairs that led to the tower room
through which Falconer had descended, but he did not dash up those
stairs for he heard the noise of feet overhead, as if returning from
pursuit, and he darted straight on through the long, narrow,
unlighted corridor, running like a hare.
At the other end he crashed against a half-open door and fell
headlong down a flight of stairs. From his astonished fingers the
revolver went clattering and though he picked himself up, battered
but unbroken, at the foot, he dared not waste a minute to go back
and hunt for the gun in the dark. He was totally at a loss for
directions; he had expected to find himself in the Captain's rooms,
and the stairs were unknown. Now he could just make out a door ahead
of him and sent it flying open, smash in the face of an astonished
black boy who went stumbling backwards.
Out went Billy's fist and caught the unguarded chin a staggering
blow, and as the boy reeled back he flung one hurried glance about
the big, lamp-lit chamber in which he found himself, the room
evidently of Captain Kerissen, and darted to an arsenal of weapons
that glinted against the inlaid panels. Wrenching down the shortest
scabbard he jerked out a most villainous looking two-edged knife and
gripping this piratical weapon he bounded out the door, fled through
the dim hall to his right, rounded a corner, to the right again,
hearing the sounds of pursuit louder and louder now behind him, shot
through a vast reception hall and plunged down a flight of stairs.
From the darkness below a figure rose up to receive him with a grip
like iron. Billy's right arm was doubled at his side; the blade of
that villainous old dagger was pressed against the yielding softness
of the fellow's sash, but for the life of him Billy could not drive
home that knife against the human flesh. With a convulsive movement
he tore himself from those gorilla arms and sent up a desperate
kick, then leaped past the staggering man, and with the unused knife
in his teeth, he tore at the bars of the great gate in the wall at
his left. The bars were stiff and primitive and resisted his furious
fingers, and the big gate-keeper, gasping for a moment against the
stairs, suddenly straightened and sprang toward him.
"Here's one hero that didn't open the door 'in the nick of time'!"
raced through Billy's grimly humorous mind, as he dodged the savage
thrust of a knife the man had drawn and turned and scuttled across
the court with the other on his heels. Through the arches he darted
and then down into the garden, sprinting as he had never sprinted
before, on, on to the southwest angles of the wall, thanking Heaven
fervently, as every step outdistanced his pursuer, that the man had
evidently no gun.
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."