THE PURLOINED CABLE
George, having made his bargain with conscience relative to the Yhiordes
rug, slept the sleep of the untroubled, of the just, of the man who had
nothing in particular to get up for. In fact, after having drunk his
breakfast cocoa and eaten his buttered toast, he evinced his
satisfaction by turning his face away from the attracting morning light
and passing off into sleep again. And thereby hangs this tale.
So much depended upon his getting his mail as it came in that morning,
that Fate herself must have resisted sturdily the desire to shake him by
the shoulder. Perhaps she would have done so but for the serenity of his
pose and the infantile smile that lingered for a while round his lips.
Fate, as with most of us, has her sentimental lapses.
The man next door, having no conscience to speak of (indeed, he had
derailed her while passing his twentieth meridian!), was up betimes. He
had turned in at four; at six he was strolling about the deserted
lounging-room, watching the entrances. It is inconceivable how easily
mail may be purloined in a large hotel. There are as many ways as points
to the wind. Ryanne chose the simplest. He waited for the mail-bag to be
emptied upon the head-porter's counter. Nonchalantly, but deftly, while
the porter looked on, the adventurer ran through the bulk. He found
three letters and a cable, the latter having been received by George's
bankers the day before and mailed directly to the hotel. The porter had
no suspicion that a bold theft was being committed under his very eyes.
Moreover, circumstances prevented his ever learning of it. Ryanne
stuffed the spoils into a pocket.
"If any one asks for me," he said, "say that I shall be at my banker's,
the Anglo-Egyptian Bank, at ten o'clock."
"Yes, sir," replied the porter, as he began to sort the rest of the
mail, not forgetting to peruse the postals.
Ryanne went out into the street, walking rapidly into town.
Mahomed-El-Gebel shook the folds of his cloak and followed. The
adventurer did not slacken his gait till he reached Shepheard's Hotel.
Upon the steps he paused. Some English troops were marching past, on the
way to the railway station; the usual number of natives were patrolling
the sidewalks, dangling strings of imitation scarabs; a caravan of
pack-camels, laden with cotton, shuffled by haughtily; a blind beggar
sat on the curb in front, munching a piece of sugar-cane. Ryanne,
assured that no one he knew was about, proceeded into the writing-room,
wholly deserted at this early hour.
He sat down at a desk and opened the cable. It contained exactly what he
expected. It was a call for advice in regard to the rental of Mr. George
P. A. Jones's mansion in New York and the temporary disposing of the
loose valuables. Ryanne read it over a dozen times, with puckered brow,
and finally balled it fiercely in his fist. Fool! He could not, at that
moment, remember the most essential point in the game, the name and
office of the agent to whom he must this very morning send reply.
Hurriedly he fished out the letters; one chance in a thousand. He swore,
but in relief. In the corner of one of the letters he saw that for some
unknown reason the gods were still with him. Reynolds and Reynolds,
estates, Broad Street; he remembered. He wrote out a reply on a piece of
hotel paper, intending to copy it off at the cable-office. This reply
covered the ground convincingly. "Renting for two months. Old friends.
Leave things as they are. P. A." The initials were a little stroke. From
some source Ryanne had picked up the fact that Jones's business
correspondence was conducted over those two initials. He tore up the
cable into small illegible squares and dropped some into one basket and
some into another. Next, he readdressed George's mail to Leipzig;
another stroke, meaning a delay of two or three months; from the head
office of his banker's there to Paris, Paris to Naples, Naples to New
York. That Ryanne did not open these letters was in nowise due to moral
suasion; whatever they contained could be of no vital importance to him.
"Now, Horace, we shall bend the crook of our elbow in the bar-room. The
reaction warrants a stimulant."
An hour later the whole affair was nicely off his hands. The cable had
cost him three sovereigns. But what was that? _Niente_, _rien_; nothing;
a mere bagatelle. For the first time in weeks a sense of security
invaded his being.
It was by now nine o'clock; and Percival Algernon still reposed upon his
bed of ease. Let him sleep. Many days were to pass ere he would again
know the comfort of linen sheets, the luxury of down under his ear.
What to do? mused the rogue. On the morrow Mr. Jones would leave for
Port Saïd. Ryanne shook his head and with his cane beat a light tattoo
against the side of his shin. Abduction was rather out of his sphere of
action. And yet, the suppression of Percival was by all odds the most
important move to be made. He had volunteered this service and
accomplish it he must, in face of all obstacles, or poof! went the whole
droll fabric. For to him it was droll, and never it rose in his mind
that he did not chuckle saturninely. It was a kind of nightmare where
one hung in mid-air, one's toes just beyond the flaming dragon's jaws.
The rewards would be enormous, but these he would gladly surrender for
the supreme satisfaction of turning the poisoned arrow in the heart of
that canting hypocrite, that smug church-deacon, the sanctimonious, the
sleek, the well-fed first-born. And poor Percival Algernon, for no blame
of his own, must be taken by the scruff of his neck and thrust bodily
into this tangled web of scheme and under-scheme. It was infinitely
humorous.
He had had a vague plan regarding Mahomed, guardian of the Holy
Yhiordes, but it was not possible for him to be in Cairo at this early
date. That he would eventually appear Ryanne never doubted. He knew the
Oriental mind. Mahomed-El-Gebel would cross every barrier less effective
than death. It was a serious matter to the Moslem. If he returned to the
palace at Bagdad, minus the rug, it would mean free transportation to
the Arabian Gulf, bereft of the most important part of his excellent
anatomy, his head. Some day, if he lived, Ryanne intended telling the
exploit to some clever chap who wrote; it would look rather well in
print.
To turn Mahomed against Percival as being the instigator would be an
adroit bit of work; and it would rid him of both of them. Gioconda said
that she wanted no rough work. How like a woman! Here was a man's game,
a desperate one; and Gioconda, not forgetting that it was her
inspiration, wanted it handled with gloves! It was bare-hand work, and
the sooner she was made to realize this, the better. It was no time for
tuning fiddles.
Mahomed out of it, there was a certain English-Bar in the Quarter
Rosetti, a place of dubious repute. Many derelicts drifted there in
search of employment still more dubious. Dregs, scum; the bottom and the
top of the kettle; outcasts, whose hand and animus were directed against
society; black and brown and white men; not soldiers of fortune, like
Ryanne, but their camp-followers. In short, it was there (and Ryanne
still felt a dull shame of it) that Wallace, carrying the final
instructions of the enterprise, had found him, sleeping off the effects
of a shabby rout of the night before. It was there also that he had
heard of the history and the worth of the Yhiordes rug and the
possibility of its theft. He laughed. To have gone upon an adventure
like that, with nothing but the fumes of wine in his head!
For a few pieces of gold he might enroll under his shady banner three or
four shining lights who would undertake the disposal of Percival. Not
that he wished the young man any harm--no; but business was business,
and in some way or another he must be made to vanish from the sight and
presence of men for at least two months.
As for Major Callahan's unforeseen danger, the devil could look out for
that.
Ryanne consulted his watch, a cheap but trustworthy article, costing a
dollar, not to be considered as an available asset. He would give it
away later in the day; for he had decided that while he was in funds
there would be wisdom in the purchase of a fine gold _Longines_. A good
watch, as every one knows, is always as easily converted into cash as a
London bank-note, providing, of course, one is lucky enough to possess
either. Many watches had he left behind, in this place or in that; and
often he had exchanged the ticket for a small bottle with a green neck.
Wherever fortune had gone against him heavily at cards, there he might
find his latest watch. Besides getting a new time-piece, he was
strongly inclined to leave the bulk of his little fortune in the
hotel-safe. One never could tell.
And another good idea, he mused, as he swung the time-piece into his
vest-pocket, would be to add the splendor of a small white stone to his
modest scarf. There is only one well-defined precept among the sporting
fraternity: when flush, buy jewelry. Not to the cause of vanity, not at
all; but precious stones and gold watches constitute a kind of
reserve-fund against the evil day. When one has money in the pocket the
hand is quick and eager to find it. But jewelry is protected by a
certain quality of caution; it is not too readily passed over bars and
gaming-tables. While the pawnbroker stands between the passion and the
green-baize, there's food for thought.
Having settled these questions to his satisfaction, there remained but
one other, how to spend his time. It would be useless to seek the
English-Bar before noon. Might as well ramble through the native town
and the bazaars. He might pick up some little curio to give to Fortune.
So he beckoned to an idle driver, climbed into the carriage, and was
driven off as if empires hung upon minutes.
Ryanne never wearied of the bazaars in Cairo. They were to him no less
enchanting than the circus-parades of his youth. In certain ways, they
were not to be compared with those in Constantinople and Smyrna; but, on
the other hand, there was more light, more charm, more color. Perhaps
the magic nearness of the desert had something to do with it, the
rainless skies, the ever-recurring suggestions of antiquity. His lively
observation, his sense of the picturesque and the humorous, always close
to the surface, gave him that singular impetus which makes man a
prowler. This gift had made possible his success in old Bagdad. Some
years before he had prowled through the narrow city streets, had noted
the windings, the blind-alleys, and had never forgotten. Faces and
localities were written indelibly upon his memory.
One rode to the bazaars, but walked through them or mounted donkeys.
Ryanne preferred his own legs. So did Mahomed. Once, so close did he
come that he could have put his two brown hands round the infidel's
throat. But, patience. Did not the Koran teach patience among the
higher laws? Patience. He could not, madly as he had dreamed, throttle
the white liar here in the bazaars. That would not bring the Holy
Yhiordes to his hands. He must wait. He must plan to lure the man out at
night, then to hurry him into the desert. Out into the desert, where no
man might be his master. Oh, the Holy Yhiordes should be his again; it
was written.
The cries, the shouts, the tower of Babel reclaimed; the intermingling
of the races of the world: the Englishman, the American, the German, the
Italian, the Frenchman, the Greek, the Levantine, the purple-black
Ethiopian, the bronze Nubian; the veiled women, the naked children; all
the color-tones known to art, but predominating, that marvelous faded
tint of blue, the Cairene blue, in the heavens, in the waters, in the
dyes.
"Make way, O my mother!" bawled a donkey-boy to the old crone peddling
matches.
"Backsheesh! Backsheesh!" in the eight tones of the human voice. From
the beggar, his brother, his uncle, his grandfather, his children and
his children's children. "Backsheesh, backsheesh!"
"To the right!" was shrilled into Ryanne's ear; and he dodged. A troop
of donkeys passed, laden with tourists, unhappy, fretful,
self-conscious. A water-carrier brushed against him, and he whiffed the
fresh dampness of the bulging goat-skin. A woman, the long, black
head-veil streaming out behind in the clutch of the monkey-like hand of
a toddling child, carried a terra-cotta water-jar upon her head. The
grace with which she moved, the abruptness of the color-changes, caught
Ryanne's roving eye and filled it with pleasure.
Dust rose and subsided, eddied and settled; beggars blind and one-eyed
squatted in it, children tossed it in play, and beasts of burden
shuffled through it.
The roar in front of the shops, the pressing and crowding of customers,
the high cries of the merchants; the gurgle of the water-pipes, the
pleasant fumes of coffee, the hardy loafers lolling before the khans or
caravansaries; a veiled face at a lattice-window; the violet shadows in
a doorway; the sunshine upon the soaring mosques; a true believer,
rocking and mumbling over his tattered Koran; gold and silver and
jewels; amber and copper and brass; embroideries and rugs and carpets;
and the pest of fleas, the plague of flies, the insidious smells.
Rarely one saw the true son of the desert, the Bedouin. He disdained
streets and walls, and only necessity brought him here among the
polyglot and the polygon.
Ryanne found himself inspecting "the largest emerald in the world, worth
twelve thousand pounds," which looked more like a fine hexagonal of onyx
than a gem. It was one of the curiosities of the bazaars, however, and
tourists were generally round it in force. To his experienced eye it was
no more than a fine specimen of emerald quartz, worth what any fool of a
collector was willing to pay for it. From this bazaar he passed on into
the next, and there he saw Fortune.
And as Mahomed, always close at hand, saw the hard lines in Ryanne's
face soften, the cynical smile become tender, he believed he saw his way
to strike.