IN THE CAPITAL OF THE SAHARA.
Mrs. Macalister turned with sudden eagerness and alarm towards Cecil
Thorold--the crowd on the lawn in front of the railings was so dense
that only heads could be moved--and she said excitedly--
“I’m sure I can see my ghost across there!”
She indicated with her agreeable snub nose the opposite side of the
course.
“Your ghost?” Cecil questioned, puzzled for a moment by this
extraordinary remark.
Then the Arab horsemen swept by in a cloud of dust and of thunder, and
monopolised the attention of the lawn and the grand stand, and the
_élite_ of Biskra crammed thereon and therein. They had one more lap to
accomplish for the Prix de la Ville.
Biskra is an oasis in the desert, and the capital of the Algerian
Sahara. Two days’ journey by train from Algiers, over the Djujura
Ranges, it is the last outpost of the Algerian State Railways. It has a
hundred and sixty thousand palm trees; but the first symptom of Biskra
to be observed from the approaching first-class carriage is the chimney
of the electric light plant. Besides the hundred and sixty thousand
palm trees, it possesses half a dozen large hotels, five native
villages, a fort, a huge barracks, a very ornamental town hall, shops
for photographic materials, a whole street of dancing-girls, the finest
winter climate in all Africa, and a gambling Casino. It is a unique
thing in oases. It completely upsets the conventional idea of an oasis
as a pool of water bordered with a few date palms, and the limitless
desert all round! Nevertheless, though Biskra as much resembles Paris
as it resembles the conventional idea of an oasis, it is genuine
enough, and the limitless desert is, in fact, all around. You may walk
out into the desert--and meet a motor-car manœuvring in the sand; but
the sand remains the sand, and the desert remains the desert, and the
Sahara, more majestic than the sea itself, refuses to be cheapened by
the pneumatic tyres of a Mercedes, or the blue rays of the electric
light, or the feet of English, French, and Germans wandering in search
of novelty--it persists in being august.
Once a year, in February, Biskra becomes really and excessively
excited, and the occasion is its annual two-day race-meeting. Then the
tribes and their chieftains and their horses and their camels arrive
magically out of the four corners of the desert and fill the oasis.
And the English, French, and Germans arrive from the Mediterranean
coast, with their trunks and their civilisation, and crowd the
hotels till beds in Biskra are precious beyond rubies. And under the
tropical sun, East and West meet magnificently in the afternoon on the
racecourse to the north of the European reserve. And the tribesmen,
their scraggy steeds trailing superb horsecloths, are arranged in
hundreds behind the motor-cars and landaus, with the _pari-mutuel_
in full swing twenty yards away. And the dancing-girls, the renowned
Ouled-Nails, covered with gold coins and with muslin in high, crude,
violent purples, greens, vermilions, shriek and whinny on their benches
just opposite the grand stand, where the Western women, arrayed in
the toilettes of Worth, Doucet, and Redfern, quiz them through their
glasses. And, fringing all, is a crowd of the adventurers and rascals
of two continents, the dark and the light. And in the background
the palms wave eternally in the breeze. And to the east the Aurès
mountains, snow-capped, rise in hues of saffron and pale rose, like
stage mountains, against the sapphire sky. And to the south a line of
telegraph poles lessens and disappears over the verge into the inmost
heart of the mysterious and unchangeable Sahara.
It was amid this singular scene that Mrs. Macalister made to Cecil
Thorold her bizarre remark about a ghost.
“What ghost?” the millionaire repeated, when the horsemen had passed.
Then he remembered that on the famous night, now nearly a month
ago, when the Hôtel St. James at Algiers was literally sacked by an
organised band of depredators, and valuables to the tune of forty
thousand pounds disappeared, Mrs. Macalister had given the first alarm
by crying out that there was a ghost in her room.
“Ah!” He smiled easily, condescendingly, to this pertinacious widow,
who had been pursuing him, so fruitlessly, for four mortal weeks, from
Algiers to Tunis, from Tunis back to Constantine, and from Constantine
here to Biskra. “All Arabs look more or less alike, you know.”
“But----”
“Yes,” he said again. “They all look alike, to us, like Chinamen.”
Considering that he himself, from his own yacht, had witnessed the
total loss in the Mediterranean of the vessel which contained the
plunder and the fleeing band of thieves; considering that his own yacht
had rescued the only three survivors of that shipwreck, and that these
survivors had made a full confession, and had, only two days since,
been duly sentenced by the criminal court at Algiers--he did not feel
inclined to minister to Mrs. Macalister’s feminine fancies.
“Did you ever see an Arab with a mole on his chin?” asked Mrs.
Macalister.
“No, I never did.”
“Well, my Arab had a mole on his chin, and that is why I am sure it was
he that I saw a minute ago--over there. No, he’s gone now!”
The competing horsemen appeared round the bend for the last time, the
dancing-girls whinnied in their high treble, the crowd roared, and the
Prix de la Ville was won and lost. It was the final race on the card,
and in the _mêlée_ which followed, Cecil became separated from his
adorer. She was to depart on the morrow by the six a.m. train. “Urgent
business,” she said. She had given up the chase of the millionaire.
“Perhaps she’s out of funds, poor thing!” he reflected. “Anyhow, I hope
I may never see her again.” As a matter of fact he never did see her
again. She passed out of his life as casually as she had come into it.
He strolled slowly towards the hotel through the perturbed crowd of
Arabs, Europeans, carriages, camels, horses and motor-cars. The mounted
tribesmen were in a state of intense excitement, and were continually
burning powder in that mad fashion which seems to afford a peculiar joy
to the Arab soul. From time to time a tribesman would break out of the
ranks of his clan, and, spurring his horse and dropping the reins on
the animal’s neck, would fire revolvers from both hands as he flew over
the rough ground. It was unrivalled horsemanship, and Cecil admired
immensely the manner in which, at the end of the frenzied performance,
these men, drunk with powder, would wheel their horses sharply while at
full gallop, and stop dead.
And then, as one man, who had passed him like a hurricane, turned,
paused, and jogged back to his tribe, Cecil saw that he had a mole on
his chin. He stood still to watch the splendid fellow, and he noticed
something far more important than the mole--he perceived that the
revolver in the man’s right hand had a chased butt.
“I can’t swear to it,” Cecil mused. “But if that isn’t my revolver,
stolen from under my pillow at the Hôtel St. James, Algiers, on the
tenth of January last, my name is Norval, and not Thorold.”
And the whole edifice of his ideas concerning the robbery at the Hôtel
de Paris began to shake.
“That revolver ought to be at the bottom of the Mediterranean,” he
said to himself; “and so ought Mrs. Macalister’s man with the mole,
according to the accepted theory of the crime and the story of the
survivors of the shipwreck of the _Perroquet Vert_.”
He walked on, keeping the man in sight.
“Suppose,” he murmured--“suppose all that stuff isn’t at the bottom of
the Mediterranean after all?”
A hundred yards further on, he happened to meet one of the white-clad
native guides attached to the Royal Hotel where he had lunched. The
guide saluted and offered service, as all the Biskra guides do on all
occasions. Cecil’s reply was to point out the man with the mole.
“You see him, Mahomet,” said Cecil. “Make no mistake. Find out what
tribe he belongs to, where he comes from, and where he sleeps in
Biskra, and I will give you a sovereign. Meet me at the Casino to-night
at ten.”
Mahomet grinned an honest grin and promised to earn the sovereign.
Cecil stopped an empty landau and drove hurriedly to the station
to meet the afternoon train from civilisation. He had arrived in
Biskra that morning by road from El Kantara, and Lecky was coming by
the afternoon train with the luggage. On seeing him, he gave that
invaluable factotum some surprising orders.
In addition to Lecky, the millionaire observed among the passengers
descending from the train two other people who were known to him; but
he carefully hid himself from these ladies. In three minutes he had
disappeared into the nocturnal whirl and uproar of Biskra, solely bent
on proving or disproving the truth of a brand-new theory concerning the
historic sack of the Hôtel St. James.
But that night he waited in vain for Mahomet at the packed Casino,
where the Arab chieftains and the English gentlemen, alike in their
tremendous calm, were losing money at _petits chevaux_ with all the
imperturbability of stone statues.
II.
Nor did Cecil see anything of Mahomet during the next day, and he had
reasons for not making inquiries about him at the Royal Hotel. But at
night, as he was crossing the deserted market, Mahomet came up to him
suddenly out of nowhere, and, grinning the eternal, honest, foolish
grin, said in his odd English--
“I have found--him.”
“Where?”
“Come,” said Mahomet, mysteriously. The Eastern guide loves to be
mysterious.
Cecil followed him far down the carnivalesque street of the
Ouled-Nails, where tom-toms and nameless instruments of music sounded
from every other house, and the _premières danseuses_ of the Sahara
showed themselves gorgeously behind grilles, like beautiful animals
in cages. Then Mahomet entered a crowded _café_, passed through it,
and pushing aside a suspended mat at the other end, bade Cecil proceed
further. Cecil touched his revolver (his new revolver), to make sure of
its company, and proceeded further. He found himself in a low Oriental
room, lighted by an odorous English lamp with a circular wick, and
furnished with a fine carpet and two bedroom chairs certainly made
in Curtain Road, Shoreditch--a room characteristic of Biskra. On one
chair sat a man. But this person was not Mrs. Macalister’s man with
a mole. He was obviously a Frenchman, by his dress, gestures, and
speech. He greeted the millionaire in French and then dropped into
English--excellently grammatical and often idiomatic English, spoken
with a strong French accent. He was rather a little man, thin, grey,
and vivacious.
“Give yourself the pain of sitting down,” said the Frenchman. “I am
glad to see you. You may be able to help us.”
“You have the advantage of me,” Cecil replied, smiling.
“Perhaps,” said the Frenchman. “You came to Biskra yesterday, Mr.
Thorold, with the intention of staying at the Royal Hotel, where rooms
were engaged for you. But yesterday afternoon you went to the station
to meet your servant, and you ordered him to return to Constantine
with your luggage and to await your instructions there. You then took
a handbag and went to the Casino Hotel, and you managed, by means
of diplomacy and of money, to get a bed in the _salle à manger_. It
was all they could do for you. You gave the name of Collins. Biskra,
therefore, is not officially aware of the presence of Mr. Cecil
Thorold, the millionaire; while Mr. Collins is free to carry on his
researches, to appear and to disappear as it pleases him.”
“Yes,” Cecil remarked. “You have got that fairly right. But may I
ask----”
“Let us come to business at once,” said the Frenchman, politely
interrupting him. “Is this your watch?”
He dramatically pulled a watch and chain from his pocket.
“It is,” said Cecil quietly. He refrained from embroidering the
affirmative with exclamations. “It was stolen from my bedroom at the
Hôtel St. James, with my revolver, some fur, and a quantity of money,
on the tenth of January.”
“You are surprised to find it is not sunk in the Mediterranean?”
“Thirty hours ago I should have been surprised,” said Cecil. “Now I am
not.”
“And why not now?”
“Because I have formed a new theory. But have the goodness to give me
the watch.”
“I cannot,” said the Frenchman, graciously. “Not at present.”
There was a pause. The sound of music was heard from the _café_.
“But, my dear sir, I insist.” Cecil spoke positively.
The Frenchman laughed. “I will be perfectly frank with you, Mr.
Thorold. Your cleverness in forming a new theory of the great robbery
merits all my candour. My name is Sylvain, and I am head of the
detective force of Algiers, _chef de la sureté_. You will perceive
that I cannot part with the watch without proper formalities. Mr.
Thorold, the robbery at the Hôtel St. James was a work of the highest
criminal art. Possibly I had better tell you the nature of our recent
discoveries.”
“I always thought well of the robbery,” Cecil observed, “and my opinion
of it is rising. Pray continue.”
“According to your new theory, Mr. Thorold, how many persons were on
board the _Perroquet Vert_ when she began to sink?”
“Three,” said Cecil promptly, as though answering a conundrum.
The Frenchman beamed. “You are admirable,” he exclaimed. “Yes, instead
of eighteen, there were three. The wreck of the _Perroquet Vert_
carefully pre-arranged; the visit of the boat to the _Perroquet Vert_
off Mustapha Inférieure was what you call, I believe, a ‘plant.’
The stolen goods never left dry land. There were three Arabs only
on the _Perroquet Vert_--one to steer her, and the other two in the
engine-room. And these three were very careful to get themselves saved.
They scuttled their ship in sight of your yacht and of another vessel.
There is no doubt, Mr. Thorold,” the Frenchman smiled with a hint of
irony, “that the thieves were fully _au courant_ of your doings on the
_Claribel_. The shipwreck was done deliberately, with you and your
yacht for an audience. It was a masterly stroke,” he proceeded, almost
enthusiastically, “for it had the effect, not merely of drawing away
suspicion from the true direction, but of putting an end to all further
inquiries. Were not the goods at the bottom of the sea, and the thieves
drowned? What motive could the police have for further activity? In six
months--nay, three months--all the notes and securities could be safely
negotiated, because no measures would have to be taken to stop them.
Why take measures to stop notes that are at the bottom of the sea?”
“But the three survivors who are now in prison,” Cecil said. “Their
behaviour, their lying, needs some accounting for.”
“Quite simple,” the Frenchman went on. “They are in prison for three
years. What is that to an Arab? He will suffer it with stoicism.
Say that ten thousand francs are deposited with each of their
families. When they come out, they are rich for life. At a cost of
thirty thousand francs and the price of the ship--say another thirty
thousand--the thieves reasonably expected to obtain absolute security.”
“It was a heroic idea!” said Cecil.
“It was,” said the Frenchman. “But it has failed.”
“Evidently. But why?”
“Can you ask? You know as well as I do! It has failed, partly because
there were too many persons in the secret, partly because of the Arab
love of display on great occasions, and partly because of a mole on a
man’s chin.”
“By the way, that was the man I came here to see,” Cecil remarked.
“He is arrested,” said the Frenchman curtly, and then he sighed. “The
booty was not guarded with sufficient restrictions. It was not kept in
bulk. One thief probably said: ‘I cannot do without this lovely watch.’
And another said: ‘What a revolver! I must have it.’ Ah! The Arab, the
Arab! The Europeans ought to have provided for that. That is where they
were foolish--the idiots! The idiots!” he repeated angrily.
“You seem annoyed.”
“Mr. Thorold, I am a poet in these things. It annoys me to see a fine
composition ruined by bad construction in the fifth act.... However, as
chief of the surety, I rejoice.”
“You have located the thieves and the plunder?”
“I think I have. Certainly I have captured two of the thieves and
several articles. The bulk lies at----” He stopped and looked round.
“Mr. Thorold, may I rely on you? I know, perhaps more than you think,
of your powers. May I rely on you?”
“You may,” said Cecil.
“You will hold yourself at my disposition during to-morrow, to assist
me?”
“With pleasure.”
“Then let us take coffee. In the morning, I shall have acquired certain
precise information which at the moment I lack. Let us take coffee.”
III.
On the following morning, somewhat early, while walking near Mecid, one
of the tiny outlying villages of the oasis, Cecil met Eve Fincastle
and Kitty Sartorius, whom he had not spoken with since the affair of
the bracelet at Bruges, though he had heard from them and had, indeed,
seen them at the station two days before. Eve Fincastle had fallen
rather seriously ill at Mentone, and the holiday of the two girls,
which should have finished before the end of the year, was prolonged.
Financially, the enforced leisure was a matter of trifling importance
to Kitty Sartorius, who had insisted on remaining with her friend, much
to the disgust of her London manager. But the journalist’s resources
were less royal, and Eve considered herself fortunate that she had
obtained from her newspaper some special descriptive correspondence in
Algeria. It was this commission which had brought her, and Kitty with
her, in the natural course of an Algerian tour, to Biskra.
Cecil was charmed to see his acquaintances; for Eve interested him,
and Kitty’s beauty (it goes without saying) dazzled him. Nevertheless,
he had been, as it were, hiding himself, and, in his character as an
amateur of the loot of cities, he would have preferred to have met them
on some morning other than that particular morning.
“You will go with us to Sidi Okba, won’t you, to-day?” said Kitty,
after they had talked a while. “We’ve secured a carriage, and I’m dying
for a drive in the real, true desert.”
“Sorry I can’t,” said Cecil.
“Oh, but----” Eve Fincastle began, and stopped.
“Of course you can,” said Kitty imperiously. “You must. We leave
to-morrow--we’re only here for two days--for Algiers and France.
Another two days in Paris, and then London, my darling London, and
work! So it’s understood?”
“It desolates me,” said Cecil. “But I can’t go with you to Sidi Okba
to-day.”
They both saw that he meant to refuse them.
“That settles it, then,” Eve agreed quietly.
“You’re horrid, Mr. Thorold,” said the bewitching actress. “And if you
imagine for a single moment we haven’t seen that you’ve been keeping
out of our way, you’re mistaken. You must have noticed us at the
station. Eve thinks you’ve got another of your----”
“No, I don’t, Kitty,” said Eve quickly.
“If Miss Fincastle suspects that I’ve got another of my----” he paused
humorously, “Miss Fincastle is right. I _have_ got another of my---- I
throw myself on your magnanimity. I am staying in Biskra under the name
of Collins, and my time, like my name, is not my own.”
“In that case,” Eve remarked, “we will pass on.”
And they shook hands, with a certain frigidity on the part of the two
girls.
During the morning, M. Sylvain made no sign, and Cecil lunched in
solitude at the Dar Eef, adjoining the Casino. The races being over,
streams of natives, with their tents and their quadrupeds, were
leaving Biskra for the desert; they made an interminable procession
which could be seen from the window of the Dar Eef coffee room. Cecil
was idly watching this procession, when a hand touched his shoulder. He
turned and saw a gendarme.
“Monsieur Collang?” questioned the gendarme.
Cecil assented.
“_Voulez-vous avoir l’obligeance de me suivre, monsieur?_”
Cecil obediently followed, and found in the street M. Sylvain well
wrapped up, and seated in an open carriage.
“I have need of you,” said M. Sylvain. “Can you come at once?”
“Certainly.”
In two minutes they were driving away together into the desert.
“Our destination is Sidi Okba,” said M. Sylvain. “A curious place.”
The road (so called) led across the Biskra River (so called), and then
in a straight line eastwards. The river had about the depth of a dinner
plate. As for the road, in some parts it not only merely failed to be
a road--it was nothing but virgin desert, intact; at its best it was
a heaving and treacherous mixture of sand and pebbles, through which,
and not over which, the two unhappy horses had to drag M. Sylvain’s
unfortunate open carriage.
M. Sylvain himself drove.
“I am well acquainted with this part of the desert,” he said. “We have
strange cases sometimes. And when I am on important business, I never
trust an Arab. By the way, you have a revolver? I do not anticipate
danger, but----”
“I have one,” said Cecil.
“And it is loaded?”
Cecil took the weapon from his hip pocket and examined it.
“It is loaded,” he said.
“Good!” exclaimed the Frenchman, and then he turned to the gendarme,
who was sitting as impassively as the leaps and bounds of the carriage
would allow, on a small seat immediately behind the other two, and
demanded of him in French whether his revolver also was loaded. The
man gave a respectful affirmative. “Good!” exclaimed M. Sylvain again,
and launched into a description of the wondrous gardens of the Comte
Landon, whose walls, on the confines of the oasis, they were just
passing.
Straight in front could be seen a short line of palm trees, waving in
the desert breeze under the desert sun, and Cecil asked what they were.
“Sidi Okba,” replied M. Sylvain. “The hundred and eighty thousand palms
of the desert city of Sidi Okba. They seem near to you, no doubt, but
we shall travel twenty kilometres before we reach them. The effect of
nearness is due to the singular quality of the atmosphere. It is a two
hours’ journey.”
“Then do we return in the dark?” Cecil inquired.
“If we are lucky, we may return at once, and arrive in Biskra at dusk.
If not--well, we shall spend the night in Sidi Okba. You object?”
“Not at all.”
“A curious place,” observed M. Sylvain.
Soon they had left behind all trace of the oasis, and were in the
“real, true desert.” They met and passed native equipages and strings
of camels, and from time to time on either hand at short distances
from the road could be seen the encampments of wandering tribes. And
after interminable joltings, in which M. Sylvain, his guest, and his
gendarme were frequently hurled at each other’s heads with excessive
violence, the short line of palm trees began to seem a little nearer
and to occupy a little more of the horizon. And then they could descry
the wall of the city. And at last they reached its gate and the beggars
squatting within its gate.
“Descend!” M. Sylvain ordered his subordinate.
The man disappeared, and M. Sylvain and Cecil drove into the city;
they met several carriages of Biskra visitors just setting forth on
their return journey.
In insisting that Sidi Okba was a curious place, M. Sylvain did not
exaggerate. It is an Eastern town of the most antique sort, built
solely of mud, with the simplicity, the foulness, the smells, and the
avowed and the secret horrors which might be expected in a community
which has not altered its habits in any particular for a thousand
years. During several months of each year it is visited daily by
Europeans (its mosque is the oldest Mohammedan building in Africa,
therefore no respectable tourist dares to miss it), and yet it remains
absolutely uninfluenced by European notions. The European person must
take his food with him; he is allowed to eat it in the garden of a
_café_ which is European as far as its sign and its counter, but no
further; he could not eat it in the _café_ itself. This _café_ is the
mark which civilisation has succeeded in making on Sidi Okba in ten
centuries.
As Cecil drove with M. Sylvain through the narrow, winding street,
he acutely felt the East closing in upon him; and, since the sun was
getting low over the palm trees, he was glad to have the detective by
his side.
They arrived at the wretched _café_. A pair-horse vehicle, with the
horses’ heads towards Biskra, was waiting at the door. Unspeakable
lanes, fetid, winding, sinister, and strangely peopled, led away in
several directions.
M. Sylvain glanced about him.
“We shall succeed,” he murmured cheerfully. “Follow me.”
And they went into the mark of civilisation, and saw the counter, and a
female creature behind the bar, and, through another door, a glimpse of
the garden beyond.
“Follow me,” murmured M. Sylvain again, opening another door to the
left into a dark passage. “Straight on. There is a room at the other
end.”
They vanished.
In a few seconds M. Sylvain returned into the _café_.
IV.
Now, in the garden were Eve Fincastle and Kitty Sartorius, tying up
some wraps preparatory to their departure for Biskra. They caught sight
of Cecil Thorold and his companion entering the _café_, and they were
surprised to find the millionaire in Sidi Okba after his refusal to
accompany them.
Through the back door of the _café_ they saw Cecil’s companion reappear
out of the passage. They saw the creature behind the counter stoop and
produce a revolver and then offer it to the Frenchman with a furtive
movement. They saw that the Frenchman declined it, and drew another
revolver from his own pocket and winked. And the character of the wink
given by the Frenchman to the woman made them turn pale under the
sudden, knife-like thrust of an awful suspicion.
The Frenchman looked up and perceived the girls in the garden, and one
glance at Kitty’s beauty was not enough for him.
“Can you keep him here a minute while I warn Mr. Thorold?” said Eve
quickly.
Kitty Sartorius nodded and began to smile on the Frenchman; she then
lifted her finger beckoningly. If millions had depended on his refusal,
it is doubtful whether he would have resisted that charming gesture.
(Not for nothing did Kitty Sartorius receive a hundred a week at the
Regency Theatre.) In a moment the Frenchman was talking to her, and she
had enveloped him in a golden mist of enchantment.
Guided by a profound instinct, Eve ran up the passage and into the room
where Cecil was awaiting the return of his M. Sylvain.
“Come out,” she whispered passionately, as if between violent anger and
dreadful alarm. “You are trapped--you--with your schemes!”
“Trapped!” he exclaimed, smiling. “Not at all. I have my revolver!” His
hand touched his pocket. “By Jove! I haven’t! It’s gone!”
The miraculous change in his face was of the highest interest.
“Come out!” she cried. “Our carriage is waiting!”
In the _café_, Kitty Sartorius was talking to the Frenchman. She
stroked his sleeve with her gloved hand, and he, the Frenchman, still
held the revolver which he had displayed to the woman of the counter.
Inspired by the consummate and swiftly aroused emotion of that moment,
Cecil snatched at the revolver. The three friends walked hastily to
the street, jumped into the carriage, and drove away. Already as they
approached the city gate, they could see the white tower of the Royal
Hotel at Biskra shining across the desert like a promise of security....
The whole episode had lasted perhaps two minutes, but they were minutes
of such intense and blinding revelation as Cecil had never before
experienced. He sighed with relief as he lay back in the carriage.
“And that’s the man,” he meditated, astounded, “who must have planned
the robbery of the Hôtel St. James! And I never suspected it! I never
suspected that his gendarme was a sham! I wonder whether his murder of
me would have been as leisurely and artistic as his method of trapping
me! I wonder!... Well, this time I have certainly enjoyed myself.”
Then he gazed at Eve Fincastle.
The women said nothing for a long time, and even then the talk was of
trifles.
V.
Eve Fincastle had gone up on to the vast, flat roof of the Royal Hotel,
and Cecil, knowing that she was there, followed. The sun had just
set, and Biskra lay spread out below them in the rich evening light
which already, eastwards, had turned to sapphire. They could still see
the line of the palm trees of Sidi Okba, and in another direction,
the long, lonely road to Figuig, stretching across the desert like a
rope which had been flung from heaven on the waste of sand. The Aurès
mountains were black and jagged. Nearer, immediately under them, was
the various life of the great oasis, and the sounds of that life--human
speech, the rattle of carriages, the grunts of camels in the camel
enclosure, the whistling of an engine at the station, the melancholy
wails of hawkers--ascended softly in the twilight of the Sahara.
Cecil approached her, but she did not turn towards him.
“I want to thank you,” he started.
She made no movement, and then suddenly she burst out. “Why do you
continue with these shameful plots and schemes?” she demanded, looking
always steadily away from him. “Why do you disgrace yourself? Was
this another theft, another blackmailing, another affair like that
at Ostend? Why----” She stopped, deeply disturbed, unable to control
herself.
“My dear journalist,” he said quietly, “you don’t understand. Let me
tell you.”
He gave her his history from the night summons by Mrs. Macalister to
that same afternoon.
She faced him.
“I’m so glad,” she murmured. “You can’t imagine----”
“I want to thank you for saving my life,” he said again.
She began to cry; her body shook; she hid her face.
“But----” he stammered awkwardly.
“It wasn’t I who saved your life,” she said, sobbing passionately.
“I wasn’t beautiful enough. Only Kitty could have done it. Only a
beautiful woman could have kept that man----”
“I know all about it, my dear girl,” Cecil silenced her disavowal.
Something moved him to take her hand. She smiled sadly, not resisting.
“You must excuse me,” she murmured. “I’m not myself to-night.... It’s
because of the excitement.... Anyhow, I’m glad you haven’t taken any
‘loot’ this time.”
“But I have,” he protested. (He was surprised to find his voice
trembling.)
“What?”
“This.” He pressed her hand tenderly.
“That?” She looked at her hand, lying in his, as though she had never
seen it before.
“Eve,” he whispered.
* * * * *
About two-thirds of the loot of the Hôtel St. James was ultimately
recovered; not at Sidi Okba, but in the cellars of the Hôtel St. James
itself. From first to last that robbery was a masterpiece of audacity.
Its originator, the _soi-disant_ M. Sylvain, head of the Algiers
detective force, is still at large.