CHAPTER X
She was sitting with her hands crossed on her lap when he returned, carrying a small tray bearing two cups filled with coffee.
"You have been a very long time," she remarked casually.
"An especially delicious coffee had to be prepared for Mademoiselle, and strict orders given that we were not to be disturbed until I give the signal. Also that this quarter of the house, which is mine, is to be cleared absolutely of all inhabitants. Therefore shall we be at peace even until this time to-morrow if I make no sign. Also to emphasise my orders, I ordered that a certain person be bastinadoed. She sickens me with her outpourings of love, and was loitering about this door seeking doubtlessly to enter. When she does she will most certainly not enter upon her feet if my orders have been strictly carried out."
And even as he spoke a distant piercing scream, followed by another, and yet another, rent the air, causing Jill's mouth to shut like a steel trap, and her eyes to blaze like fires.
"That is what happens when I am disobeyed, Mademoiselle! Here is your coffee, drink it!"
The tone was brutal, and Jill meekly put out her hand to take the little porcelain and silver trifle the man was bringing to her, laying it beside the emerald ring upon the table as he turned to fetch his own cup.
"Drop that!"
Jill had not raised her voice, but a certain unmistakable quality in it caused the man to wheel sharply.
He stared in blank amazement for a fleeting second, and then, still carefully holding the cup, backed hastily and sideways out of the direct range of a very small but very useful-looking revolver in Jill's right hand.
There was a curious lifelessness in the whole situation, and a quite distressing lack of drama until the oriental smiled contemptuously.
"Do not think to frighten me with that plaything, because I am totally unafraid. We hear of the Englishwomen who shoot and ride like men, but—well! we hear so many tales of Europe. Put up your little toy, Mademoiselle, and remember in future that no one with any respect for his life ever gives me an order!"
With an indifference that was not in the least assumed, he raised the cup he was still holding.
There was a crashing report in the luxurious room, a tinkling of broken china, and a wisp of smoke between a smiling girl and a very surprised man.
"Don't be a fool, and do as you're told if you have any respect for your life," said Jill tersely, as she moved her hand slightly so that her aim was on a dead level with a big button ornamenting an inch or so of satin on the middle left of the man's undervest.
He stood like an image carved out of consternation, whilst streaks of rage seemed to flash across his livid face. Be it confessed, he was not in the least afraid, but no word in the Egyptian or any other tongue could be found to express the depths of humiliation in which he stood neck deep.
"Now, drink this coffee!" said Jill pleasantly, pointing with her left hand to the cup she had placed on the little table.
"Never!"
Jill smiled icily.
"I thought as much. You scoundrel! So it is drugged, and I, having drunk it, would have lain unconscious at your mercy. God! to think that such brutes as you are allowed to live."
The man was watching the girl's every movement, ready to spring like a cat from the area steps upon the unsuspecting sparrow in the road, but neither her eyes nor her hand moved as she continued speaking very gently.
"Listen! I should have killed you myself to-night, feeling myself justified, so that other wretched girls should escape the fate you had prepared for me—you, lower than the beasts of the field; but I am not going to do it, as happily I know of one more powerful than I who will enjoy it thoroughly. Think of what I say when you see his messenger with your ring upon his finger, to-morrow or next month or next year perhaps—and when your time comes, watch the procession of betrayed and tortured girls as they pass before you to catch your soul in their slim hands as it leaves your body. Now! drink that coffee!"
But the man stood stock still, and Jill frowned, for she was not a paragon of patience at any time, and the obstinacy of the man fretted her already jagged nerves.
"Very well," she said, "I give you one more chance. If you refuse again I shall put a bullet straight through your head just between the eyebrows, as I shall now put one through that brooch kind of thing in your turban."
There was another deafening report, and the turban flew from the oriental's head just as a paper-bag will fly before a March wind.
"Go and pick that turban up and put it on your head. Hurry now, or we shall have the police or someone coming to inquire about the shooting gallery."
The eyes of the boa-constrictor in the Zoo were gems of humanity in comparison with those of the negroid-Egyptian's as he turned to obey, and then stopped mulishly until a third little reminder chipped splinters from the marble at his heel, whereupon he stooped and recovered his headgear, minus the brooch, but plus a neat little hole fore and aft.
"Now come and drink the coffee! It won't be very nice as it is almost cold. And remember in future if you are allowed to live, which I very much doubt, that such supreme indifference as mine could only possibly be the outcome of an absolute sense of perfect security."
Jill patted the silly-looking little ivory and silver thing she held.
"You mongrel!" she continued sweetly, "I was simply playing with you until the right moment—the coffee moment which I knew must happen—should arrive in which to give you a lesson. Why! when I saw your eyes in the restaurant I took my little friend from my pocket and made sure he was in order. I may look a fool, and I may act in a manner still more foolish, but I am not exactly what you would call a born fool! Now drink that, I am late already! And don't spill a single drop or I'll shoot you on the spot!"
There was nothing for it but to obey, though the brute took the only revenge he could in pouring out a torrent of language beyond description, until Jill suddenly rose and levelled her revolver at his head, which seemed to send the sickly contents post-haste down his throat, after which Jill ordered him to stretch himself comfortably upon the flower-screened divan.
He did so smiling stupidly, the drug having begun to take effect; and the big eyes closed and opened and closed again, and the mouth relaxed as a gentle snore told Jill that as far as the present danger was concerned she was safe.
She stood for a second looking idly down upon one of the world's greatest criminals, and then at the thought of the dangers which might still be awaiting her on the other side of the door, unloaded her revolver and slipped a fully loaded clip into her little friend.
Then picking up the emerald ring from the table, and her dressing-case from behind the cushions, she crept gently across the room, and gently—oh! so very gently, opened the door which yielded noiselessly to her touch, and stepped into a deserted hall only to recoil violently from something at her feet.
Across the threshold lay a girl.
The agonised eyes in the beautiful dark face gazed up in terror at Jill, whilst a little hand searched weakly for a jewelled plaything of a dagger at her waist.
"Oh! Poverina!" said Jill, as she knelt to raise the little head, and then stared in horror at the girl's shoulders and the hem of her satin trousers.
Some expert hand had flicked the delicate flesh off the back in a criss-cross pattern; what was left of the feet lay in a pool of blood, the deep red of which stretched across the hall far into the distance, showing the path along which the child, left by her torturers for dead, had dragged herself.
"Poor little, little thing!" whispered Jill, as she made to raise the body in her arms. But the dusky head shook feebly, and a dainty henna-tipped finger pointed to a window across the hall, and Jill, feeling herself pushed away ever so slightly, rose as three words were whispered over and over again:
"Vite—allez—mort—vite—allez—mort!"
And understanding that there was nothing more to be done she bent and kissed the child upon the cheek and turned away, looking back as she opened the window which gave on to a balcony about ten feet above the level of the deserted street, and even as she looked, saw the door of the room she had just left being pushed back inch by inch as the dying girl, strengthened by love and agony, dragged herself slowly into the room in which lay the man she worshipped asleep.