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."