Lord Northcliffe would begin by offering a good camera to any person finding trace of her and end by setting up a reward of 1,000,000 pun. No question of it. Hearst would offer the pick of his newspapers to any reporter who could rescue her.
But if any reporters got around her caravan it would be so easy to disguise herself. She would not even have to take off her ridin’ britches. Just slip a lady jelab around her and bring one end of it up over her nose and get by.
Or if the hue and cry got the French Government so all-fired distrait that they ordered a ruthless search of the caravan harems, she had only to show up in her usual ridin’ pants, paste a little blackberry jam on her lip and chin for a glossy black Oriental beard and fool ’em all.
Perhaps it would be wise to mix camel hair with the jam.
But that would be a matter to be decided upon when the emergency arose.
Of course, there might be no jam in the caravan commissary. But surely there would never be a lack of gum Arabic.
And when she, Verbeena, had thus vaulted into the top skies of notoriety, she would communicate secretly with the largest of the movie concerns.
What would they bid to star the “mystery girl of the Sahara” in a magnitudinous thriller with her own company of devil-riding, thrilling, stirring, fierce, wild, startling, arousing Arabs?
She saw herself getting a flood of checks from these sources blank of everything but signatures.