“Eeny, meeny, minee, mo—” began Verbeena when another title clattered against her vision. “The Passion Worm of the Sahara, an Account of its Discovery,” by Robert S. Hitchings.
At first she derived about ten degrees of comfort from the discovery that Amut wasn’t exactly a raw native, that he was probably half-baked at least. She felt that it would be logically safe to presuppose that she was mixed up with a king of the desert, who might be found to be superficially coated with a veneer of civilization that was tenuous.
And yet dared she find comfort in that? Might it not make him the more horrible, sinister, intolerable, cheekier and fresher than ever, this desert devil in whom passion dictated the methods of a chiropractitioner?
“O, hum!” screamed the distrait and fearful Verbeena doing a backfall among the cushions.
There was one good thing she could say for him anyway—his cigarettes were smokable. They were, she had seen by the boxes, of the famous brand of Bull Camel.
Of one thing she was convinced. There would be no sandbagging this evening.
SPAGHETTI.
She had reduced Spaghetti to where she had only to show him the hat pin and he would run right out and sit in the sand. She had made him produce the sand-bag too, had ripped it open and poured the contents back into the desert.
Also she had asked Spaghetti numerous questions about the Sheik Amut and as far as she could make out his chief business was that of a breeder, trainer and trapper of horses of a high-class character.