There could be but one reason for the dark desertion of the room and for the unanswered call. In some way the girl she hated, the man she desired, had communicated with each other, had outwitted her. How? When? Where? Oh, of what avail to lose time in asking useless questions when, even at that moment, they might be on their way to freedom and love? She stood in the centre of the faintly lighted room, then laughed until the ugly sound beat against the walls. She laughed with sheer rage at the thought of how she, Zarah the Cruel, the most beautiful woman in Asia, the woman who had never been thwarted or foiled, had at last been circumvented by Helen. Helen Raynor, the fool English girl, the slow-witted, the dense, the hopelessly dull, as she had described her when holding her up to ridicule to her women slaves.
Her slaves!
In a moment her trend of thought changed, and with it, replacing even her rage, came a violent desire to revenge herself on everyone who had connived at or participated in the prisoners’ escape.
Yussuf! Namlah!
She seized the metal rod and smote the huge brass gong as the two names leapt to her mind. Her men were gathered together on the plateau, with Yussuf and the dumb boy whom he loved in their midst. She would summon the two who had been thorns in her flesh since the death of the Sheikh and wring a confession from them.
Left by her father in her care!
In the name of Allah what mattered a promise more or less when it had to do with those who had put humiliation after humiliation upon her? She would see to it that they and the white people were rendered dumb and blind in death by the time she had wiped out all the insults they had heaped her with.
Her women!
They slept peacefully in their quarters with Namlah in their midst. She would summon them all and wring a confession from her. She had treated the body-woman, who had shown such strong affection for the white girl, with a strange leniency, merely replacing her, upon the spies’ report, by the surly negress who had so unaccountably disappeared upon the night when the dogs had rushed the hall. She should learn what awaited a slave and a prisoner who dared plot against the master.
She smote the gong to awaken the entire camp and to summon her attendants, smote it without ceasing.