In a word, Rabat looked settled and prosperous. It was utterly out of keeping with the picture conjured up by the tattoo marks made by Domenico Garcia on the skin of Tommaso Rodriguez. Still the Hassan Tower was no myth. It was pointed out to him by an Englishman who had walked to the wharf to watch the landing of the ship’s boat.
Pausing only to buy a strong chisel in a native shop, Warden strolled at once in the direction of the tomb. He would neither delay his search for the ruby, nor give much time to it. If he failed to identify the exact spot described in the parchment, or was unable to discover anything after a speedy examination, assuredly he would not spend several hours in tearing ancient masonry to pieces. Since leaving England, Warden had become a different man. Always a good–humored cynic, he was now perilously near the less tolerable condition of cynicism without good humor. Intellect began to govern impulse. Though his brain was wearied with endeavor to find a reasonable explanation of events, he was almost convinced that Evelyn must at least have committed the indiscretion of gossiping about her adventures in the Isle of Wight. If only she had written! His heart kept harping on that! Why had she flown away with her employers without ever a sign that her thoughts were with the man she loved?
He wondered if Peter Evans had found her. If so, there would be news at Cape Coast Castle, for he had given his bankers explicit directions, and a member of the firm was a personal friend who would attend to cablegrams and letters.
The Hassan Tower stood on a height not far beyond the outermost city wall, Rabat being dignified with two lines of fortifications, built by Christian slaves centuries ago. Indeed, when Warden climbed the hill of which it formed the pinnacle, he realized that it was a landmark shown on a chart he had examined the previous evening. Square and strong, built to defy destruction, and rearing its one hundred and fifty feet of exquisitely fretted stonework from a tangled undergrowth of stunted vegetation, it seemed, in some proud and curiously subtle way, to promise the fulfilment of Domenico Garcia’s bequest.
Great marble columns, many erect, but the majority overthrown, indicated the quadrangle of what was meant to be a gigantic mosque. Warden passed quickly through these and other ruins; he caught a hint of an aqueduct, looked into a deep excavation evidently designed as a cistern, and then, with somewhat more rapid pulse–beat, and a certain awed wonderment dominating his mind, made straight for the causeway that led to the “door three cubits from the ground.”
To his chagrin, though the inclined plane itself might be ridden by a man on horseback, the arched door was solidly built up.
Here was an unforeseen check. It was one thing to be conscious of a cooling of the ardor that vowed the adornment of Evelyn’s fair hand with a “gem of great price,” but it was none the less baffling and exasperating to be at the foot of the tower and meet an apparently insuperable obstacle of this nature. Was he brought to Rabat by the most extraordinary series of events that could well have befallen him, only to find blind fate smiling maliciously? The thought was not to be borne. Somehow, anyhow, that tower must be entered, or the spirit of the hapless Garcia would haunt him for ever.
He looked around, thinking his Arabic would serve him in good stead were there a goat–herder or other tender of flocks near at hand. But he was quite alone on the tiny plateau. A couple of great storks which had built their nest on top of the tower looked down at him with wise eyes. Hundreds of pigeons fluttered about the summit or clung to the ridges of fretted stone, while the only window visible above the doorway was a hundred feet from the base.
But a soldier knows that every position, however impregnable in front, may be turned from the flanks. Before formulating any method of attack, he decided to survey the stronghold from all points of view, and, because Garcia mentioned the “third window on the left,” he went to the left. On that side there were only two windows, each twenty feet or more above his head, and Warden was nearly six feet in height. Then he reflected that the Portuguese, writing his sorrowful legend “to pleasure that loathly barbarian, M’Wanga, King of Benin,” would surely count from the inside of the tower.
On he went, noting each cranny and fissure in the weather–beaten mass, until he reached the opposite side. Here were three windows, and, most gratifying of discoveries, he saw that the Arabs had contrived a means of entry and egress through the center window by scooping away the mortar between the huge blocks of granite used for the foundation story. Débris had accumulated close to the wall in such quantity that the window–sill was not more than fourteen feet from his eyes. To an active, barefooted Moor, with toes and fingers like the talons of a vulture, the climb would present no difficulty whatever. To a man whose nails were well kept, and whose toes would speedily be lacerated if not protected by boots, the scaling of the rough wall was no child’s play. But Warden began to crawl upwards without a moment’s hesitation.