Title: The Pursuit
Author: Savile, Frank (Frank Mackenzie)
Language: English
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THE PURSUIT

by

FRANK SAVILE

Author of "Beyond the Great South Wall," etc.

With Illustrations by Herman Pfeifer



Boston
Little, Brown, and Company
1910

Copyright, 1909, 1910,
By Little, Brown, and Company.

All rights reserved

Published, June, 1910

The University Press, Cambridge, U.S.A.



[Illustration: _"I know now that you are a gentleman," she said simply_]



CONTENTS

        I. THE LADY OF THE PIER

       II. AT THE TENT CLUB

      III. THE SHADOW OF A NAME

       IV. DESPARD EXPLAINS

        V. MR. MILLER

       VI. LANDON'S NEW PROFESSION

      VII. VILLA EULALIA

     VIII. THE FIRST TRICK IS LOST

       IX. AYLMER IS EXPLICIT

        X. BY FAVOR OF THE FOG

       XI. RATTIER LOSES HIS CALM

      XII. THE AMBUSH OF THE BROOM

     XIII. THE TRAP

      XIV. ONE SIDE OF A BARGAIN

       XV. PERINAUD'S NEWS

      XVI. AT MELILLA

     XVII. MUHAMMED SCORES TWICE

    XVIII. THE SANTA MARGARITA'S LAZARET

      XIX. MILLER IS STILL IMPERTURBABLE

       XX. AYLMER CLIMBS--AND FALLS

      XXI. FATE STAYS HER HAND

     XXII. THE PRISON

    XXIII. PADRE SIGISMONDI

     XXIV. LUIGI'S HOSPITALITY

      XXV. FATE'S FINAL WORD

     XXVI. DAWN COMES

    XXVII. SHADOWS GO

   XXVIII. FATE SMILES AT LAST



ILLUSTRATIONS


"I know now that you are a gentleman," she said simply

"You saved the boy!" she said, in a quick, panting whisper

"Mademoiselle, I am Sergeant Perinaud"

She gripped the protecting hand between her fingers



THE PURSUIT



CHAPTER I

THE LADY OF THE PIER


It was not the muleteer's shove, slight but significant though it was,
which produced John Aylmer's shrug of irritation. His resentment was
directed at himself. He realized that he had been guilty of a gaucherie.
For thirty seconds he had been standing halted in the main street of
Tangier, a rock of obstruction to all the rabble traffic which passes
between the Bab al Marsa and the Bab al Sôk, staring at--what?

At a pretty woman.

He reddened under his tan. The muleteer's shoulder had displaced him for
purely practical reasons, for, indeed, almost benevolent ones, for the
mules would have been capable of obtaining with their teeth what their
guardian had obtained by mere weight of his body. But Aylmer felt that
by accepted social standards a kick would not have been more than his
due. Had he not been behaving like some cub of a cockney clerk at an
Earl's Court Exhibition? His lips moved. He was muttering excuses of
himself to himself, and knew that they were valid, but that an onlooker
would have had no clue to them.

For it was not her prettiness which had drawn his attention to the girl.
It took no second glance to assure him that she was no countrywoman of
his, but an American. Her features had the clean regularity, her
complexion the pale, unfurrowed smoothness which is kept intact on the
western side of the Atlantic and there alone. The Moroccan sunlight was
proving in a dozen places the mistake the shadows made when they dulled
the gold of her hair to brown. Her eyes matched the waters of the
unrippled bay.

Though he recognized these things, they had not, in the first place,
attracted Aylmer's attention. American girls--pretty American girls--are
no rarity in Tangier since Mr. Cook threw over Moghreb-al-Aksa the ægis
of his protection. Under ordinary circumstances he would have looked,
approved, and, without altering his stride, passed on. But here was
something which appealed to the inherited instincts of a gentleman. What
was it?

Apprehension.

He felt no reasonable doubt on the subject. Among this girl's natural
attributes, he told himself, were placidity, content, self-reliance. The
first two were wanting. The third was strained. There was almost a sense
of furtiveness in the glances which she turned to throw not only about
but, occasionally, behind her. Frankly, she was afraid.

His interest fed upon observation. He glanced at her more narrowly, he
observed her surroundings. He drew aside out of the mid-street traffic,
and under pretence of lighting a cigarette, halted again in the shadow
of an awning.

She was not alone. She held by the hand a small, alert-looking child--a
boy, who watched the passers-by with the happy, unconcentrated interest
of childhood. His eyes reviewed his surroundings without any of the
surprise of unaccustomedness; obviously the scene was not strange to
him. He smiled at Jew and Moslem, Christian and Infidel, with a pleasant
patronage which one or two itinerant pedlars and shop touts returned
with obsequious affability. One man, indeed,--a bronzed, hawk-nosed
specimen of the desert Arab clad in a ragged _djelab_ of brown,--laughed
gaily, plucked a carnation from behind his ear, and flung it to his
small admirer as he passed.

The child gave a little cackle of delight as he picked it up. The girl
looked down as he did so and frowned.

"Who was that, Selim?" she asked quickly, and Aylmer saw that the
question was addressed to a stout, muscular Moor who was in attendance.

The man lifted his shoulders in deprecation and darted a suspicious
glance towards the crowd which had already closed upon the _djelab_ of
brown.

"Some desert dog," he answered sullenly. "But indeed Sidi Jan encourages
all the rabble of the Sôk to take these liberties. He smiles, and the
jackals think they have license to smile back."

The object of these reproaches thrust the carnation carelessly behind
his own small ear.

"I have seen him before--once, twice, many times," he explained. "He
laughs; he is not gray and dull like Selim. I would like to have him for
my kavass."

"I drown in perspiration three shirts a day while I wait on thee,"
affirmed the fat man reproachfully. "Is this thy gratitude?"

"I do not wish to be waited on; I wish to be played with," said the
child. "I should like to go to the sands where the Kaid's horses are
galloped, and play with the brown man. We would paddle and I would throw
the water over him. He has promised me this."

The girl started and gave a convulsive little grip of the fingers which
lay in hers.

"He has spoken to you?" she cried. "When--where?"

The boy nodded his yellow mop of hair importantly.

"Yesterday as I rode through the Sôk," he answered. "He walked beside my
donkey and told me that I was a horseman already made, and should be on
the back of a black barb like Sid' Abdullah's. Then I, too, could race
upon the sands."

The girl looked stonily at the Moor.

"How was this, Selim?" she asked coldly. "Where was your watchfulness?"

The man spread out his hands.

"Am I a prophet--am I Allah Himself?" he cried aggrievedly. "There was a
crowd--a press--in the Sôk yesterday, wherein one had scarcely room to
take breath. And you have seen for yourself. Sidi Jan snatches at
familiarities from such as that one; the nearer the gutter he finds his
friends the better is he pleased."

She looked down at the delinquent, who, without being disconcerted,
grinned back.

"John," she admonished him gravely, "you are _never_ to speak or listen
to strangers in the Sôk, or anywhere else."

John wriggled and pouted.

"I love the brown man," he answered defiantly.

"He's probably a wicked, wicked man," said his monitress. "Instead of
playing with you on the sands, he'd very likely bite you--like a camel."

The eyes beneath the yellow mop grew round with interest.

"Would he?" he asked breathlessly. "That would--would be fun!"

Do what he could to restrain it, a smile broadened across Aylmer's face,
and in that moment the girl, looking up, met his eye. He reddened
slightly again, hastily struck and put a match to his still unlit
cigarette. But in that instant he had read surprise first in her glance,
then the knowledge that she had been overheard, and lastly--yes, there
was no doubt about it--fear. Not the apprehension of the unknown and
unexpected this time, but the thrill of distrust experienced by one
seeing peril looming unveiled before her. She was afraid of him, John
Aylmer! Her apprehension was no longer vague; he had become the target
of it.

She dropped her eyes, made a sign to the Moor, and swung quickly towards
the nearest shop. And Aylmer, in the midst of the mental disturbance
caused by the incident, barely repressed a smile. For the booth, it was
little more, was stored with the coarse calicoes and prints which appeal
to the dwellers in the desert; there was certainly nothing there to
please the tourist or hunter of curios. No--hunted, she had turned
instinctively to the nearest shelter. Undoubtedly she had fled
from--him.

He wheeled quickly and strode off down the hill towards the
Bab-al-Marsa. Explanation eluded him; he felt baffled. At the same time
he was conscious of a sense of relief. Instinct had brought him to a
halt, the instinct which bids the normal man stop to offer help to the
helpless even before that help is claimed. He had discovered, or thought
he had discovered, fear in the girl's attitude, and almost inadvertently
had stayed to rout it. And now? What fear could have a stable foundation
which made him, an absolute stranger, its sudden focus?

He shook his head regretfully. To what could not neurasthenia or some
such fashionable derangement of the nerves bring a woman in these days
of fashionable stress? And yet? Her bearing had not been that of a
neurotic. And she was young, three and twenty at the outside. Her face
was unlined, her eyes clear, yet, after a moment's scrutiny, she had
fled from him. He could not dismiss the problem; he carried it with him
out of the Marsa gate, along the wooden pier. Behind the toll bar he sat
upon a timber balk and studied it. It gave him a sense of physical pain
to remember the expression in those eyes, of which the sea was one vast
reminder.

A minute or two later, with a petulant shrug, he dismissed the
matter--or tried to--from his thoughts. After all, mystery though it
was, the affair had no real significance for him. He had, inadvertently,
frightened a lady. But no real responsibility was his. He had looked at
her keenly; too keenly, perhaps, but with no shadow of offence. She had
chosen to interpret his scrutiny as menacing. They would probably not
meet again--why, indeed, should they? And yet, this decision was
mentally addressed to a possibly listening Fate to disarm it. Without
defining the desire even to himself, he knew that it was there. He
wanted to meet her again; he wanted it badly.

It was with this desire still at the back of his mind that he turned his
eyes seaward on the mission which had brought him to the harbor.

The _Diomède_? Was she in? Would her commander, Paul Rattier, be in time
to join him in riding out to the Tent Club that evening, or would they
have to postpone their expedition to the early hours of daylight? He
strained his glance northward where the gray bulk of Gibraltar was
hidden by floating clouds of Mediterranean mist.

Two French men-of-war lay far out in the bay. A trail of black smoke
showed where another steamed eastward with invalids from Casablanca to
Oran. But neither of the three was the _Diomède_; he knew her squat
turrets among a thousand. He gave a pessimistic little sigh. Instead of
the jovial evening out at Awara under canvas, they would have the hot
discomforts of an hotel and a fifteen-mile ride in the dawning to sap
their energies before the day's sport began. He looked up with
discontent at the westering sun. It appeared to be sinking towards the
horizon with almost indecent haste.

He pulled out another cigarette and lounged lazily along the plank,
watching the traffic of the pier and shore in _blasé_ indifference. Just
below him half a dozen _barcasses_ were being filled with stout, squat
little cattle, destined for food for the weary troops of Ber Rechid and
El Setat. The bullocks were being goaded up an incline of planks and
tumbled roughly into the unwieldy lighters, and as these were filled a
little tug fussed up and towed them by threes to the waiting steamer of
the Compagnie Mixte. And here the sufferings of the bullocks deepened
from mere discomfort to the fine edge of tragedy. In twos they were
lassoed round the horns. The steam winch aboard the steamer crashed,
and with straining necks and starting eyes the unfortunate beasts were
rushed up through the air and swung with terrifying speed down into the
hold. They were near enough for him to see through his binoculars the
strained mute agony of fear in the eyes of each brute as it swung. And
there was a dog on board. Each time as the living load passed within
reach of its leap, it sprang into the air and made its teeth meet in the
helpless flesh. And the stevedores applauded and goaded him to further
efforts. Finally the horns of one struggling animal broke. There was a
hoarse laugh as it fell, to break other bones, no doubt, in the depths
of the hold, or to mutilate some former comrade below. Aylmer turned
away with a shrug of sickened disgust. What a land of cruelty it was, of
grinding cruelty which spared neither man, woman, nor child, and
certainly no beast! He turned his glance shorewards to avoid seeing the
tragedy of the bullocks repeat itself.

As he did so he gave a start of suddenly aroused interest. Rapidly
nearing him was a man whom he recognized. He was the hawk-nosed, swarthy
son of the desert who had flung the carnation at the American child's
feet. He was walking rapidly, smiling, talking in a quick undertone to
another child, one who trotted at his side happily enough--born of his
own people, this--a little Moor, clad in a tiny bournous and a hooded
_djelab_ of brown.

They were making for the steps which led down from Aylmer's side to the
huddle of rowboats which awaited chance fares below.

Suddenly Aylmer's attention, which had been aroused merely by the fact
that the sight of the man led his thoughts back to the interest of an
hour before, became concentrated. The Moorish child babbled in English!

"A black stallion!" he said impressively. "One that will arch his neck
like the dome of the mosque, and carry me past all the other horses on
the sands?"

"It shall be as you desire, little lord," answered the man, easily. "We
have but to take a boat from among the many below and row across to the
beach. There the horse of thy desires awaits thee. Look carefully.
Perchance thou canst see it even now. Thou hast the eyes of a hawk; I
know it."

And then Aylmer understood. He saw that below the child's ears and along
the line of his hair a dye had been applied. The golden curls had been
stuffed back into the hood of the _djelab_, shoes and stockings flung
away, and little dye-stained feet thrust into yellow slippers. The folds
of the bournous covered all else. It was the child of the street
encounter, the child himself!

Aylmer's instincts, rather than any formed purpose, brought him to his
feet and in front of the man, as the latter was about to descend the
stairs.

"Where did you gain authority over this?" he asked curtly in Arabic,
pointing down at the boy.

The man eyed him with stony imperturbability.

"Is Tangier come to such a pass that we of the Faith have to justify to
Nazarenes our authority over our own children?" he asked. "Keep to thine
own affairs, _Kaffirbillah_."

Aylmer did not unbar the road of the steps. He leaned down and spoke
directly to the child, who was regarding him with half timid curiosity.

"Is this man your kavass?" he said gently. "Is he in your parents'
service?"

The red flush of guilt rose under the brown dye. A bright yellow curl
fell from out of the _djelab_ hood as the small head was shaken.

"He promised me a horse," said lips which had begun to have a distinct
semblance of trembling. "They have only given me a donkey so far--only a
gray donkey."

"Then they do not know that you are with this man; they would not allow
it?" pursued Aylmer.

The Moor broke in angrily.

"Do not be questioned, little lord!" he cried. "This is a son of
infinite shame and wickedness, who has no rights over thee!"

"As many, at least, I suspect, as thou," returned Aylmer. "This is a
matter for investigation. We will come to the post of the Spanish police
at the pier head."

"We!" The man's eyes flashed wickedly. "I come not, nor this, my
charge."

Aylmer shrugged his shoulders.

"That is a matter within your discretion, for yourself." He laid his
hand upon the child's shoulder. "But this one goes with me."

A grin of rage flashed across the Moor's features. With one hand he made
a quick clawing snatch at the child's arm; the other he plunged into his
bosom. As it reappeared a knife blade flashed in the sun.

Mere instinct made Aylmer throw up his arm in defence. Experience and
presence of mind bade him fling himself to one side without removing his
knee from the path of his assailant. Matters followed the usual course
when this old trick of the desert is put in action. The fellow tripped,
plunged forward over the outsprawled limb, and fell crashingly upon his
elbows.

Aylmer's first thought was for the knife which gleamed upon the
planking half a dozen yards away. He scrambled to his feet and, without
troubling to bend, gravely kicked it into the sea. At the same time he
was aware of a commotion behind him. The small child's voice was raised
in anger.

"I hate you--I hate you!" he declaimed. "Now Selim will get me!"

There was a reason for his wrath. Panting, blowing, and, to be frank,
looking uncommonly like an over-driven buffalo, the Moor attendant was
speeding down the pier with outstretched arms furiously gesticulating.
The flap of his slippers slammed upon the boards, boat boys jeered,
hotel touts made comments which no Bowdler could render into reputable
English. And a few yards behind him--Aylmer's heart gave a queer little
leap at the sight--ran totteringly the white-clad lady, his mistress.

The child made an angry gesture of repulse.

"I won't go back!" he shrilled. "I won't, I won't!"

He looked round towards his new-found friend, who was scrambling to his
feet. He ran towards him.

Aylmer stretched out a hand and whirled the child up, facing towards the
Moor. The latter hesitated, looked towards the advancing figures, and
hesitated no longer. Behind the lady ran a couple of the newly raised
Spanish police.

He swerved swiftly aside, dashed down the steps, and passed rapidly from
boat to boat across the gunwales till he had gained one on the outskirt
of the press. He shouted fiercely to the boy who held the oars, and the
latter bent to his work. The tide was with them and they passed rapidly
across the harbor mouth towards the yellow sands outside the town.

The child struggled and shouted in Aylmer's arms, stretching out his
hands as he saw his friend disappear in the direction of the, to him,
still credible black stallion and other promised delights. He struck out
passionately at Selim as the latter's hand closed upon him like the grip
of an embodied Fate.

"I want my horse, my horse!" he wailed. "I don't want a donkey; I hate
it, hate it!"

Aylmer surrendered him, nothing loath, into his attendant's arms and
then stood expectant, hat in hand. As she saw Selim again in full
command of his responsibilities, the girl dropped from a run into a
rapid walk. She panted, she held her hand upon her breast as she joined
them. The two khaki-clad police inspected Aylmer with something of
mistrust in their gaze.

For a moment her breath failed her; she could only look at the captive
with half resentful, half satisfied eyes. Then she shook her finger at
him.

"You wicked child!" she cried. "You wicked, wicked child!"

The small sinner laughed defiantly.

"The brown man beckoned me from the door of the mosque," he boasted. "I
did see him and ran behind the mule that passed, and in at the door, and
the brown man caught me up and smeared brown stuff on my face, and ran
with me through the other door and out into the other street and covered
me with this." He indicated the _djelab_ with pride. "And Selim did not
find me. Ho! Ho! I saw fat Selim jumping like a jerboa as we passed the
harbor gate!"

Aylmer inspected him gravely.

"I have a bamboo cane at home which would meet your case, young man," he
said quietly. "Would the loan of it be a boon?" he asked suddenly,
looking at the girl.

There was no answering smile in her eyes. She shook her head.

"Thank you for--your intervention," she said quickly. "No, we never beat
children in America; we--we respect them."

Aylmer nodded.

"In England our plan is to make them respect themselves," he answered.
"I dare say both methods have their advantages." He made a gesture
towards the town. "Can I have the pleasure of escorting you back?" he
asked. "Have you any further--attempts to fear?"

There was an obvious desire for information in the question and in his
eyes.

She made no attempt to satisfy it. She shook her head again.

"Thank you, no," she answered. "John will have no further opportunities
to escape us; we have had our lesson. I can only thank you again and say
good morning."

He raised his cap in answer to her bow. He watched her turn and walk
after Selim, who held his prisoner enfolded in an embrace that gave no
loophole for a second escape, little, indeed, for any movement at all.
Expression gave place to expression on Aylmer's face. Irritation
succeeded surprise and that was quickly followed by amusement.

Finally he seemed to dismiss the subject with a shrug which was all
bewilderment.

"She thanked me," he reminded himself. "She thanked me, but her manner
suggested that she would rather have flung me a sovereign to get
decently rid of me." He nodded his head with decision. "She's afraid of
me, that's the truth. Why--in the name of all that's sensible--Why?"

Echo supplied no answer.



CHAPTER II

AT THE TENT CLUB


Aylmer tightened the reins, touched the rowels against the mare's flank,
and lifted her out of her easy amble into something like a canter. He
called to his companion and pointed up the slope at a gleam of white set
in the dun green of the cork woods.

"The camp!" he said, and gave a little sigh of relief. Through the
fifteen miles which separate Tangier from Awara the two had halted no
longer than sufficed to tighten a girth or light a cigarette. The horses
were white with lather, the men stained with dust.

Commandant Rattier looked, nodded, and smiled. For a sailor, people were
apt to consider him taciturn--at first; but they soon discovered that
his was a taciturnity which spoke. His brown eyes could gleam with many
lights which were whimsically expressive. A little sidelong jerk of his
neatly trimmed beard told more than many elaborated sentences.
Reputations had tottered and scandals had been abashed before a single
gesture of his neatly gloved hands. For the moment his nod suggested
content, anticipation, and unruffled good humor.

A minute later surprise overcame his reticence. Half a dozen dull,
half-muffled explosions throbbed in the distant jungle of broom and wild
olive. The commandant's eyebrows rose in arcs of amazement.

"Do they then shoot the boar as well as impale it?" he asked.

Aylmer smiled.

"The beaters," he explained. "They are driving towards the plain behind
the marsh. They are firing blank charges."

The Frenchman gave a little laugh.

"In all these matters you must remember that I am of an ignorance the
most profound. And my impudence, also, must appear to you colossal. I am
to allow myself to charge with a spear--I, who, till to-day, have never
seen a wild pig save, perhaps, as bacon!"

Aylmer dropped the reins upon the mare's neck, lifted his hand, and
wiped his forehead.

"All things must have a beginning, my friend," he said. "You have the
sailor's eye and, no doubt, the sailor's steady hand. And, above all,
you ride--as sailors do not always ride. I have every reason to believe
that I shall be proud of you before the day is out."

Rattier lifted his shoulders with a little shrug. He did not speak, but
he left the impression that he deprecated this point of view, found the
arguments futile, and disposed of the question finally. The attention of
the riders was suddenly drawn elsewhere.

A couple of men emerged into view from behind a clump of argans. They
held two horses by the bridles. One of them signalled with outstretched
hand.

As Aylmer reined in the mare almost upon her haunches the man dropped
his hand, relinquished the horse he held into the care of his companion,
and approached. He made a dignified gesture of welcome and pointed to a
basket on the ground.

"Sid' Anstruther sends breakfast, Sidi. They drive the bush beyond the
hill and the marsh. If you will refresh yourselves here you will avoid
climbing the hill to the camp. You can then take these horses and join
the spears who wait at the tongue of the jungle in the plain."

Aylmer slid to the ground.

"It is well thought of, Absalaam," he said, and turned to explain
matters to his companion. The Moor beckoned forward his underling, who
quickly tethered the fresh horses to a broom stump and then led away the
other two in the direction of the tents which gleamed white upon the
slope a mile or so above them. Absalaam, meanwhile, was deftly setting
out the meal in the shadow of the argan branches.

The two began to eat and drink with appreciation but quickly. They did
not exchange much conversation; their attention, indeed, seemed
concentrated on matters outside sight but within hearing. For the
muffled explosions continued and to them was added the sound of
chorussed and intermittent yells. But these last had not risen to any
great pitch of excitement; no pig, or, at any rate, no boar, had as yet
been sighted or had broken cover.

Absalaam flitted to and fro handing dishes, changing plates, expressing
by the vigilance of his attitude and actions the fact that he, too,
appreciated the need for haste. His dark eyes beamed a sort of intensity
of vigor; the pose of his head seemed to indicate that his ears were
critically alert to the purport of those distant shouts. But he offered
no comment till Aylmer pushed aside his plate and rose to his feet.

"Your station, oh Sidis, will be at the far side of the point of jungle,
between the marsh and the forest."

Aylmer nodded, explained to Rattier, and swung himself into the saddle.

"How many spears?" he asked laconically. The Moor held up the open
fingers of one hand.

"Four," he answered, "and a lady, who rides but does not carry a spear.
It will be difficult with so few, but the Sidis will find the horses of
good mettle and capable. Have I now your leave to go, oh Sidis? It is
desirable that I join the beaters."

Aylmer made a curt motion of consent and looked round, with a tinge of
impatience, for his companion. Rattier was daintily flicking a crumb or
two from his khaki tunic and flapping his handkerchief at the dust on
his overalls. He mounted, at last, with a self-satisfied little shrug.
He was prepared to meet the world's criticism, or this, at any rate, was
the implication his shoulders conveyed.

With an air that was deferential without being obsequious the Moor
handed each rider a long "under-arm" spear. The next instant they had
disappeared down the ragged track through the mimosa at a gallop.

As they emerged into the open plain beyond the stretch of forest land,
the yells in the jungle combined into a stentorian chorus. The hidden
men shrieked, hollaed, rattled their staves, and in one or two instances
performed excited fantasias with empty sardine tins. Up on the slope a
furlong or two above Aylmer and his companion, a woman came suddenly
into view, riding a dappled gray, and waving a handkerchief.

They turned towards her as another rider, as yet unseen, cantered round
a thicket of broom in the same direction.

The handkerchief was waved excitedly and the canter became a gallop.

The mimosa crashed; the sun-dried lop of wild olive was splintered.
Something dark, unwieldy, menacing, burst out of the undergrowth with a
speed which seemed preposterously out of proportion to its bulk. It fled
across the interval of sand which lay between the strip of forest behind
it and the one from which Aylmer and Rattier had just emerged. Emotion
perforated the latter's imperturbability. Speech escaped him.

"But this is a monster!" he exclaimed. "The near relation of a
hippopotamus!"

The boar may have heard and certainly seemed to resent the criticism. He
jinked, wheeled from the direction which would have taken him slantingly
towards the other rider, and charged the commandant. Nothing daunted,
the latter lowered his spear and galloped steadily forward.

He did not attempt to lessen his speed to receive the shock. Had his
skill, indeed, been equal to his spirit, the result would never have
been in doubt. But he held his spear at a "dropping" angle, which
discounted the force of speed behind it. The point, instead of meeting
the boar's chest in a line almost parallel with the ground, grazed his
jaw, brushed past his shoulder, and cut a shallow groove in his quarter.
It turned the charge, but not far enough. The wicked eight-inch tusks
flashed out in passing and gashed the horse's pastern. The gallop slowed
into a canter, blundered into a trot, and became a halting limp.

The boar jinked again and Aylmer spurred in pursuit, hearing the hoofs
of his rival's horse thundering jealously behind. He increased his
speed, diminished the distance yard by yard, lowered his spear, thrust,
and was nearly spilled from the saddle. With incredible quickness the
huge body had wheeled again as if on a pivot.

The pursuers made a chorus of their vexation. Their impetuosity carried
them a full forty yards past the line of the boar's retreat. They reined
in jerkily, and turned to see their quarry in full retreat up the hill.

By good horsemanship Aylmer maintained and increased his lead, but
without much hope of overhauling the chase before the thicket gave it
shelter. The mimosa covert was a bare two furlongs distant. The only
chance lay in the boar being headed, and all the spears were,
apparently, behind it. There remained nothing to do but to ride and ride
hard.

His horse responded bravely to the touch of the spur but the sand was
loose and deep. He decreased very slightly the distance between pursuer
and pursued, faltered once or twice, and began to show distress in his
breathing. Aylmer told himself that, for the moment, the game was up.

And then, with a whirl of flying drapery and gesticulating arms, a new
rider shot into view on the brow of the slope. Absalaam, calling down
innumerable maledictions upon the ancestry of all jungle pigs, galloped
a tent pony between the boar and his refuge.

His tactics were successful, but not in the direction which he had
desired. The brute wheeled, not down-hill towards the other riders, but
slanting back and still upwards in the direction of Awara and the camp.

As Aylmer swerved to follow, a cry startled him. He was suddenly aware
that the lady in white was riding slightly behind, but almost abreast of
him. She was swathed in a sand veil, but her eyes were uncovered and the
expression in them was arresting. She was staring up the hill. Her
glance told of anxiety, or even horror.

He followed the direction of her gaze.

Two figures appeared, both exactly in the line of the hunt. One, also
white clad, and running with uncertain feet, was evidently a child--a
boy of six or seven years. He had distanced his pursuer, a fat and
middle-aged Moor, who was menacing him with gesticulations of wrath and
at the same time emitting supplicating cries. The youngster answered him
with triumphant little jeers, and continued his escape. At the same
moment both of them saw the approaching danger.

The child halted, hesitated, and seemed to debate upon his action. Not
so the Moor. With a howl of dismay he fled towards the undergrowth, his
yellow slippers twinkling against the dun background of the sand. And he
continued to yell with whole-hearted despair; he woke the echoes with
his shrieks.

About fifty yards separated Aylmer from the boar. The child was a full
furlong distant. A sudden chill pulsed into, and gripped, the man's
heart as he realized the situation.

Again the woman called aloud and smote her horse furiously across the
withers as she strove to urge it on. Taken by surprise the gray changed
step, stumbled, and nearly came down. With lowered spear Aylmer shot
ahead.

The horse responded nobly to the need. The interval decreased. The boar
was thirty yards ahead--twenty--now no more than ten. The wicked little
eyes flung glances sideways; the bristling withers showed that almost
imperceptible rippling motion which presages a "jink."

Aylmer leaned down across his saddle, holding out the spear before him
almost by the butt. He was yet too far to get in a thrust. He could only
hope to divert the brute's attention by a short, pricking stab. For the
child, now running with short, terrified strides, was immediately in
front of the gleaming tusks.

Aylmer lunged out.

The point reached and entered the boar's flank. It squealed savagely,
turned, blundered, and fell beneath the horse's hoofs. Aylmer felt the
shock, the agonizing effort at recovery, the final thud of the fall. The
horse tripped and rolled over; the spear was torn from the rider's grip.
Aylmer ploughed a groove in the sand which landed him far out beyond the
huddle of flying limbs in which the white tusks were already working
viciously.

He scrambled first to his knees and then to his feet. He looked around.
The child was close to him, running now towards him. His hands were
outstretched; he gave little panting cries.

And then Aylmer experienced that curious cold sense of relaxation which
comes to some men when the situation calls for instant effort. He saw
the child; he saw also the boar, slashing relentlessly a way out from
the tangle of his horse's legs; he saw the horsewoman whose reins were
tightening not twenty yards away. But here was no cause for hesitation
or bewilderment. His mind, to himself, worked with a certain sense of
leisure. He stooped, caught up the child, placed him in the woman's
arms, and gave her horse a thrust of dismissal with his fist. As the
flying hoofs scattered the sand upon his tunic, he turned to confront
his own plight without fear, with, indeed, nothing less than relief. The
absorbing objective of the last two minutes being achieved, his mind
had not had time to review and interpret his own danger.

The boar shook itself free of entanglement, snapped around at the wound
in its flank, swayed a little and suddenly, malignantly, focussed its
gaze upon Aylmer. It gave a grunt of satisfaction, as it seemed. As if
the tension of a hidden spring was released, it bounded forward.

Aylmer looked at it as one looks at, and appraises, a picture. The sense
of his own peril was in his mind, but latently. He understood the
consequences if the boar reached him, but, owing to some perverse
enravelment of the brain, details absorbed him to the veiling of all
else. He noted with what excellent effect the crimson smear upon the
dark flank shone out against the dull background of the sand. He
recognized the abnormal curl of the tusks, and debated to what angle the
jaw must be slanted to deliver the ripping undercut which experience
told him he would receive within a couple of seconds. He saw with a pang
of regret that the shaft of his spear was broken; the splintered end
protruded from below the withers of the still struggling horse. Thus the
picture--which engrossed him.

And then it was gone, blotted out. The thunder of hoofs, a rising cloud
of sand, a dark, struggling mass, which was the boar upon its back. The
rider whom he had distanced had passed and the spear had got home. Red
was the central spot of this picture, also, but no longer on the dark
flank. It welled from the dying animal's chest in torrents.

As he watched its struggles, the sense of hazard escaped came home to
him. Fear found room in his brain. He ran towards the broken spear,
grasped it, turned to confront a peril which no longer menaced.

A shudder shook the swaying body, the great thews relaxed. The boar
panted violently--once--twice. Then with a single sigh, very gently,
very languidly, it sank upon the earth. And so lay still.

As he stood staring down at it, a reaction against his tinge of panic
moved Aylmer to laughter. He began to giggle in little bubbling gasps of
mirth which were near relations of hysteria. Matters had gone so quickly
that his sense of proportion had been displaced. First perfect
equanimity, then sudden and unfounded apprehension, now recoil. One
short minute had made ample room for all these among his emotions. He
found laughter the only balm to his self-respect, for he was shivering
with a Briton's uneasy sense of having been guilty of melodrama.

His introspection was so intent that he failed to observe the return of
the lady in white till her horse spurned the sand upon his riding boots.
Then he wheeled alertly and looked up in her face. Her veil had dropped.

She was clasping the child to her with the hand in which she gripped the
reins. The other she held out to him.

"You saved the boy!" she said, in a quick, panting whisper. "You saved
him!"

[Illustration: _"You saved the boy!" she said, in a quick, panting
whisper_]

Aylmer took the proffered hand, lifted his hat, smiled, and recognized
the lady of the pier.

He hesitated a moment. He shrugged his shoulders.

"No," he deprecated, and pointed to the other spear-man who was already
wheeling to inspect his trophy. "Your thanks are due to our friend
Despard, if anywhere."

"No!" she contradicted vehemently. "Did I not see it? You were
sacrificing yourself, doing it deliberately. And I shall never forget
it--never!"

He smiled again. He looked at the child who sat silent on the
saddle-bow, staring down at him.

"Still running away?" queried Aylmer, pleasantly. "Whither, this time?
And what was the terrible hurry?"

A guilty grin puckered the little man's lips.

"I thought I knowed you; you're the man of--of yesterday," he shrilled.
"I was running from Selim. He wanted me to take siesta, but I did wish
to be in the hunt."

Aylmer nodded.

"The usual trouble," he said. "We all want to be in--or, at any rate, to
see--the hunt. And we never pay any attention to Selims, worse luck.
You'll learn more by experience, sonny."

The child made a little gesture of protest.

"That's not my name," he answered solemnly. "Mother calls me Jackanapes,
or Jack. But I'm John, really, just John."

"Just John," assented Aylmer. "Just John what?"

"John Aylmer," said the boy and stared in surprise at his new friend's
startled visage. But the other John Aylmer was not looking at his
namesake. He was looking at the girl who held him.

Her eyes answered the glance gravely, sternly, even defiantly, and in
silence.

"You?" cried Aylmer. "You are--?"

She hesitated.

"John's nurse," she said, looking him steadily in the face.



CHAPTER III

THE SHADOW OF A NAME


For a moment there was silence between the two. Aylmer's fingers
unconsciously wound and unwound a tiny lock of hair in the horse's mane.
His eyes travelled over the woman's face and figure appraisingly; his
brows contracted into a frown of puzzlement.

He had seen little John Aylmer's mother once before, at her wedding nine
years previously. She had been a girl, then, almost a child, and young
for her age, which was barely eighteen. Her beauty had been the fresh,
innocent _beauté du diable_. She was fair, blue-eyed, with a tendency to
fragility. And if report told the truth, her beauty had wasted and her
fragility increased through the cruel years of her husband's domination.
A bare six months ago she had been freed. Her father's millions had
helped her to a separation which English Courts had made a legal one.
They had also given her the custody of her one child, the heir to the
Aylmer name and the Landon title.

This girl was fair, indeed; her eyes like the sea, her color fresh, her
forehead bland and unwrinkled. But she was not the woman whose woes had
made copy for a thousand newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic, whose
sufferings had roused the storm of execration which had made the honest
name of Aylmer a byword of dishonor and reproach. No, this was not his
cousin Landon's wife.

And yet?

Feature for feature, line for line, she reminded him of the woman whose
daintiness he remembered among the massed decorations of that New York
cathedral those years ago.

He sought bluntly for an explanation.

"I, too, am John Aylmer," he said quietly. "Who are you?"

The sudden thrill of surprise with which she clutched the child to her
tightened the reins. The gray backed a step; it was as if horse and
rider were alike repelled by his question.

She stared at him with a sudden fierce aversion which was undisguised.

"You are Landon's cousin--you?" she cried.

He bowed his head.

"I have that misfortune," he answered quietly.

At the form of his answer a tinge of relief woke in her eyes, but they
still watched him with incredulity and suspicion.

"He--he has sent you?" she demanded. "You bring other proposals, or
threats?"

He smiled gravely.

"We have shared nothing, except a club, he and I," he explained. "I have
not set eyes on him for over a year."

She still watched him alertly, debatingly, and still with mistrust.

"How did you come here, and why?" she asked.

"I am a member of the Tent Club," he answered. "I am in garrison at
Gibraltar. I could not get leave till yesterday afternoon and I waited
in Tangier to accompany Captain Rattier, whose ship is in harbor. Have I
sufficiently explained myself?"

She hesitated.

"You have not seen your cousin for over a year? Perhaps you are in
correspondence with him?"

He showed signs of impatience.

"We have not exchanged half a dozen letters in our lives!" he said
emphatically.

The lines of her face remained unsoftened. Her fierce grip on the
child's shoulder did not relax.

"And this Frenchman--this Captain Rattier?" she asked. "What of him?"

His eyebrows expressed the intensity of his amazement.

"Paul Rattier is my distant cousin," he answered. "No finer gentleman
walks the earth." He paused for a moment. "Is it permitted to inquire
why you suspect--strangers?"

She did not answer him. An abstraction, real or feigned, seemed to have
seized her. She stared out over his head into the distance with unseeing
eyes as if she weighed problems, debated evidence, sought conclusions.
It was the child who roused her into attention. He laughed, clapped his
hands, and shouted.

"Browny!" he clamored in delight. "Browny!"

Aylmer looked round.

Rattier, leading a very melancholy and still bleeding horse, had
approached with Despard. Together they were bending over the major's
trophy, the dead boar. Behind them Aylmer's horse was hobbling painfully
to its feet. Despard looked up and shook an admonishing finger at his
acclaimer.

"You young rebel!" he cried. "You want a good smacking for your
disobedience!"

He slipped from the saddle as he spoke and led his horse towards them.
He laid his hand familiarly on Aylmer's shoulder.

"Hurt?" he asked.

"Not in the least," said Aylmer, and then looked, with a significant
lift of the eyebrow, from Despard to the gray horse's rider.

Despard's face showed his own surprise.

"Don't you know each other yet?" he marvelled. "Miss Van Arlen--Captain
Aylmer."

Uncertainty gripped Aylmer again. Landon had married a daughter of Jacob
Van Arlen, the millionaire. A divorcée reverted to her maiden name, but
surely not to her maiden title. But Despard had said Miss, most
distinctly Miss.

With his usual straightforward instinct to find the nearest way to probe
a mystery, he looked at the girl herself. He became aware that her eyes
had been upon his face with intentness.

"Yes," she said quietly. "This," she patted the child's shoulder, "is my
nephew."

He gave a little sigh of appreciation and, he scarcely knew why, of
relief. It was not possible, of course, that this girl, whose whole
poise and carriage spoke of resolution and unfettered self-command,
could be the woman, broken in health and spirit, who had cowered before
her husband's glance, so some of the baser journals had hinted, even
when she was seeking and had received the law's protection from him.

And her eyes? They were not of that appealing blue which had shone
beneath the bride's deep lashes on that half-forgotten wedding-day. They
were blue, indeed, but they met his with something which was akin to
defiance.

She did not explain herself, but her glance was that of one who needed
no warrant for her demeanor. Her attitude was not one of blatant
aggressiveness, but was undoubtedly distrustful.

He looked at the child with renewed interest.

"Your sister is--where?" he asked quickly.

The frown came swiftly back to her forehead.

"You ask me that? Why?" she demanded.

He looked at the boy.

"Naturally I thought she might be with you," he answered. "As an Aylmer
I should be glad to meet her."

"Ah!" Her tone was hard and suspicious again. Unconsciously she gripped
the child to her again with a fierceness which made him protest.

"You hurt!" he complained. "You hurt, and I want to see the boar."

With a sailor's instinctive fondness for children, Rattier, who had
resigned his limping horse into the hands of one of the Arab beaters,
turned towards him.

"May I be permitted?" he said simply, and held out his arms. The child
made a restless little movement towards him. "He'll show it me!" he
cried joyously. "He'll take me!"

Again she reined back, looking from one to the other with patent
misgiving.

"No!" she cried sharply. "You shall not touch him, either of you!" She
made an appealing gesture towards Despard. "You must see me back to the
camp!" she said.

He was smiling with tranquil amusement, a smile which seemed to rouse
her to anger.

"Let us go now, at once!" she said, and wheeled her horse.

Despard nodded, but did not dismiss the smile.

"Might I inform you that Aylmer has been my friend since our Sandhurst
days, and that I have shared his intimacy with Commandant Rattier for
the last five years? I can vouch for them; I really can."

She reined in her horse again and sat looking at all three with doubt
still lurking in her eyes. Aylmer met her expression with unrestrained
amazement. He found her mistrust of him a conundrum to which there was
no answer. The Frenchman's shoulders rose and fell almost imperceptibly.
His head was slanted with deferential acquiescence. He laid his hand
upon Aylmer's arm.

"Your horse?" he interposed.

He pointed to it and to Absalaam, who had now arrived and was touching
the wounds in its flank with delicate, probing fingers. The commandant's
gesture seemed to imply that the situation in which they found
themselves demanded a tactful retreat, and that here he indicated a
dignified one.

Aylmer still hesitated. He saw no reason why he should concur in his own
dismissal; the idea grated on him. What had he done?

It was Despard who took the edge of restraint off the situation. He
swung himself back into the saddle, and pointed up the hill.

"After all, the thing was a squeak," he allowed. "You are shaken." He
turned and nodded slightly to the other two. "I will return and help
with the horses; we shall have no other beat to-day."

They smiled, bowed to his companion, and gave him answering nod. They
understood. He was going to use the opportunity to sponsor them. Then he
would return, and they would have their explanation. They watched him
bend towards his companion as they rode away.

"It is almost as if we diffused a contagion, you and I," speculated
Rattier as they turned to Absalaam and the horses, but Aylmer made no
effort to elaborate the issue. An inexplicable instinct to make the
incident a personal rather than a general one had overtaken him. As he
watched Despard ride away with his companion, he felt almost as if he
were being defrauded. The relations between his cousin and her sister
made a tie between Miss Van Arlen and himself; surely, in spite of
everything, they were sufficient foundation upon which to found
something more than a mere acquaintanceship. In the name of all the
other decent-minded, clean-living Aylmers, he might have been allowed to
make his and their protest against being held responsible for the
knaveries of the head of their house.

So it was with something of dissatisfaction in his aspect that he turned
to Absalaam and the wounded horse. The Moor saw it but misunderstood its
purport.

"Merely a flesh wound, Sidi," he hastened to assure Aylmer. "A week,
perhaps ten days, of rest and he is himself again. A small price to pay
for so precious a thing as that child's life."

Aylmer looked at him with tolerant amusement. Absalaam ibn Said had
neither harem nor wife; his career had been notoriously one of unrest
and adventure. These pious opinions issued oddly from his bachelor lips.

"A small price indeed," he agreed pleasantly, "but a hundred youngsters
run risks little less in the Sôk of Tangier every day."

The Moor made a sweeping motion of the hand, as if he suddenly dropped
the subject of conversation from a higher plane to a lower.

"The children of the Sôk!" he cried contemptuously.
"Khabyles--Arabs--Susi--Riffs! What are they? Little more than vermin;
their ranks are replenished all too quickly as it is! But this one! Here
we tell a different story, do we not?"

Aylmer halted in his examination of the wounded pastern and looked up.
There was something arresting in the Moor's vehemence.

Absalaam caught the look and shrugged his shoulders.

"The Sidi has not visited Tangier for five or six weeks?" he said.

Aylmer nodded. And waited. He had had a good deal of experience of the
Moor and his conversational methods. He was aware that the deferring of
a climax till it could be launched on a tide of tantalization was the
chiefest of them.

"Therefore, Sid' Aylmer," continued the Moor, "you have not heard all
the tales which center round this small one's fortunes?"

Aylmer smiled and prepared to give his attention again to his horse. It
was left to Rattier to ruin the pyramid of stimulation.

"What tales?" he demanded laconically.

Absalaam's brown eyes met both question and questioner with
melancholy--almost, indeed, with scorn. How could one titillate, how
could one embroider, how could one work up to a brave display of
interest, if bald facts were to be wrung from one at this stage of a
tale? He sighed.

"Tales of his wealth and importance, Sidi," he answered, in accents of
subjection.

Rattier drew up the monocle which swung from a ribbon at his buttonhole
and concentrated his stare upon the Moor.

"Wealth?" he repeated tersely.

Absalaam opened his arms to their widest and held his palms emptily
outflung.

"Wealth sufficient to buy all Tangier, all Fez, the whole of Mogrheb al
Acksa, if a tenth of the reports be true. His life, therefore? How can
one value it!"

He beamed upon them. He had been robbed of his slowly forged
culmination, but he had, at least, been able to offer them a surprise.

Aylmer replaced upon the ground the hoof which he had been holding. He
looked at the Moor good-humoredly.

"So the gossip mongers of the Sôk credit this infant with riches?" he
said. "On what evidence, if any?"

Absalaam made a motion towards the sea.

"In the harbor, when you landed, did you observe a yacht, Sidi--a white
boat, with lines of gold at her cutwater and figurehead?"

"Yes."

"That boat lies there at the service of that child. They have taken for
him the Villa Eulalia; they have surrounded it with tents of men who are
there to do no more than guard his safety; there are servants, horses,
donkeys. The Gibraltar steamer brings packets of provisions or what not
several times a week. In the town their money flows."

Rattier dropped his eyeglass.

"I think, _mon ami_," he said slowly, "that gold must be freer with them
than gratitude. Were you thanked for what you did? I don't seem to
remember it."

Aylmer shook his head.

"That is the mystery," he agreed. "I did little enough, but I was going
to be thanked--till I disclosed my name. Then," he shrugged his
shoulders, "you saw."

He meditated a minute. Then he burst out laughing.

"I was not allowed even to hold him, and I am not at all sure that I am
not his guardian!" he said suddenly.

Rattier's surprise was evident, but he managed to concentrate it in a
monosyllable.

"Eh?" he demurred wonderingly.

Aylmer gave an emphatic nod of the head.

"I was coming home from China at the time of the marriage of my cousin
Landon with this child's mother. I broke my journey in New York
specially to attend it. And Landon, merely as a form, asked me as his
kinsman to be a party to his settlement. In certain circumstances,
including his death, I was to be one of the trustees for his children."

"And he is dead, this cousin?"

"No, my friend. Merely divorced. Where do I come in--where?"



CHAPTER IV

DESPARD EXPLAINS


"Suppose we sit down long enough to smoke a cigarette," suggested
Aylmer. "Perhaps the thump I received just now has had a disastrous
effect upon my limited intelligence, but I confess that Miss Van Arlen's
deportment remains a matter of mystery. What have I done?"

Despard laughed gently. He had strolled back from the camp to meet his
friends and had found them superintending the obsequies of the boar.
These were performed by a Spaniard, one of the human jetsam cast up
everywhere along the North African coast by tides of hazard and
adventure which set from every quarter of the Mediterranean. The true
son of Islam will not touch the _haloof_, the unclean jungle pig. And so
Señor Bernardo Albareda, penniless derelict and strongly suspected of
being a fugitive from the Spanish convict establishment at Melilla, was
extracting the tusks. He held them up with a dramatic gesture of
admiration.

"Twice the length of my central finger, which is not a short one!" he
remarked airily, and used the occasion to exhibit the elegances of a
hand which had patently not occupied itself lately with manual toil. One
or two of his compatriots, who had been among the beaters, were given
the task of disposing of the flesh and bristles, and departed under his
escort, carrying their burdens dependent from a couple of poles, the
Arabs hastening to avoid even the shadow of contamination which they
cast, and spitting with undisguised disfavor as they passed. Despard
accepted his comrade's invitation and joined the other two upon the seat
which they had made of a fallen mimosa stump in the shadow of the olive.

The major took out his cigarette case, found a match, and sent several
tiny clouds rolling up among the branches before he spoke. And his
answer was another question.

"You read the details of the Landon divorce case?" he hazarded.

"Yes," said Aylmer. "One could hardly escape it."

"You remember, then, that at the close the respondent was very nearly
committed for contempt of court?"

"He lost his temper, or his head," agreed Aylmer, "and threatened his
wife. I don't think any one attached much importance to his vaporings."

"Ah!" Despard nodded his head thoughtfully. "I suppose that would be the
point of view with most people."

"Not with yourself?" suggested Aylmer.

Despard shook his head.

"I have known the Van Arlens for many years," he said quietly. "Perhaps
you have forgotten that my own mother was an American, that a good deal
of my boyhood was passed in New York."

"I didn't know you knew the Van Arlens; in fact, I could hardly suspect
it, when to the best of my remembrance you never even discussed the
Landon divorce case with me."

Despard nodded.

"No," he said, in a dry, unemotional voice. "I did not discuss it with
any one. And you, moreover, were an Aylmer."

He was silent for a minute and the other two looked at him a little
curiously. This was not the Despard they were accustomed to, a sportsman
whose hobbies engrossed him to the exclusion of most other topics. This
was a man who had the force of pent feeling behind his words.

"The Van Arlens naturally did not seek outside society at the time of
the case," he continued, "but I was on leave, and I saw a good deal of
them. Has it occurred to you," he added suddenly, "that this child is
not only heir to the Landon title but to the Van Arlen millions--at
present?"

"No," said Aylmer, "but I suppose he is the only direct male
descendant."

"Do you realize what that means in America? To be a Landon, only a
barony, though I grant you an old one, is a small thing compared with
being the grandson of--the richest man in the world."

Aylmer was silent. The point of view was one that did not easily present
itself to his British complacency. Rattier, too, though he nodded
assent, did it without vehemence and with a tinge of reserve. Of a
royalist clique, transatlantic caste was outside his experience.

"At any rate your cousin Landon realized it at last in realizing what he
was losing. He moved every legal lever he could lay his hands upon to
retain the custody of his child and failed. He is to see him twice a
year, for an hour. You will understand that his chances of winning his
child's profitable affections are too limited for his taste."

Aylmer's brows met in a tiny frown of perplexity.

"Profitable affection?" he meditated.

"John is eight. In thirteen years he will be of age. His father then
will be forty-five, and quite capable of getting much enjoyment out of
his son's unlimited income."

Rattier gave a little hissing intake of the breath.

"This Landon!" he murmured admiringly.

"The Court decided, also, that the child must be brought up, for nine
months of every year, at any rate, in England. This was modified, after
medical examination and certificate, to include Europe and North
Africa."

Aylmer made a little startled motion which dropped the ash of his
cigarette upon his knee.

"Eh?" he questioned. "Medical certificate?"

"Phthisis," rejoined Despard, quietly. "The little chap has the seeds of
it, but with care the seeds need never come to growth. But he has to
winter in the South, invariably."

Rattier made a tiny caressing motion of the hand which seemed to imply
infinite commiseration. Aylmer expressed the same emotion in a little
inarticulate murmur.

"And so--?" he questioned. "And so--?"

"And so Tangier," said Despard, "which has other conveniences, for the
moneyed. The law, here, is always behind the dollars, is it not?"

The other two looked at him debatingly.

"The law?" mused Aylmer. "The law?"

"They have already had experience of it in Italy and Spain--the Van
Arlens. A man like Landon can make use of it there to further his own
purposes, against the law. The Spanish and Italian police? Can you
expect them to interfere against a man's dealings with his own child?
What do they know of the fiats of the British Courts of Chancery? He
made two very nearly successful attempts to get possession of the
boy,--one at San Remo, one at Taormina."

Aylmer gave a little low whistle of comprehension. Rattier nodded, still
with a sort of grudging admiration of this English lord's talents and
persistence.

"Have you got it now?" went on Despard. "Do you see where they stand?
Here, under the protections of the Bashaw, where Landon can never
overbid them, they enjoy a security which they can obtain nowhere else
outside America or Great Britain."

Aylmer's eyes filled with a sudden shadow of loathing.

"The scoundrel!" he cried. "The miscreant!"

Despard nodded.

"Quite so," he agreed. "The epithets any decent-minded man would apply
to him. Unfortunately, he is without shame, reckless, and heedless of
everything but his passionate desire to turn defeat into victory. He
will stop at nothing to get even with those who have so far triumphed
over him."

"And the boy's mother lives here--with her sister?" said Aylmer.

Despard did not reply for a moment. There was a queer pause and catch in
his voice as if he sought uneasily for breath.

"Miss Van Arlen is here, and the old man, Jacob Van Arlen, the
grandfather."

"And the mother?" asked Aylmer, with a note of surprise in his voice.
"Lady Landon, or does one call her Mrs. Van Arlen?"

"She is broken down in health," answered Despard, in a curiously wooden,
expressionless accent. "She has been--recommended to try for at least
six months the effects of an Alpine Sanatorium."

The two listeners understood, or thought they understood, and muttered
their sympathy in an almost inaudible chorus.

"Insane?" they whispered. "Insane?"

Despard smote his hand down upon the rotting wood.

"No!" he cried fiercely. "Her brain is as sound as yours or mine, but
her heart has been frozen. By God! Try to think, imagine, if you can,
what hell a woman has lived in who was the wife of Landon!"

His passion seemed to choke him. His eyes glowed, his chest heaved, he
was another man from the one who had sat down smilingly to smoke a
cigarette with them a few minutes before. And the passion of his wrath
infected his hearers. Imagination painted pictures in their brains;
they, too, breathed a little faster as they listened.

The gust of Despard's passion passed and left him calm again. He gave a
tiny shrug of the shoulders, which seemed to imply apology. He began to
speak with ordinary unshaken accents.

"It was I who suggested Tangier to the Van Arlens. I am in garrison at
Gibraltar; I can see them at frequent intervals; I introduced them to
the Foreign Colony here. The Anstruthers have done their best to make
them at home. I got Absalaam to be their dragoman, and I don't think you
will find a better or more versatile one between Tripoli and Mogador.
They have the most suitable villa outside the town. The Bashaw has been
given to understand the situation, has been generously tipped, and is
doing his best to keep his side of the bargain. The men who guard them
are picked and know that matters will reach an extreme of unpleasantness
for them if their vigilance is allowed to relax. All has been done that
can be done. And yet--?" He shrugged his shoulders again. "They share
the anxieties of Damocles," he added. "They live under a sword which may
fall at any moment."

He rose, flicked the cigarette ash from his sleeve, and made a motion
towards the hill.

"Shall we be getting on?" he asked. "The sun waits for no one."

They rose slowly and began to follow the distant line of beaters. Aylmer
linked his hand through Despard's arm.

"Miss Van Arlen understood ... what we feel ... all we Aylmers, about
Landon?" he asked.

Despard hesitated.

"I put it to her, strongly," he answered.

There was something not entirely convincing in the reply. Aylmer's voice
showed anxiety.

"But--but she cannot imagine that we, or any decent-minded man, could
view him with anything but loathing?"

There was still a perceptible pause before Despard's reply.

"I didn't tell her yesterday that you were coming," he said. "Indeed,
Anstruther only informed me last night. I thought it would be well that
you should arrive and make a good impression before she learned your
name. Then, you see, as it happened, you exploded it on her rather
startlingly. And she, at the time, was rather shaken."

"And this means--?" said Aylmer, impatiently.

"It means," answered Despard, debatingly, "that your name recalls
memories to her which, unfortunately, do not prepossess you in her
favor. And, I think, that, being a woman ... your service to the
child ... your saving of him ... under the circumstances ... acted
against you."

Aylmer turned and looked into his friend's face with amazement.

"But--but I don't understand!" he stammered. "That's unjust!"

Despard shook his head.

"Not entirely," he demurred. "It's feminine; it's jealousy. It is hard
to her that you should have saved the child's life. I could see that,
and combated it, during the few minutes in which we rode back to camp."

Aylmer was frowning. He dropped Despard's arm, thrust his own hands into
his pockets, and stared out into the distance. He shook his head.

"No!" he said suddenly. "I can't quite follow it. No woman with that
girl's ... eyes ... would be so ... shabby ... if she understood!"

Rattier gave him an impulsive little nod.

"If?" he enunciated slowly. "If?"

Despard threw the Frenchman a grateful glance.

"That's it," he agreed. "His name is Aylmer. So far she has not got
beyond that fact, my friend."

Aylmer looked round at them both. There was something calculating in the
way in which he surveyed the two, as if they were factors in a situation
which had hitherto eluded him, but which was now beginning to take
definite shape. And his lips had set one upon the other in a rigid line.
His chin seemed to have attained incongruous squareness beneath the
suave droop of his moustache.

"She's got to believe in me!" he announced grimly. "I won't let her be
unworthy of herself."

And the other two noticed that as he said it he nodded to himself two or
three times decidedly. He drew himself up; unconsciously his carriage
grew stiffer. It was as if he had mapped out and settled a matter
definitely. He began to talk and laugh naturally, and on other subjects.
And if any allusion to the day's adventure outcropped into the
conversation he did not avoid it, but simply passed it by without
comment. He had taken his line. The incident, apart from his resolution,
was closed.

       *       *       *       *       *

As the three strolled up to the camp a man rose from the group which sat
in the shadow of the awning at the door of the largest tent and came out
to meet them. He was tall, white-haired, aquiline of feature. And his
pervading characteristic seemed to be gravity. His figure and face alike
were unbending.

He made them a studied little bow.

"My daughter tells me, Captain Aylmer," he said, "that I have to thank
you for your prompt action on behalf of my grandson. You saved him from
a situation of grave peril."

Aylmer realized that this was without doubt Jacob Van Arlen. He
suspected, also, why the old man had thus addressed him without waiting
for an introduction. For men who are introduced, amid the intimate
sociabilities of the Tangier Tent Club, at any rate, usually shake
hands. Van Arlen's right hand held his sombrero; his left was at his
side.

Aylmer returned the bow.

"I did no more than what had obviously to be done," he said quietly.
"Despard merits your thanks more than I."

The other looked at the major with a distinct tinge of relief.

"Is that so?" he asked hopefully.

"No!" said Despard, laconically. "Your thanks are not in the least
misdirected, Mr. Van Arlen."

The old man made another courteous inclination of the head.

"I thought I could not so far have misunderstood my daughter," he
answered. "I hope, Captain Aylmer, that while you remain in Tangier I
may be permitted to serve you in any way which you like to command.
Perhaps, though, your stay is short?"

And there was hopefulness in this last query. It was patent amid the
studied urbanity of the tone. In spite of himself Aylmer smiled.

"I am a bird of passage," he said lightly. "I manage to take short leave
for most of the Tent Club meetings, to which Colonel Anstruther is kind
enough to make me welcome."

He strode forward as he spoke and began to exchange greetings with Mrs.
Anstruther, who rose to meet him. He had to hear the morning's story
re-discussed, exclaimed over, criticized. He bore it, without
impatience, but with a certain aloofness which gave the subject no
chance to endure. He managed skilfully, at last, to divert the
conversation into other channels.

Anstruther, who had sat between his wife and Miss Van Arlen, had risen
to welcome Commandant Rattier. The mishap to the latter's horse
engrossed their attention; they wandered off together to examine the
wounded limb. After a moment's hesitation Aylmer sank into the vacant
chair.

He looked round at the girl. Her eyes met his, but her hand, as if
acting by some automatic command of the brain, touched her skirt and
pulled it toward herself, and away from him. His lips grew a thought
more rigid behind the veiling moustache. But his voice was entirely
divested of any semblance of pique.

"And how is my small cousin?" he asked pleasantly. "Has Selim persuaded
him to take that long-deferred siesta?"

Old Van Arlen stirred restlessly on his seat. He looked at Aylmer, his
lips moved as if to speech, and then closed again. Miss Van Arlen sat up
very straight.

"Do you mean my nephew?" she asked frigidly.

"Your nephew and my cousin," said Aylmer, cheerfully. "I hardly expected
to find a relation here when I started this morning."

Her eyes grew stormy with suspicion, almost with hate.

"Are you sure?" she demanded suddenly.

"Quite sure," said Aylmer, halting for a scarcely perceptible moment
before her meaning reached him. "I have found only friends--so far."



CHAPTER V

MR. MILLER


Outside their own country two British types carry their caste marks
patently. They are the tourist and the officer. Gibraltar abounds with
both, the company of the first having an occasional and transient
superiority when it is swollen by Transatlantic arrivals or intermittent
yachting cruisers. But the officers of the garrison and their wives and
daughters are the reigning members of the informal club which makes
Society on the Rock. They know each other, they discuss each other; the
longer they stay the more parochial grow their interests. Newcomers
undergo a period of silent probation. They cannot slip in unobserved.
The who and the whence test is applied to each with unction, sometimes
without justice, but almost invariably with good-humor. As a consequence
everybody, within limits, knows something about everybody else.

There are exceptions, and one, an olive-complexioned, gray-clad,
gray-haired, dark-eyed man, was walking steadily down the Waterport one
sunny afternoon as a rush of cabs towards the custom-house proclaimed
the incoming of an important steamer. Mr. William Miller had a
pleasantly situated cottage in the South Town. The postman knew that he
had many correspondents in Spain, England, Germany, and elsewhere.
Moorish visitors from across the straits were not infrequent at a small
office which he retained in Waterport Street. Men of letters, desiring
information on recondite subjects, separated themselves from the
frivolous landing parties of Messrs. Cook and called at the same
address. No one had ever tapped the sources of Mr. Miller's encyclopædic
knowledge in vain. No one had found him otherwise than affable. And
though it was understood that his activities were literary, no resident
or tourist had successfully probed the nature of his life-work.

The wives of many colonels had recognized this and had flung themselves
with ardor against the breastworks of his imperturbability. Not one of
them could look back with pride on any action in which they had won even
a temporary advantage. Mr. Miller spoke freely, showed an intimate
knowledge of men and manners throughout the civilized world, and
appeared to manifest pleasure in sociabilities. His only attempts to
return these lay in small but eclectic tea-parties whereat he displayed
hoards of artistic treasures and discoursed learnedly of carpet dye and
porcelain marks.

But he was by no means a ladies' man. He accepted, and was welcome at
the hospitalities of many a mess or gun room. He sang well and could
play a more than ordinary effective accompaniment to a comic song after
hearing the air whistled half a dozen times by its would-be interpreter.
The impersonality of his social attitude prevented his being popular,
but he was an institution. As he walked along he bowed, nodded, smiled;
obviously he knew everybody. Obviously everybody knew him.

As he walked across the sunlit square and dived into the deeply shadowed
tunnel which is the Waterport, a tender fussed noisily up to the quay.
Mr. Miller eyed the passengers on its deck keenly.

The steamer was evidently a White Star in from New York. The load of
colossal trunks upon the deck would have told him that apart from the
accent of the passengers and the flag at the masthead. Baggage agents
began to dart here and there; Mr. Cook's uniformed interpreters were in
the forefront of the fray; Spanish cab runners yelled and grimaced.

Mr. Miller stood aside without attempting to force a way into the
tumult. His hands rested quietly together on the hilt of his cane. His
brow was contemplative and unruffled. Certainly if he awaited anything
he was in no hurry to find it.

All things come to those who wait, and Mr. Miller had not to wait long.
A man strode suddenly out of the custom-house gate, thrust aside the
Spanish porter who was snatching at his handbag, and made a beckoning
motion towards a cab.

Mr. Miller strode quietly forward and reached it simultaneously with the
fare.

The man looked at him with a sudden irritable alertness and then broke
into a grin.

"You're here," he said, and flung his bag upon the seat. The other
responded with a tiny shrug as if he deprecated the platitudinous nature
of the remark. He motioned the man to take his seat, sat down beside
him, and told the driver the name of an hotel. "Your man is looking
after your heavy luggage?" he questioned.

The other nodded impatiently.

"Yes," he said. "Not that there's much to look after." He turned and
glanced into his companion's face. "I'm getting down to bed-rock now;
nothing left to waste on trivialities. I nearly came second class."

Miller's eyebrows rose.

"That would have been unnecessary." He speculated.

"Imbecile, as it turned out," agreed the man. "There were some
bridge-playing Southerners on board, old school, couldn't bring
themselves to be civil to the New Yorkers, but ready to take an
Englishman, and a lord, moreover, to their hearts. No high play, but I'm
eight hundred dollars up on the voyage."

Miller nodded placidly.

"Bed-rock is quite a way down yet," he smiled.

"Not if expenses are to mount as you advised me in your last letter,"
snapped the other. "Has anything been done?"

Miller shook his head slowly.

"Force is beyond us," he said, "for we don't possess it. Bribery is out
of the question; there is no one left by the other side who has not had
his price. Opportunity may be ours. We must await it."

"And waiting costs twenty pounds a week!"

The gray man turned his opened palm outwards with a deprecative motion
which was not English at all.

"My dear Lord Landon, how can Opportunity be seized if there is no one
to meet her when she appears?"

Landon gave a dissatisfied grunt.

"How many lacqueys have you set to wait on her?"

"Six," said Miller, succinctly. "Six men of action, who would have
succeeded before now, but for an accident."

Landon's face took on the eager expression of a wolf to whom a distant
taint is brought by the evening wind.

"Eh?" he cried. "There has been a chance, then; their defences are not
impregnable?"

Miller shook his head.

"They have been strengthened since," he said diffidently. "But the weak
spot in them is the child himself. He has never had, if you will pardon
the remark, proper control. He is frankly disobedient of the precautions
with which they surround him."

Landon grinned.

"There's my blood in him," he chuckled. "And, by God, I'm fond of the
little toad, too. It's not only to spite her, Miller, or for the money
that's in it. I never took the trouble to whop him; I believe he'd come
to me of his own accord, if he had the chance."

"It's a large if," suggested Mr. Miller, politely.

Landon made no retort. His face had assumed a meditative mask; his lips
were firmly pressed together; he had the effect of one who calculates
pro against con.

"That's why I think it's time I took a hand," he said suddenly. "We'll
knock off three of your six, Miller. I am prepared to be a host in
myself."

For the moment the other said nothing. They had swung out of the
Waterport Street and turned the sharp corner which brought them to the
entrance of the hotel. He listened quietly as his companion demanded the
number of the room engaged for him, received his letters, and entered
the lift. He accompanied him silently. It was not till they were left
alone that he pulled a pocket-book out, tranquilly turned the leaves,
and consulted an entry.

"I note that I have had no remittance from you, Lord Landon," he
announced, "since November."

"Six weeks ago," agreed Landon, languidly. "Six times twenty is a
hundred and twenty. You reinforce my argument, my good Miller. A hundred
and twenty pounds gone and you show me--nothing."

The other coughed a dry, perfunctory little cough.

"As far as I am concerned, the money is, as you say, gone," he allowed,
"but you have just come by one hundred and sixty sovereigns owing to the
complacence of these Southern gentlemen on board your boat. That puts us
right and safeguards another fortnight."

Landon nodded and answered in a voice as dry as his own.

"That is a matter for discussion," he intimated. "I should like to hear
these expenses justified to some appreciable extent. What was the chance
which failed?"

"Though it failed," rejoined Miller, "it proved the advantage of
constant vigilance. The child separated himself from his guardians in
the very midst of the late afternoon traffic and got into the hands of
one of our men. They reached the pier together; they were within an ace
of success. Then Fate interfered--it must have been Fate," he
interpolated with the ghost of a grin--"because her instrument was of
your own house."

Landon came to a sudden halt in the opening of an envelope.

"What's that?" he cried quickly. "A relation of mine?"

"Captain John Aylmer, R.A., Assistant Secretary to the new Military
Works Commission," answered Miller, sedately.

Landon swore. Then suddenly he began to laugh.

"It's quaint," he conceded. "It's damned quaint, Miller. And he
did--what?"

Miller shrugged his shoulders.

"Interested himself in the situation, caused a delay which was fatal,
for the moment, to our success. He cross-questioned the child and our
man had to save himself, alone."

Landon laughed again.

"And he knew, this cousin of mine? He knew whose child it was?"

"Not then, but now, I imagine. He has met him since, at the Tent Club.
He has also met your late father-in-law."

"What? The Kite--old Jacob--he's there?"

"Personally superintending a situation which gets daily more
impenetrable, for us. Each fright we give them adds another palisade to
the defence."

Landon took up the letters which he had laid down and went on opening
and glancing through them. He pursed up his lips into an obstinately set
expression; he assumed the air of a bargainer who has reached the limit
of his purpose. For he fully understood the drift of Mr. Miller's
remarks.

"We had better be plain with each other," he said at last. "My little
expedition to the States has been a failure. As a matrimonial
proposition I am, for the present, out of the running. They told me to
come again in a year's time. Title-hunting American women have short
memories, but some beastly reporter recognized me and ran two columns of
reminiscences of the trial. That queered me, and after all the decree is
not made absolute for another six months."

"Is this anticipatory of the announcement that those eight hundred
dollars are the only support between you and bed-rock after all?"

"You jump at my meaning. I'm going to take over the duties of your six,
or of some of them, at any rate."

The other's gray eyes reviewed his companion with a keenly calculating
glance. There was no irritation in it, rather there was satisfaction.
Mr. Miller did not present the aspect of a man whose chances of
receiving a debt of one hundred and twenty pounds had been made
doubtful. He had more the look of a bull speculator watching a tape as
the eighths and sixteenths are added every few minutes to the stock
which he commands.

"You will fail," he said drily. "Without funds you must fail. One poor
man, in spite of the story books, can do nothing against a hundred and
wealth."

"Possibly," said Landon. "But one may be permitted to try."

"No," said the other, stolidly. "One may not be permitted, in Tangier."

Landon looked up and for a moment silence hung heavily between the two
men. The one who stood was the picture of heavy, imperturbable
resolution. Landon, sitting back in his chair, was animate with energy,
with a sort of tenseness which was almost magnetic. It was as if a
panther faced a rhinoceros.

Then Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"Am I being threatened, my dear Miller?" he asked quietly.

"You are being informed," said the other. "The Syndicate which I
represent is willing to finance you, for an adequate return. Without
that it proposes to make Tangier an impossible residence for you."

Landon stared his surprise and his obvious relief.

"They are going to speculate in me?" He pondered for a moment. "I don't
promise, or I haven't promised, that I shall allow old Jacob to buy the
child back, if we get him, at all."

Miller nodded weightily.

"That does not matter to us," he announced. "That is as you like."

Landon's eyes were still wide and debating.

"Then your return comes--where?" he asked.

"We are willing to wait for it," said the other. "The first service we
require from you is that you will renew your acquaintance with your
cousin, Captain Aylmer, and endeavor to remove the distaste which I
regret to think he feels for your company."

Landon bent forward, leaned his elbows on the table and his chin on his
closed fists. He stared at his companion with a concentrated,
dispassionate examination which seemed to probe and fathom through the
depths of the other's impenetrability.

Miller met the scrutiny with no other manifestation than an, if
possible, increase of apathy.

Landon dropped his hands slowly upon the table and gave his head a tiny
shake.

"I don't understand you," he said. "Why has my cousin a distaste for my
society? We have never been in collision. As a matter of fact, he was
best man at my wedding."

"It is to be supposed that he read the account of your divorce," said
the other, stolidly. "He has now made the acquaintance of your wife's
relations."

"I see," said Landon, slowly. "Is that all?"

"Isn't it enough? Are you generally received?"

There was something callous, almost brutal, in the man's tone. The tiny
spot of color which began to burn in Landon's sallow cheek was evidence
that he recognized it.

"So," he answered, "I am to eat dirt at the hands of Captain John
Aylmer? I am to appear to like it? Why?"

"Because," said Miller, dispassionately, "you are practically
penniless. That is your side of the question. Our side is that your
cousin happens to be what he is--Secretary to the Military Works
Commission, who hold the immediate future of Gibraltar in their hands."

For the second time, and through a longer silence, the two stared at
each other. As the fiery torch of comprehension burned brightly on
Landon's face, rose to his forehead, seemed, indeed, to gleam in his
eyes, his lips, which were at first grim and rigid, curled slowly into a
sneer.

"By the Lord!" he swore. "By the Lord, Miller, you have an impudence!"

"I have a knowledge of values," said the other, impassively. "I wish to
get my commission both ways. I expect it from you, because you get the
job from no one else. I expect it from my employers, because you are
practically the only tool at present, which they can use. I am perfectly
open with you."

"As open as the Pit!" snarled Landon. "As candid as midnight! Let's have
a taste of it plainly. What is it you want of me--robbery?"

Miller made a gesture of deprecation.

"I want you to--borrow--unknown to your cousin, certain books, the
nature of which will be indicated to you in detail."

"And if I don't?"

"You must, at any rate, try."

"And if I won't?"

Miller smiled.

"We don't discuss absurdities."

There was nothing manifestly menacing in this, but there was a sense of
finality. It reached Landon like a shaft of cold air blown in through
the suddenly opened door. Mentally he flinched from it; he lifted his
shoulders into a shrug of resignation.

"Where are his quarters?"

"In the South Town near my own cottage. For the moment that does not
matter. You meet him to-morrow, by accident. You do not know, you see,
that he is here?"

He consulted a small time-table.

"We should be on the quay about three-thirty to-morrow, when the steamer
gets in from Tangier."

For the second time Landon expressed surrender with a passive shrug.



CHAPTER VI

LANDON'S NEW PROFESSION


As Despard and Aylmer passed out of the dark of the Waterport into the
sunlight of the square, two men, who walked in front of them, halted,
shook hands, appeared to exchange an informal farewell, and separated.
One, clad in gray flannels and a gray sombrero, turned to the left and
began to mount the ramp behind the barracks. The other strolled slowly
on.

The two soldiers fresh from their crossing of the straits from Africa
were hailed and questioned more than once by comrades or friends who had
not been fortunate enough to share in leave for the Tent Club meeting
and were anxious for the last details of sport. How did pig run this
time? Had such and such coverts been burned as was reported? What luck
had they had personally? Despard and Aylmer had to halt half a dozen
times within the first two furlongs. They began to regret that they had
not taken a cab.

The man who strolled along in front of them halted, too, here and there.
He did not appear to look round, but whenever acquaintances buttonholed
the pair behind him it was noticeable that shop windows or Moorish curio
sellers claimed his attention. He lingered, indeed, opposite a
well-known book shop till his sudden resumption of his stroll brought
him into collision with the others at the exact moment of their
passing.

He started, muttered a perfunctory apology, and then made an
exclamation.

"Jack!" he cried gladly, and held out his hand.

Aylmer met his cousin's glance, first with surprise, then with a sudden
stiffening of his lips, finally with frowning. He gave a side glance at
Despard.

The major's face was transfigured with wrath and loathing. He was
looking at Landon as he might have looked at a poisonous reptile. He
drew back a step of instinctive repulsion.

Landon gave a bitter little laugh. He still held out his hand defiantly.

"Isn't it fit to be shaken, Jack?" he asked. "Have I to thank the
Galahad at your side for that?"

Despard's eyes grew grim and set. He turned to Aylmer and nodded coldly.

"See you later," he suggested, without another look in Landon's
direction, and passed on his way with unhesitating strides. Venomously,
malignantly, Landon watched him go.

"I don't wonder he won't face me!" he cried with well-simulated passion.
"By God, I don't!"

He turned and stared at his cousin. Aylmer met his gaze coolly,
unhesitatingly, and without a trace of relenting. For the second time
Landon's bitter laugh escaped him.

"You've had his version?" he said. "Well, I don't altogether wonder at
you in that case."

"I don't understand you," said Aylmer, quietly. "The public prints have
made it quite evident that you're not fit for the society of decent men,
if that is what you mean."

"No!" snarled Landon. "It isn't what I mean. What I mean is that that
blackguard who's just left us, curse him! has won all round. He took my
wife from me and now he's taken my reputation, my honor, and he's gone
far to take every friend I have. But by the Lord who made me, Jack, I
thought that you might be left with some sense of justice!"

"Justice?"

Aylmer's voice made an echo to Landon's. "Justice?" he repeated. "You
got that, or less than that in most men's opinion, in the divorce
court."

"I didn't!" said Landon, fiercely. "Ah, they made a pretty story of it!
The blackguard who knocked his wife about, who thrashed his child, who
took his wife's allowance and flung it under a dunghill of drink and
devilry. That was me! Who gave evidence? The wife herself, who has since
gone into a lunatic asylum. Servants who were bought with that old
miser's gold. The man who wanted her--Despard!"

In spite of himself Aylmer gave an almost imperceptible quiver of
surprise.

Landon laughed again.

"Does that touch you?" he cried. "He wouldn't tell you that. Not of how
he schemed, and laid traps, and sunk pitfalls for me, to catch me, as I
was caught. I'm no saint, Lord knows, but I've never sunk to that. I've
had my game and paid my price, but, by God, I've never cheated!"

Aylmer's eyes still met his with level contempt.

"I know Despard, I've known him since boyhood," he answered. "He does
not do these things."

Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"Of course! I'm down and you're all stamping me into the mud, lower and
lower. You've all taken the accepted view, and when I cry out against it
I'm told I've had my chance. So I did, but it was never a fair one."

"You have still six months in which to give your version to the King's
Proctor if you have any new facts to support your statement," said
Aylmer, coldly.

"Facts! How am I to get the benefit of facts when the other side can
manufacture answers for them with a dollar for my every penny? I've
supplied 'facts' to the King's Proctor till I'm sick of the sight of his
office paper assuring me that he has 'no evidence to justify my
contentions.' I can give facts enough. It's a hearing I want--an
impartial hearing!"

Aylmer shook his head.

"You got it," he said doggedly. "You got it!"

Landon rapped his stick upon the pavement.

"I tell you I didn't!" he cried. "I tell you that I could tell you
things that would prove to you--yes, prove--that the whole job was got
up by that scoundrel who's just left us--got up by him to steal my wife
from me. I ask you to hear me; I appeal to you to listen to my side; I
appeal to your sense of justice!"

Aylmer turned up the street.

"If you think there is anything to be gained by it, say on!" he
answered. "You can walk with me as far as my quarters."

"You won't ask me in?" sneered Landon. "That's more than I can expect."

"Some of the fellows might look in on me--decent fellows," explained
Aylmer, drily.

Landon gave a little gasp, halted, and leaned suddenly against the wall.
He looked up at his cousin. His lips worked, he stammered, he broke into
a panting storm of sobs.

"I didn't deserve that! My God! I didn't deserve that!" he cried.

Aylmer looked down at him and a tiny thrill of compunction shot through
him. He hesitated. He did not believe in Landon's protestations. He
knew, in every instinct of his nature, that Landon was a scoundrel. But
he began to remember that it had not always been so. Things that had
brought them together as boys came back to him. His memory suddenly
framed a picture of that wedding nine years ago. Landon had gone to meet
his bride gallantly, adoringly, that day. He had loved her then. Yes, he
could not have acted that, he had loved her then.

And Landon, watching narrowly his cousin's face, read the emotions as
they chased each other across it as if they had been writ upon an open
page. He hugged himself mentally.

"That's what knocks him!" he told himself triumphantly. "The abased
ingenuous sinner! A little more of that and, Great Nicholas! I have him
by the short hairs!"

He pulled himself together with a well-acted effort. He turned and drew
back.

"You cur!" he cried. "You cur, to hit at a man who's down!"

Aylmer's tanned cheek showed through it a tiny flush. The dart had gone
home.

"When you prove that an apology's due, I'll make it."

"In the street!" sneered Landon. "I'm to shout my wrongs, tell you all
the intimate story of my provocation before the town. Thank you for
nothing!"

Aylmer made a little movement of the hand which implied irritation.

"You can come to my quarters," he said, "but--"

"This evening?"

"No, this evening I'm dining out. You can come to my quarters. Until you
give me reason to alter my opinion I don't introduce you to my friends.
Is that understood?"

Landon stood silent for another instant before he answered slowly.

"Yes," he agreed. "You've read and been told enough to excuse you. Yes,
I'll come. And in half an hour you'll be begging my pardon, or--"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Or what?" said Aylmer, quietly.

"Or I shall know you've made up your mind not to be convinced."

And then a sudden taciturnity overtook him. He marched along at his
cousin's side, his eyes bent upon the pavement, his brows contracted. He
had the appearance of one who considers deeply. John Aylmer made no
attempt to resume conversation. He concluded that Landon was either
piecing together a story out of unpromising material which would leave
considerable gaps to be filled or, which was more likely, evolving one
out of his vivid imagination. In either case he was content to leave the
issue to be ascertained in the privacy of his quarters.

They gained them uninterrupted. Aylmer made a sign towards a chair.
Landon, after an expressive glance towards the Tantalus on the
sideboard, sat down. Aylmer did not take the hint; he was in no mood to
offer hospitality to this man, even to the inconsiderable extent of a
whisky and soda.

He looked at Landon.

"Well?" he demanded curtly.

Landon gave another look towards the sideboard.

"I've hinted once," he said, with a laugh which he tried to make genial
and offhand. "This time I'll ask bluntly for it."

"For what?"

There was no encouragement in Aylmer's voice, and his eyes were hard and
unrelenting.

"For a drink."

Aylmer shook his head.

"Suppose I hear your statement first," he suggested. "Then you can have
a drink here, or elsewhere."

Landon rose to his feet with a dramatic jerk. He turned abruptly towards
the door.

"That's enough, by God! that's enough!" he swore savagely. "I've taken
your insolence once; I'll not take it again. I'm not fit to be offered a
drink in your rooms; I'm to sit like some damned flunkey giving his
character while you cross-examine me. I'll see you on the far side of
Hell first."

He reached the door, halted, and stood with hand on it, looking round.

"You'll be sorry for this," he said. "I tell you that, when the truth of
it comes to be known, as it'll be known some day, you'll be sorry for
it."

Aylmer looked at him with a steady contemplation which showed no signs
of clemency. Landon flung open the door and passed out.

"Cursed prig!" he snapped and descended the stairs into the street.
Aylmer, with a slight shrug of the shoulders, turned towards his
dressing-room.

Ten minutes later Landon was enjoying his drink in Mr. Miller's
pleasantly furnished apartments. His host had supplied it this time
without any demur--with alacrity. He watched his guest dispose of it
and hastened to offer another. This, too, disappeared down Landon's
throat and a third was placed solicitously at his elbow. Not till these
arrangements had been completed did Mr. Miller smirch his hospitality
with any hint of business. But though he differed from Aylmer in this,
he imitated him in the directness of his _pour-parlers_. He, indeed,
used the same monosyllable.

"Well?" he said inquiringly.

Landon nodded with much satisfaction.

"I got in," he said briefly. "I was only there two minutes, at a liberal
computation, but I've found out and done all I required. He's dining out
to-night. The books, as you expected, are in an ordinary bookcase, glass
fronted, with an ordinary padlock on it. What fools these War Office
experts are! There was a spare latch-key of his rooms hanging on a hook
on the wall, for the servant, I suppose. I nicked it as I went out. I
met the servant on the stairs--just as well, if I run across him
to-night. There will be nothing rummy in my returning to see his master.
I purposely dragged my coat against the passage whitewash, and after he
offered to brush it for me I gave him half a crown. So he's all right;
he thinks I'm a worthy gentleman who ought to be encouraged to call
often. Is that all right?"

Mr. Miller smiled.

"You show such talents and attention to detail, my dear Lord Landon," he
answered, "that I grieve that I am not the happy partner of such a
colleague permanently."

Landon looked across at him with a grin.

"Seriously?" he demanded.

"Quite seriously," replied the impassive Mr. Miller.

Landon meditated.

"If there is good money in it--?" he mused slowly, but his host hastened
to interrupt him energetically.

"Excellent money," he assured him, "and we have always a use for a
lord."

Landon grinned again.

"Perhaps my value will increase after this evening," he suggested. "When
do you purpose going?"

"Would half-past nine suit you?" said Miller, affably, and Landon
nodded.

"Charmed, I'm sure," he grinned again, and tossed off his third glass
with unction. "Here's luck!" he cried, and Mr. Miller, who used spirits
sparingly, and in the afternoon not at all, was forced to include
himself in the aspiration with the good fellowship which is implied in a
courteous bow.

At half-past nine Aylmer's soldier servant found, as Landon had
prophesied, nothing extraordinary in his master's guest's return. The
glint of a second half crown shone persuasively in that guest's hand as
he expressed his desire to write a note to await the master's coming. He
was shown without any demur into the sitting-room, and supplied with pen
and paper.

But Landon's talents were not wasted on literary composition when he was
left alone. He produced a pair of pliers and dealt very drastically with
the padlock on the bookcase, opened the glazed doors, and ran his
fingers down the numbers engraved upon the morocco-bound volumes. He
selected one, opened it, flipped the pages, and finally came to a halt,
his finger-tip poised above a plan.

He closed the book and went to the window. He opened it noiselessly.

"Number 34 North Front. Elevation of gun platforms with angles to east
and south," he enunciated very quietly but very distinctly into the
night.

A grayness stirred in the shadow below the window. There was a whispered
reply.

"Right!" answered Miller's voice laconically, and Landon poised the book
in mid-air.

"Can you see it?" he asked, still below his breath. There was an
affirmative grunt from below.

The book left Landon's hand and fell through the night. There was a
faint shock as it reached the waiting grip in the darkness.

Landon quietly and methodically shut the window and turned to the desk.
He leaned, pen in hand, over the note-paper.

There was the click of a latch-key. He swung round to confront his
cousin.

For a second the two eyed each other in silence. Then Landon rose slowly
to his feet.

"I came, forgetting that you were dining out," he said. "I came because
I reasoned that by now ... you would be wanting ... to offer me an
apology."

Aylmer looked at the desk. Landon followed the glance.

"I was going to explain--why?" he added, pointing at the unsullied
note-paper.

And then Alymer's gaze, which had been concentrated on his cousin's
face, slipped past it and found, by chance, the bookcase.

His brows met in a puzzled frown; he made a step forward; he bent to
examine the fractured padlock. Then he straightened himself and gave an
exclamation.

Landon was ready. He drew a revolver from his pocket; he held it by the
muzzle. And the butt came down with business-like vigor on Aylmer's
temple. He seemed to crumple up rather than fall. He slid against the
bookcase to the floor.

The dawn was breaking before, confusedly, achingly, consciousness
wavered back to him again--the same dawn which saw a Spanish steamer
drop anchor in Tangier's roads and Landon, with a satisfied smile, swing
down the ladder into the boat which was to take him ashore.



CHAPTER VII

VILLA EULALIA


Aylmer looked up as Despard came into the room. A kit bag lay on the
floor half full and Aylmer's man was packing it. Despard raised his
eyebrows in surprise.

"Going?" he asked quickly. "Where?"

"Tangier," said Aylmer. "To-night, by the Forwood boat."

Despard gave a little whistle.

"And the Commission?" he objected.

"I've had very special luck there," explained Aylmer. "Sir Arthur went
down with influenza yesterday morning. So the Commission, instead of
meeting this week as proposed, adjourns till the end of November."

He leaned down, gave a searching glance into the bag, and closed it.

"That will do, Sillery," he said to the servant. "I'll call if I want
you."

As the man went out Despard dropped down upon the sofa. He sat and
looked across at his companion with a glance which blended inquiry and
concern.

"I've heard only rumors, so far," he remarked.

Aylmer made a little gesture towards the bookcase, which was still
broken but empty.

"I came back unexpectedly last night. I had been discussing a point with
the general at dinner and ran across to find a book to prove my
contention. I found Landon here, ransacking the bookcase. One volume is
gone. He took me unawares and knocked me out. I didn't come to for
several hours."

Despard made an inarticulate exclamation of anger.

"And he escaped, out of Gibraltar?"

"By the _Miramar_, so the police declare. A Spanish tramp, going down
the Moroquin coast and stopping first at Tangier."

"He's gone to kill two birds with one stone," said Despard. "And you are
pursuing?"

"Naturally," said Aylmer, in a very matter-of-fact voice.

"And your leave home--Scotland--cub hunting?"

"That goes, of course. Possibly, if ten weeks is insufficient, my
secretaryship goes. Perhaps, old chap, even my commission."

Despard got up with a startled jerk.

"What's that?" he cried fiercely. "What's that?"

Aylmer's hand made a deprecative motion.

"My duty's plain, isn't it?" he asked.

"No!" retorted Despard. "If these old women of Commissioners have no
more sense than to direct you to keep important books in a simple
bookcase in your quarters--"

"Oh, the book?" interrupted Aylmer, placidly. "Of course, there's the
book."

Despard halted, hesitated, and looked at his friend with curiosity.

"You mean the contents of it? You can't help them getting known?"

Aylmer nodded.

"We must recognize the fact that they are known by whoever buys them,
or whoever hired Landon to steal them."

"Then why worry; why pursue, why start on this wild-goose chase?" He
pointed to the great bruise on Aylmer's forehead. "It's outrageous, with
that on you. It's probably dangerous."

For a moment Aylmer was silent. He stood looking at Despard, and his
eyes seemed to express a sort of speculative criticism.

"Landon is my cousin," he said at last, as if he put the keystone to an
argumentative arch.

"What of it?"

For the second time Aylmer hesitated before he spoke.

"It seems to me," he said slowly, "that in this part of the world I am
responsible for the good name which he is smirching. He has gone to
Tangier--not only to save his skin. He has gone to commence a campaign
of terrorization against the Van Arlens. Merely as an Aylmer I have to
pit my hand against his, merely to clear our name and to do my duty. And
there is more than that. Since Landon, for moral purposes, is dead, I
consider that morally, and very possibly legally, I am the child's
guardian. To keep my trust I have to safeguard the child from his
father."

Despard tapped his fingers doubtfully upon the mantelpiece.

"And the Van Arlens?" he questioned.

There were tones in his voice which made Aylmer pause over his
portmanteau.

"The Van Arlens? I am, of course, going to them direct."

Despard hesitated.

"You can't work with them," he said at last. "They won't accept your
help."

A flicker of emotion, first of pain and then of purpose, gleamed in
Aylmer's eyes.

"But they may need it," he answered. He looked at Despard searchingly.

"And why not?" he went on. "What have they against me except my name?"

"You don't know what it has come to mean to them, in eight years," said
Despard, quietly.

And then a queer little silence fell between them, an interval which
seemed charged with the electricity of emotion. Despard looked at
Aylmer. His friend was staring in his direction, but with a meditative,
impersonal gaze which seemed to glance through--not at--him. And a smile
grew faintly about his lips, though these, indeed, were pressed firmly
together.

He straightened his shoulders, he sighed.

"Of course I start handicapped," he allowed. "But I can run a waiting
race." And then he gave an involuntary start and a quick, curious glance
at his companion. "We aren't competitors?" he asked suddenly.

The crimson surged up under the tan on Despard's forehead. He laughed
harshly.

"The race was run and I was beaten, nine years ago," he said. "There
will be no other entry, for me." He walked up to Aylmer and laid his
hand upon his shoulder.

"God knows, old chap, I wish you luck. But you carry weight, there's no
denying that."

Aylmer nodded again.

"To carry weight one wants a stayer," he said. "And I can stay,
Despard."

The other nodded.

"Yes," he said quietly. "You can stay. And as far as I know, the course
is clear." His voice halted and stumbled queerly. "I ran straight, too,
but I was fouled."

And with a grip of Aylmer's hand he went out, to lay the balm of hope
against the unhealed wound fate had dealt him, nine long years before.

       *       *       *       *       *

As twenty-four hours later Aylmer climbed the steps from the water's
edge to the pierhead of Tangier, a red fez was doffed from a
close-cropped skull and out of a little crowd of hotel touts a Moor
saluted with a welcoming smile.

"A pleasant surprise, Sidi," he remarked affably. "There is no hunt
abroad to-day."

Aylmer shook his head gravely.

"Not in thy meaning, Daoud," he answered. He moved closer to him. "A
Spanish boat--the _Miramar_ came in at dawn?" he questioned.

The Moor hesitated and then turned to shout to a companion. The man
answered with a laconic affirmative.

Daoud nodded.

"Yes, Sidi. She came in. As you see, she has gone again."

"Who landed from her?"

Again Absalaam put queries to the assembled loafers. They answered
obscenely but with directness.

"A man came ashore with the captain and did not return with him," said
the Moor. "Is this, then, an affair of importance?"

"I will give fifty dollars to him who brings me face to face with that
man," said Aylmer, quietly. "Let your fellows know this."

Absalaam frowned ferociously and then laughed, a queer, high-pitched
nasal laugh.

"My fellows!" He swept his hand towards the pier loafers witheringly.
"Does the Sidi think that I am of this noble company of--of dogs and
eaters of dirt?" He laughed again, cheerfully this time. "After all, I
have given the Sidi every reason to believe it. But it is not so. My
work in Tangier sends me strange companions, but I am not of them. And
there is no need that these should debauch themselves with your fifty
dollars, Sidi. I will see to this thing!"

Aylmer made a gesture of assent.

"As you will, so that the matter is done with speed. I stay at the
Bristol. For the moment I visit the Villa Eulalia."

"You can spare yourself the heat and the mounting of the hill, Sidi.
They of the villa set forth on an expedition to the lighthouse this
morning."

Aylmer came to a halt, irresolute.

"This is not mere talk; you know it?"

The Moor looked at him with sombre eyes which, however, barely hid a
twinkle.

"The lady, the little lord, and their attendants went; this I saw
myself. Absalaam ibn Said, their dragoman, is my cousin. I spoke with
him."

"The old man?"

Daoud's shrug conveyed the fact that he was sufficiently conversant with
the customs of Nazrani to have neglected the movements of one who could
surely not claim the attentions which were notoriously the due of his
daughter.

"I did not concern myself to notice the old man, Sidi. If your business
is with him, doubtless it is God's will that he awaits you."

He waved towards the town with a determined and energetic sweep of the
hand.

"I go, to earn your dollars, Sidi. One hour may suffice me; perchance I
must waste three or even four. But I shall find him, have no doubt of
the matter. Have I your leave to depart?"

As they passed together under the shadow of the Marsa gate, Aylmer
nodded and the next moment passed alone into the crowd. A side alley had
swallowed Daoud as if by magic.

Aylmer joined the main stream of traffic which breasted up past the
Mosque and the little Sôk towards the Gate of the Great Market, and so,
past the hovels of the desert vagrants which cluster round the walls, to
the Marshan and the European quarter outside the town.

A little apart from the cluster of Legations stood the Villa Eulalia,
encircled with its tiny park. This, in its turn, was bounded by a high
wall of plaster or dried mud. The entrance led under an archway by a
porter's lodge.

A Moor in a spotless bournous appeared and made a grave gesture of
obeisance as the visitor stood in the shadow of the porch.

Aylmer presented his card.

The man inspected it and pulled a cord. Some way off, inside the house,
came the clang of a bell. Another man emerged, took the card which the
porter handed him, and disappeared. All this time Aylmer still stood
outside the gate.

Perhaps a certain irritation showed on his face, for the porter made a
gesture of deprecation.

"If the Sidi would sit--?" He submitted courteously, indicating his own
chair. "I do not know the Sidi," he added, with another tiny shrug, "or
else--" His voice died away. He let it be inferred that circumstances,
not his own desire, stood between the visitor and instant welcome.

Aylmer smiled.

"Strangers do not have the entrée?" he asked, as he seated himself.

The man bowed a grave affirmative.

"These are my orders, Sidi," he answered. "But if the Sidi comes again
he will find that I have a good memory. I do not forget a face."

Aylmer nodded. "I hope to prove it, my friend," he said quietly, and
then sat silent, reviewing his surroundings.

There is probably no more beautifully situated dwelling in Africa than
this wide one-storied house upon the knoll which dominates the Marshan
with Tangier at its feet. Beyond the clustered houses of the town lies
the blue of the bay. Beyond that again the gray vagueness of Gibraltar,
Cadiz, and the cork woods of Spain. On clear days, high, white, and
mystical looms, above all, the snow of the Sierra.

Far to the east stands the ring of mountains which encircles Tetuan, and
this, for many months of the year, has its own crown of white. Away to
the west is the infinite emptiness of the Atlantic beyond Spartel, while
southward, a barrier between the sea and the desert wastes, Sheshouan
rears up its mighty crest. To whichever quarter the eye turns there is
loveliness--loveliness both of color and of line. And the lucent
clearness of the atmosphere emphasizes both. Sometimes the mist floats
in and covers the seascape with a cloud of mystery, but it is seldom,
save in the short time of the rains, that the landward view is anything
but sun-swathed. And the sands which stretch between the river and the
town walls seem to suck in his rays and render them back from their
yellow richness when his face is obscured.

What nature has done for the distant views artifice has graven upon the
immediate surroundings. Pipes laid down to the little River of the Jews,
which babbles below the knoll, bring up water to irrigate the lawns
which surround the verandahs. Nowhere in Tangier is there such a carpet
of living green. The creepers climb the verandah posts and trail
unrestrained upon the roof. Great white, red, and yellow flowers swing
from pole to pole as the sea breeze freshens; trailing tendrils of vine
and clematis nod through the open windows and mingle with the cords of
the string curtains. And the plash of water adds to the sense of leisure
and repose. A little fountain plays ceaselessly from the summit of a
massed pyramid of rocks and rambles down into the grass between
clustered ferns. In masses of six and seven the date palms fling shade
from trunk to trunk.

Peace was the pervading element, Aylmer told himself, as he looked down
the shady alleys and listened to the voice of the fountain, and yet
peace, as facts went, was further from this abode than from the clangors
of the market-place in the faction-riven town at their feet. This was no
house of pleasure; it was a fortress, with the enemy ever at the gate.

The precautions of his own entrance were sign enough, but other things
bore witness. A score of gardeners was not necessary to tend the two
acres of pleasaunce, elaborately planned and kept though they were.
There was no entrance save the one; two others had been solidly walled
in. Bars were on the windows; massive bolts upon the inner wooden gate
beyond the iron one.

Remembering to whom this debt of anxiety and watchfulness was due,
Aylmer set his lips yet more grimly as he waited. Landon should pay to
the uttermost, not only for the wrongs which he had heaped year by year
upon his wife and her relations, but for the injury he had done to those
of his own blood. Aylmer's eyes grew hard; his color rose angrily. He,
John Aylmer, a reputable man, sat and waited admission to a house like a
common mendicant, because Landon was a scoundrel. And beyond this, was
there not more? Had he not had to endure a look of repulse, of loathing,
from eyes--for the first time he confessed it, even to himself--which
had become to him the very eyes of Fate. By God! Landon should pay
bitterly for that!

A step upon the gravel scattered his reflections. He looked up. Mr. Van
Arlen was coming towards him, his head bent to that courteous, suavely
interested inclination which is a relic of the old school of politeness.
No man under sixty has had the time, or the inclination, to practise
these old-time graces.

Aylmer rose, and held out his hand. Mr. Van Arlen, with profuse
gesticulations, insisted on personally bringing forward a couple of low
deck chairs into the shadow of the palms. He waved his visitor to take a
seat.

Aylmer bowed, but preferred, he said, to stand. There was a significance
in his tone which did not escape, was, indeed, not meant to escape, his
companion. The old gentleman gave him a keen and somewhat disquieted
look.

"But I cannot sit if you do not," he protested. He gave the back of the
chair a seductive little pat. "Let me persuade you," he pleaded
anxiously.

"Mr. Van Arlen," said Aylmer, slowly, "I am not received here as a
friend. I prefer, therefore, to give my message standing, as a matter of
business."

The gray, furrowed face flushed.

"My dear sir!" protested the old man. "My dear sir!"

"You obviously evade my hand; you do not desire to ask me inside your
house?" insisted Aylmer, quietly.

The other raised a hand which shook deprecatingly. But Aylmer
forestalled his attempt at speech.

"You do these things, or rather you avoid doing them, without any
personal cause of complaint against me, but because my name is what it
is?"

Van Arlen's hand fell to his side. The pained remonstrative look faded
from his eyes. His lips, which had quivered, grew suddenly set and were
firmly pressed together. He seemed to increase in stature.

"Is not my reason good?" he cried sharply, as if some relentlessly
passionate impulse mastered all restraint.

"No," said Aylmer, quietly, "though I grant your provocation has been
ample. Let me tell you this. If there are any men breathing whose
loathing of your son-in-law can equal your own, it is those who are
tainted with his name. In the name of my kinsmen, a name all reputable
till Landon smirched it, I tender you their sympathy and regret."

For a long instant the gray eyes beneath the grayer eyebrows searched
Aylmer's face. Doubt, perplexity, and then finally a thrill of obvious
relief passed across the waxen face. Aylmer's hand was taken; he was
gently propelled towards a chair.

"I have suffered much; can I be forgiven?" said the old man wearily.
"Can you make my excuses valid to yourself?"

"They were written, and the shame of our family with them, all too large
in the press of two hemispheres," said Aylmer. "God knows I am not here
to-day to bring anything more than such little reparation as is within
my power."

"Reparation?" Van Arlen's tone was more than surprised; it was startled.

Aylmer nodded.

"I came to give you information of Landon's whereabouts. He is here in
Tangier, Mr. Van Arlen. I came to put you on your guard, and at the same
time to offer you my assistance."

Quickly, accurately, and in as few words as possible he outlined the
events of the previous evening. Silently, but with growing anxiety, Mr.
Van Arlen heard him to the end.

He rose, trembling a little, as Aylmer concluded.

"You will excuse me if I leave you to--to give some orders. The one
outstanding fact in your story for me is that Landon is here, and that
my daughter and the boy are on this expedition. They have their usual
attendants, but--but--" He halted, stammering. "He--he may poise his all
on one last attempt? He may get together a following which would
overpower them?"

Aylmer looked at him debatingly.

"Yes," he allowed. "That is a possibility to be faced though I believe
his resources are, or were, meagre. You will take more men and go and
meet them?"

The old man made a gesture of apology.

"Yes," he said. "And, if you will pardon my curtness, at once."

"The sooner the better," agreed Aylmer, quietly, "as I hope to be
allowed to accompany you?"

Van Arlen gave a little start, one that seemed to imply a doubt or a
question. As if he replied to it, Aylmer gave a little nod.

"You must accept me as an ally, my dear sir," he said. "You have seen
that I have a pressing need to meet Landon. I should like to do so in
your company."

The other still hesitated.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I would like to make the interview convincing--to you," said
Aylmer. "Because I covet your friendship; because I want you and your
family to revise their estimate of the name of Aylmer. Because," he
paused and deliberated over his words for a moment, "because I want to
be received by you at Villa Eulalia, inside."

Again the gray face flushed; again the hand was raised in deprecation.
And then the bell in the porch rang furiously, and continued to ring
till the porter emerged frowning from his lodge.

Aylmer heard the sound of blows and his own name repeated in fierce
interrogation. He recognized the voice. It was Daoud who was shouting
and endeavoring to gain entrance in the face of the porter's emphatic
protests.

As Aylmer advanced to the bars, the tumult ceased.

"Sidi! Sidi!" cried the Moor. "Your man left by the Larache road three
hours back. A company of ne'er-do-wells have taken a sudden impulse to
visit Arzeila, or so they said. He joined himself to them, wearing
native dress, and was accepted by them without comment. Surely there is
something of strangeness and importance in this. I have run, I have
sweated, to let you know!"

Van Arlen gave an exclamation of alarm.

"It is as I thought!" he cried. "The Arzeila road? That is a blind. They
can make a cut across towards Spartel at any moment." He shouted towards
one of the watching attendants; his voice seemed to gain new force as he
issued his orders alertly. He faced Aylmer again. "It is a matter of
speed," he exclaimed. "I must hasten--at the gallop."

Aylmer gave him a protesting look.

"Not I! We," he corrected.

For a moment the other still hesitated. Then a smile broke into being in
his sombrely weary eyes.

"We, then," he agreed. "Even the gentleman who has sadly impaired the
distinction of my porter, if you can guarantee him. We may need all the
help we can get. Certainly we! God send we may be in time!"



CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST TRICK IS LOST


The cavalcade of horsemen swept along a level plain of beach and from
there turned aside to gain the broom-covered slope which led towards the
cliff top. The white column of the lighthouse, which had been their
guide heretofore, disappeared behind the shoulder of the ascent. It was
no more than a couple of miles away. The riders spurred their horses up
the steep, Aylmer and Van Arlen leading. The edge of their anxieties
grew blunter as they neared their goal. They might be in time to meet
and safeguard those they sought before they left the shelter of Spartel.

As they topped the rise and looked across the undulating stretch of
green which lay before them, Daoud, riding behind Aylmer, gave a
triumphant shout.

"_La bas, alkumdullah!_" he cried fervently. "No harm, thanks to God.
The lady is even now coming towards us with her party unharmed."

Their eyes followed the direction of his finger. A great sigh of relief
broke from Mr. Van Arlen's lips.

A party came slowly towards them, a couple of furlongs distant. Seven or
eight were men mounted on barbs, and armed, in spite of prohibitions,
with Remington rifles swung across their laps. In front of them, a
couple of mules paced doggedly on, carrying two white-clad figures. At
their bridles were _djelab_-clothed youths, whose adjurations of their
charges were audible even at that distance, so still was the evening
air. Two or three dogs chased each other and supposititious partridges
from tuft to tuft.

Van Arlen and Aylmer saw that they were seen, but not recognized. The
muleteers halted and cried loudly to the guard. The horsemen looked up,
whirled up their rifles with their right hands, and spurred to the
front.

Daoud's bull voice stormed the cliff echoes.

"Absalaam--Absalaam ibn Said! Son of foolishness! It is I, Daoud, with
Sid' Aylmer and thine employer!"

The rifle muzzles were lowered; the horsemen drew aside, and the two
white-clad figures led again. A minute later Aylmer reined in his horse,
and raised his helmet at Miss Van Arlen's side. Daoud, with a
self-satisfied smile, was understood to explain that owing to his
unparalleled management the expedition had resulted in an unprecedented
success.

The girl's eyes were raised questioningly, first to her father's face,
and then doubtfully, almost, indeed, unwillingly, to Aylmer's. She bowed
to him coolly, not ungraciously, but with no effect of welcome. He sat
silent, watching as she listened to the explanation which the elder man
gave in a rapid undertone.

She made no comment till he finished, but at the first mention of
Landon's name she unconsciously, as it seemed, edged her horse in a
direction which took her away from Aylmer and closer to her small
nephew, who sat on his gray donkey, staring at the newcomers with the
frank astonishment of childhood. Aylmer noticed the movement. Was it
instinctive maternal impulse which drew her to her charge when she heard
that danger threatened him? Or was it antipathy for himself--the
antipathy which long prejudice had given her for all who bore her
brother-in-law's dishonored name? The shadow of doubt clouded his eyes,
but his lips grew hard and resolute. Despard, if he had been there,
would have recognized the symptoms. It was with that expression that
Aylmer had led his guns into action on Colenso's already forgotten day
of blood.

But as Mr. Van Arlen's narrative continued, the girl's features relaxed.
She turned and for the second time looked at Aylmer, doubtfully, indeed,
but with the doubt of one who reconsiders, whose verdict is shaken by
appeal.

"Captain Aylmer has been at considerable trouble to warn us," she said.

Aylmer shook his head.

"No," he said quietly. "The warning I brought you was only part of my
obvious duty. Surely you see that?"

There was a queer note of feeling below the restraint in his voice. She
recognized it and interest grew in her glance. She looked at him keenly.

"After all, you have put yourself out to assist us in what is solely our
own hazard," she protested. But there was something in her look which
seemed to put the emphasis of her words awry. Was she hinting that he
might have minded his own business, or was she pricking his sense of
honor purposely, to judge him out of his own mouth.

"I thought of your hazard, truly enough," he answered slowly. "I was
thinking, perhaps more earnestly, of my own and my family's reputation.
You forget that if you and your father have a heavy reckoning against my
cousin, his own kinsmen, whom I represent, consider that theirs is no
lighter."

She considered him gravely.

"No," she answered quietly. "No, I did not get that point of view. I did
not even believe it a possible one, amongst Aylmers. There I have to ask
your forgiveness."

There was the hint of a smile lurking in her eyes, something that hinted
that she exaggerated in saying this and knew it. But there was perfect
seriousness in his reply.

"That is taken for granted. And my position in this matter is taken for
granted, too?"

She looked at him questioningly again and then at her father. The latter
smiled.

"Captain Aylmer has his own grudge against this child's father. He
offers us his co-operation."

"And I ask for the friendly treatment of an ally," added Aylmer,
quietly.

Her look was still doubtful and, unconsciously, perhaps, she frowned.

"Considering what we already owe you--" she began. He interrupted with a
gesture.

"You owe me nothing," he said. "If you reckon profit and loss in your
dealings with Aylmers, you have a wide balance against you. All I want
is your friendly tolerance, while I pay in instalments."

She still seemed to ponder his proposal, to review it with the interest
of a curiosity which has been imperfectly fed.

"What is your ultimate goal, then?" she asked.

He hesitated. A queer glint of passion shone in his eyes to sink into
shadow again.

"My goal is the trapping of Landon into an English gaol, for espionage
and robbery. Or--" He shrugged his shoulders meaningly.

"Or?"

"Or his death," he said, in very distinct, level tones.

"Ah!" The exclamation came from her almost unconsciously. Her face shone
with a sudden alertness, her expression warmed, her eyes grew bright.

"You would not hesitate--at that?" she demanded.

Mr. Van Arlen made a little inarticulate murmur of protest; his hand was
stretched towards her with appeal.

She disregarded it. Her eyes were fixed piercingly on Aylmer's face.

He met her glance with matter-of-factness.

"I should not hesitate, if need arose," he said.

She drew a long breath. Her features relaxed.

"Thank you," she said gravely. "Now I know where we stand. And
then--that is all?"

This time it was his eyes which held hers with insistence, almost with
menacing, she told herself.

"No," he said quietly. "That is--not all. But that, for the present, is
enough."

For a moment her heart seemed to halt in its beat, the blood rushed to
her face, the pulse of anger which leaped through her gave her a queer
sense of choking. For she understood. Incredible, monstrous, as his
purpose appeared in the light of her loathing of those who bore his
name, she had not misread it. His words? They were possibly nebulous.
But his eyes? No. No woman could misunderstand that look. Steadfast,
patient, determined--the unswerving gaze of the pioneer who sees the
unseen goal with the eye of faith, and sees it won.

She wheeled her mule with a fierce drag of the rein; her spur found its
flank and forced it forward. She felt morally stunned by this--this
insolence; mere words could not meet it. For the moment she felt
herself deprived of weapons by the unexpectedness of the attack.

Her movement set the whole party in motion. Her father reined up to her
side. She stole a half glance at his face. There was a queer, partly
grim, partly puzzled expression on it, but she read, too, a glint of
humor? Her exasperation rose. Her father, even? Had he gone over to the
enemy; could she no longer reckon that his support would not crumble
from resentment into laughter? Oh, this imperturbable Englishman should
pay for this! If there was one shaft of gall left in her woman's armory,
he should pay! The insolence of the man--the unparalleled insolence!

Behind her she heard his voice, addressed to Absalaam in trivial
inquiry. She felt an overwhelming desire to forestall the answer with
indignant words of bitter loathing. His impassibility excited her--the
serenity with which he passed back, as it were, to little things after
launching such a bomb. She gave a shiver of passion, or, perhaps, fear
had its place in her emotion. There was something relentless in his
attitude, something uncompromising.

Absalaam's answer was forestalled, but not by her. Little John Aylmer's
voice rang out, shrill with the joy of discovery.

"The brown man!" he cried rapturously. "The brown man!"

The other John Aylmer looked up. A couple of men had come into sudden
view round a corner of the track. A clump of Spanish broom had hidden
their approach; they gave an exclamation of alarm as they met the
glances of the riders not thirty yards away.

One Aylmer recognized at once. He was the man of the pier, the would-be
kidnapper whose purpose he himself had frustrated at the moment of
success.

The other man made a movement to cover his face with the hood of his
_djelab_, but by some apparent unadroitness let it fall further back.
And so revealed his identity.

It was Landon--brought to a sudden halt by surprise.

Through a pregnant instant of silence they confronted one another. Then
Aylmer spurred forward with a shout.

"Don't let them escape!" he roared. "A hundred dollars to the man who
takes him!"

The two fugitives turned and ran desperately down the path, seeking
wildly for an opening in the surrounding jungle. Surprise and terror
appeared to have dazed them, for they passed several avenues of escape
heedlessly, made half-hearted attempts to turn, and still blundered on
between the caging walls of green. Aylmer thundered behind them, drawing
nearer with every stride. He leaned forward in the saddle; his arm
reached out within a yard of Landon's flying draperies; he spurred
fiercely into his horse's flanks.

The two men leaped right and left into the green thicket as divers leap
into the blue. And in the same instant something rose out of the
earth--something thin, snake-like, starting suddenly into being, as it
were, from the concealing smother of the dust into a rigid line knee
high. Aylmer's horse stumbled, shot forward, and went down heavily. His
rider was flung far beyond him, moved spasmodically once, and then lay
still. The squadron of charging horsemen were trapped in their turn. Not
one escaped. The goad of Aylmer's bribe had sent every man of them
charging in the wake of his leadership. The taut-held rope accounted for
them all, or for all save one. Absalaam, a consummate horseman, reined
in on the brink of disaster, rearing his stallion high into the air.

The road was an inferno of yelling men and blood-stained horses.

The few Moors who were not stunned and incapacitated by their fall had
to endure the perils of half a hundred wildly struggling hoofs. Scarcely
six out of the score who had thundered so carelessly after their easy
quarry fought a way for themselves out of the mêlée unharmed.

And of those six there was not one who did not come to a sudden halt
with uplifted fingers as they gained the open road. A revolver barrel
was pointed at each man's breast.

Ten or a dozen men had emerged from the thicket. They used no words;
their fingers, significantly pressed upon the triggers, were eloquent
enough. Only one spoke--Landon, who strolled slowly and panting a little
into the circle which the menace of his underlings had formed.

He halted opposite Claire Van Arlen.

"Eh, sister-in-law!" he chuckled smilingly.

Her face was white, but her hand, which gripped the reins, was steady.
And her gaze burnt upon his face in loathing and contempt.

"Rather neat?" said Landon, amiably. "I plume myself. My resources were
limited, you see. I may congratulate myself upon having used them to the
very best advantage."

Still she was silent and still her eyes flung him their message of
hate. He gave a pleasant little laugh. He made a significant jerk of the
head in the direction of the chaos behind him.

"And the virtuous cousin," he said. "What a fall is there, is there not?
A hundred dollars! He actually appraised my poor liberty so high!"

For a moment the expression in her glance changed as she turned it in
the direction of the still struggling horses and their riders. He saw it
and laughed again.

"You divide your anxieties," he said. "Let me relieve you of one!"

He stretched out his hand and laid it gently upon his son's shoulder.
"Are you coming with your father--to ride the black horse upon the
sands?" he asked.

The child looked at him debatingly. His face lit up at the question, and
then shadowed again as he turned his glance upon the motionless white
figure on the mule beside him.

"Auntie won't have it--and Selim," he deplored.

"Won't they?" said Landon, good-humoredly. "I think they will."

He stared up in the girl's face with insolent satisfaction.

"In fact," he went on, "they've got to. Vulgarly, my boy, they may not
like it, so they must lump it."

He made a gesture of command.

"Come, my son!" he said, motioning him to dismount.

A tension broke. She lifted up her riding-whip and struck hard at him,
struck with the concentrated strength of passion and despair. He leaped
aside, but the end of the lash reached him and left a staring weal of
red upon his cheek.

He cursed aloud; he made as if he would spring at her.

A warning cry came from behind him; half a dozen revolver shots rang out
upon the evening air.

Absalaam, sitting stark upon his stallion, covered by the revolvers
which encircled him, had struck his spurs against his horse's flank. The
fire in the animal's blood had responded in a great leap forward. Landon
wheeled round to see, towering above him, man and horse, looming
gigantic against the glare of the sunset. Instinctively, automatically,
he threw up the muzzle of his own revolver, and fired full at the Moor's
broad chest.

The other bullets flew wide, but that one, so near was the human target,
had no room to miss. Absalaam fell limply, heavily from the saddle, fell
at his mistress's feet. The horse tore past a dozen restraining hands
into liberty.

There was shouting, confusion, the rattle of other shots. And then the
voice of the brown _djelabed_ man thundered out high above the uproar.

"In God's name, Sidi, have haste. Four of them have fled into the
thicket! God alone knows what help they may bring their fellows and how
soon!"

And Landon, who had been flung to his knees in the dust, rose swiftly,
without another word snatched his son from the saddle, and led the way
into the jungle.

In five short minutes he had come, conquered, and gone. He had won every
trick, every trick! Claire passed her hand across her brow as she stared
at the huddle of wounded and--she shuddered in agony as the thought
thrilled--perchance the dead! What lay within that ring of broken
bodies--what? With white lips and fear-brimmed eyes she slipped from her
saddle to see.



CHAPTER IX

AYLMER IS EXPLICIT


It seemed to Aylmer that the world into which he woke was one of
stillness, of neutral tints, of intrinsic peace. There was a hint of
sunshine diluted by the green hangings in front of the windows, but no
more than a hint. There was a faint echo of the sound of falling water
floating in with the light, but merely an echo. There was, in fact, but
the slightest suggestion of life in his surroundings, and that came from
the silently regular rise and fall of the bosom of the sleeping man who
sat at his bedside. Aylmer blinked and stared in mild surprise, for the
man was Daoud.

He moved restlessly under the sheets. Where was he? Into what unsought
refuge had Fate flung him now?

His movement, slight as it was, aroused the Moor. With a little
self-reproachful exclamation he stood up and leaned over the bed.

"Oh, Sidi!" he cried, "it rejoices my heart to read the light of
understanding in your eyes."

Aylmer blinked again bewilderedly.

"Where am I and what do you here?" he asked.

"You are in Villa Eulalia, Sidi, and where should I be but in attendance
on my lord?"

Astonishment lifted Aylmer into a weak attempt to rise. The Moor put a
hand upon his shoulder and firmly pressed him back.

"Nay, Sidi," he said respectfully. "The German doctor lord expressly
forbade that you should raise your head from the pillow till he had seen
you again."

Aylmer began to feel as if his wits as well as his body had been
bludgeoned. Circumstances seemed to have leaped freakishly beyond his
recollection.

"I was brought here when?" he asked.

"Yesterday, Sidi. Your brain was sorely smitten inside your skull, or so
I understood the man of medicines. For fifteen hours you have lain as
one feigning death, though breathing. Now you have come into the right
of your senses again. This the medicine man also prophesied."

The puzzled frown stayed on Aylmer's brow.

"And you?" he demanded. "And you?"

The Moor answered with a demure shrug of the shoulder.

"Your wounded brain has perchance forgotten, Sidi, that I entered your
benign service on the morning of the day which saw you defeated by the
treachery of that one whom we sought, you and I. My service has been
constant ever since."

He met his victim's increasing frown with complacent assurance as he
spoke. Surely everything, he seemed to imply, was in order. And as the
situation became clear to Aylmer's growing intelligence, the frown
became an exasperated smile.

"You have used my helplessness to impose yourself into this house as my
body-servant," said Aylmer. "Oh, Daoud, you are of a deceitfulness
beyond my unpractised powers of speech."

"Speech beyond the mere limits of necessity was strongly discountenanced
by the German doctor lord," said Daoud, hastily. "Has the Sidi any
further desires?"

"None, save for information. Speak thou! Give me the plain tale of all
happenings since I fell into that trap upon the road. The man we
sought--did he escape?"

The Moor nodded.

"He escaped victoriously, with all his following. He took also the
child, the Sidi Jan, who, so they tell me, is the son of his house. They
took themselves unmolested into the tangle of the broom, leaving of our
company one dead--from the kick of a horse, Sidi--half a dozen
senseless, yourself among them, Absalaam grievously wounded in the
bosom, though like to recover, and all, save four or five, with bruises,
broken limbs, or, at least, frayed and bleeding skin. So they fled, but
Ali, of the Walad Said, who had been flung away from the hardness of the
open track into the heart of the thicket, had taken no harm and followed
them to the caves."

Aylmer gave a start.

"The caves?" he muttered weakly. "The caves?"

"The Sidi knows them well. The caves of Hercules beyond Spartel, where
the millstone carvers ply their toil and where the Sidi and other
Nazrani ride forth to eat and drink upon occasion when they entertain
their friends."

Aylmer nodded. The caves of Hercules are the resort of many a picnic
party from Tangier.

"Leaving them there, he hastened back with news. The Sidi Van Arlen,
lord of this house, was by then recovered of the stunning which he, too,
had suffered, and weak though he was immediately led forth another
company to search the caves. And this they did unsuccessfully, Sidi,
learning from one of the millstone workers, who had doubted of the
integrity of these sons of dirt before they saw him, and who had
therefore hidden himself and watched them unseen, that after a rest of
three or four hours the men, taking with them the child, had passed down
to the shore, had there awaited and been taken off by a boat which
delivered them, so he conceived, to a lateen which he could descry in
the moonlight about three furlongs out. And in that ship they have gone
we know not whither."

Aylmer's fingers clenched and unclenched upon the coverlet. How
thoroughly, how absolutely, they had been bested! But the account was
rolling up. Ultimate defeat? His mind never even considered it. He
merely put another item in the mental ledger from which Landon's account
would one day be presented, and paid, in full.

"Let not the Sidi imagine that we have sat inactive while these sons of
unchaste mothers triumph. I myself snatched a hasty hour from your
bedside to enter the town and set certain ones agog for news. The Sidi
Van Arlen hath telegraphed to Spain; every Guardia Civile along the
coast has knowledge of how a reward of a thousand pesetas may be gained.
By favor of the captain of the French warship all other ships of the
French marine within three hundred miles have been warned to challenge
unvouched-for boats. How this is done I am unable to say, but so it is.
Watch upon the seas is therefore being kept. Now steam is being raised
upon the white yacht in the bay, that when news comes it may be followed
without delay. Lastly, a special mission has been sent by favor of the
Bashaw from town to town along the coast as far as Dar-el-Baida. Thus
have we set a wide net. Yet it has holes in it, Sidi, and holes are what
these jackals are ever quick to seek."

With a sudden movement, Aylmer sat up. A frown and a gesture of command
warded back Daoud's outstretched hand.

"Art thou my servant?" he cried, and the Moor spread out his palms in
alert assent.

"Of a surety, Sidi, but the dispenser of medicines--"

"What have I to do with medicines--I, a strong man with no more than a
bruised skull? Give me my clothes!"

"But, Sidi--"

"My clothes, or return instantly to the gutter from which my favor
yesterday lifted you!"

The Moor gave a fatalistic shrug.

"If Allah has written it that you are to die by the weapon of thine own
obstinacy, oh, Sidi, He has written it. This is thy shirt."

With an accustomedness which spoke of previous practice, he presided
over his master's toilet. He fetched water, honed a razor, shaved Aylmer
with deftness and despatch, produced trousers from a press, handed coat
and waistcoat brushed and folded to the last pinnacle of neatness. It
was as he laced the boots that he looked up inquiringly and put a
question which had been obviously hanging upon his lips since the moment
of his master's rising.

"And what, oh, Sidi, are your intentions now?"

"First, to see my host. Afterwards," he made a vague gesture,
"afterwards, my friend, I shall act as is directed by your perpetual
gossip--Fate!"

"May Allah direct our councils!" aspired Daoud, piously. "Lean upon me,
Sidi! There is no need to overtax thy returning strength!"

But Aylmer leaned upon nothing. Slowly, but walking erect, he paced
across the wide entrance hall, and then halted, indeterminate.

The hangings across a door opposite him were drawn aside. Claire Van
Arlen stood confronting him, her lips parted in amazement.

"You!" she protested breathlessly. "You!"

He answered with a little bow.

"Myself," he said quietly. "I must present my excuses for an ...
intrusion which it was not within my power to prevent."

She held up her hand in protest.

"When you were wounded in our service!" she cried. "When you were doing
your best for us!"

He shook his head.

"No," he said. "I am working, I shall go on working, for myself. I
should like that to be clear."

She half turned away with a little startled motion and the ghost of a
frown. Words trembled on her lips and were thrust back. She understood,
and would have sought, at any other time, this opportunity to make
things clear indeed, but ... the man was wounded ... serving her and
hers. No, for the moment the opportunity must go by.

She held up the cord hangings and pointed into the room behind her.

"At any rate you must not stand, and I am extremely culpable to permit
your mutiny against your doctor's orders. Why have you got up?"

He strode slowly after her into the shadowed room. He sat down upon the
wicker chair which she indicated. His eyes sought hers, keenly and very
directly.

"You have no news?" he asked. "Nothing out of Spain, or from the coast?"

Her eyes clouded.

"None, or next to none. The signal station at Spartel saw a lateen
working her sweeps in the distance at dawn. There was a glassy calm
inshore, but occasional and uncertain breezes out of the shelter of the
land. She was making as if for Cadiz, but half an hour later, just as
the haze covered her, a strong wind rose from the northwest and it is
doubtful if she could have beaten up against it. In which case she
probably stood down the coast."

Her voice was apathetic and a little weary. Her glance avoided his.

He gave a little nod as she finished.

"Yes," he said. "He has taken the first trick--Landon. And I have been
no help to you but a hindrance. It was I who helped him last night--I,
with my impulsiveness. There you have a right ... to suspect me."

She made a quick, restless movement.

"Suspect you!" she cried. "You!"

"Yes," he said slowly. "That day in the town, and on the pier, at the
Tent Club meeting, even--was not that in your mind?"

His voice was not reproachful, merely inquiring.

She flushed.

"The first time I suspected every one," she answered. "The second time I
discovered, suddenly and unexpectedly, your name."

He nodded.

"And now?" he questioned. "And now?"

"Now?" she repeated. "Have you not given me my proofs?"

"Have I?" His voice was eager. "I can reckon that barrier down then? The
taint of the name is cleared away? I start with no handicap of
prejudice?"

Again the form of words half bewildered, half exasperated her. Start?
Start whither, in what race, to what goal? And were there barriers to be
won, too? Between him and--what?

Her instinct gave her the answer as it had done the day before. But she
shrank from the acknowledgment, even to herself. The thought was too
monstrous. An Aylmer and--and that! The blood rushed to her forehead on
the tide of her resentment. And then as suddenly ebbed. After all, was
it not the name alone which sent that surging throb of repulsion through
her veins? Supposing she had met this man, in ignorance. She started
again. Had she not so met him, at first? She cudgelled her brains in
reflection. How did she regard him that morning at the Tent Club, before
she knew? Had he not seemed a personable, even a gallant and courageous
soldier, worthy of a woman's regard? She looked at him suddenly,
curiously, with a sort of speculation in her eyes.

And he met the glance quietly, watchfully, and--so she told herself with
a recurrent thrill of exasperation--relentlessly as well. It was as if
he was forcing her to be won from prejudice to impartiality. As if he
willed her into just thinking against herself. A tiny spasm of fear
pulsed through her. In a clash of purpose who would win, she or this
man?

She made him a gesture which had about it the sense of appeal.

"One cannot dismiss prejudices; one can fight them," she faltered.

"Ah!"

He sighed, not with weariness, but with a sort of patience, with
restraint. "I think perhaps women do not accept mere justice as a plea
so easily as men," he debated. "So I must not presume on that footing. I
have still to win my way from ... dislike?"

"No!" she cried sharply. "No! I can be just to what you have done. What
you are--that I have yet to learn, have I not?"

He smiled a little bitterly.

"I am an Aylmer. That is the lesson you have got by heart. I ask you to
begin by unlearning."

She caught her breath a little quickly. Then she gave a decided little
nod.

"Very well," she answered. "I--I will forget everything but the fact
that you saved the boy once and that you--"

"Will do it again," said Aylmer. "That is a bargain?"

Again she hesitated over the form of words. A bargain? What was her side
of the contract. If he fulfilled the purpose of which he spoke so
confidently, what did it mean, from her point of view? She avoided the
issue.

"You will find the child, you will bring him back?" she wondered.

"Of course!" He sat very erect in his chair. He smiled confidently. "In
a fight between a rogue and honest men, the honest men win ultimately,
and always. The green bay tree of the unrighteous grows with luxuriance
but withers in time inevitably. I shall follow him till I win."

"And your career?" she asked incredulously. "Your profession?"

He smiled.

"That will be my career--to defeat Landon. Is it a reputable one for a
gentleman?"

She made a motion of protest.

"But--but that is self-sacrifice, one which we couldn't accept. Why
should you do this for us?"

He shook his head again.

"No," he said. "I must repeat it, I work for myself. I seek my own
interest, and that, in the first place, is to make you just. I see but
the one way to do it. I have to convince you that I am in earnest, have
I not?"

Again that baffling allusion. In earnest in what? In defeating Landon,
in attempting the rescue of the child? Surely he had proved that
already. And yet how could she counter a point which she could not help
allowing she now understood; how could she do it without the loss of
dignity implied in an explanation? But it was grotesque. He had known
her a bare week. He had met her on four occasions.

She looked up, met his eyes, and dropped her own. A tiny sense of panic
overtook her. He sat there, indomitable. Suppose--suppose he ultimately
made his purpose good. She made herself look at him again. He had, at
any rate, good looks to recommend him. And courage and the respect of
his fellows. But--again a wave of exasperation flowed over her mind. Oh,
it was outrageous, unthinkable. An Aylmer--another Aylmer. Unconsciously
her lips curved in a half sarcastic smile. Why, the very newspapers of
the world would pile headline upon headline over such a fiasco. She
stiffened with resentment, with a sense of being played with. Her voice
was chill with a note of dignity outraged.

"I think the fact of your proposing to devote time and strength to the
pursuit of--of your cousin is a very convincing one, Captain Aylmer,"
she answered. "The point is that we have no right to accept so much from
you."

He smiled joyously.

"I shall always want to be giving, to you. Always, always. Please
understand that. My service is to you, and so to myself. Try to think of
me in that light, patiently."

And then a sort of desperation seized her. She probed her mind for a
form of words which should give him no further loophole to persist in
his veiled menaces, for she could call them no less, one that should
seize a meaning out of his allusions and crush it with a directness
which could not be misunderstood. Her eyes grew hard; she rose to her
feet.

A step sounded in the hall, and the hangings were pushed aside. Her
father stood before them.

He looked at Aylmer with amazed reproach. His face, already haggard with
anxiety, took on new lines of concern.

"My dear sir!" he protested. "My dear sir!"

And Aylmer could not resist a smile. It was the form of protest which he
had used at their former meeting to veil--what? Antipathy? And now? The
words were full of genuine concern. He read no longer dislike in Mr. Van
Arlen's glance. The elder man's eyes had softened as they reached his.

He warded off further reproaches with a question.

"The news?" he cried eagerly. "The news is what?"

"Good, in so far that we can gauge the direction of their flight. They
have been seen passing Arzeila; the morning's gale has prevented their
attempt to reach any port of Spain."

"And so--?"

"And so we start in pursuit with my yacht, within the hour."

Aylmer stood up.

"We?" he repeated. "We being--?"

Van Arlen looked mildly astonished.

"My daughter and I."

Aylmer held out his hand with a pleading gesture.

"You can't afford to despise my help," he said. "You must take me, too."

Van Arlen looked at Aylmer and then, questioningly, towards his
daughter. She met his glance. Here at last was the opportunity to make
things plain with a vengeance. They had but politely to decline.

Aylmer's voice forestalled her.

"To be impartial, that was your promise," he said. "We had not got far,
but at least as far as that."

In spite of herself she turned and faced him. He met her glance
steadily, confidently, expectant.

She gave a queer, half-exasperated little laugh.

"I think Captain Aylmer is a man who is easily refused nothing," she
said, and passed quietly out of the room.



CHAPTER X

BY FAVOR OF THE FOG


"I do not like this!" piped a small and dejected voice. "I came to ride
a black horse, not to be bumped in this vessel forgotten of God!"

In English these words would have sounded strangely from the lips of a
child of six, but little John Aylmer was fluent in the Arab jargon of
his grandfather's native household.

He was sitting disconsolate in the cockpit of the lateen _Esmeralda_.
His company was Señor Emilio Albaceda, mariner and practical exponent of
the tenets of an uncompromising Free Trade. From the uncovered hatch
came the sound of wind whistling in the cordage and the swish and thud
of the combers breaking past. Upon one of the narrow bunks which flanked
the tiny cabin lay Landon, fast asleep. A guttering and extremely
odoriferous lamp of vegetable oil was the sole illuminant. The prospects
of comfort and entertainment in such surroundings were not those likely
to appeal to a child accustomed to luxury and constant attention.

"_Pazienza!_" grunted the skipper, good-humoredly. "Black horses are not
found upon the sea, though a friend of mine who prefers the running of
contraband to the priesthood for which his parents destined him, read me
once verses from a journal--true poetry in praise of a boot polish the
name of which does not stay by me--where the waves of the Atlantic were
likened unto stallions white-maned. I confess I thought the notion
original."

The child stared at him meditatively.

"If horses are not to be found upon the sea and we seek horses, why do
not we forsake the sea for the land?" There was a note of anticipation
in the query which seemed to find this argument conclusive.

The smuggler grinned.

"Excellently argued, son of much intelligence," he answered. "Land is
what we shall seek when this gale breathed from Jehannum permits us to
do so in safety. For the moment we drive before it, there being no
harbors on this coast within a thousand miles."

The child moved restlessly.

"Where then can we land?" he demanded.

"Where God and His Mother and the Holy Saints permit," said Señor
Albaceda, suddenly reverting to _lingua franca_ to clothe a piety of
sentiment which the Moslem religion ignores. The One Allah's plans,
being laid from the foundation of the world, are not susceptible to the
influences of human appeal.

Little John made a grimace of hearty discontent and looked doubtfully at
the sleeping form of his father. But for the moment distraction came
from another quarter.

Two brown legs appeared in the opening of the hatch. As their owner
lowered himself into the cabin, he disclosed the features of the man of
the brown _djelab_--he who on Tangier pier had been sponsor for those
fiery but phantom steeds which Fate had not allowed to materialize. The
child received him with a shrill little shout of welcome.

"Muhammed!" he cried gladly. "Muhammed!"

The Moor placed his lean finger upon the yellow curls in a light caress,
but his look was towards the berth where Landon could be seen stirring,
aroused by his son's acclamation.

He slipped into a sitting posture in front of the tiny table and leaned
upon it, his chin supported by his elbows, a look of expectancy tinged
by humor in his eye.

"Well, my friends," he queried amiably, "our news is, what?"

The Moor gave a pessimistic shrug of the shoulder.

"Bad, Sidi," he said tersely. "We continue to drive westwards as
before."

Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"We shall not see Cadiz to-morrow nor the day after," he said. "Well,
the future is spacious. We have infinite leisure before us in which to
beat back."

The captain grunted.

"Leisure we have in abundance, but not food nor yet water. We must put
in somewhere before we attempt a feat which will take, at the best,
three days and, if Chance so decides, perhaps a fortnight."

Landon's face was clouded with a sudden scowl.

"Food and water! Why have you not these in sufficiency? Your terms are
extortionate enough as it is without the makeweight of starvation!"

"My terms," said Señor Albaceda, gruffly, "were all too cheap; what I
learned in Tangier after I had come to an agreement with you was proof
to me of that. But I am a man of honor; I keep bargains duly made. I
contracted to set you ashore in Cadiz harbor--with a favorable wind a
one night's work. I did not contract to feed three extra mouths through
a voyage of weeks. When the wind moderates, I make for the nearest
market, and you will buy your own provisions for our return. That is
well understood."

"You mean to land on the African coast, not the European?" cried Landon.

"Where else?" said the skipper, drily. "Do you expect me to carry you on
to the Azores?"

Landon looked questioningly at Muhammed. The Moor made a gesture of
resignation.

"_Mektub_, it is written!" he answered fatalistically. "Azemmour,
perchance, or Mazagan."

"And opposite each we shall find a French cruiser anchored," growled
Landon, "with launches fussing about, and every craft which enters under
suspicion of smuggling guns for the Chawia. And ten to one warning about
us from Tangier sent down the coast."

"That would be a matter of time," said the Moor. "We have driven faster
than horsemen could ride!"

"Horsemen!" Landon smote the table in his irritation. "These ships of
war have apparatus by which they can communicate as if a cable linked
them. If my father-in-law gets the right side of the commandant of the
Tangier guardship--" He broke off with another shrug. "Well, to each day
its appointed sorrow. The gale has not blown itself out yet."

"The event is with Allah!" said the Moor, gravely. He thrust his head up
through the hatch and shouted to the steersman. A moment later he
dropped back into the shelter of the cabin again.

"Your man Ibrahim is of opinion that the wind shows signs of abating. We
passed Larache two hours back. The scud hides the shore, but he judges
that we are not far from Sallee. If the surf permits, we may get
anchorage and make a landing at Azemmour. If not, we must dare
Casablanca or continue to Mazagan."

Señor Albaceda grunted pessimistically and climbed lumberingly on deck.
Landon threw himself back on the berth again. The Moor looked down at
the child with a whimsical expression of pity which changed to a
benignant smile as the object of it raised his eyes to his.

"The Sidi Jan has not heard the marvellous tale of the Bashaw of Tripoli
and the Afreets of El Mut?" he submitted. "If it is the Sidi's will, his
servant will now take the opportunity of relating it to him?"

Little John Aylmer answered with an ecstatic chuckle of delight, and
wriggled hurriedly into the encirclement of his friend's arm. Thus
supported, he was able to defy the unsettling influence of the waves and
give the whole of his attention to the taxing of the Moor's memory or,
when this occasionally failed, his very competent imagination. The hours
of the afternoon were passed agreeably; the difficulties of making a
meal without the ordinary appliances of civilization provided a certain
amount of diversion when night fell, and afterwards sleep was paramount.
When the child woke he found the boat running slowly upon an even keel,
and scrambling on deck was met by the view of a glassy swell surrounding
her, but only visible to the extent of the few square yards which were
enclosed in a veil of fog.

The skipper was at the wheel, and Ibrahim, the deck hand, and Muhammed
were seated side by side in the bows. They did not peer into the fog--a
hopeless task. They sat in a listening attitude, exchanging a brief word
now and again.

"It is certainly the drumming of a ship's screw," decided the sailor,
after a moment's silence. "It is going at half speed, behind us."

"Let us hope that Allah has not predestined us to be cut in twain," said
his companion. "But from port, and very regularly, I hear the beat of
breakers. The swell is rolling against a cliff."

"A shore, not a cliff," corrected the other. "If my dead reckoning is
right within a score of miles, we are opposite a beach of sand."

Muhammed shook his head.

"Nay, listen to that thud. The crest of the comber meets something flat.
It does not roll, in slowly dying foam, upon a strand."

Ibrahim shrugged his shoulders.

"In a fog we be all blind men," he said pessimistically. "Let us wait
for the fulfilment of Allah's plan."

They glanced questioningly upwards. As is common in these west coast
fogs, the blanket of vapor was thin. Now and again a faint hint of blue
above their heads seemed to presage a lifting of the mist; occasionally,
indeed, the sun was to be seen vaguely as a round yellow ball of light,
streaked by the slowly drifting scud. But the gray walls on each side of
them remained unbroken. At the same time the beat of the breakers was
perceptibly near.

Señor Albaceda lifted his head from the hatch and invited the
maledictions of innumerable Holy Men upon the weather. He was understood
to confess that he did not undertake to gauge their position within a
hundred miles.

"If Allah's mercy would send us an offshore wind!" aspired the pious
Ibrahim, and lo! with the word came its sudden fulfilment. The fog was
rent by a gust, to disclose, not a couple of cable lengths distant, what
appeared to be a smooth and painted crag of gray.

The two Moors addressed fervent appeals to the One God. The Spaniard,
impartially apostrophizing the tormented of Purgatory and the
celestially blessed to hasten to his assistance, delivered himself of
the opinion that Fate had closed her iron hand upon them. Where else
could they be than within a mile of the sea bastions of Casablanca?

That, did they observe, was a cruiser--nay, possibly a battleship by
whose watch they had been observed without a shadow of a doubt. As the
fog closed in again, he descended to the cabin where he could be heard
loudly bewailing the situation to his passenger, whom he appeared to
hold responsible for this and for a fairly extensive list of other
inconveniences. The captain of the lateen _Esmeralda_ had obviously been
warding off the chill influences of the fog by a liberal dose of
_aguardiente_.

Landon lifted himself quickly to the deck. The mist was perceptibly
lighter by now. A beam of sunlight pierced it from above and lit the
_Esmeralda's_ deck. The gray wall was still unbroken landward, but
seaward it thinned, lifted, rolled this way and that, and finally
disclosed a shining plain of blue. The central object in this, a couple
of miles away, was a white, gleaming yacht.

Landon swore.

"_The Morning Star_--Van Arlen's boat, by God!" he cried. He made the
helmsman a furious gesture. "Into the fog again!" he shouted. "Stick her
nose into it, get out of this!"

"To beat out her timbers upon the harbor reef, or be swamped beneath the
bows of a warship!" screamed the skipper from the hatch. "Never! Keep
her in the light, son of accursed mothers! Do passengers who have been
born of leprous parents give orders aboard this vessel, or I, Concepcion
Albaceda, to whom the law rightly adjudges powers of life and death?"

He came lurching heavily aft, waving a case bottle by the neck to give
emphasis to his commands. The bewildered Ibrahim stared at him owlishly.

The next moment he gave a cry of alarm. Landon had tripped the captain's
unsteady feet, and, aided by Muhammed, had taken him forward and flung
him into the cockpit. They closed the hatch, secured it, and came aft
again. Imperiously Landon repeated his order.

The unfortunate sailor still hesitated. His compatriot took him firmly
by the nape of the neck.

"Into the fog, child of indescribable unfaithfulness," he commanded, "or
become immediately bait for sharks! Choose!"

The bewildered Ibrahim brought round the tiller with a jerk. Like a
rabbit seeking its burrow, the lateen dived fogwards.

As the gray wall surged up to them again, they turned and stared
seaward. Landon cursed loudly. The yacht was turning, too, straight
towards them. At a word from his master, Muhammed got out the great
sweeps and invited Ibrahim imperiously to join him in working them.
Landon took the helm.

Two minutes later there was a crashing sound forward and the bowsprit
splintered with a shock which made the little vessel shiver throughout
its length. A muffled wail of wrath and despair followed from the depths
of the cockpit.

The wall of gray was towering above them. Over the bulwarks of the R.
F. Cruiser _Diomède_ a lieutenant looked down and anathematized them
with a versatility only acquired by a true son of the sea. Landon bowed,
smiled, and in perfect French, asked the liberty of being permitted to
come aboard.

The lieutenant, surprised beyond measure to hear the accents of the
Faubourg from the decks of such an unpromising craft, hastened to forget
the collision between the _Esmeralda's_ bowsprit and the _Diomède's_
paint, and directed his petitioner to find the companion ladder. A
minute's groping in the fog, and Landon stood upon the cruiser's deck.

He bowed elaborately. The lieutenant returned the bow and motioned him
towards the quarter-deck. The captain came forward to receive him,
smiling amiably.

"I must be perfectly frank with you, Monsieur le Commandant," said
Landon, returning the smile. "I come to beg assistance. My yacht is in
harbor here, as you are possibly aware. No? The fog has hidden us; we
came in last night. With my little son, I went ashore early this morning
to leave a card on General d'Amade, to whom I have an introduction. I
missed my own boat at the landing-place and was foolish enough to be
persuaded to embark with these imbeciles below, of whom one is drunk and
the other witless. I have already had an hour of monotonous adventure in
the gloom; I am a little tired of being very reasonably cursed by master
mariners whose vessels we have been ambitious enough to ram. It struck
me that perchance you would be sending a boat ashore within the course
of an hour or so, and might permit me to wait on deck and be a passenger
in it. If so, my gratitude would be beyond words. It is not only for
myself. My little son is delicate; I do not wish to expose him longer
than is necessary to the chill of these vile vapors."

Commandant Rattier smiled again, expressed his pleasure in being able to
offer assistance to any Englishman--he himself was united to that nation
by ties of blood. He would order away his launch immediately. In the
meantime _une limonade Ecossaise_ would combat the effect of chill and
mist. Monsieur would descend to the cabin, would accept some small
refreshment?

Monsieur overflowed with thanks. He would dismiss the villains who had
led him into such a coil, and then hold himself at M. le Commandant's
service.

He leaned over and gave his orders. Muhammed turned to Ibrahim.

"Remove yourself and your master, oh, son of dirt, from these
surroundings with the utmost speed, or I have the promise of the captain
of this warship that he will send you in chains ashore to answer for
your crime in wilfully colliding with his vessel. Your bowsprit? What
have I to do with the results of your own vile seamanship? Have haste or
Allah alone knows what will betide from the mouth of one of these guns."

He gathered the child up into his arms and stalked with dignity up the
companion.

Ten minutes later a launch fussed away from the side of the _Diomède_.
The commandant waved his handkerchief gaily in farewell to his small
guest, who, from the encirclement of his father's arm, waved as gaily
back. Half a hundred _matelots_ grinned affably at him as they paused in
their toil at cabin lights and brass-work. Landon saluted punctiliously
and Muhammed's brown eyes expressed a grave approval of his
entertainment. The launch's prow was thrust into the gloom.

Another gust sang lazily from the shore and the desert and shivered the
fog. The patches of blue joined, grew wider, opened a triumphal arch for
the descending sunbeams' entrance. A little more than a mile away the
walls of the sea bastions shone white. The launch's speed increased.

Before they reached the quayside the last wisp of vapor had disappeared.
Land and sea were swathed in sun. Landon gave a little cackle of
amusement and pointed behind him.

"My yacht!" he cried gaily. "My over-anxious master has weighed anchor
in pursuit of me. Word must have reached him of my having allowed myself
to be persuaded into that vile lateen."

The sub-lieutenant in charge swerved the tiller.

"Let me take you straight to her," he said. "Let me signal her!"

Landon appeared to consider.

"Thanks, a thousand times," he said, "but a small matter of victualling
which I promised my steward to deal with has just recurred to my mind. I
will see to it and then signal for my own boat. After all, too, I might
see a little of the town, now we have the sunshine to illuminate it. A
couple of hours ago it was London in November, with a few additional
smells!"

The lieutenant laughed and turned the prow towards the shore again. He
cast another look over his shoulder.

"Is it possible that your master has information of, or suspects, that
very lateen? It appears to me that he is chasing it!"

Landon faced seaward and observed the yacht keenly.

He laughed with great enjoyment.

"He is a character, that skipper of mine," he said. "He is as likely as
not to sink the unfortunate boat if he does not find me on board or get
a reasonable account of me. I shall have to smooth matters down with a
dollar or two."

A minute later the launch slowed up against the little quay. The three
passengers stepped ashore, Landon full of compliments and thanks. Still
waving adieu, he, Muhammed, and the child paced contentedly off into the
town. The lieutenant turned seaward again.

A slightly bewildered frown clouded his face as he approached the
_Diomède_. The yacht had anchored with the lateen alongside her, and a
boat was pulling from her towards the warship. The lieutenant considered
that for yachtsmen he had never seen a boat's crew pull faster.



CHAPTER XI

RATTIER LOSES HIS CALM


Major D'Hubert, Provost Marshal of the French forces occupying
Casablanca, grinned widely.

"So you suffered him to escape?" he said.

Commandant Rattier drummed fiercely on the office table.

"Suffered?" he roared. "I entertained him--the _escroc_! I nourished
him; I sent him ashore!"

The soldier smiled and looked at Rattier's companion--Aylmer.

"What open-hearted ingenuousness!" he chuckled. "You and I now, my
Captain! When one has been officer of the day a few thousand times, or
sat upon a few hundred courts-martial, or acted as _maître de logis_,
one learns to sift a story then. And this one had its weak points, even
for a sailor. Would any one not mentally deranged hire a lateen to take
him aboard his own yacht? No, I should have required something better
imagined than that--I."

Aylmer shrugged his shoulders.

"The man can make himself of an engaging personality, Major. Our friend
acted according to the impulses of his generous soul. But the point is
that our man is hidden in the town. We come to you for expert knowledge.
Who would be likely to shelter him, and where? You will pardon our
insistence and intrusion, but our need is very pressing. It is the
child who is our concern, the child."

D'Hubert made a gesture of assent.

"Apart from my sincere affection for our simpleminded commandant,
Monsieur, your tale is good enough for any honest man and a father of
babes like myself. But this town of Casablanca is, in effect, a
haystack. Your quarry has the best of chances to act the needle."

He opened a door into an outer office and shouted a name.

"Sergeant Perinaud!"

A body filled the doorway and entered, bending the last few inches of
its stature. The sergeant saluted and unfolded himself, his eyes
reviewing the company with affable respect about two metres above the
floor.

"Visit the guardroom at each gate, see the lieutenants of the Spanish
police and bring me back a list of parties which have left the town
since morning. This is a matter of haste."

The sergeant saluted again and then hesitated.

"Is it permitted first to speak?" he asked.

The major nodded jerkily.

"It is, by chance, the movements of two men and a woman which are in
question?" speculated Perinaud.

Major d'Hubert opened his lips, shut them tight, meditated a moment, and
then spoke. He turned and looked at his visitors.

"The child? Is it of a stature to be disguised as a woman?" he asked.

The sergeant interrupted with an apologetic gesture.

"The figure of the woman I suggest was not seen by me. She travelled in
an _arba_. My attention was drawn to the party thus. Two hours ago a
band of the Beni M'Geel, Berbers, left by the eastern gate as for Ber
Rechid. They had with them two Arabs and a woman under the canopy of
which I spoke. Arab and Berber, especially if the latter are of the Beni
M'Geel, do not usually travel together."

"You observed the men?"

"Not narrowly, my Major. One was of a smiling countenance, hook-nosed,
and clad in a _djelab_ of brown. He walked beside the _arba_ and his
talk, as I judged it, was to the woman, who, however, made no reply. The
other had the hood of his _haik_ pulled far over his face. I did not see
it."

The major sat down at his desk, wrote a few lines swiftly, dashed sand
upon the ink, and handed the completed note to his underling.

"Let that be taken to General d'Amade without delay. Search may at the
same time be made in the town for an Englishman, his child, and a Moor
attendant who landed from a launch of the _Diomède_ some three hours
back. The messenger may await the general's answer and bring it to me
here."

As the giant saluted for the third time and diminished himself into the
doorway, Major d'Hubert confronted his friends with a pessimistic shake
of the head.

"My instinct is that Perinaud has already put his finger on the mystery.
Your milord must be a man of resource. To have engaged the services of
some of these wolves of Beni M'Geel within an hour of landing in a
strange town shows more than talent. It amounts to genius."

"This servant of his, Muhammed, is no stranger to the port," said
Aylmer. "We learned that before we left Tangier. He is a well-known gun
runner, and stands high in his profession. He has made these
arrangements."

Commandant Rattier flung aside his taciturnity with a suddenly impulsive
oath.

"Name of all little names!" he cried. "Do we sit and discuss this matter
as if it were a comedietta in which we take no more than the languid
interest of the dilettante! Are they not to be pursued--this past master
of perjury and his lieutenant? Are we to mount the town walls and wave
them affectionate farewells?"

D'Hubert arched his brows with protest.

"Pursuit? Certainly there is a question of pursuit, if it is allowed. I
have just sent a _précis_ of your story to the commander-in-chief with a
request for his leave to send a patrol. In a very few minutes we shall
learn whether or no we have his permission."

"Permission!" Rattier roared the word in the major's face. "I, Paul
Rattier, do you see, have been made the laughing-stock of the fleet and,
in time, no doubt, of half Europe! Am I to wait your general's
permission to chase this scoundrel to Timbuctoo, if I so wish? I am the
senior officer of marine here. I give myself leave, understand me--I!"

"And these amiable Berbers?" asked the major, sarcastically. "Supposing
they turn upon you and demand your reasons, and estimate your powers?
Suppose, to be blunt, my friend, they put a bullet through your brains?"

"Would that be any worse than wearing this hat of ridicule which this
Baron de Landon has put upon my head? No Moor or Touareg or Berber shall
stand between me and the object of my just retaliation, if I confront
him!"

A small bell tinkled in a corner. D'Hubert made a gesture of apology as
he went towards a cabinet screened from the general office. He came back
grinning.

"My Paul," he chuckled, "there will be shortly an insuperable barrier
between you and your desire. In another hour you will not be the senior
officer of marine at Casablanca. I learn by wireless that the
_Barfleur_, with the admiral on board, enters the roads within the
hour."

Rattier stood for an instant motionless. Then he turned and darted for
the door.

Before his ringers reached the handle Aylmer's grip was on his shoulder.
With a passionate gesture of repulse the commandant shook him off.

"I am not one to await admirals!" he roared. "I go to make arrangements.
Within half an hour I leave the town--I. If I have to walk I will follow
these Berber scoundrels, yes, if I have to crawl upon my knees!"

As the two wrestled and argued on the threshold, the door opened from
the outside. The massive proportions of the sergeant towered over them
in respectful amazement. He saluted and deferentially edged a way for
himself towards D'Hubert.

"The general was in the act of passing, my Major," he explained. "He
read your note and wrote his answer on the back in five words--he was
amiable enough to inform me."

The major untwisted the little roll of soiled paper and as he inspected
it a smile creased his cheek. He chuckled.

"A half troop of Goumiers!" he read. He looked at the frowning face of
the commandant.

"No need to go alone, my Paul. There is your escort." He hesitated a
moment, debating. "Do either of you, by chance, speak Arabic?"

"Am I an interpreter?" asked Rattier, bitterly. "Does one need a grammar
and dictionary to arrest half a dozen scoundrels who are perfectly well
aware why they are being chased, and whom one will take the liberty of
shooting if they resist capture? For that plain English or French--or,
for all practical purposes, Chinese--will suffice. Avoid alarming
yourself on that subject, _mon ami_."

The major grinned.

"I was not thinking of your quarry but your colleagues, my pigeon. The
Goumiers speak their own _argot_. They are good-hearted children, but
apt to be tempestuous in matters of fighting." He meditated through
another minute before he spoke with quick decision. "Sergeant! Prepare
to accompany M. le Commandant within fifteen minutes."

Perinaud saluted with entire imperturbability.

"And my instructions, my Major?" he asked.

"To return with the prisoners which Commandant Rattier will indicate to
you, or, failing their capture, within twenty-four hours."

"_Bien!_" Perinaud folded himself anaconda-like into the back office and
disappeared. Ten minutes later, a period which D'Hubert filled with much
voluble advice, there was the tramping of many horses' feet without.
Aylmer and Rattier strolled out into the open at the major's heels.

Under the command of one of their own native officers, forty horsemen of
the famous Algerian yeomanry had reined up in the dusty street. They sat
in their high peaked saddles, watching keenly the faces of D'Hubert and
his companions. Aylmer noted the eager, alert expectation which filled
each flashing brown eye. The Goumier, though he has proved his valor in
more than one pitched battle against the men of his own blood, is not a
man of war as we understand it. Manoeuvring, tactics, the orderliness
of drill and discipline are not inherent in his nature. But the raid,
the foray, the looting expedition are to him the apex and apogee of
human bliss. Thin, modest of stomach and worldly possessions, he passes
over the quickly reached horizon of the desert and is forgotten of the
well-drilled colleagues he leaves behind. But see his return! Swelling
with good victuals, jingling with caparison of desert wealth, with
chicken and kid pendent from his saddle-bow, who more popular than he?
The savory incense of his mess attracts all nostrils; his lavishly
scattered loot widens the already capacious circle of his friends.
Winning it, or wasting it when won, loot is the pivot on which his
reckless, joyous, heedless existence swings.

Rising from the rear as a cathedral tower rises above the encircling
dwellings at its base, Perinaud's head and shoulders topped the ranks.
His amiable smile, this time, had about it something of more than
ordinary deference. It was the near kin of a smirk, and his yellow
moustache was twisted fiercely upwards. Aylmer followed the direction of
his glance to find it focussed upon Claire Van Arlen.

Her eyes met his. She made him a little gesture, half of appeal, as it
seemed, half of command.

As he covered the few yards which separated them, he noted, with a queer
tightening of the heart, the deep shadows which had grown beneath her
eyes. But at the same time it was not all anxiety or weariness which
her face expressed. There was determination also. And this was reflected
in Mr. Van Arlen's glance. It dwelled upon Aylmer with expectancy and
more than expectancy,--with hope.

Without preamble he answered the question which their eyes had asked.
They heard him in silence to the end, and as he finished, the girl's
first comment was no more than a little sigh.

"The sergeant's surmise is right; my instinct tells me that," said
Aylmer. "A few hours--and I shall be putting the child in your arms
again."

She looked up at the double rank of horsemen. A sudden vivid flash of
feeling passed over her features. Her breath came with a little pant.

"Ah, if I could ride with you!" she said fiercely. "If I could do more
than wait!"

The color mounted to her cheeks, to her brow. A new note sounded in her
voice.

"If they show fight--these men? If, rather than lose the child, he"--her
voice sank unsteadily for a moment--"does him an injury? You would not
spare him?"

He smiled a little wearily.

"So you distrust me still?" he asked. "Why should I spare him? Because,
to my shame, we are of one blood?"

Mr. Van Arlen's thin hand rose in deprecation.

"We can leave this matter confidently in Captain Aylmer's hands," he
said. "We have only the one thing to think of--the child."

"No!" she cried vehemently. "I want the child, but I want more than
that. I want retribution. I want Landon in the dust. I want him made to
feel, as I feel. The child is much, but he is not all. Have you
forgotten the last eight years of my sister's life? Do you remember what
she has undergone and still has to undergo if the father of her son wins
this trick, as my heart tells me he will win it? I want vengeance. I
want every chance to grasp it seized. I should not hesitate, where his
kinsman might."

Aylmer nodded gravely.

"I understand," he said quietly. "Perhaps it is natural. But you keep
forgetting the one thing--that I work for my own reward. Even pity would
be a frail barrier between me and that."

Watching her keenly, he saw a quiver of repulsion tremble about her
lips, but it did not stay. She set them rather into grimness. She looked
at him keenly, debatingly, indeed, as if she weighed his words and
sought to set a value on them.

"Yes," she said, and there was a breathlessness in her tone as if she
slurred words which she did not dare to let herself hear. "I, too,
understand. And my father would consider no price too high for the
service which won back his grandchild, and removed the menace of
Landon's existence from our lives."

Van Arlen bowed unconsciously--his courteous, instinctive inclination of
assent.

"Such a service would be beyond price or reward," he said quietly. "We
could only do our best."

But there was a queerly puzzled look in his eyes as they wandered from
Aylmer to his daughter's face. He frowned a little, still unconsciously,
in the throes of an obvious bewilderment.

Aylmer looked at him once, swiftly, speculatively, and then turned
steadily towards Claire.

"And you?" he asked quietly.

She did not flinch; she did not even show, this time, any sign of
repulsion. The note in her voice now was exasperation, the nervous
defiance of one confronting an intolerable situation from which there
was no escape.

"I? I should think as my father thinks," she said coolly. She turned as
she spoke and looked impatiently at the line of waiting horsemen.

Aylmer nodded.

"Thank you," he said briskly. He made a sign towards Perinaud, who
jogged forward leading the spare horse whose bridle he had been holding.
Aylmer vaulted into the saddle, and reined in beside his friend Rattier,
who, using the pommel for a desk, was writing a few lines of instruction
to his lieutenant. A guttural order rumbled from the native officer's
lips.

The line of horsemen wheeled and deployed into lines of four. With a
jingle of accoutrements, they jogged off into the dust of the allies
towards the eastern gate.



CHAPTER XII

THE AMBUSH OF THE BROOM


"The wells of El Djebir, Monsieur," explained Sergeant Perinaud. "It is
here we should find our men, if they are proceeding by the shortest
route to their hills. If not--" He shrugged his shoulders significantly.

The horses were roused from their gentle amble into a gallop. The dust
rose from fourscore hoofs as the Goumiers raced down in an enveloping
cloud upon the cluster of palms and thicket of broom scrub which
surrounded the watering-place. They pulled their horses upon their
haunches; they shouted in hoarse disappointment. The shadowed
resting-place beneath the palms was empty. Not a living soul was in
sight.

Perinaud shrugged his shoulders again.

"This is very conclusive, Monsieur. The party we seek has thought fit to
leave the open road and to bury themselves in the recesses of the jungle
and the northern gorges of the river. They did not do that without a
reason. It remains to follow, if we can."

The native officer shouted something and Perinaud turned swiftly in the
saddle to stare down the track which they had been following. A white
figure bestriding a brown horse was thundering towards them, the rider's
_haik_ fluttering out snowily against the dun background of the earth.

"So Monsieur thought fit to leave me--me!" expostulated Daoud, as he
drew rein at Aylmer's side. "I, I who address you, am told by the chance
gossip of the Sôk that this expedition has set out without a word of
warning, to seek bandits--where?" He threw abroad his arms in derision.
"On the broad and open road, within sound, nay, almost within sight, of
the patrols of Casablanca. I ask, is it here that knaves are likely to
hide their knavery? Your venture and its object are already the pivot on
which the laughter of the market-place swings."

He turned and pointed vehemently towards the north.

"Has none of your trained spies had the wit or the courage to tell you
that a hundred of these Beni M'Geel Berbers have encamped in the
thickets of the Bou Gherba gorge this ten days back? And yet the
market-place knows it, as it knows a hundred things beneath your
concern."

Perinaud looked the Moor up and down. Then he turned leisurely towards
Aylmer.

"He is a safe man, this?" he asked. "You guarantee him?"

Aylmer smiled, and shrugged his shoulders towards the waiting Goumiers.

"They are all for their own hand, these, are they not, Sergeant? Yes, I
will guarantee that he seeks to serve me, for the moment, and in serving
me, himself. It is the way with these desert folk. They cannot manage
large issues, and they split into factions to follow small ones. Let us
hear him and, if you see no objection, take his advice. He has been in
Casablanca before."

Perinaud grunted and eyed the Moor grudgingly.

"Well, man of infinite knowledge," he said in Arabic. "You
propose--what?"

"Are there two courses before us?" asked Daoud, disdainfully. "Or are we
to await reinforcements? We have to surround this lair of desert cats."

"Where?" asked Perinaud, laconically.

The Moor wheeled his stallion with an elaborate caracole.

"If the Sidi had used my services from the first," he said, "he would
have been saved an hour's ride. Forward, Sidi!"

The sergeant lifted his eyebrows at Aylmer with an air of comical
resignation. To the native officer he gave a decisive little nod. With
Daoud leading, the brown stallion arching his neck in remonstrance to a
tightened rein and goading spur, the column broke formation and in
single file turned northwards into the broom scrub which fringes the
tilled lands of the Chawia.

The horsemen rode in silence. The mantle of Rattier's taciturnity, rent
to rags in D'Hubert's office, seemed to have been restored to its
pristine imperviousness, seemed, indeed, to hang heavy upon the spirits
of the whole company. Now and again the commandant's lips moved
uneasily, but the spoken word died still-born. A Goumier would address
fervent maledictions to the memory of the female ancestors of a
stumbling horse; curt conferences took place at long intervals between
Perinaud and the native officer. But apart from this, the thud of hoofs
meeting sand or earth and the dull rap of rein or stirrup leather were
all the sounds which broke the stillness. The heavy noontide heat seemed
to have swallowed into silence all sound. For sound denotes creative
energy, and energy, when the sun is at its zenith in South Morocco, is
sapped.

Their course, as Aylmer was quick to notice, led perpetually upward, but
in gradients which almost eluded notice. Gray blue in the haze of
distance, the rolling uplands culminated in a range of low hills, but
these were a full day's march beyond their powers. Their goal, if it
were to be reached within daylight, must be nearer than that. His
attention, as the hours went monotonously by, was at last drawn to a gap
in the far mapped expanse of vegetation.

A line of green, deeper and of more luxuriant growth than the thickets
around them, divided the jungle from east to west. Daoud, turning in his
saddle, waved his hand in an important gesture.

"The Gorge of the Bou Djerba, Sidi," he said. "It is my advice that I go
forward to reconnoitre--alone."

Aylmer looked at Perinaud. The sergeant shrugged his shoulders.

"Monsieur guarantees this fellow, I understand? Well, let him justify
himself. I have no objections."

Rattier interrupted.

"It is well understood that I deal with this M. de Landon if he is
there, I alone? Your man, now, if he suddenly confronts him--" He broke
off with a meaning gesture. "I do not wish my interview with him
anticipated."

In spite of himself, a smile broke the imperturbability of the
sergeant's face. With a suggestive jerk of the hand he dismissed Daoud,
who cantered on into and was lost in the jungle of mallow. Perinaud
turned sympathetic and now perfectly grave features towards the
commandant.

"Monsieur may be easy in his mind," he said quietly. "The man we seek,
if I have understood his talents rightly, is hardly likely to be subdued
without the display of some force and intelligence."

He turned to give the order to dismount. Rattier watched him with an air
of baffled exasperation. There had been a gentle emphasis on the last
two words which could scarcely be misunderstood, and as the sailor
ruminated over them, his taciturnity showed renewed signs of failing
before the rising tide of his wrath. A sudden diversion averted an
outbreak.

For a gunshot rang out among the woodland silences into which Daoud had
disappeared. It was instantly replied to by the shriller snap of a
revolver. And this was followed by a fusillade of five more reports as
the weapon was emptied. The Moor's voice was suddenly uplifted.

"To me, Sidi!" he was shouting vehemently. "To me!"

The native officer thundered an order. In a twinkling the men were back
in their saddles and, in irregular formation, threading the aisles of
thicket at a canter. Aylmer and Rattier followed the sergeant, riding
abreast.

There came another report. A bullet whistled between the pair, and from
Rattier came a little growl of satisfaction. If there was to be a fight,
he seemed to imply, his promised interview with Landon would assume
proportions which were entirely pleasing to him. Perinaud increased his
horse's pace, flinging alert glances each side of him rather than in
front.

A couple of hundred yards at speed and the forest maze opened into a
wide clearing, deeply overgrown with mallow and broom. Through the
middle of this, his horse laboring against the growth which was full
five feet high, rode Daoud, revolver in hand. A short distance ahead of
him the green thicket was grooved in half a dozen places, as unseen
bodies crashed through. Daoud's aim was poised and then withdrawn a
score of times in as many seconds. The flicker of a white _haik_ would
show for a brief instant here and there, and then be swallowed by the
jungle.

Daoud would answer these appearances with a bullet, one which apparently
invariably missed its mark, for the echo of a mocking triumph greeted
them. He turned irritably in the direction of his companions.

He waved his hand significantly, motioning them to deploy right and
left, to surround the thicket. Perinaud answered with a comprehending
nod.

But Rattier had neither the time nor the inclination for a display of
tactics. As Daoud turned his horse to emerge from the mallow, the
commandant spurred his charger into the thick of it. And he shouted, he
whirled up his right hand, grasping his revolver, with fierce
gesticulations of encouragement.

The Goumiers saw, heard, and found little room for hesitation in their
mood. Like a torrent released at the breaking of a dam, they followed.
Perinaud thundered an ineffectual protest.

It fell on deaf ears. The green brake was furrowed by a dozen lanes
before their impact and then, relentlessly, as it seemed, closed behind
them. The horses bucked, plunged, but made little headway. From one of
them came a sudden whinnying shriek of pain.

Then it sank under its rider as the knife which had severed its tendons
slipped back into the cover from which it had been so swiftly and so
silently thrust.

The fallen Goumier cleared himself and scrambled to his feet. His face
alone was clear in the sea of vegetation, and it was a mask of anger and
bewilderment. And then it, too, was gone with a sudden panting cry.

Aylmer gave a little gasp. The head was there and then it was not. It
sank into the green as the swimmer sinks into the blue in a
shark-infested sea. But this shark was a human one, and its teeth a long
Berber knife. The fugitives of the Beni M'Geel had chosen their
battle-ground well.

Horse or man, lance or carbine--what were they against the daggers which
the tussocks veiled? Mocking cries echoed in the thicket. Another horse
shrieked and fell; another face showed white above the green and then
was gone. The Goumiers snarled with rage as they spurred furiously
forward, but the clinging mallow held them, shackled them, suffocated
them with its density. There was a note of panic in their shouts; they
battled no longer for victory but for escape.

The leader of the reckless charge was in slightly better case than the
majority. Rattier and one or two others, by chance of circumstances,
stood in wider spaces, where the dagger men could not reach them unseen.
They sat in their saddles, alert for opportunity, quivering with rage,
but useless. Their glances flashed from side to side, their eyes
gleamed, but opportunity evaded them. And the cries of the unseen enemy
still mocked them from the ambush.

Carried away by impulse, Aylmer would have joined the charge. Perinaud's
hand fell upon his reins with a grip of iron. Aylmer made as if he would
release them by force.

The sergeant made a gesture of appeal.

"No, my Captain! This is serious. A little coolness, a little restraint,
and we pull them out of this! But to follow! That spells death for us
all!"

He leaped from the saddle, drew his carbine from the bucket, and flung
to Aylmer the reins of both horses.

"If Monsieur will be so obliging?" he said quickly, and turned towards
the nearest tree, a cedar which towered twenty feet above the dwarfed
bolls of cork. He climbed lithely, rapidly, resting, at last, within a
few feet of the top. He leaned his carbine upon a bough, took a steady
aim, and fired.

A shriek answered the report--a shriek muffled in the blanket of the
broom.

"_Courage, mes enfants!_" said Perinaud, placidly. "That accounted for
one, and from here I see all. There are but six. Give me time and the
affair completes itself effectually."

Again he dwelled upon his aim, hesitated, fired, shook his head in
self-reproach and fired again. This time he gave a little nod of
satisfaction.

"Two!" he cried complacently. "Two, my children!" and the report of his
rifle punctuated the announcement. "So!" went on the sergeant, as if he
commented on the score at a rifle range. "So! We write full stop to
_Monsieur le troisième_. Aha! _Messieurs quatrième_, _cinquième_ and
_sixième_--it is poor stuff to push through, the broom. No, I do not see
you, Messieurs, but I see where you run like rabbits, and perhaps we may
chance a bullet--there!"

The report of the last cartridge in the magazine was answered by another
yell. A brown-clad body shot into the air out of the undergrowth and
subsided limply. Perinaud nodded again.

"Through the brain, my friend, through the brain. Yes, I still see you,
my two little doves. We have to reload. Four for one magazine of five
cartridges is not bad, you will allow. You are trapped, are you not? In
the broom you cannot escape me; in the open you will be ridden down.
Well, it is to be in the broom, is it? So! _Voilà, Monsieur le
cinquième!_ That closes your account. As for you, my sixth friend, you
have chosen the thicket, have you? You are very still; we must
speculate, we must invite the co-operation of chance, who is a good
friend to Sergeant Perinaud as a rule. There! No, is that not in the
middle of the target? We must try again. Umph! I wonder if you are,
after all, dead, my pigeon. Holà, there! Monsieur le Commandant. If you
will be good enough to step fifteen long paces to the right, following
the motion of my hand, you will be able to inform me if my last shot was
a bull's-eye, an outer, or even--shame to me if it is so--a miss. Yes,
Monsieur, that is the spot. Where the patch of broom outcrops between
those two stumps of cork."

Rattier beat a road laboriously through the clinging stems as the
sergeant's finger motioned. A sudden muffled exclamation burst from him;
he lurched sideways, stumbled, and fell prone. The green stalks rustled
and shook as something brown and indistinguishable shot through them in
the direction in which the waiting Goumiers were thickest.

Perinaud gave a warning cry.

"Look to yourselves! I cannot shoot; he is in line between us!"

One of the horsemen shouted and spurred his stallion towards the fringe
of the undergrowth furthest from the point at which the charge had
entered it. His impulsive action countered Perinaud's manifest purpose
of firing, for he, too, had seen the agitation of the mallow in that
direction. The horseman bounded forward, the horse clearing the
obstructions in a series of jerky little leaps. Beside the edge of the
clearing they halted, the man searching the cover in front of him and on
each side keenly.

A brown something snaked out of the thicket at his back. Steel flashed
in the sun. The Goumier toppled from the saddle, and a brown figure,
bowing flat across the horse's withers, seemed to have replaced him
almost in the moment of his fall. Spurred desperately by his new rider,
the stallion burst away down the cork tree alleys.

A ragged volley rattled out. Splinters flew wide from a dozen trees, but
horse and rider fled on. The Goumiers called fiercely on the name of a
dozen saints of Islam to qualify their rage as they thrust their
chargers out of the tangle in pursuit. Perinaud and their officer yelled
strenuous commands.

Crestfallen and sullen, the troopers reined in, listening in silence to
the commination addressed to them from the pulpit of the cedar.

"Is one lesson insufficient?" thundered Perinaud. "Do we practise the
arts of war or are we conducting a _ralli-papier_? Like hares you were
decoyed into this ambush, and, flinging your red-hot experience to the
winds, you are prepared to be drawn, as likely as not, into another.
Collect yourselves, morally as well as physically, if you please."

They reined in among the cork trees, and half a dozen, flinging their
reins to comrades, pushed back on foot into the cover. A string of
oaths and maledictions, twice repeated, told of what they found. They
came back with the sullen tread of those bearing the heavy burdens of
defeat and death. They laid the bodies of their two comrades at the foot
of the cedar.

Rattier, leaning upon Aylmer's arm, swore vehemently. The blood dripped
from a gash across his wrist, but he raised it to shake a fist in the
direction taken by the fugitive.

"Another item in M. de Landon's ledger, name of all names!" he cried.
"But we shall see, my friends, we shall see. The hand is not played out
yet, believe me!"

"Perhaps not," agreed Aylmer, "but you, at any rate, have cut out of the
deal, or have been cut out," he added significantly, pointing to the
wounded arm.

The commandant drew himself away with a fierce jerk.

"I!" he cried. "Is a cut finger--a graze--to send me weeping to the
ambulance? The scoundrel who deceived me I pursue to the world's end! He
has scored once more. It is the last time--this!"

He raised himself to his full height in a grandiloquent gesture
and--fell fainting into Perinaud's arms. The sergeant grunted morosely
and pointed to a crimson stain which had welled through the blue tunic
and was rapidly spreading.

"If it is not serious, I thank Our Lady and all the listening Saints for
this!" he said devoutly. "He is impossible as a colleague on
reconnaissance, this energetic commandant. It was his recklessness which
led these men into a trap which at any other moment they would have
avoided. We have lost two men and five horses by the result of this
escapade. What are your suggestions now, Monsieur?"

Aylmer hesitated.

"For the moment have you not done enough?" he asked. "After all, your
service is to France, not to intruders like myself. My Moorish servant
and I might continue to reconnoitre alone. Your hands are full enough,
are they not?"

The other looked at him queerly.

"Perhaps Monsieur thinks that so far we have been a hindrance rather
than a help to his purposes. Monsieur has reason. At the same time we
might justly, in my opinion, be permitted another chance to repair our
prestige."

Aylmer smiled. Perinaud's voice was chilly. The glance he directed at
the crestfallen Goumiers let it be inferred that his words were also
designed to reach their address. They shuffled and kicked at the ground
restlessly as they listened.

"It is for you, of course, to direct matters, Sergeant!" he said
quickly. "But the commandant, without a doubt, must be removed at once
to hospital."

"Without a doubt, Monsieur," agreed Perinaud, with sudden cheerfulness.
"We will escort him and the dismounted men out of the forest into the
open farm lands, where patrols are not infrequent and nothing is to be
feared. They will then be about twenty kilometres from the town. The
best mounted will proceed as quickly as possible to fetch the ambulance.
Of the others, twenty will escort the commandant's stretcher--it is
perfectly feasible to make a good one of poles which we will cut and
over which we will button two greatcoats--the five new-made _fantassins_
will walk. The remaining dozen and you and I, Monsieur, will
proceed--with energy, if you please, but certainly with prudence."

Perinaud closed his little homily with the satisfied air of an orator
who has arrived at and correctly delivered an anticipated peroration.

And chance, who may have been listening, offered yet another of her
favors to her protégé. As the little column debouched from the trees
into the open expanse of alluvial country, a cloud of brown dust was
rising on the far side of the fringing barley fields. Perinaud gave an
exclamation of content.

"It is the Tirailleurs with their major," he explained. "They have
patrolled the Ber Rechid road and made a reconnaissance to get cattle.
They will have an ambulance, or at least a mule litter."

He put his horse to the gallop. The others, following more sedately, saw
him reach and disappear among the ranks of white-uniformed men, whose
cummerbunds and tarbooshes winked a cheerful scarlet against the dun
fallow or green cropping of the fields. And there was an air of
animation about the column accounted for, perhaps, by the fact that
innumerable kids frisked about their mothers as the captured goats were
herded along the track, while droves of small, wiry cattle bellowed and
butted at each other, their captors, and every moving object within
reach of their serviceable little horns.

Perinaud, who had dismounted, was standing and speaking with an air of
respect and precision to a mounted officer. The latter turned as Aylmer
and his companions approached, and the former could barely restrain a
start of consternation and surprise. For a deep, flaming groove dinted
the man's forehead from temple to temple, while the hand which he raised
in salute was one huge scar from knuckles to wrist. His brown eyes
inspected Aylmer with friendly attention.

"At your service, _mon Capitaine_," he said. "Sergeant Perinaud has
explained your needs."

Aylmer began to express his thanks. The other nodded pleasantly and gave
an order. From the rear an ambulance was trotted forward: a
gray-moustached doctor in uniform swung himself from his saddle and bent
over Rattier, who was still unconscious.

A moment later he looked up.

"Loss of blood," he said laconically. "He has a gash two fingers deep
behind the shoulder. Severe, but not serious--with care. We will see to
him."

The officer nodded again. He looked at Aylmer.

"And yourself, Monsieur?" he asked.

Aylmer made a gesture towards the forest and the distant uplands.

"With your leave, we will continue our--investigations, Major," he said.

The other shrugged his shoulders.

"The forest, _mon ami_? We, do you see, have confined our operations so
far to the plough lands, the open. I have no store of experience to draw
upon for your advice. You will be pioneers. I shall hope to have the
benefit of your experience on your return. Maillot is my name, Monsieur,
and I hope to have the pleasure of seeing you at the headquarters of my
regiment outside the Fedallah Gate. For the moment, then, _au revoir_!"

He smiled cheerfully, saluted, and gave an order. The tramp and jingle
of the march were renewed. The dust cloud began to form again where it
had settled, and the Tirailleurs swung off seawards with the elastic
step which those who wear the _godillot_ acquire, and which makes them
the envy of their colleagues in the regulars who are doomed to the
precise lacing of the _soulier_. Perinaud made a gesture of admiration,
as with Aylmer and his half score of Goumiers he watched them go.

"Monsieur has seen the bravest man and the finest leader of all the
troops of France," he remarked.

"Major Maillot?"

"But certainly the major, Monsieur. He needs no medals to prove what he
is and where he has been. His deeds are witnessed on his brow and
hands."

He hesitated and then spoke quickly.

"I have no wish to vaunt the deeds of Frenchmen to you, a foreigner,
Monsieur, but that is a man in whom we may take an honest pride. The
scar you saw came to him by Settat. He and a picket were cut off from
the main body by a hidden reserve of the enemy. They retreated fighting
and were within measurable distance of safety. And then one of our
fallen, whom they had left for dead, cried aloud out of the hands of the
enemy. How these savages were dealing with him I shall not disgust
Monsieur by telling. Suffice it to say that they were working the will
of devils upon him and, in spite of his manhood, he shrieked. The major
heard, and like a thunderbolt turned and charged straight for the enemy,
and his men, without a thought of the peril, turned with him, a dozen
perhaps, against five score. But those hundred Moors were in full
retreat before the main body of the regiment raced up to the rescue, and
they picked their major up wounded as you have seen, lying across the
body of the man he had fought to save, with seven dead foes ringed round
him.... They have a confident air, these Tirailleurs of ours. Some say
an insolent one. Well, Monsieur, they have their pride, it must be
allowed, but God knows when they are led as that man leads they have a
right to it."

Aylmer nodded. Slowly they turned their horses' heads forestwards again.
Perinaud looked at the line of trees abstractedly and then back again at
the receding column.

"France does not desert her children if she remembers," he remarked
quietly. "It is well that we met these men and their major. He is a man
who will see to it that we are not forgotten, if chance wills that we do
not soon return. The task of seeking us would be one after his own
heart, and his Tirailleurs would think with him." He smiled confidently.
"So we may go forward with an easy mind, _mon Capitaine_. We are
pioneers, as the major said. To pioneers should come adventures, if they
are worthy of their name."

He touched his stallion's flank with the spur. The little band of
horsemen cantered up and into the shadow of the cork trees. And there
was an air of arrogance and recklessness about the riders. All trace of
discomfiture of an hour back was gone. It was as if the Tirailleurs had
breathed an infection of valor around them--a bacillus of intrepidity
which their major had cultivated with the point of his untiring sword.



CHAPTER XIII

THE TRAP


"That our friends have left is obvious," said Daoud. "The question is
how long ago and whither."

The litter of a recently disturbed encampment cumbered the ground. Rags,
the feathers of lately plucked chickens, the ashes of recently
extinguished fires abounded. But whether the camp had been struck days
or only hours before it was impossible to determine. Night as well as
day had been rainless, and the dry dust left no trail perceptible to
European eyes. Daoud, however, examined the soil carefully.

"They have gone south," he declared at last. "They have struck out of
the forest and back towards the plain. This grows interesting."

Perinaud gave a sniff.

"The reason is obvious," he said a little contemptuously. "Where did
they obtain water? From the spring which welled up at the foot of that
cactus to the left. But now it is dry and cracking mud."

Daoud nodded grudgingly.

"Possibly," he allowed. "The nearest wells are at Ain Djemma."

"Held in force by two companies of the Legion," said Perinaud. "They are
hardly likely to show themselves there. No, if they have gone south they
are seeking the Wad el Mella. They will follow the stream through the
gorge towards their own foothills from which it issues."

"This river? How far is it?" asked Aylmer.

"Eight kilometres, possibly ten," said Perinaud. "There are _duars_ and
encampments along its banks in a dozen places. We ought to get news of
our men, even if we do not overtake them."

"Our horses have come a matter of thirty kilometres already," said
Aylmer.

"Then as soon as possible they must do ten more," answered the sergeant,
energetically. "Without water we cannot camp, any more than our friends
of the Beni M'Geel. _En avance!_"

Aylmer drew his horse up beside Perinaud's as for the second time they
left the shelter of the trees and ambled out on to the plain. The
westering sun was turning it to broad belts of dun, and yellow, and
green, as the slanting beams fell upon earth, or marigold weed, or
crops. Four or five miles distant to their front the rolling uplands
culminated in a belt of squat but far-branching trees.

"There, one may suppose, are the river and the gorge," he suggested.
"The inhabitants of these _duars_, of which you speak? How will they
greet us?"

Perinaud shrugged his shoulders.

"It remains for Fate to show us, Monsieur. There were some drastic
whippings of the Moors within this district a few weeks back. How well
they have learned the lesson taught them then we shall have to prove."

Aylmer hesitated.

"It is not with the purpose of getting embroiled in skirmishes that I
have come," he said quietly. "You understand that my duty, for the
moment, is to keep myself alive until my object is achieved."

Perinaud grinned drily.

"That is a remark which a poltroon would not have dared to make,
Monsieur, and shows you to be a brave man. Be assured that my efforts
towards maintaining an unperforated skin will be as energetic as your
own. Hysterical madness, such as we were involved in in the forest,
shall not recur, if I can help it. My purpose is to camp, as soon as we
reach water, and then to allow your omniscient Monsieur Daoud to conduct
his investigations under cover of the darkness."

As the red disk of the sun sank below the seaward horizon, they topped
the gentle rise which terminated in a belt of trees. Not far below them,
belling musically through the dusk, came the song of the ripples. Half a
mile away, on the far side of the gorge, a dim light twinkled in the
growing darkness.

Perinaud pointed towards a group of palms.

"Here, Monsieur," he explained, "you will find dry earth. You have your
cloak. Your saddle is a practical pillow. I have bread, a ration or two
of preserved soup, some beans, coffee, a tin of milk, sugar. At the
_duar_, where we see that light, are--possibly--chickens. But we are
quite as likely to receive a bullet. What does Monsieur advise?"

Aylmer smiled.

"An immediate picnic. In the friendliest of _duars_ cannibal hordes
thirsting for our blood would await us, if we were reckless enough to
sleep among them. I prefer to housekeep _à la belle étoile_."

The sergeant nodded and gave his orders. Sentries slipped right and left
into the night. A tiny fire was kindled in a hollow between two
boulders. The tins of preserved soup gave up their secrets, and the
ration bread proved that the military bakers of France have discovered
the secret of making loaves which will remain fresh and eatable through
a whole week of desert marches. Coffee succeeded--coffee made in the
empty vegetable tin, and worthy of Maxim's or the Ritz.

Daoud drank his portion, shrugged his shoulders fatalistically at the
sleeping places which the Goumiers were preparing, and then, without
comment, vanished into the night.

Aylmer lay back upon his cloak, his head pillowed upon his arm, his pipe
between his teeth. He was enjoying to the full the sensations of a
pleasantly weary and well-fed horseman. The first drowsy challenge of
sleep touched his eyes and brain.

The very next instant, as it seemed to him, he was on his feet, revolver
in hand, searching the dark aisles of the forest on either side. A shout
had echoed from one of the sentries, a hoarse challenge followed almost
on the instant by a shot.

The cry was repeated, shriller this time with the insistence of anxiety.
"_Au secours!_" came the Goumier's voice. "_Au secours!_ There are a
score of them; they are all around me!"

In silence, but with a wave of the hand, Perinaud dispersed his men into
open order and doubled towards the sounds of conflict. Aylmer ran with
them, making more noise in his heavy boots than the whole of the party
made in their _souliers_. He heard Perinaud whisper an emphatic oath of
disgust as he tripped over a fallen branch and smashed heavily through a
cactus bush. The next instant both of them fell together, over a soft,
woolly obstruction, which stirred faintly under their feet. Meanwhile,
half a dozen rifles were flashing red in the night, and the woodland
echoes tossed the reports from thicket to thicket.

Perinaud swore again viciously, scrambled to his feet, and shouted.

"Imbeciles! Cease fire!" he thundered. "They are sheep, these Moors of
yours, sheep! A pretty night's work! You have killed probably a dozen,
and we have no means of transport."

Shamefacedly the Goumiers crowded round to feel the fatness of the
victim which had lain in Aylmer's path. As they felt and appraised it,
their voices resumed a note of philosophic content. It was indeed a slur
upon the collectedness of the Goumiers as a whole that Hassan el Fehmi,
the sentry, had been betrayed into this indiscretion. But the dead
sheep, look you, was of an unlooked-for plumpness, and breakfast must be
partaken of sooner or later. There would be cutlets, and room might be
found on a saddle or two for a couple of _gigots_. No, this was not all
loss, this night alarm. There were compensations.

Perinaud declined to meet these representations in the spirit in which
they were made.

"Looters! Robbers of hen roosts!" he cried. "The whole of your thoughts
are centered, as ever, on your unworthy stomachs. The compensation for
this outrage will be made to the owners from your pay, let me tell you,
from your pay! You have raised the country on us with your shootings;
within a matter of minutes we shall have the Moors here in earnest, be
assured of that!"

Wrathfully he led the way back to the bivouac and carefully extinguished
every cinder of the fire.

"And now," he ordered, "our duty is to wait--beside our horses. If it
will not inconvenience Monsieur, I should be obliged if he will defer
sleeping, for the present. If we are not molested for the next hour or
two, it will be different. The moon rises before midnight and after that
a couple of sentries will amply suffice."

It was a memory which stayed by Aylmer for many a month--that long,
silent, and very weary vigil of the next few hours. He sat, with his
back supported by a palm trunk, the haltering rein of his horse in his
hand, his eyes trying vainly to pierce the gloom which surrounded him,
and his ears strained to attention.

The forest, though in the windless calm not a leaf fluttered, was full
of disquieting noises. There were rustlings, faint, half perceptible
crackings of twigs, dull, muffled, resistant sounds from the earth which
must surely be caused by human footfall. Once his whole frame sprung
into startled alertness as a night bird shrieked in the cork branches
not twenty yards away. The faint but distinct after-echo of a chorussed
sigh told him how a dozen other pulses had leaped with his. The quick,
irregular darting run of a small animal--a jerboa or a forest
rat--produced a little less disturbing effect. But the soft, stolid
breathing of his horse, as its breath beat past his shoulder, was a
soothing, soporific sound which his nerves welcomed, yet seemed to
protest against as tending to lull him into an unalert insecurity. With
a sudden qualm of reproach he found his head dropping sideways and
smiting lightly the trunk of the palm. He drew himself up with a quick,
decisive tautening of his muscles. He would not sleep; his eyelids
almost ached with the intensity with which he held them apart.

Sleep, like fate, is a tricky jade to defy. It was Perinaud's voice,
level and stolid, but with a faint note of sarcasm, which aroused him.

"Monsieur may now sleep in comfort if he will," suggested the sergeant.
"There is little fear from surprise with such a moon."

Aylmer blinked. The round white orb was sending its rays in full flood
through the broad fans of the palm leaves overhead. It tinged the cork
trees with silver radiance; it produced an effect of grateful coolness
in the cinder-dry thickets and powdery earth. It was as if dew had
fallen, a dew of light. And the shadows of the gorge were of a velvet
blackness in contrast.

Aylmer looked carefully round. It was as Perinaud said. The forest
spaces were clear; one could trace them almost as distinctly as in the
daylight. No enemy could steal upon them unseen.

And so it was with a little sigh of content that he laid his head back
upon his saddle, pulled his cloak more disposedly about him, and
prepared to give nature freely what during the past three hours she had
stolen.

With the usual result. Sleep deserted him. He closed his eyes
resolutely; he breathed with exact precision; he even counted an
imaginary flock of sheep as they passed sedately between two
supposititious hurdles. He remained broadly awake, his eyes rebelling
against their imprisonment till at last he gave up trying to coerce
them. He searched his pocket, found tobacco and a pipe, and smoked. His
brain became suddenly active.

He reviewed the circumstances of the last few days. He debated his
position, appraised his progress. It was typical of his temperament
equability that he did this; it was part of the dogged resolution with
which he approached the vital problems of his career. He knew that for
the first time he had encountered passion, and that it had mastered him.
He had seen Claire Van Arlen perhaps half a dozen times before he
realized this, and realized it, too, with a certain ingenuous wonder at
the thing which had such power over him. But he had made no attempt to
combat it. He knew that this girl had become for him the pivot of
existence. As matters had gone, he had scarcely had the opportunity for
introspection. Passion had gripped him, and now passion's authority had
gone beyond the limits of question. He set his face unswervingly towards
his goal. The days of debating an alternative path had gone by.

He sighed. Up the path he had chosen had he made any progress? Yes, one
great step had been taken. She knew the goal he sought; he had made it
absolutely plain. He had read repulse in her eyes as she first divined
it. He had read it again, but tinged with a thrill of curiosity, at his
second allusion. The third time? There he was beaten. She had seemed to
fling him a sort of encouragement. Why? What was her intention here? She
had not softened towards him; instinct told him that. And yet--and yet.
He sighed again. There were many barriers in this road he had set out
upon--barriers which must be levelled one by one. Dislike, suspicion,
but not, thank God, apathy. No--from the first he had interested
her--from the moment of their first meeting he had been forced into
prominence in her regard.

A hand fell lightly upon his shoulder, bringing him back with a start
from the possibilities of romance to the facts of an everyday African
world. The most engrossing of these, for the moment, was Daoud's face.

There was a sense of importance in the Moor's aspect, the importance of
discovery. Aylmer realized this at once.

"You have discovered--what?" he asked sharply.

Daoud waved his hand with a magnificent and comprehensive gesture.

"All, Sidi," he answered. "The two we seek, with the child, are in an
encampment of Berber tribesmen within an hour's march."

Aylmer scrambled to his feet. He made but little noise as he did so, but
there was a corresponding movement in the half-dozen recumbent figures
beside him. Perinaud, raising himself upon his elbow, looked
thoughtfully at the scout.

"Well, my friend?" he asked amiably. "Your researches take us where?"

"Five miles further up the ravine," said Daoud. "It is more than a camp.
A village of some importance. Our friend who escaped from the broom
thicket has not arrived there. There was no alertness, no watch kept. By
the time I left snores were echoing from practically every tent and
dwelling of mud. We are not expected."

Perinaud nodded.

"_Bien._ The moment of attack then--?"

"Is now, Sidi. By the time we reach it the dawn will have come."

Aylmer fumbled for his watch. It was true. The hour was between four and
five. The wan light of the false morning was, indeed, faintly paling the
east. He looked at Perinaud.

The sergeant nodded.

"Short rest for the horses, Monsieur," he said, "but that we cannot
help. The time is short enough, as it is."

He motioned the waiting figures of the Goumiers into activity. The
sentries were recalled. A tiny fire was kindled, and coffee made with
incredible quickness while the saddles were being flung upon the horses'
backs.

Aylmer gulped his portion gratefully, for the dew-brimmed air was chill.
But within twenty minutes of Daoud's return, the half score of horsemen
were following him in single file along the river bank.

Progress was slow, the path imperceptible or devious. The light of
morning was no longer yellow, but alive with the rose red of sunrise as
they halted, at a gesture from their leader, and gazed between the
trunks of a grove of palms.

White against the green of crops a dozen houses lined the edge of an
oval space, which some winter floods of bygone years had hewn deep in
the surrounding alluvial soil. The forest thickets grew up to the fringe
of the arable land, divided from it by hedges of cactus. Between the
house and the river was an encampment of brown, dilapidated tents. The
land immediately in front of these was bare and open, as if some
ceaseless traffic had beaten all vegetation down. On an eminence stood a
lime-washed, dome-topped shrine.

"If possible, we should surround and examine each house or tent in
silence, and one by one," suggested Daoud.

"A matter of hours," said Perinaud. "No, let our men form rank where
their rifles command each doorway, and I will see to the summoning of
the inhabitants. For the moment, softly. Keep your horses off the rock,
but avoid the thickest of the jungle. Show judgment, my children, show
judgment!"

He finished with a little oath of surprise. For almost at his horse's
feet, or, at the furthest, a bare five yards from him, a man had
suddenly risen from a thicket--a man clad in a dirty _djelab_, who
viewed the sitting horsemen with every sign of amazement and sudden
panic. In another moment, and with a shrill cry, he had darted through
the palm grove and was flying across the crop lands, straight towards
the line of silent tents.

Perinaud struck spurs into his stallion.

"Take him!" he cried, and his voice had a queer note of exasperation as
he tried to make it vehement and yet hold it below the level of a shout.
He led the charge which raced across the herbage. Aylmer, carried away
by the sudden infection of repressed excitement, thundered at his side.
The dark spot of brown made by the _djelab_ of the fugitive seemed, for
the moment, to comprehend all that was vital in existence. He must not
reach the tents, he must not give the alarm. Although he was a matter of
fifty yards or more behind his quarry, owing to the start the runner had
gained by the intervening palms, Aylmer began to lean forward in the
saddle, to thrust out his arm, feel a tenseness, a twitching in his
fingers as if he already grasped the hood of the garment which rose and
fell with its owner's every stride.

A yell burst from Perinaud's lips--a yell of rage and warning!

"A trap!" he cried. "The silos! The silos! Pull wide! Pull wide!"

Aylmer heard a crash. A Goumier on his right seemed to have been
swallowed with his horse into the very earth. He gripped his own rein,
moved by a sudden and imperfectly comprehended pulse of fear, and
wrenched at his bridle. His horse fought under the strain, made a
half-hearted attempt to halt, and was carried by mere impetus another
fifty yards. There came another crash; another Goumier's horse
disappeared, while the man, spilled from the saddle, rolled over a dozen
times across the hardened flat. Perinaud's stallion, its eyes wild, its
nostrils round with terror, spread out its legs and skated forward to
the very brink of--what?

A huge round hole, beneath which was darkness only. Aylmer saw it, saw
that he himself must reach it, and comprehended as in a flash the
sergeant's cry.

The silos!

Even his narrow experience of things Moroquin had taught him what the
word meant. They were the underground grain cellars of the villagers,
sunk in the earth, unfenced, often coverless, and, as now, open traps
for the unwary. The thought and the flash of apprehension which it
kindled added force to the grip with which he tore at the reins.

Too late!

His realization of the hideous fall which was inevitable was swift as a
lightning flash, and yet at the same time the thing itself seemed to
arrive with a horrible deliberation. His thews were tense, his knees
clutched the saddle. And then, and the feeling was as if he watched for
the culmination of a well-understood and expected movement of familiar
machinery--his horse's feet slid grudgingly over the edge. The black
hole in the earth rose instantly--rose and sucked him down. There was a
shock and then night fell--a night impenetrable.



CHAPTER XIV

ONE SIDE OF A BARGAIN


"It's the pig man," said a childish voice. "The man what lifted me out
of the way of the boar."

Aylmer blinked. Himself in the shadow, he was aware of a figure opposite
him in the center of a circle of light. He lay, apparently, in a
circular and unfurnished room, lit by an unglazed skylight alone. The
figure, which sat cross-legged on a lump which his returning senses
discovered to be a dead horse, wore the white _haik_ and the bournous of
a Moor. The hood was drawn back, showing bronzed aquiline features and a
brown beard, but the man's eyes were blue. Aylmer studied the face with
a feeling of bewilderment which gradually became irritation. He was
stunned, but consciousness had so far returned that he knew himself
stunned, and knew, also, that his brain was confronting a problem which
his normal powers would have grappled with easily. He ought to be able
to recognize his visitor; there was familiarity, there was recognition
in the man's sneering smile. And yet, who was he? Aylmer moved
restlessly, petulantly. An excruciating pang leaped up through his
shoulder and made him gasp. The man shrugged his shoulders.

"Dislocated, I fear," he said in level English accents. "And the
collar-bone most certainly fractured."

Aylmer's ear served him where his eyes had failed. The voice was
Landon's. It was his cousin who sat opposite him, smiling evilly from
the shadow of the _haik_.

Something touched the wounded shoulder lightly, but not so lightly but
that Aylmer winced again.

"Poor--poor!" said the childish voice again commiseratingly. "Is it
badly hurted? When I fell off my pony they rubbed me wiv butter."

It was his little namesake, swaddled in white flowing garments, who
stood at his elbow, peering into his face with anxious eyes.

Aylmer pulled himself into a sitting position, not without intense pain.
But the throb of his wounded arm seemed to awake his dulled
consciousness. He looked from father to son without bewilderment. His
understanding had fully regained command of the situation.

His first action was typical of the man; he fumbled with his left hand
at his holster.

Landon laughed.

"Empty, my dear John," he said. "Fogs, gales, the menacing hand of
nature I do not pretend to have my remedy for. But I retain the
common-sense which deprives my enemy of a weapon, when opportunity is my
friend."

Aylmer was still silent. Landon gave a self-satisfied little nod of the
head, a little motion which implied the insolence of triumph fully
enjoyed.

"And by opportunity, please understand that I do not refer to mere
chance," he went on. "The little _ruse de guerre_ by which you and your
associates were drawn into this trap was the product of an active brain,
not mine, I grieve to say. A friend who has seen much of desert
bickerings did not invent but adapted it. I don't think many of your
beautiful Goumiers escaped him and his allies."

There was something more than disgust and repulsion in the glance with
which Aylmer regarded his cousin. It was, perhaps, wonder.

"Libertine--blackmailer--spy--and thief--you have proved yourself all of
these within the space of half a dozen years," he said quietly. "And
now, traitor, and, I suppose, assassin. It puzzles me. Clean living
isn't so hard, and yet, you have never tried it, never!"

A queer line showed in Landon's cheek, as his lips tightened against
each other. And then he laughed again--a harsh, unconvincing little
laugh.

"Is the first line of attack an appeal to my better nature?" he asked.
"Omit it, my friend. However good your aim, you cannot reach a target
which, to be frank, is non-existent. Appeals to my self-interest find me
alert, but to my conscience, chill as ice. We may chaffer, you and I,
but on strictly business lines."

He settled himself back upon the dead horse's shoulder, pulled out a
silver case, and selected a cigarette. He lit it, talking slowly,
between puffs.

"My apparently unkinsmanlike conduct in offering no attention to your
wound is easily explained. It is a small matter, involved in far larger
issues. If you meet my terms, our limited resources in that and other
matters will be at your service. If not--" He shrugged his shoulders
placidly. "Well, I do not suppose a prison governor pays attention to
the condemned's complaints of his breakfast egg on the morning of
execution."

He moved, leaning forward at last, his elbows on his knees, his palms
supporting his chin. And he looked down at Aylmer malignantly.

"And I have you here to make or break as I will," he said. "By God!
Opportunity doesn't call me twice. I clutch her!"

The child turned with a little start, looking at his father with puzzled
but not apprehensive eyes. The note of malice in that voice was
evidently strange to him, and Aylmer, as he understood this fact,
breathed a tiny sigh of relief. The child, at any rate, did not suffer
ill-treatment.

Landon saw the motion and his features relaxed into something like
affection.

He held out his hands.

"Come here, my son," he said. "Go and find Muhammed."

As the child ran forward, he caught him deftly and without a pause of
energy tossed him up and out into the sunlight. Aylmer heard the boy's
cry of welcome and laugh of delight, as his footsteps pattered over the
roof of the cellar and were lost. Muhammed, whoever that might be, was
evidently not far away.

His father settled down upon his seat again.

"That," he said, with an upward jerk of the shoulder towards the opening
above his head, "that is one of the things I have been robbed of. Also
my comfort, my credit, my security, my ease. I have had to endure
unpleasantness. I have had to descend, though as a mental exercise I do
not count it a descent, to crime. Life, in fact, has been difficult for
me lately, owing to the action of certain people--with whom you appear
to have allied yourself. You and they have to get matters in a different
perspective. Your efforts in future must be for, not against, me. They
must, indeed, be directed to effacing unfortunate circumstances in the
past which are detrimental to my well-being. That must be fully
understood before we even begin to talk of terms."

He looked up at Aylmer with a sudden quick, speculative flash of the
eyes. The other met it steadily and equably.

"Have we begun--to discuss terms?" he asked.

"No!" Landon snapped the monosyllable with contemptuous emphasis. "No! I
don't discuss them, let me tell you. I make them!"

Aylmer met the announcement with a smile.

"Ah," he said quietly, and something in his tone seemed to whip Landon's
restrained spite over the border-line of fury.

"Damn you!" he cried, "do you think I can't and won't humble the lot of
you; do you think I'm to be robbed of the winning ace now, when I've got
it in my hand? I tell you there isn't a thing in me you can appeal to.
I've shunted notions; I'm out for the stuff; I'm in business for myself,
for me!"

He swayed to and fro upon the carcase, his face livid, his fingers
unconsciously twining and plaiting the dead animal's mane. His teeth
flashed, attracting, as it were, the core of the little light which
reached the gloom--attracting it to intensify his fierce animal fury.
For, as he swayed, and swore, the teeth shone behind his red lips like
the fangs of a cornered wolf.

And then, suddenly, darkly, the emotion was planed from his face. His
features became mask-like in their imperturbability.

"You had better listen carefully," he said. "First, I keep the boy. That
goes without saying. I've got him. Secondly, they give me their
engagement under bond not to molest me in my possession of him if I
choose to visit America or England, or even if I marry again. Thirdly,
old man Van Arlen pays me ten thousand pounds--pounds, mind, not
dollars--within a week from now, and on the same date every year.
Fourthly, you explain away the matter of the book I borrowed from your
library. Explain it as you like; say I was drunk or insane or any sort
of lie which suits you best. You'll have to give me your word of honor
to do your best about that; I'll take it, because I know you believe in
these shibboleths. Lastly, they're to keep quiet while I have a free
hand with Despard."

Aylmer gave an involuntary start, and Landon snarled--there is no other
word for it--with savage rage.

"By God, they've got to stand by and see me break him! He's hunted me
through the courts and through the press of two hemispheres. He shall
have his turn. Not all in a moment, either. A word here and a word
there. A paragraph or two where they can't well be missed. Then rumors,
and then a circumstantial story. Rush him into action and then, slowly,
thoroughly, and perfectly plainly, bowl him out. Eh, that will be the
gilded roof on the whole thing. Despard down in the mud--Despard ...
broken!"

His fingers ceased their wandering. He sat motionless, his eyes staring
gloatingly into the gloom over Aylmer's head. It was as if he saw
visions of evil triumph limned upon the walls.

Aylmer lay very still. The sense of inertia which had been overpowering
when consciousness first revived was passing away. His brain was clear.
He realized that for all practical purposes he was in the hands of a
madman, or of a man so far enthralled by a very possession of wickedness
that he might be reckoned insane. There was nothing to do but await
events.

Landon dropped his eyes.

"Do you see?" he asked. "That's your job. To go to them and tell them.
Do you understand?"

Aylmer shook his head.

"I hear your price--for what?" he asked. "It's a one-sided bargain, so
far."

"The goods that I have to deliver," said Landon, slowly, "are what I put
safely out of your way a moment ago. That boy's health, and mental
and--moral, too, if you like--strength. Do you get the notion?"

For a moment the silence remained unbroken. Then Aylmer spoke.

"You devil!" he said slowly. "You incarnate fiend!"

Landon laughed again, with complacent satisfaction.

"You do get the notion," he said. "Let your mind dwell upon it, give it
deliberation. I sha'n't kill the boy, oh, not for a long time. I shall
keep him alive; he'll even enjoy the process. I'll bring him up
carefully, very carefully. There isn't a form of life as I've seen it
that he sha'n't be familiar with. You may hunt me from England; you may
make it hot for me in Europe and America. There are plenty of lively
resorts in this good old continent of Africa which will amply fulfill my
purpose. I'll put him through the mill; I'll begin early, too. I sha'n't
leave much to luck. If by any chance you brought about my death, and I
credit you with grit enough to attempt it, you'll find the kid
well-grounded. He shall be his father's son, and a bit more. I hadn't
the advantages he's going to have."

The flush of anger which had mounted to Aylmer's face was gone now. He
looked at Landon keenly, indeed, but with more curiosity than wrath.
His voice was quite controlled.

"And in the alternative?" he asked. "In any case you keep him. What do
we gain by meeting your terms?"

Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"He has his chance, then, against the World, the Flesh and the Devil
with the rest of them. I sha'n't pose as a saint before him, but I'll
see that he behaves himself decently and plays the game. He'll go to
Eton and Balliol, if he has the sense. I sha'n't send him to
Sunday-school but he'll attend church on Sundays--once. I'll choose his
tailor and put him in the way of things. He'll learn, in fact, how to
conduct himself as an ordinary English gentleman."

Aylmer nodded.

"From whom?" he asked quietly.

And then Landon flinched. The eyes which had been bent on his cousin
with eagerness, with greed alight in them, quivered. He gave a little
intake of the breath.

"You cursed prig!" he breathed thickly. "You cursed prig!"

Aylmer smiled.

"You've been out of it too long, Landon," he said. "For over a year I
suppose your only familiars have been Bowery ruffians or Soho
blackmailers. Did you think this could be done? Did you really make
yourself believe that I was likely to be an easy intermediary for such a
proposition? And I imagine that you forget that it was entirely for your
wife's sake that your father-in-law dealt gently with you during your
married life. There's no need for any restraint in that quarter now."

Landon made a gesture of contempt.

"Are you making threats for that old tame cat?" he sneered.

"He's got claws that will reach out to scratch you at the world's end,
my amiable cousin. They're made of dollars. And they'll be sharpened
with American grit. Uncommon unpleasant, you'll find them."

Landon snapped his fingers.

"That for his dollars and his grit!" he cried. "It's no good raising
your bluff on me. I'll see you every time, see you and take it! Leave it
out; don't waste time over it. Are you going to carry my message to
them, or are you not?"

"No," said Aylmer. "You knew perfectly well what my answer was going to
be, but if it's any satisfaction to you to have it--No!"

Landon leaned forward.

"I guessed what your high falutin' ideas would answer," he said, "but
I'm talking to you--to you about yourself." He pointed to the well-like
opening above his head. "Do you believe that you could climb out of
there with a broken collar-bone?" he asked.

Aylmer glanced quickly in the direction of the extended finger.

"Perhaps not," he answered.

Landon nodded.

"You don't know what superhuman exertions a man will contrive when he is
perishing--of thirst," he said. "But even he couldn't move the slab of
stone which ten men will drag over that opening, if I bid them. And that
will be now, if you don't come off your high horse. This isn't a healthy
place for my friends of the Beni M'Geel. We have to be moving on
immediately."

A sudden quiver that perhaps was nearly akin to fear pulsed up into
Aylmer's brain, showed, indeed, in his eyes. The fever of his wound was
already upon him; his lips were parched, his tongue swollen. To be left
in that pit--to be sealed in--to die?

Landon grinned.

"Eh?" he questioned. "Are second thoughts best? Do you begin to
understand?"

For a moment or two the stillness remained unbroken, and in Aylmer's
gaze there was little still but wonder--wonder that things like Landon
should continue to exist in this prosy work-a-day world of ours.
Opportunities for unleashing a real lust of cruelty and evil come to few
of us. We argue therefore that they do not occur. A common error. A
glance at the pages of half a dozen reports of philanthropic societies
will refute it, but we, who are not engaged in social reform, are lost
in amazement at the monsters when we meet them. It was incredulity which
was in Aylmer's mind, and incredulity Landon imagined to be
deliberation.

"There are no two ways to it!" he cried sharply. "Don't think that. It's
yes or no, now and here!"

Aylmer made a wearily contemptuous gesture.

"Haven't you had your answer?" he said. "It's no; it would be no if I
had a thousand chances to say it--no--no--no!"

Landon rose. He looked down at the man at his feet malignantly,
suspiciously. He shouted in Spanish to some unseen listener outside. The
end of a rope was dropped down through the opening. Methodically Landon
knotted it about the dead horse's neck and forelegs.

"No, my friend," he said, as if in answer to some unspoken question,
"you aren't going to exist by munching this dead brute's flesh or
sucking its blood till help comes, if it comes at all. You are going to
be left in here with no more company than your own obstinacy, alone."

He shouted again. The rope tautened. Landon seized it, and with a couple
of energetic jerks swung himself up into the sunshine. And then the
carcase rose, dragged a little on the floor, and in its turn was hauled
out of sight. The cellar loomed larger, gloomier, emptier when it was
gone. There was another dragging sound. Half the light which filtered
through the opening was eclipsed.

Landon's voice rang hollow in the underground echoes.

"Is it no, still, you fool?" he snarled.

There was no answer.

With a curse, Landon made a significant motion of the hand. The brawny
Arab shoulders were bent and their thews tightened. The great slab slid
into its appointed place.



CHAPTER XV

PERINAUD'S NEWS


A full mile out in the offing _The Morning Star_ swung at her anchorage,
dipping and swerving lazily over the incoming rush of the Atlantic
swell. The dawn-light was soft behind the white bastions of the town's
sea-wall; the harsh glare of the fully risen sun was yet to come. A
little boat put out from the shore, zigzagging across the wide lake
which is bounded on the south by the headland and on the north and west
by the ring of transports, merchantmen, and cuirassés of the French
Marine. She tacked and came about at short intervals as if those who
sailed her had need of haste, or at any rate of the distraction of
attempting speed even if it could not be attained. She sidled, at last,
towards the yacht's companion ladder.

Claire Van Arlen rose from her deck chair as the boat's sail dropped.
She walked towards the taffrail and looked down. She had used her
binoculars upon the little craft ever since its start from the shore,
and had finally recognized Daoud. His companion, a uniformed man, whose
long limbs seemed to occupy the whole of the space between stern and
stem, had his head swathed in bandages.

Daoud was the first to scramble aboard. He stood before her with bent
shoulders, the picture of dejection.

She breathed a little quickly.

"Yes?" she asked. "You have brought news--of what?"

The tall man swung himself off the ladder, drew himself upright, and
saluted.

"Mademoiselle, I am Sergeant Perinaud, attached to the office of the
military police here. I attended M. Aylmer during our ride in pursuit of
the man named Landon, who was escaping with certain desert knaves of the
Beni M'Geel. We overtook them--"

[Illustration: "_Mademoiselle, I am Sergeant Perinaud_"]

She interrupted with an exclamation of delight.

"You have the boy?" she cried. "You recovered him?"

He shook his head.

"No, Mademoiselle. We were betrayed into an unfortunate ambush. We lost
five men out of ten in addition to further losses at an earlier date in
the proceedings. Monsieur le Capitaine has been badly hurt."

He looked at her keenly with a sort of speculative curiosity. And Daoud
frowned. For there was no sign of commiseration in her glance. She
showed annoyance, almost disgust.

"You had your hands upon these men and they escaped you?" she cried.

"We were within a very little of arresting them, Mademoiselle, but by an
Arab trick in which I regret to say they showed more intelligence than
we were capable of divining, they defeated us. I am directed by Major
d'Hubert to report to you fully on the incident if you desire it."

She made a vehement gesture.

"If!" she cried. "If!"

With an accession of woodenness in his demeanor, the sergeant drew
himself up yet more stiffly, repeated his salute, and in a few precise
words gave the story of the pursuit. But, as he described Aylmer's fall,
it was to be noted that his voice and bearing relaxed. A tinge of the
dramatic colored his level tones. His eyes--his hands were called upon
to emphasize the description of the headlong plunge into the black trap
of the silo--indicated the feelings of an onlooker rather than a mere
reporter, as he described the sealing of the prison mouth. And as she
listened, she gave a little gasp. In the background Daoud flung his
colleague a little nod of approval.

"And then?" she asked breathlessly. "And then?"

"I was unhorsed, Mademoiselle, and somewhat beaten about the head, as is
evident. I found shelter in a neighboring patch of mallow, where, after
a season, I was joined by my friend here. The Beni M'Geel having
departed, we watched their route as a matter of precaution for a mile or
two, and then returned. We were unable to deal with the slab upon the
cellar mouth."

This time his voice had been level enough, but he made his pause
effective.

She gasped again.

"You left him there?"

He smiled.

"Yes, Mademoiselle, but not without rendering him assistance. Not being
able to remove the stone, we merely dug another entrance. The outer
earth was hard and baked, but after pecking off a few inches with our
knives we fetched water from the river and easily softened it. We
fashioned a couple of wooden shovels. Thus we dug down into the prison
in an hour or two. We found the captain delirious."

"Yes?" she said again, eagerly. "You brought him away?"

"Mademoiselle forgets that we had no horses. Daoud remained with him. I
walked to our nearest outpost--at Ain Djemma--to fetch assistance."

His tones were absolutely matter of fact, but some instinct of
comprehension made her look at him yet more keenly and thus note the
weariness which his voice could hide, but not his drawn features.

"You walked, how far?" she questioned.

"I have no exact idea, Mademoiselle. For some hours. I could not obtain
a surgeon; there was but one at the post and his hands were full. An
orderly of the ambulance came with me with a _cacolet_ and a small
escort of Chasseurs. But we have not dared to remove the captain, whose
fever has reached a serious height. The orderly advised that I should
come direct to the town and obtain either medical help, or, if possible,
one of the _Dames de la Croix Rouge_. But there is an epidemic of fever
at the hospital and an influx of wounded from the Tirailleurs' foray of
four days back. Neither surgeon nor nurse can be spared for one man."

For a moment there was silence again. Perinaud looked at her with a sort
of questioning apathy, with the detached air of one having done his duty
and awaiting the decrees of fate. But Daoud moved restlessly, and then
broke into speech, as if some irresistible impulse moved him.

"I think my master is likely to die, Mademoiselle," he said.

And then he, too, waited, in a sort of queer, hushed expectancy, as if
his words must result in some definite action.

"We have medical comforts on board," she said quickly. "We will put
anything we possess at Captain Aylmer's service."

Perinaud nodded again solemnly.

"The dislocated shoulder has been dealt with, Mademoiselle, and the
broken bone set. The orderly, also, has quinine for the fever, which is
high. We might be doing right, perhaps, in taking back any other
remedies which your intelligence can suggest."

His tone was meditative and judicial, and intimated quite distinctly
that this was a side issue and not the objective of his present mission.
He continued to stare at her steadily, without any tinge of offence, but
with a questioning directness which spoke volumes. "I am waiting," it
seemed to say. "I have given you your cue. Speak your part."

She looked from him to the Moor, read the same message in the latter's
air of anticipation, and then spoke, desperately.

"What is it?" she demanded. "You want--something?"

The man looked not exactly embarrassed but disconcerted, surprised. His
eyebrows rose a fraction, he flashed a swiftly inquiring glance at the
Moor. The other nodded.

"The captain's fever and delirium is very great, Mademoiselle," he said
slowly. "We thought--" He hesitated. "The captain, in his wanderings,
used your name frequently."

She understood in a moment. Aylmer, in his fevered unconsciousness,
had--what had he done? Placed himself, and her, in a false position?
These stolid, unimaginative men, at any rate, regarded her as his
fiancée! She was not eager, vehement, to rush to her lover's side! No
wonder they showed astonishment.

She stood silent, perturbed, at a loss. And the two impassive faces
watched her. And again a tiny spasm of fear throbbed through her. Fate
was fighting for this man, it seemed. Helpless, unconscious, cast away
in this rat-hole in the wilderness, his plight worked for him where his
own powers could not. His very helplessness appealed to her. Could she
refuse the duty which was being plainly forced upon her by the mute
message of those four watching eyes? Her imagination began to work. She
saw a gloomy pit, a white face wasted with fever, heard a voice which,
unconsciously, perhaps, but still appealingly, called upon her name. And
this was the debonair soldier who had ridden out three days before to
do--what? Her bidding, no less. A flush rose to her brow.

"I have not a nurse's training," she assured Perinaud quietly, "but I
will come with you, if you will wait."

The sergeant saluted.

"At Mademoiselle's service," he said placidly, and then turned towards
his colleague and sighed, a deep suspiration eloquent of relief.

At the door of the saloon she hesitated. She could see her father at his
desk, bent over his papers, writing methodically. A sudden irritated
sense of shyness fell upon her. Surely he, too, could not misunderstand.

He looked round at her entrance. Without preamble she repeated the
sergeant's report, speaking in level, matter of fact tones. She
announced her decision to return with Perinaud and his escort.

Her father's first comment was no more than his usual deferential little
nod. But there was a slightly strained silence between them as she
finished speaking--a silence which gave him time for reflection.

"You think your presence necessary, likely to benefit him?" he said
questioningly.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"He has been wounded in our service," she said. "These men seem to
expect much of my nursing--I who have never nursed. I hardly see a way
to refuse graciously."

Again her father made his little obeisance of assent.

"I could charge myself with an explanation," he said gravely. "There is
no reason for you to go against your wishes. I fear there is little
prospect of our being of real help."

Then a sudden throb of protest surged up in her. The vision of the dark
cellar and of the fevered lips which called constantly upon her name
became vivid, more vivid than before. To her own amazement she realized
that she wanted to go, that the thought of those two horsemen riding out
into the wild with their message of repulse had become abhorrent to her.
She felt suddenly pitying, protective. The feminine, indeed, the
maternal, instinct gripped her.

The blood rose to her cheeks.

"I should prefer to go," she said quietly.

Van Arlen made a little gesture of finality.

"The sooner, then, the better," he said, and moved briskly towards his
own cabin, summoning the steward to his councils as he went.

The dusk was falling over them with grateful coolness as, eight hours
later, they rode over the brink of the gorge and saw below them the
black spectral shape of camel's-hair tents and the white dwellings of
the _duar_. A lantern newly lit twinkled a welcome. A stallion neighed a
greeting from his pickets as he heard the sound of advancing hoofs, and
a couple of men in white uniform came to the door of a white-domed hovel
and stood awaiting them.

One, a dapper, black-moustached little man with the Geneva Cross upon
his sleeve, hastened to help Miss Van Arlen to alight.

"Monsieur sleeps, Mademoiselle," he informed her, as she reached the
ground. "It is a matter of temperatures--and the subsequent weakness.
Mademoiselle may have good hope that matters will yet go well."

His smile was reassuring and, in spite of his obvious youth, almost
paternal. At the tent door he turned and laid his finger upon his lips.
There must be no feminine want of self-restraint, he implied. The sight
of one dear to her in his hour of helplessness must not leave her
unstrung. She must be brave.

She followed with her father into the shadows within.

He lay with his arms outflung. A light coverlet was over him, but the
damp of perspiration gleamed upon his forehead and neck. He moved
restlessly, breathing with a panting sound.

"We poise much on Monsieur's recognition of Mademoiselle when he wakes,"
explained the orderly, and offered a smirk of intelligent sympathy to
Mademoiselle's father.

She looked down, and a strange sense of unreality in the situation
seized her. The white, fever-stricken face on the pillow seemed a
spectre--a caricature of something familiar. A queer sense of anger, as
if some well-liked possession had been meddled with and defaced by
outsiders, rose in her heart. An instinct which she could not explain
set her kneeling beside the pallet bed, her eyes fixed on its occupant.

Wearily, drowsily, Aylmer opened his eyes.

And then his smile dawned, slowly, incredulously, till the glory of
assurance had become convincing. He pronounced her name.

In the background, emotional thrills travelled across the orderly's
foolishly sentimental countenance. He took mental notes of a situation
which bulked largely and enticingly in a letter to an apple-cheeked
damsel in far-away Provence a few days later. "Such are the rewards of
the soldier, my soul," he explained. "Love? Its cords are strong to drag
its devotees even across this waste wilderness of Africa!" Wherein he
did one of the most fertile lands upon the habitable globe a vile
injustice. But your true lover is invariably a poet and girdled with
merely a poet's limitations, while the apple-cheeked demoiselle's
romantic sensibilities were quickened to the point of tears.

Mr. Van Arlen moved forward to his daughter's side with a suddenly
instinctive motion. And she understood it. The embarrassment of the
situation had at once become plain to him; his desire was to clear it,
he was framing words--courteous, no doubt, but without any trace of
sentiment--to assist her in this. He would do it admirably; his tact was
beyond question.

And she?

Again she felt a sudden thrill of protest. No, how could they deal
coldly with this man, now? It would be less than womanly--would it even
be common fair play? He was down. Surely till he was up again, the
indomitable soldier she knew and feared, honor forbade their striking
even at his self-assurance.

Her hand was laid upon her father's arm, pressing it in gentle
remonstrance. Then she leaned towards the bed.

"We have come to thank you," she said quietly. "You have suffered much
for us, too much."

His smile was fading while she spoke.

"I--I failed," he muttered. "I had my hands upon him, and failed."

"Ah, but you mustn't think us unjust, always," she answered. "What you
intended--that is what we look at. You have worked for us ceaselessly.
And now you suffer for us. You must accept our gratitude for that."

He shook his head slowly, and his gaze wandered past her to Van Arlen's
face.

"It is a check," he said slowly, "but only a check. He is not going to
win." His eyes grew suddenly clear and his lips grim. "I shall follow
him to the end," he said.

The orderly moved forward and rearranged the coverlet. He looked
significantly at a flush which had risen to Aylmer's cheek.

"It is better that Monsieur should not excite himself," he explained
amiably. "Mademoiselle is here; matters are going well. Monsieur will
convalesce all the quicker if he avoids emotion."

Aylmer pushed at the rearranged coverlet with a gesture of irritation.
He drew himself into a sitting posture.

"Don't think that I have flung up the sponge!" he cried. "Before, before
this weakness came over me I arranged for the future. Daoud has seen to
that; he has put matters in train. Landon will be watched--if necessary,
followed. And when I am up again--" he smiled savagely--"when I take the
trail for the second time, he will pay in full, as I promised he
should."

And his voice rang firm as he caught sight of the Moor silhouetted
against the evening light at the tent door.

"That is so?" he demanded. "You have seen to this among your friends?"

Daoud came forward a couple of respectful paces.

"Be assured, Sidi," he said, "that this man will not move a yard but I
shall have due knowledge of it, in time. He cannot leave North Africa,
and I be ignorant of it. Our hands may lag, but they will grip him at
the last."

Aylmer gave a little sigh of satisfaction and lay back. And his eyes
rose to Van Arlen's half appealingly, half defiantly.

"You see?" he said. "At any rate, I am doing--my best."

The other bowed, but not his automatic, courteous little bow with which
he punctuated his everyday conversation. There was a moisture in his
eyes. He leaned forward and took the hand which moved restlessly across
the coverlet.

"If I had had a son," he said, "he could have done no more. Take my
thanks, Captain Aylmer, for all that you are and have been; take them in
full."

Aylmer gave a little nod of content.

"I'll take them," he smiled, "for what I have been to you, and that is
less than nothing. But for what I am going to be--I'll earn them for
that, earn them!"



CHAPTER XVI

AT MELILLA


About the aspect of the port of Melilla there is only one thing wholly
admirable. That is the curving bay which sweeps eastward from the town
towards the frontier blockhouse. This last is an eyesore; the untethered
camels which pasture in herds beside it have little attractiveness; the
wide plateau which stretches up to the distant hills is desolate and
often arid. But the bay is a perpetual delight. Curved like a scimitar,
it shines in the sunlight as a tempered blade shines, ringed by white
tresses of foam, banked by its parapets of sand.

Two men sat in the shadow cast by a stranded boat and watched half a
dozen Moors and Spaniards who bent their shoulders and swelled out their
muscles to haul at a couple of ropes. The ropes slanted down to and were
lost in the rush of the breakers. Those who dragged at them panted, the
perspiration raining off their faces. The men who sat and watched seemed
to find a whet to the enjoyment of their siesta in reviewing so much
energy. One of them sighed--a contented little sigh, drew a cigarette
from the breast of his _djelab_, lit it, and began to smoke with stolid
satisfaction.

A child who was sitting between the two rose suddenly and ran down the
sand. The men at the ropes had come to a halt. They stood gasping,
wiping their faces. Impulsively the child laid his little hands upon the
rope and stood in an attitude of tension, ready to use his tiny
strength when operations were resumed. The men welcomed him with a
glance of good-humored toleration.

The cigarette smoker laughed.

"The restlessness of youth, Sidi. Repose? They have no knowledge of the
meaning of the word, these children. Now I? The last three weeks have
brimmed with such toil that I could sit here and contentedly drowse a
week, a month, nay, a whole year, if Allah willed."

The other nodded and stretched his limbs. The movement expressed the
lethargy which is earned by fatigue.

"To-night we shall eat real food," he murmured. "We shall sleep in beds
of sorts. We can even be amused, if we find the _cafés chantants_ which
attract these poor devils of Andalusian conscripts amusing. It's all a
matter of contrasts--life. After the experiences we have endured among
our friends the M'Geel, this doghole appears alluring. This!"

He waved his hand with a significant gesture towards the town, in which
the mean houses appear to hustle the citadel and the citadel the houses,
without either the one or the other gaining advantage.

The smoker blew out a cloud and spat towards the flagstaff which
dominates the sea bastion.

"May Allah relegate it and its inhabitants shortly to the Abyss!" he
aspired devoutly. "Is it permitted to ask how long, Sidi, you purpose
using its hospitalities?"

"It is always permitted to ask, my friend. The answer is another matter.
Bluntly, till the Gibraltar boat arrives."

The other lifted his shoulders into a tiny shrug.

"For the Sidi Jan this is a place not to be recommended. There is a
smell, do you notice, especially at night--murk which rises from the
fort ditch. And the vermin! His little skin is pitted with them!"

Landon moved irritably. He looked at his son. The men at the ropes were
hauling again by now, and the small back was bent and the little arms
tautened with efforts to emulate them. The first few meshes of a laden
net appeared above the surface of the breakers.

Little John gave a squeal of delight, promptly deserted the toilers, and
capered joyously down the beach. Scales began to shine silvern in the
sun as the tangle of the nets rose slowly, but higher and yet higher.
His voice rose in shrill outcry; he clapped his hands.

As the great bag of the net was hauled little by little up the shelving
beach, he flung himself into the hurtle round the wriggling catch. The
mackerel were there in their hundreds--in their thousands. He tripped
and fell into the center of the heap of fishes, wriggling as they
wriggled, and to little more purpose.

Muhammed rose, paced slowly forward, and plucked him into safety. But
the child met his good offices with scorn.

"I wish to help; I wish to gather them up!" he cried petulantly. "I am
going to be a fisherman. I shall take the yacht to the fishing grounds
and catch millions--millions!"

"There must be a catching of a yacht first," said Muhammed, amiably.
"Where wilt thou obtain it, little lord?"

Little John Aylmer turned puzzled eyes up to his questioner. Then he
wheeled and pointed eastward towards the anchorage below the headland.

"It is there!" he explained. "Did he," he pointed towards his father,
who still lay comfortably reclined in the shadow of the boat, "not send
for it?"

Muhammed's eyes followed the direction of the child's hand. He stared,
gave a sudden startled exclamation, and stared again, incredulously. The
next moment he was back at his employer's side, twitching excitedly at
the folds of his bournous.

"Sidi--Sidi!" he exclaimed. "While we drowse we are betrayed. Look!
Look!"

Landon scrambled to his feet and saw what the timbers of the shadowing
boat had hidden before. A white vessel, drifting slowly in from the
headland abreast the market quay. As he watched, a white spout of foam
and the rattle of the hawse-pipes told that the anchor had been dropped.

She rounded to, the American flag waving lazily from her stern, the
burgee of the New York Yacht Club from her peak. They could not read her
name across two miles of water, but they did not need to. It was _The
Morning Star_.

Landon went white beneath his tan. He swore.

"We have been here three days--three days, by God! Not a soul in the
place knows me or knows that I am not what I profess to be--a Moor from
El Dibh. And yet--this! It can't be a coincidence. They know--somehow!"

He looked at Muhammed in sudden fierce suspicion.

"That infernal Jew of yours has sold us!" he cried.

The Moor made a tolerant gesture, the sort of motion a nurse offers a
wilful child.

"Sidi! You do not understand. A Jew to sell me! Not this side of the
Mediterranean. It means death! Yakoob knows it; it is knowledge that he
has sucked in with his mother's milk, chewed with his daily bread, seen
written in letters of blood in a score of towns between this and
Mequinez. No, Yakoob Ihudi is not in this business. Some other is the
instrument of--fate!"

He stooped, lifted little John carefully in his arms, and nodded towards
the town gate.

"We must use haste, Sidi," he said calmly, avoiding the protests the
child was making with his closed fists. "Show wisdom, little lord. Why
do you not wish to return to the town, wherein are special delights for
the eye in the booths of the market-place?"

Landon hesitated. Then he joined the Moor, running. And the other was
covering the ground with huge strides which forced his companion to
continue the run to keep pace with him. He panted out a question.

"My plan, Sidi?" returned the Moor. "It lies in the hands of Allah. Here
when inquiry begins to be made, we are the mark of a hundred eyes. In
Yakoob's hovel a means of escape may be found."

The two reached the dusty road which leads from the drill ground,
followed it into the shadows of the town gate, mounted the steep on
which the citadel stands, and gained a row of squalid wooden hovels
which fringed the rampart above the fort ditch. Into one of these they
disappeared.

A man looked up as they entered, a dark-skinned, low-browed Israelite,
who greeted them with an obsequiously furtive air. He sat cross-legged
upon a turned-up chest and plied his needle upon an exceedingly ragged
pair of trousers. A heap of other garments lay at his elbow. His trade
was evidently that of mending tailor.

"This deposit for contraband of which you spoke last night?" asked
Muhammed, without preamble. "Where is it?"

The look of furtive expectancy in the tailor's eyes became active alarm.

"What do you fear?" he asked shrilly. "A search? There are fifteen
thousand cartridges awaiting transport."

"The search will not be for those, but for these," said the Moor,
pointing to Landon and his son. "And there is as great a ruin attached
to the finding of the one as the other. You must prevent that."

The Jew rose quickly and barred the door. With alert movements he
gathered up the smoking ashes from the hearth and emptied them into a
shallow pan. He covered his hand with a cloth, seized the pothook which
hung from the entrance of the chimney, and moved it laboriously aside.
As he did so the hearthstone moved slowly downwards as if on a hinge. A
flight of steps led into the darkness.

Muhammed indicated the opening with a shrug.

"The best we can do, Sidi," he deprecated. "Till matters adjust
themselves you must keep company with Yakoob's contraband."

Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"Air?" he questioned laconically. "It is supplied--how?"

Muhammed passed on the question. The Jew pointed to the bosom of his
bournous, which rose and fell in the draught which rose from below.

"There are innumerable crevices which open through the wall of the fort
ditch," he said. "For this reason the Sidi must not use a light--at
night."

Landon shrugged his shoulders pessimistically, and took his son by the
hand. "Come, my boy," he said. "We are going to play that childhood's
favorite and most successful comedy--the Robbers in the Cave. You and I
are to be the leaders of the gang."

Little John peered doubtfully into the darkness.

"And Muhammed?" he asked, looking at the Moor with expectant, trusting
eyes.

There was a queer intensity in the Moor's glance as he bent over the
small figure hesitating at the head of the steps. His smile was kindly
and reassuring.

"I am the robber who goes abroad, prowling to find wicked rich men who
deserve robbing," he said. "I return shortly, little lord. Have no
fear."

Little John nodded gravely and took his father's hand. The two paced
solemnly down into the cellar. The hearthstone was replaced, the cinders
set smoking upon it again. With a sigh Yakoob took up another deplorable
pair of trousers and bit off a length of thread. Muhammed passed out
into the street.

Five minutes later he stood on the quayside, watching the motor launch
which slid out of the shadow cast on the still waters by _The Morning
Star_.

Three figures sat upon the cushions at the stern, and Muhammed, as he
watched them from under the hood of his _haik_, examined one of them
with startled intensity. Miss Van Arlen he recognized. Aylmer, whose
face was partially disguised by bandages, he debated over for a moment.
But this third? This gray-clad elder? This was not the owner of _The
Morning Star_. It was--whom?

Surprise as much as relief erased the wrinkles from the watcher's face
as the unknown stepped ashore, turned to assist his companion, and
disclosed the features of the Moor's former employer, Mr. Miller.

Muhammed emphasized his amazement with an oath. "One God!" he swore, and
for a moment hesitated. Then, as the gray-clad man strolled past him,
talking, the Moor pushed back the _haik_ which shadowed his face and met
the other's glance squarely.

Mr. Miller made no sign.

Muhammed dropped back into the shadow of the quayside booths, and
sauntered carelessly up the citadel ramp. The three preceded him. At the
top of the ramp a causeway leads to the drawbridge which spans the fort
ditch. Mr. Miller had apparently eyes for nothing but his fair
companion. He failed to notice, at any rate, the dilapidated state of
the iron rails which fence the bridge. The dust cloak he was carrying
caught in a jagged piece of iron and was most unfortunately torn. A
sudden appreciative gleam burned in Muhammed's eyes as he noted the
incident. The _haik_ hood concealed a smile.

He could not hear, but he could see the expressive pantomime which was
accompanying Mr. Miller's apologies. He motioned his companions forward
towards the bridge and the dark entrance through the casemate into the
citadel. As for himself, his finger explained, he would return to the
town and get the damage repaired. After a minute's discussion, matters
followed the course indicated. Aylmer and Miss Van Arlen passed on--to
seek the government offices, as Muhammed told himself, to interview the
head, no doubt, of the military police.

The Moor slid forward deferentially as the gray figure turned.

"I can direct the Sidi to a _sastre_ of incredible skill," he explained.
"The Sidi has no need to return to the town if he desires such an one.
He is to be found within a hundred paces, if the Sidi so will."

Mr. Miller made an affable gesture of acquiescence.

"You are certainly quick to seize a business opportunity, my friend," he
said amiably. "Lead on."

Two minutes later the two stood behind Yakoob's well-barred door, and
the hearthstone had been raised. Landon offered his visitor a tribute of
surprise tinged with humor.

"I understood, my friend," he said, as he took the other's hand, "that
the mail came in from Gibraltar to-morrow. For you, it seems, the age of
miracles is not past?"

"I hope I am an alert servant of opportunity," said Miller. "I got your
letter yesterday morning."

"That does not entirely explain your presence in Melilla to-day."

Miller nodded.

"Your father-in-law has been anchored in Gibraltar Bay for the last
fortnight. He has had information of your movements, my friend--good
information, and I have not been able to determine the source of it. I
made it my business to get introduced to him at the house of mutual
friends. A humble client of mine, a ship's chandler, acquainted me with
the fact that _The Morning Star's_ anchor and steam were being raised,
and with the name of her port of destination. A couple of good boatmen
and a little tact did the rest. I told Mr. Van Arlen that I had an
urgent business necessity to visit these possessions of the King of
Spain. Result--a warm invitation to anticipate the mail boat by a day."

"Excellent!" commended Landon. "And the business necessity? You have
brought the means of relieving it?"

Mr. Miller dilated his nostrils. Perhaps the reek of the fort ditch
reached him. Very carefully and methodically he lit a cigarette.

"Yes--and no," he answered at last, and with deliberation. "I have money
with me, my dear Lord Landon. But my employers give me no commission to
apply it to--charity."

Landon's eyes grew suddenly ominous.

"The price of that book was to be five hundred pounds," he said. "I have
received one hundred so far."

Miller made a gesture of assent.

"You obtained for me a certain book. Subsequent investigations proved it
to be a mere dummy--a book made, in fact, to be stolen. You remain in my
debt to the extent of that score of five-pound notes which I gave you."

Landon laughed a dry little laugh.

"Then I concede that I shall remain in your debt--permanently. The
bungling is yours, not mine. I demand the balance of my fee. For
suppose, my dear Miller, that I gave your game in Gibraltar away?"

"Suppose you did," said Miller, placidly. "It would be a question of
your word against mine, would it not?"

There was nothing sneering in his tone, but its bald self-assurance
seemed to whip Landon's temper into fury. He swore wickedly.

Miller watched him as the weasel might be expected to watch the trapped
rat. And the dark, unpleasant little room had, indeed, many of the
attributes of a cage.

And then there was an energetic gesture from the gray-clad arm.

"You bungled the matter--not in stealing the wrong book," said Miller,
"but in the manner of your escape. It was then that you lost your value
to my employers. You are liable to be arrested in any of the British
dominions. Till that matter is settled, you are a weapon without an
edge, for us. That error must be repaired."

Landon stared up at him curiously.

"How?" he asked.

Miller made a significant gesture towards the child. There was no
intention of menace in it, but the child shrank back, turning, not
towards his father, but with a sudden instinctive outstretching of his
hand to Muhammed. The Moor grasped the little fingers silently and
smiled--a smile which faded as he turned his keen, watchful eyes again
upon the visitor.

"You must renounce your detention of your son," said Miller. "You must
bargain with his grandfather. Your price must be a certain competency,
if you will, but above all the right to return unquestioned into your
proper place in society. In this way alone can you continue to be of
use--to me."

There was a silence. Landon, still a-squat upon the floor, his elbow on
his knee, the heel of his fist supporting his hand, stared up at his
mentor with impassive eyes. In the shadow on his right Muhammed stood,
still holding the child's hand, his glance hovering over Miller with a
speculation which was almost distrust. Behind him the tailor stitched
apathetically at his dilapidated wares.

Suddenly Landon turned to the Moor.

"You have heard?" he questioned sharply.

"I have heard, oh, Sidi."

"And understood?"

The man hesitated.

"There is a purpose of surrendering the Sidi Jan?" he murmured, and his
voice conveyed not so much protest as incredulity.

Landon nodded.

"This month of toil, all our leagues of weariness and pain among the men
of the M'Geel are things lost, then," went on the Moor impassively. "An
order has come and we must leap to obey it. The Sidi Jan, too? His voice
is not to be heard in the matter." He shrugged his shoulders
apathetically. "Only a child," he added, and touched the golden curls
with a caressing hand. "Only a bale of merchandise, a thing to be bought
and sold."

Miller turned and looked at him keenly. The Moor met the glance with a
droop of the head which spoke eloquently of submission. But a queer
smile began to harden Landon's lips. He rose slowly to his feet.

"A bale of merchandise," he repeated slowly. "And, as I am reminded, we
toiled to bring it uninjured across the wilds of the Beni M'Geel. Will
that be reckoned in the value of it?" he asked, and wheeled suddenly
towards Miller with a savage, cat-like motion. "Will they pay me for my
sweat and thirst and pain?"

The gray man was silent for a moment. There was something electric in
the atmosphere, something menacing, something--and this was perhaps what
his machine-like mind shrank from most--something human and passionate.
These were not among the goods which Mr. Miller sought to purchase.

"You will do your own bargaining," he said, in a level, dispassionate
tone. "But the child must be delivered. The price? There you are master
of your own affairs."

For the second time Landon's eyes dwelled on Muhammed's face.

"I shall answer him--how?" he asked quietly.

"Thus!" said the Moor, and flung his arms round Miller's elbows and
smothered his lips upon his breast, while Landon, laughing a queer,
excited laugh, snatched up a garment from the dismal heap on the floor,
tore off a liberal patch, and deftly wound it in gag-wise between the
prisoner's teeth. Shackled with ragged waist-cloths at ankle and wrist,
the gray figure was lowered down the steps into the darkness. Muhammed
spoke rapidly and incisively for the space of a minute to the Jew, who
listened in impassive silence. Then, with a last commanding gesture, the
Moor opened the door and went out again alone into the swiftly falling
dusk.



CHAPTER XVII

MUHAMMED SCORES TWICE


Muhammed's steps were bent away from the town towards the row of
dilapidated hovels which fringe the bank of sand below the nearer
blockhouse. And he walked quickly; there was definite purpose and no
sign of hesitation in his stride. He came to a halt before a dwelling,
half burrow, half barn, round the entrance of which were clustered half
a dozen ragged figures.

The Moor's face was dark in the shadow of his _haik_ hood, but he
appeared to need no introduction. He raised a finger and beckoned. One
of the lounging figures rose grudgingly and drew aside with him.

"I have it from Yakoob, Signor Luigi, that you leave to-morrow. That
must be altered. It may be necessary to make a start to-night."

The other raised a dark Italian face towards the Moor and eyed him
questioningly. He shrugged his shoulders.

"I have no charter from Yakoob," he said. "I return home to Salicudi--to
await the sponge-fishing season. I need a holiday; this contraband
running frets the nerves, do you see? I wish to forget the need of
having eyes--and a telescope--at the back of one's head."

For a moment Muhammed was silent, debating, as it seemed, something in
which memory or experience gave him no assistance.

"Salicudi?" he questioned.

"In the Lipari group," said the other, laconically. "My home."

"An island?" said the Moor. "And your home? What is it? A house--a
hut--a castle? Give me particulars. My chiefest need would be privacy.
Can you guarantee it?"

The Italian pondered.

"You flee from--what?" he demanded.

"From a curiosity which still seems to dog my footsteps," said the Moor,
drily. "Let it be sufficient for you to know that with three friends I
desire to vanish from Melilla to-night. We might find it convenient to
remain temporarily on Salicudi. It depends on your neighbors' thirst for
information and your capabilities of defeating it."

Signor Luigi gave an expressive and contemptuous wave of the hand.

"On Salicudi are six families--cousins of mine, all of them. I and my
brother Sandro alone possess boats or money. The others work for us and
are fed. We do not encourage them to think; they do not tire their
magnificent brains except under our direction."

Muhammed nodded appreciatively.

"The priest?" he suggested.

"Father Sigismondi serves six islands besides mine," said the smuggler.
"He visits us by favor of my boat, when Christian offices are in special
demand. It is a matter I regulate myself."

"Carabineers, tax collectors?"

"Of the former, none; we have leave to cut our own throats. Of the
latter, one yearly. He is due in about eight months' time."

"Food?"

"Polenta--fish--beans; at times of _festa_ a _risotto_ of kid. We have
goats, and therefore milk."

The Moor nodded.

"I am empowered to offer you for your hospitality for myself and friends
twenty _lire_ per head per week during our stay on your boat or island,"
he said slowly.

Luigi scratched his head.

"One hundred _lire_ for the lot?" he temporized. "You have appetites,
you Moors; that is notorious."

"We have appetites--for food," agreed Muhammed. "The bill of fare you
quote contains little that would be dignified as such in my way of
thinking. You will take eighty _lire_ per week, or lose this trade of
Yakoob's. Choose quickly."

For the second time the Italian's shoulders rose in a shrug.

"What you will," he said apathetically. "You hold a pistol to my head."

"Try to remember that it remains always loaded," replied the other, and
turned briskly towards the port. "You had better see to your
arrangements instantly."

He passed across the sand towards the dirty little Marina which fronts
the shipping offices and ship-chandlers' booths, leaving his companion
staring after him with a frown. Then, for the third time, Signor Luigi
shrugged his shoulders and followed, to enter finally a ship's dingy
which was tied to the Marina steps. In this he gained a large
lateen-rigged boat which swung at her moorings in the bay.

The motor launch floated idly on the ripples at the landing stage
immediately below the citadel. The engineer had come ashore and sat on a
bench beneath the tarpaulin which had been roughly erected to protect
some perishable government stores. In the shadow of the Marina booths,
Muhammed halted and looked thoughtfully at the man and then at the
launch and finally at the setting sun. The birth of a new and up-lifting
emotion could be seen working in his expressive eyes.

"Bismillah!" he exclaimed softly. "The one! Why not the three!"

He drew himself up; a deep breath escaped him. He slipped around the
back of the line of booths and reappeared coming as from the citadel.
And he had the aspect of haste and importance.

He walked straight up to the waiting engineer.

"I bring an order that you do not await your mistress but return for her
in three hours' time," he said in excellent English.

The man looked up in stolid surprise.

"Eh?" he questioned.

"Your mistress has accepted an invitation to dine with the governor,"
said Muhammed. "You are to return for her at ten o'clock."

The man got up and shook himself lazily as he strolled towards the
launch.

"Nice hospitable old cock--what?" he hazarded. "Didn't send me down a
small bottle of beer and a sandwich, now did he?"

Muhammed shook his head. The man grunted pessimistically, gave a surly
little nod, and sat down behind the launch's steering wheel. A moment
later he was grooving a white trail of foam out into the bay.

Muhammed sighed--a sigh which expressed relief, content, and the
expansion of a hitherto unleashed excitement. He turned and ran rapidly
back along the shore. A second visit to the hovels below the blockhouse
resulted in a conference with another of their deplorably clad
inhabitants. A taciturn fellow this, of apparently Spanish extraction.
But the fact that he wore the remains of an extremely dissolute _haik_
over a pair of remarkably tattered frieze trousers hinted at a
cosmopolitanism which was buttressed by his speech. He used the _lingua
franca_ and moved amid an almost palpable reek of garlic.

After the exchange of a few rapid sentences, he relapsed into silence
but not into inactivity. He paced solemnly down the sand and motioned
the Moor to help in the launching of a boat. In it they pulled round the
sweep of the bay into the inner port and moored themselves in the
berthing which the motor launch had vacated.

The dusk had now become darkness. Lights shone in the booths; the
distressing clangor of a gramophone sounded from one _albergar_, the
thrumming of a mandolin from another. There was a clink of spurs as half
a score of artillerymen clattered down the citadel ramp, eager for the
squalid debaucheries of the port. A _guardia civile_ sauntered along the
quayside edge and looked down into the waiting boat.

"Profitable evil-doing is surely at a low ebb when I find El Avispa
trying to make an honest penny," he meditated.

Muhammed's companion turned.

"Why do you term me The Wasp, Señor?" he asked with a grin of
complacence. "Have I been known to sting?"

The _guardia_ made a jerky motion of his thumb in the direction of the
great convict establishment upon the hill.

"I don't know, _amigo_. Your exploits are scheduled up there; have a
care that I do not need to refer to them. Whom do you await?"

"The Señor and the Señora who landed from the yacht," said the boatmen.
"They visit the Señor Intendente."

The _guardia_ looked doubtful.

"They landed from a boat, a motor boat," he objected.

"Precisely," agreed the other. "It appears that something affected the
engine of this, some leak of the jacketing which I do not understand,
but which I am informed cools the cylinders. The engineer returned while
he could, enlisting my services to await and explain matters to his
employer."

"Humph!" grunted the uniformed man. "His choice showed little
discretion. See to it that you do not disgrace your opportunity. That
seat is bespattered with fish-oil and scales. Wipe it!" He made a
commanding gesture towards the offending stain, and walked majestically
away.

At the far end of the Plaza he was seen to halt and observe two
newcomers, who appeared leisurely descending the citadel ramp. A
gold-braided official was in attendance on them, and his gestures were
rapid and deferential. The _guardia civile_ saluted and spoke. Muhammed,
watching keenly, gave another sigh. Fate was on his side. The very
guardians of law and order were unconsciously buttressing his plan. This
officious _guardia civile_ was already explaining the situation to Miss
Van Arlen and her companion. The onus of explanation--and possible
suspicion--was thus being lifted from shoulders possibly less capable
of bearing it. He muttered his satisfaction in a hurried undertone.

The girl and Aylmer advanced towards the quayside, the gesticulating
official still in attendance. The latter eyed the waiting boat
disdainfully.

"Let me demonstrate, Señora," he cried, "that our port can supply
something less deplorable in the way of shore boats. Let me summon a
pinnace and crew from the naval arsenal."

Muhammed's heart stood still. But fate smiled on him yet.

Miss Van Arlen protested that the boat would do well enough, that it was
hardly fair to have kept this man waiting by the instructions of her own
engineer, as it appeared, and then refuse to engage him. With a smile
and bow of farewell she took her seat in the stern, while the _guardia
civile_ muttered stern instructions to the rowers anent their duty. They
received them in stolid silence. Aylmer took the yoke lines, and amid a
renewed demonstration of respect from the men of gold braid, the boat
shot out into the darkness.

A slight mist hung over the water, but the riding lights of the yacht
were plain enough and Aylmer headed directly for them. He leaned forward
and asked a question of the man who pulled stroke oar.

"The Señor who came ashore with us?" he queried. "Did you mark him? Did
he return in the motor boat?"

The man shrugged his shoulders.

"I did not see it," he said laconically. "Have the goodness to steer
well to the right. Your present course will foul a line of net buoys."

Aylmer pulled the line and swerved as directed. And then Claire spoke,
with a hint of something in her voice which was nearly akin to
suspicion without exactly attaining it.

"Mr. Miller frankly puzzles me," she said.

Aylmer gave a little nod in the darkness.

"Yes," he agreed. "There is a sense of--of estrangement about him. He is
good company, a _mondain_, intelligent, but not--human. One feels that
at every turn."

The girl made a gesture towards the shore.

"What can he have to do in that--that ash heap?" she asked. "A man who
poses as a _flâneur_, a _dilettante_."

"Pottery?" suggested Aylmer. "He collects; I have seen his collections.
They are sound and in good taste, without being remarkable."

"That is what I think," she acquiesced. "For the life-work of a man they
are petty. It is mysterious; he is mysterious! Why did he not rejoin us
this evening at the governor's office as he promised?"

Aylmer smiled.

"The ardors of the chase," he hazarded. "He is probably sitting in the
sanctum of some Jew huckster, chaffering for the least worn of a
collection of Rabat rugs or old Mequinez steel-work. He will come on
board to-morrow to explain and bid us farewell, and we shall hear all
about it."

"About what?" asked the girl enigmatically.

Aylmer smiled again.

"About--what he chooses to tell us," he answered, and jerked the
yoke-line energetically, as a couple of oval dark objects loomed up on
the surface just ahead.

There was a swish and a dragging sound, and the dark objects disclosed
themselves alongside as net buoys. They hung below the gunwale
persistently; the boat was obviously brought to a standstill.

"In spite of my warning the Señor has fouled the fishing nets," growled
the boatman.

"On the contrary," retorted Aylmer, "your directions carried us straight
into them. A direct course would have avoided this."

The man shipped his oar and stood up.

"The Señor will permit me to pass him?" he said. "The rudder itself must
be unshipped to clear us."

Aylmer shifted his seat to one side as the man leaned over him. The next
instant he had cried out--a choking cry, smothered under the folds of
the sail which the man had heaped bodily upon his head. His hands were
grasped and drawn together in the loop of a rope. Lashings were knitted
about his limbs with almost miraculous rapidity. Stark and inert, he
felt himself rolled into the bottom of the boat, his rage and horror
almost suffocating him as he heard the quickly stifled cry which told
him that his companion was suffering like treatment. And then, for half
a minute, the rapid rumble of the rowlocks was evidence that the boat
was being furiously rowed--whither he could not guess.

There was a shock of wood meeting wood. They had run alongside another
vessel, or possibly the piles of a landing place. Whispered voices
joined those of their captors.

He felt himself lifted, borne staggeringly forward a few paces and then
lowered into arms which gripped him from below. There was the creak of
reluctant hinges. He was placed not ungently upon a floor of planking.
The voices whispered again, something was laid beside him, touching him.
The hinges grated, footsteps passed over a floor or deck above his head.
And then there was silence.

But out in the bay a few minutes later, the decent stillness of the
night was torn into tatters of uproar. The voice of the Spanish boatman
was uplifted in appeals for help to every listening saint in Paradise,
and to every inhabitant of the Melilla's citadel and port. The sounds
reached, as they were meant to reach, the quay. Every guardroom was
emptied; the roisterers surged into the street from a dozen _albergars_
and _cervecerias_. Half a score of boats put out into the night, one
manned by the naval police leading.

Lament guiding them, within five minutes they reached a point where El
Avispa clung disconsolately to the keel of his upturned boat, bewailing
the day of a birth which had developed for him into a life of
unremitting sorrow. He was dragged into the police boat and ordered to
explain himself.

It was the fault of the foreign Señor, he deposed. Justice to himself
compelled him to admit that, though he had every regard for the
reputation of a cavalier who was now without doubt drowned fathoms deep
below the very spot on which the rescuing pinnace swam. Being careless,
or perchance engrossed by the attractions of the Señora who was for
beauty a very swan, the amateur steersman had precipitated them among
the mackerel nets. The rudder was fouled. He, Ignacio Baril, sometimes
called El Avispa, had stood up to pass to the stern and release it. The
Señora, with entrancing but unfortunate timidity, had risen in her turn,
and the Señor, gesticulating in argument, had consummated the disaster.
He had leaned sideways, lost his balance, and caused the boat to lurch
completely over.

Yes, he himself had put forth the efforts of a Hercules to save, at
least, the woman. In deference to the memory of his mother, who was
already among the Saints after a lifetime of charity and benevolence, he
must bear witness to the fact that her son met this crisis with energy.
How was he defeated? The truth must out; again it was the foreign
cavalier. In his panic he had clutched and drawn back from the brink of
safety the Señora--alas! to perdition. The would-be rescuer had desisted
from his efforts only when his overtaxed lungs failed him. In a state of
semi-unconsciousness, Providence had guided his aimless hand to reach
and rest upon the keel of his overturned boat. He had been saved, it was
very true, but it was a question if death itself was not to be
poignantly preferred to safety coupled with such a burden of grief. His
days must be clouded to his life's end.

And thereupon the bay echoed with the shouts of a hundred searchers and
the waters glittered in carnival gaiety below the glare of their lights.
A couple of hours later one of them halted, as if to rest the rowers, in
the shadow of the felucca _Santa Margarita_. From her bows a long,
cord-lashed package was silently lifted on the larger vessel's deck,
while three figures scrambled hastily over the gunwale and crept below.
Then laboriously the clumsy anchor was hauled home, the broad sail
spread to the western breeze, and Signor Luigi steered a straight course
into the bosom of the night.



CHAPTER XVIII

THE SANTA MARGARITA'S LAZARET


The torment of his tightly lashed limbs, the irk of the gag between his
teeth, want of air, hunger, thirst--these had all done their work upon
Aylmer and, as the hours went by, produced a partial unconsciousness. It
was not sleep which overpowered him; it was a thing less merciful than
that. A numbness had seized both his limbs and his brain. He no longer
felt the cutting pressure of his bonds; he scarcely realized where his
powerlessness lay. Effort was paralyzed, that was all he understood. It
was a nightmare; his brain refused to confront reasons; he was sensitive
only to effects. Thus it was with a shock as if sensibility itself was
only then returning that he heard the grating sound of hinges, was
conscious of a gleam of light in the hitherto persistent darkness, felt
fingers busy at his lips. The gag fell from between them.

With the powers of speech his own again, his senses used them
instinctively for primitive needs.

"Water!" he muttered hoarsely. "Water!"

"With pleasure, my dear cousin!" said a familiar voice. "Water, food,
and even, under restrictions, a little liberty. Has that programme
attractions? Surely--after what, I fear, has been a monotonous night."

It was Landon who held a guttering lamp in his hand and looked down at
them complacently--Landon, debonair, smiling, triumphant.

Aylmer's eyes searched past him after the first glance of surprise.
Touching his feet lay Miss Van Arlen, bound as he had been bound, the
mark of the gag still grooving her lips and cheek. Beyond her, propped
against a bulkhead at the end of the narrow oblong lazaret in which they
all lay, was another figure. Aylmer blinked and frowned in his surprise.
The face was unfamiliarly pale; the usually apathetic eyes dark with
repressed emotion. But they both undoubtedly belonged to--Mr. Miller.

This, then, was the meaning of the opening of their prison door for the
second time the previous evening; this was the addition to their cargo
which darkness had concealed from him.

Landon gave a pleasant little laugh.

"An unexpected reunion, is it not?" he suggested. "I have unavoidably
deprived you of a few luxuries, my dear Miller, but have supplied what
is far more important--true friends."

For a moment the other was silent; his glance reviewed his surroundings
with careful intensity; he seemed to prime himself with all available
information before he dealt with a situation which found him moved,
indeed, but not by useless loss of temper.

"You will probably pay for this--highly," he said in his usual level
tones. "I do not know precisely what you expect to gain, my dear Landon,
but believe me the price of this exploit will be more than you can
afford."

Landon made a gesture of protest.

"There will be a price; you are quick to jump to these conclusions," he
agreed. "But I, dear friend, am the payee."

He nodded, favoring each of them with a glance in turn.

"Yes," he said. "That is the situation; please understand it. I am
dictating terms, I. I am no longer the hunted, but the hunter. I have
many debits in my mental ledger. I propose to collect them once and for
all, in full."

The three regarded him without speaking, and he laughed again, amiably.

"Sister-in-law," he said, "your sex requires my first apologies. You
must blame the wind, not me, for the discomforts of the night. While we
remained within earshot of the land or of passing ships, your silence
was overwhelmingly desirable. This applied to all three of you, and the
contumacious wind forbore to rise. But the breeze of the last hour has
given us an offing which frees you of all disabilities. Your bonds, to
commence with."

He stooped and rapidly unlashed her wrists and ankles. He put out a hand
to draw her to her feet.

With an uncontrollable gesture of repulsion, she waved it away and rose
unsteadily, clinging to the bulkhead. She faced him.

"Have you never asked yourself what the end will be, the end of all
this?" she said suddenly, fiercely. "You win a trick here and there; you
reckon up the points; you mock your adversaries. Do you never give a
thought to what the price, the ultimate price, must be?"

He looked at her--a look that held some curiosity--a tinge, indeed, of
admiration.

"You are a little unexpected, my dear Claire," he answered. "Does not
the more material question of food and drink engross you? Do you really
wish to discuss abstractions?"

She gave a hopeless little shrug of her shoulder.

"It is because you are wholly evil, wholly, that you puzzle me. And yet
you are not unintelligent; you must know, mere experience must teach
you, there is a price to be paid!"

"Certainly." Landon laughed again, a mocking laugh. "I sketched it in
outline to your--your lover--may I have the felicity of calling him
that?--when I enjoyed his company in the silo on the road to El Dibh."

The color flamed to her cheek.

"You are insolent!" she said, and again Landon laughed.

"Or merely premature?" he asked gaily. "After all, for the moment
hospitality must engross me and nothing else." He turned and beckoned to
some one unseen. He received a basket.

"Bread, cheese, wine," he explained. "Will you help yourself while I
assist my other guests? Or, if they choose, they may assist themselves.
But I must have your words, my friends, that you will not attempt
violence or escape if I release your hands."

The two prisoners exchanged glances. Then Miller held out his fettered
wrists.

"As you will," he said quietly. "Temporarily I give you my parole. I
retain the right to withdraw it."

Landon nodded and looked at his cousin.

"And you?" he asked.

Aylmer met the look squarely.

"No, to you I will be beholden for nothing," he answered. "I give no
word; I keep my independence."

Landon shrugged his shoulders.

"You only inconvenience yourself," he said indifferently. "Well, my
Quixote, stay here then, in the dark, shackled, and alone."

He held back the door, motioning the others into the outer cabin. Miss
Van Arlen stood still, leaning against the bulkhead.

Landon made another gesture towards the door. "Ladies first," he smiled.
"While we play at pirates, let us maintain the high standard of
piratical courtesy."

She shook her head.

"I prefer to stay," she said quietly.

Landon's surprise escaped in an exclamation. And then he laughed--an
evil, sneering laugh, which brimmed with insolence and suggestion.

"You--prefer--to stay?" he repeated, and looked from her to the man who
lay at his feet. "Was my chance shot so far from the target?" he asked.
"You will stay with--whom? Not a lover?"

Her eyes were stormy, but her voice was restrained.

"Even your insolence does not turn me from my duty," she answered.
"Captain Aylmer has served, and is suffering for, me and mine."

She turned her eyes from his as she spoke and, as if some power outside
herself compelled her, let them meet the glance which Aylmer flung at
her from the level of the floor. Through a pregnant moment she read its
message--surprise, incredulity, and then hope. These lit fires in it one
by one, but the last eclipsed all other gleams, and remained.

He spoke.

"Thank you," he said simply. "But I am not here to add to your
hardships. I cannot accept the sacrifice."

"The decision is with me," she said quietly, but with determination. "It
is settled. I remain here, with Captain Aylmer."

Landon was still smiling.

"It has its unconventional side, this decision of yours," he said. "I
must remind you of that."

"You need remind me of nothing," she answered. "I stay; that is all."

He shook his head.

"Not quite all," he objected. "I must, of course, have a promise from
you that you will not interfere with Captain Aylmer's bonds in any way."

She nodded.

"Very well," she said laconically. "I promise."

Still Landon hesitated, his hand upon the door.

"And you?" he said suddenly, looking at his cousin. "You shall give me
your word not to let her touch you."

Aylmer's eyes sparkled with rage.

"Have you not got her word, you _dog_!" he answered, and there was an
intonation on the last syllable which seemed to sting even Landon's
imperturbability. For he made a threatening step forward.

"By God, I'll show you where you are!" he cried. "You dare to give me
your impudence, here?"

He stood looking down, his breath coming pantingly. His cheeks had
become curiously patched; he gasped.

Miller's even voice broke across the tension.

"Captain Aylmer refuses any relaxations," he said urbanely. "Why not
accept the fact?"

Landon swung round.

"Do you think I daren't?" he cried menacingly. "Do you think I daren't
go the whole hog? If I swing him overboard, who's to tell? By the Lord,
I've a mind for it--and to make myself safe with the rest of you, too.
I've a mind, a very good mind, to rid myself of the lot of you!"

"And live afterwards--on what?" replied Miller very quietly.

There was silence, more than a moment of it. Landon's fingers sought and
found purchase upon the wood partition. His glance dwelled upon Miller,
debatingly. Slowly the flush died from his cheek.

And then he laughed again, harshly, unmirthfully, even apologetically,
so it seemed, but as if the apology were to himself. He motioned Miller
to the door. He laid the basket upon the floor.

"Make the most of it," he said. He hesitated. "And don't count on my--my
good-humor--again." Without a backward look, he placed the lantern on
the table and banged the door.

Claire made no comment; her whole desire was to dull all sense of
emotion from the situation. She laid her hand upon the basket; she drew
out a bottle of wine; she found a tin cup and filled it. She did it all
with matter-of-factness; she did not spare a glance towards the floor.

And then she knelt beside him, put her arm behind his back, helped him
to shuffle into an uneasy leaning posture against the bulkhead. She
brought him the cup.

He shook his head in protest.

"After you," he said determinedly.

Her lips moved to speech, and then she stayed herself. After all was not
stolid acquiescence best; did not that kill sentiment, and was not
sentiment the one thing to be dreaded in this situation? She lifted her
shoulders in an indifferent little shrug and then she drank. He watched
her quietly. She refilled the cup and held it to his lips. He moved his
chin in a queer, cramped little nod of acknowledgment and drank in his
turn. And there was a hint of reluctance in the little sigh with which
he relinquished the emptied cup.

She refilled it and held it for him again, anticipating his protests
with the declaration that she herself would have no more, disliked it,
wished, rather, for food. And so she watched him drink for the second
time, slowly, swallowing tiny mouthfuls, dwelling on it. A queer sense
of unreality gripped her as she did so. It was as if she waited on and
tolerated the foibles of a child. A hundred times she had done as much
or more for her small nephew, but without this protective sense in the
doing of it. She realized the fact with a sort of self-inquisition. It
pleased her to see this man where her help was essential to him. Some
instinct of the same kind had been awake in her as she nursed and
watched over him at the silo, but it had died or slept in the
intervening weeks of ordinary converse at Gibraltar and on the yacht. It
woke again now; and it had grown unwatched. Why, she asked herself. Why?

And then came the question of food. The basket contained no accessories,
merely the bare essentials. She had to break the bread and divide the
cheese with her fingers, bit by bit. And bit by bit she had to place
each portion between his teeth. She shrank, or she told herself that it
was shrinking, as her hand brushed his moustache, but was there anything
truly repellent in this suddenly intimate action? Again self-inquisition
denied it. Pleasure was in the sensation, not pain.

She rose, at last, when the contents of the basket were finished, and
placed it on the table. Returning she flicked the crumbs from his
shoulder and then, with a little sigh, sat down. He looked at her
gravely, but with a gravity which tells of emotion restrained.

"Thank you again," he said. "Thank you for everything, but--why?"

She gave a little start. Was not this the question that her inner self
had been dinning in her ears for half an hour? She was humbling herself,
sacrificing herself even, in the eyes of such as Landon, lowering
herself to serve this man. Why?

And as she debated she avoided his gaze lest he should read indecision
in her glance. And yet the answer should have been glib on her lips; she
had, indeed, already given it to Landon. Duty to a servant suffering in
her service. But was that all?

"Did you expect me to choose the company of your cousin?" she asked
slowly. "The very sight of him revolts me. I cannot stand it!"

"You spared me a little of that distaste, at our first meeting," he
said, and there was the glint of a queer smile beneath his moustache.
"Have I lived that down?"

"I know now that you are a gentleman," she said simply. "I realize, too,
that Landon is--is monstrous, wickedness incarnate, beyond the reach of
human feeling, completely vile. I think," she hesitated, "I think he
must have concentrated within himself every evil influence that has
fallen upon his family, to leave you--" again she faltered, as if she
struggled with a compelling power, not as if a word or phrase escaped
her--"to leave you--_stainless_," she sighed with an inflection that
seemed to tell of something reluctant in the effort.

For a moment he was silent. Then the color flamed to his face; the light
of incredulity woke in his eyes.

"Then I start now with every handicap cleared away?" he asked quickly.
"You see me--as other men?"

She turned and looked at him. She smiled a little wearily.

"No," she said quietly. "Not as other men."

He drew a deep breath.

"Claire," he said very quietly, "a month ago I came first into your
life. Fate brought me to you, to earn, and then to resent, your
unexplained hatred. When I understood it, I swore to myself that I would
make you--just. That, then, is a task accomplished."

Was this sudden intimate use of her Christian name unconscious or was it
premeditated? She made no comment; she only bowed her assent.

"That was no personal decision," went on Aylmer. "I did it as a duty--to
all who bore my name. The personal factor came afterwards, but so soon
afterwards that I can scarcely tell you when the one merged in the
other. I loved you; did you understand that?"

And now it was her turn to flush and wince. But was it wincing? The
pulse which throbbed through her--was it truly resentment? A sense of
sudden bewilderment came over her--a bewilderment which sought refuge,
at first, in silence.

"You--you almost threatened me," she allowed at last, with the ghost of
a tiny smile. "And I am not accustomed to threats. They--they made me
angry."

"Yes, but you understood!" he cried. "You understood what I sought and
for what reward?"

There was something masterful, triumphant in his tone which grated on
her instincts, a reaction to the days when all he said and did grated
upon her. And it helped her to regain command of herself, to snatch
herself from the brink to which she was drifting.

"I hoped I misunderstood," she said coolly. "For it was a liberty. At
the time I considered it an insult."

She did not look at him, but she heard the quick intake of his breath.
And the sudden pain in his voice smote her with remorse.

"As an insult it is atoned?" he asked. "Does it remain a liberty still?"

She turned her eyes to his, and he looked up to know his opportunity
there, and could not grasp it. He lay a prisoner at her feet. If he had
been free, if his arms had been about her, if he had used his man's
strength and mastery to take and hold her, if opportunity had not mocked
him, would he have won? Fate knows, but fate was smiling then. And the
history of man and maid from all ages is with us. Yes, he would have
won; he would have won.

She gave a tiny gasp, and then the fugitive instinct, the primeval
resort to flight, was upon her. She sent opportunity packing with her
reply.

"I am here, by my own choice, with you--alone," she reminded him. "A
liberty may become a question of--circumstance."

He flushed hotly, and again remorse gripped her as she saw the haggard
lines draw in about his eyes.

"I can only ask your pardon," he answered. "I ask it, humbly and
contritely." He gave a wry little smile. "And perhaps circumstance is to
blame, after all."

Opportunity halted in her flight, hesitated, gave a returning step
towards beckoning remorse. There was a shuffling sound at the door of
the lazaret, and opportunity wheeled and fled.

"Let me in!" said a childish voice impatiently. "It's me! It's me! Let
me in!"

The girl started forward.

"John!" she cried. "Little John! Find the bolt! It's your side of the
door!"

The shuffling, scrabbling sound continued. An impatient foot kicked the
panel. And then suddenly, creakingly, the door flew back. The child
pranced gaily over the threshold.

"I just kicked, so!" he explained, "and it flew in! I did not know there
was a cupboard here." He gave a shrill little shout of amazement and
capered towards Aylmer. "It's the pig man!" he cried. "The pig man!"

Claire's arms closed about him and snatched him to her.

"Oh, John--Little John!" she whispered fiercely. "Aren't you glad to see
me, _me_?"

He held his face back from her for an instant and looked at her
appraisingly.

"Yes," he said meditatively. "But you aren't come to make me wear clean
things again? Muhammed doesn't."

And then he wriggled energetically, his eyes on Aylmer.

"Is he hurted?" he asked anxiously. "He was hurted once, last time I saw
him. Why have they wrapped up his hands?"

A sudden gleam shone on Aylmer's face. He held out the pinioned wrists.

"Could you unknot them, old boy?" he asked quickly. "Would you like to
try?"

She gave him a glance of comprehension and let the child go. He leaned
down over Aylmer and his little fingers picked at the cords. He pulled
at first unavailingly. Aylmer gave low-voiced suggestions, showed which
knot should be dealt with first. Claire, as she watched, put out a hand
instinctively to help.

He smiled, but snatched his wrists away.

"You forget," he said quietly.

She drew back.

"Yes," she said. "I forgot," and a flame of unreasoning anger burned in
her. Landon fought with any weapon he chose to forge--a lie had ever
been the easiest to his hand. And they? They must not touch the fringe
of disloyalty; even with him they had to keep perfect faith. Her
feminine perceptions revolted; this was too rigid for her woman's mind.
If she had forgotten, for a moment, her promise, why should he not avail
himself of the slip, which was hers alone? And then she smiled. Had he
not gone up in her estimation another step? Yes, and she smiled again;
how long ago was it since she, who now looked up at him, had from so
very great a height of condescension and dislike, looked down?

Suddenly the child gave a little squeal of triumph.

"There!" he cried. "You pull your hands--so! Then I pull so!" And
shouted again, for the lashings which lay upon the parted wrists lay now
loosely, in loops which dangled on the floor.

And then, as anger had seized upon her, so did fear. She looked at him
with suddenly apprehensive eyes.

"You will do--what?" she asked tremulously. Her imagination pictured
half a dozen dangers in as many seconds, all lurking to overwhelm a too
reckless freedom.

He smiled.

"For the moment I dissemble, and wait," he said, and sat down quietly to
loop anew the cords about his arms, but in running loops, this
time--knots which would give before one well-directed pull.



CHAPTER XIX

MILLER IS STILL IMPERTURBABLE


As the imperturbable Mr. Miller reached the deck of the _Santa
Margarita_, he took stock, for the second time within a few minutes, of
his immediate surroundings.

He saw an exceedingly dirty deck on which the smuts from the galley
chimney appeared to have become embedded through long years of neglect.
He smelt the very rich, nourishing odor of spaghetti fried with garlic,
and sniffed unappreciatively, in spite of his hunger. He heard a couple
of nasal voices chanting cheerfully, but with an exceedingly labored
accent, the Bersaglieri quickstep, and made a tiny grimace of protest.
Around him the panorama of sea was empty of all shipping. Land was out
of sight.

Muhammed leaned lazily against the tiller and eyed his late employer
with the stolid apathy which an Oriental alone can make convincing.
Lounging against the panel of the companion hatch, from which Landon and
his companion had just emerged, sat the skipper, Signor Luigi, idly
whittling a stick, and looking up at his passenger with an amiable
indifference.

Miller, it must be remembered, had just passed a night of great
discomfort and mental agitation following a most unanticipated shock.
His nerves--is it wonderful?--were at tension. In spite of his own
imperturbability, on which he set some store, the _insouciant_ aspect of
his surroundings jarred on him. Was kidnapping, then, such an everyday
affair that men cooked, and sang, and whittled under his very nose while
the pirate's gallows very possibly stood awaiting them? He had probably
never approached petulance more nearly in the course of his well-ordered
existence.

He turned to Landon with a little shrug.

The other was holding out the half of a yard-long roll of bread, with a
lump of doubtful-looking cheese.

"I would have suggested a plateful of that spaghetti, my dear Miller,"
he smiled, "but my watchful eye understood the curl of your nostril.
This is at least clean."

Miller drew an edge of tarpaulin over a heaped rope, and, after a
regretful glance at his no longer immaculately gray trousers, sat down.
He took the bread and cheese and began to eat slowly.

There was something bovine in the manner in which he carefully champed
each mouthful, something ruminative about the way in which he looked
around him. But behind this stolid mask of indifference his brain was
working rapidly. He was putting facts as they appeared to him to the
test of logic and experience. His mental summing up was rapid. A
felucca, of Italian register: crew, three men and a boy. Engaged in the
contraband trade more or less continuously, for the ingeniously
contrived lazaret between the cabin and the galley showed an attention
to detail made necessary by continual service. The real mast passed
through the centre of his prison of the previous night. Yet the half of
a mast, a sham half, of course, passed through the partition and showed
in the cabin. Doubtless another half was to be seen likewise in the
galley. It was a neat idea; there was nothing to indicate to the casual
glance of a custom's officer that the partition between the two was not
what it appeared to be. Nothing but actual measurements would discover
the space which hid the intervening lazaret.

With the tonic of food, his self-reliance was entirely his again. He
turned to confront Landon after half a dozen mouthfuls, alert to probe
for the limits of his position. Landon had greatly dared. Did he
understand how greatly? Miller felt himself restored to a state of
energy and resolution which would very quickly find out.

"This," he enunciated slowly, "is of the nature of piracy. Do you and
your underlings realize it?"

Landon was lighting a cigarette. He sucked in a full mouthful of smoke
and shot it out again before he replied. The act was artificial--far too
artificial, Miller told himself--in its indifference.

"My underlings," he answered, "realize that they are well on the way
to--what shall we say--a modest competency. Beyond that, their very
finite understandings have not advanced. _Domani_ or _mañana_ are words
frequent in their vocabularies, but not in relation to results.
Comfortable procrastination--that is the whole sense which they
appreciate in them."

"Your own outlook is sufficiently intelligent to pierce beyond
to-morrow," said the other, drily.

"Certainly!" agreed Landon. "I dwell upon to-morrow, and the day after
to-morrow, and the day after that! I engage in prescient revels in their
rosy-tinted hours!"

Miller made a little inarticulate sound which expressed a restrained but
unequivocal irritation.

"Shall we be business-like?" he proposed. "You have entrapped on board
this boat three people, including myself. What advantage do you expect
to get out of the situation and, bluntly, how?"

"You are such a rigid man of affairs," complained Landon. "You refuse
even to eat your breakfast without distractions."

"I find myself in an extraordinary and unfamiliar situation," said
Miller. "It is obvious that I wish to disentangle myself from it as soon
as possible. Let me hear and accept or reject your terms. Is there any
need to be mysterious?"

"None," said Landon, amiably. "But I have not been a man of successful
_coups_, so far, my dear friend, and you must not grudge me the
unaccustomed zests I draw from this one. To clear the situation, I
purpose holding you all three to ransom."

"Where?"

Landon laughed.

"That you must allow me to consider a trade secret. I intend to retain
your company and that of my cousin and my sister-in-law till I am richer
by some forty thousand pounds. There you have the situation in a
nutshell. I am willing to take the advice of such a finished man of the
world as yourself on business methods. The end in view I cannot consent
to vary."

The gray man shrugged his shoulders.

"You are of opinion that money will be paid for me? By whom?"

"I can conceive two sources of supply. The German Government--pray don't
allow yourself to be startled--or, in the last resort, yourself. You are
not a poor man, unless you have grossly misused your opportunities."

"The German Government has no interests of any kind in my well-being or
otherwise."

"I must take your word for it," said Landon, politely. "The alternative
remains by us, literally."

"Meanwhile, what about the laws of--whatever country you purpose using
the shore of? We do not, I take it, remain afloat--a sort of modern
Vanderdecken?"

"Let me assure you that no laws or lawgivers will be of the slightest
assistance. My friend Luigi and I propose being a law unto ourselves and
you."

"Ah."

Miller's tone was reflective and impassive. He had found out one of the
things he wanted to know. As he suspected, they were being taken to some
remoteness, probably an island. He digested the information silently.

"You must pardon the want of--of finish in our arrangements," said
Landon. "Your capture was entirely unpremeditated; you were a gift from
the hand of fate. Your suggestion about my child undid you. The boy has
become the pivot of Muhammed's existence. Queer, don't you think? I have
never professed to plumb the depths of the Oriental mind."

"And Miss Van Arlen and Aylmer?" questioned Miller. "That was a matter
of premeditation?"

"Nothing less than an inspiration, a stroke of genius conceived in a
moment in Muhammed's brain. Premeditate? How could we premeditate? We
expected you and you only, or your messenger, by the next day's boat."

Miller nodded.

"Miss Van Arlen and her companion are officially drowned," he said. "My
own disappearance--how is that accounted for?"

"The matter is now probably engaging the interest of the Melilla
police. They need distraction; theirs is a gray life," said Landon,
pleasantly.

Again Miller nodded, perhaps unconsciously, and in assent to some
deduction of his own mind. He kept his meditative air for a second or
two, shrugged his shoulders again pessimistically, and then made a brisk
gesture of acquiescence.

"And your terms--to myself--are what?" he asked.

"Ten thousand golden sovereigns," said Landon. "Do I hurt your
self-esteem by my moderation?"

Miller smiled again sombrely.

"That is, of course, preposterous," he said. "I do not possess half the
sum. I should not pay it, if I did. If the alternative is that you
support me for the remaining number of my days, I must accept it."

"That would not be the alternative," answered Landon. "In fact, I hope
to be able to prove to you that an alternative is lacking. But, at the
same time, I am willing to hear proposals."

"My proposal remains what it was yesterday. Make your peace with your
wife's family, give up the child. I shall then be able, I have little
doubt, to put you in the way of earning more than the sum you suggest.
But that you become a person tolerated in ordinary English society is
essential."

"I am, in fact, to work laboriously for what is already in my grasp. You
underrate my business capacity, my dear sir, you really do."

The gray shoulders were shrugged.

"I might possibly allow a payment of a thousand--let us say--on account.
That would suffice to establish you in a decent and plausible position.
The work, as you call it, would not be difficult. I rather fancy you
would find it amusing."

"I think you want me badly," said Landon. "I think I must be unique for
your purposes."

"Don't assume that it is your intelligence which my employers wish to
buy," said Miller, coolly. "It is your social standing, still something
of an asset in your caste-ridden land."

"But I refuse to have my intelligence underrated," protested Landon,
gaily. "I hug it; it tells me many things which you may not suspect.
One of them is that there is a lever which will displace your
self-confidence. You are a very bad bearer of--physical pain."

Very faint was the pulse of the emotion which throbbed through Miller's
eyes as he turned them towards his companion, but distinct enough for
Landon to discover and greet with another amiable little laugh.

"It's where blood tells," he said. "I discovered it accidentally; we
spoke of what D'Amade's men had to undergo as prisoners at the hands of
the Moors, did we not? I mentioned the eyes gouged out, the fettered
wounded flung on slow fires, the impaled. You flinched, my dear sir, you
flinched badly and--I tried you again. I harked back to like subjects
more than once; the result satisfied me. And then I began to dwell upon
your complexion. Is that olive tint from Spain, or was there a near
forefather in the gorgeous East? Are you of Hindoo blood, my friend--are
you?"

Miller's impassive eyes met his, looked deeply within them, and wandered
vaguely towards the empty spaces of the sea. Landon chuckled.

"By God, I wouldn't stop anywhere, with you, you renegade!" he swore
with sudden, hot, irrational rancor. "I'd deal with you. Will any one
stop me? Ask those men--Mafiaists, every one. Stop me! They'd give me
tips; they'd mutilate you as they'd mutilate their own domestic animals,
for fun!"

Miller drew back a couple of paces, not with any show of disgust or
fear, but with the air of an artist who wishes to regard a finished work
from a more distant aspect. And he surveyed Landon keenly.

"So I am being threatened?" he said quietly.

Landon grinned wickedly.

"So you're being threatened," he agreed. "Deliberate the matter; give it
your best attention; and all the while remember that there is nothing
which will stop me, not a single solitary thing."

"I think you are wrong," said Miller, slowly, and then--the sound of it
was bizarre to the last degree between his lips--he whistled a quaint
little run, which thrilled and quavered up and down half a dozen bars to
end upon a long-drawn note.

There was a queer silence. Landon looked at him with a frown which
implied scarcely apprehension, but what is nearly akin to
it--bewilderment. For there was no mistaking the intention with which
the thing was done. Miller had whistled the tripping little air
deliberately.

There was a stirring from below. The two hands appeared, and appeared
with a suddenness which left no room for doubt that they had been
summoned. The savor of burning spaghetti followed them; the summons had
been one exacting instant obedience. They had left the frying-pan upon
the fire. Together with their appearance came the sound from the
companion of Captain Luigi stumbling to his feet.

"Fling this man overboard!" said Miller, in level, indifferent tones. He
pointed to Landon.

Landon gave a shout which brimmed with incredulity as much as fear. His
hand flew to his breast pocket fumblingly, but too late. Miller's grip
was on his wrist; Miller's thrust flung him into the skipper's waiting
arms. As Muhammed relinquished the helm and sprang forward, one of the
deck hands ducked, tripped him, and rose between his legs--that deadly
Mafiaist trick which never fails of its results. The other had closed in
upon Landon as he struggled in the captain's grip. He assisted to drag
him relentlessly towards the gunwale.

Landon yelled again. His eyes glared out of the struggle at Miller in a
very fury of amazement. He bellowed oaths, blasphemies, obscenities
even, the fruits of instinctive passions and automatic to his wrath. And
there was something almost devilish in the silence which his two
assailants kept. They panted a little, by stress of effort, but they
uttered no other sound. They merely edged their victim nearer and yet
nearer to the side, forced him against the gunwale, stooped with
concerted action for one last heave, and then--fell away from him with a
little obsequious shrug. For Miller's voice had been heard again.

"_Basta_--enough!" he had said, his voice still unraised.

Landon lay where their relinquished efforts had left him, huddled
against the gunwale, and staring up at his surroundings with fierce,
incredulous eyes. Muhammed was stretched prone beneath his assailant
who, as he tripped him, had deftly caught the Moor's right wrist and
twisted it behind his back. He sat on his prisoner now, still holding
the other's hand, but carelessly and without open concern, perfectly
aware that the slightest movement from his human pedestal would break
the delicate bone as pipe-clay breaks--in one clean snap.

"Have I made myself plain?" asked Miller, equably.

Landon used a moment of complete silence to stare round the deck,
poising his glance on each of his companions in turn. It rested, at
last, on Miller's entirely emotionless countenance.

"Yes--and damn you!" said Landon, rising sullenly to his feet.

Miller nodded.

"An amateur cannot break into my particular class of business, my dear
Landon," he said. "There are pitfalls for him at every turn. Membership
of a dozen organizations is necessary, and they are close corporations;
even their humbler servants, as you see, find them rigidly exacting."

Landon shrugged his shoulders, produced his cigarette case and
match-box, stuck a match in his mouth, and drew the cigarette across the
roughened edge of the box. Miller suffered himself to smile.

"Your nerves are not altogether at their best," he allowed, "but there
is no need to emphasize the fact. I have no wish to deal harshly with
you. In fact, half of the scheme you have just outlined to me has my
approval. I shall not interfere with your desire to receive compensation
from your father-in-law, but whatever you receive you will regard, if
you please, as from me, provided by my efforts and to be accounted for
in full! Is that understood?"

Landon shrugged his shoulders again.

"I welcome your assistance," he said quietly, and put the cigarette to
its appointed use.

"But _my_ scheme has, in the final event, to be carried out in all its
details," Miller added. "In your bargain with your relations, complete
social regeneration and recognition is included."

"But not--the boy?" said Landon, slowly.

"But not the boy," repeated Miller. "The first, I have satisfied myself,
cannot be obtained without the surrender of the second. You follow me?"

Landon looked at Muhammed, looked at the deck hand who still sat
impassive on the Moor's shoulders, looked at Luigi, looked, lastly, at
Miller.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"We are in your hands--literally," he said, and made an amiable gesture
of assent.



CHAPTER XX

AYLMER CLIMBS--AND FALLS


The door of the lazaret was pulled quietly back. The opening showed
Miller, silhouetted as in a frame, a splash of sunshine which flowed
down into the outer cabin hanging in a golden halo, as it were, behind
his remarkably solid looking head. Coming from the full light into the
darkness--for the lamp was already flickering to final extinction--he
blinked. And there was something unhuman in his aspect as he stood
there, searching the gloom with his impassive eyes, something not
altogether stealthy, but yet something with a tinge of menace in it. So,
no doubt, the hovering night-bird comes to a pause above its victim.

His glance first recognized Miss Van Arlen. He demonstrated the fact by
a little deferential movement--a bow which seemed to deprecate, or even
criticize, the circumstance of her surroundings. He smiled, but with
slightly raised eyebrows, and as his glance travelled on to meet
Aylmer's there was a hint of suggestion in it. It was a glance, at any
rate, which was responsible for the faint flush which rose to the girl's
cheek and for the hardening of Aylmer's lips. For some reason unknown
even to himself, the latter's bound arms instinctively moved towards the
child, who had nestled against his shoulder and had there fallen asleep.

"A scene which would catch a painter's--or a poet's eye--" said the
gray man, meditatively. "We could call it Innocence, could we not?"

Again he looked from one to the other with that questioning, suggestive
glance which somehow seemed to deprecate, and yet, at the same time,
imply equivocation. Neither answered him, and he made an energetic
gesture--one which relegated trivialities to forgetfulness.

"I must be a source of wonder to you; I am to myself!" he cried. "To
allow myself to be trapped into such trifling at such a moment! It is
the artistic temperament; you must address your amazement to it and your
forgiveness to me. I bring good news, relatively."

Claire rose from her seat on the floor.

"Yes?" she said eagerly. "There is a chance of escape, or, perhaps,
rescue?"

His eyes became sombre.

"No, my dear young lady," he said. "My optimism has not reached so far,
as yet. But I have persuaded our captors that Captain Aylmer's detention
here is not necessary. They do not exact a parole from him, but they
permit me to loose his lower limbs and to give him the freedom of the
deck. It is because his release implies your own that this concession
gives me--and him--undoubted pleasure."

He stooped as he finished speaking, and quickly and deftly unlashed the
cords at Aylmer's ankles and, with a jerk, pulled him to his feet. He
shrugged his shoulders as he looked at the still tethered hands.

"I fear I am helpless there, my dear fellow," he said. "Complete rights
of enfranchisement were not allowed me."

Claire parted her lips as if to speak, hesitated, and pressed them
firmly together again. The shackling of those wrists was a mere blind
but--Aylmer forbore to communicate the fact to Miller. Why?

Miller looked at her keenly, inquiringly.

"Yes?" he said. "You want further information? Is that it?"

"I have a hundred questions to ask," she smiled. "How did you get this
concession? Where are we? What are they doing with us? What is our
destination?"

He shrugged his shoulders again.

"As to the first--a little tact was all that was necessary, though tact,
indeed, is too self-laudatory a word. Logic, let us say. I showed him
how unnecessary it was to antagonize a man with whom he would eventually
have to chaffer. That was mere common-sense, was it not?"

"Chaffer?" repeated Aylmer. He considered Miller; for an appreciable
moment he surveyed him silently. "That implies a bargain, and to bargain
there must be goods to sell. Landon has none which will tempt me."

"Liberty," suggested Miller. "Comfort, and not for yourself alone?"

"With Landon I do not bargain," said Landon's cousin, doggedly. "I have
set myself to clean our name of the stigmas with which he had bedaubed
it. There are no terms to be made."

"You sacrifice yourself?" said Miller. He paused. "Have you the right to
sacrifice others?"

"No," said Aylmer, quietly. "You and Miss Van Arlen must do exactly what
seems best for yourselves. That is a deal apart."

Miller shook his head.

"No, my dear Captain Aylmer," he answered. "That is exactly what it is
not. Landon's terms concern us all."

Claire looked at him anxiously.

"He has told you them?" she cried. "You are his messenger?"

Miller gave a little bow of acquiescence.

"They are bluntly these," he said. "For you he demands from your father
the sum of twenty-five thousand pounds. For your nephew, double that
amount. For myself, I must apologize for placing myself next, but the
financial sequence necessitates it, ten thousand. For our friend
here--nothing, or, to be precise, nothing in cash."

She did not flinch as he mentioned the sums. She merely looked
contemptuous.

"Is that all?" she asked. "He is a common blackmailer?"

Miller shook his head.

"No," he said. "Unfortunately that is not all."

He looked directly at Aylmer.

"It rests with you," he said suddenly. "He wants from you--silence. What
has happened is as if it had never been. You are to allow him to take
his place unquestioned in the society which befits his rank. He wishes
to turn a new leaf."

Aylmer met the look with blank incredulity, at first. Then his lips
tightened with determination.

"And you?" he cried. "You are taking him seriously? You are going to
give him this money?"

Miller's out-turned palms expressed a vague pessimism.

"Is there an alternative?" he asked.

Aylmer laughed harshly.

"Blank refusal: what is his answer to that?"

The dark eyes searched the two expectant faces meditatively. The thin
prehensile fingers picked at a loose splinter in the bulkhead.

"I think he would find a way," he said slowly. "I think--in fact he has
threatened it--he would--_hurt_ you!"

Aylmer stared at the gray figure, puzzled, frowning. Miller had used a
new voice for the two last syllables, a voice that shook ever so
slightly with some concealed emotion. "Hurt you," he reiterated sharply,
and then darted a quick, bird-like glance at Aylmer--a look full of
interrogation.

Claire Van Arlen moved forward with a sudden startled movement.

"Hurt!" she cried. "You mean that he would use torture?"

"I think," said Miller, very slowly, "that he would use anything."

And then Aylmer began to laugh--loudly, gaily, and quite
whole-heartedly. Miller's eyebrows proclaimed their owner's
astonishment.

"Melodrama!" explained Aylmer, still chuckling. "I remember Landon as a
small boy, even before his Eton days. He bred these leanings then. He
wasted his pocket money on 'bloods,' I think they are called--penny
exhilarators for youths of tender years, crammed with impossible
villainies. And now he is going to tie flaming splinters between my
fingers and squeeze my thumbs in the crack of the door! This is the
price I am to pay for refusing him social rehabilitation. We cannot
congratulate him on his sense of humor, we really cannot."

Miller paused over his reply, looked down, looked up, and then bridged a
moment of hesitation with his usual expedient--a shrug.

"For the moment I fear he hasn't got one," he said.

"Possibly not," agreed Aylmer. He nodded towards the door. "I'll take
advantage of his concessions to come and see." He gave another little
confident nod to usher the other two before him. As the child ran
forward he caught him up with his bound hands and raised him shoulder
high. Then, stooping, he passed out at Miller's heels on to the deck. He
was laughing still, laughing up at the boy as the childish fingers
steadied themselves in his hair.

"You won't be able to do that when they shave it to put the pitch
plaster on," he cried. "And when they've stretched me on the rack, I
shall be too tall to carry you out of a cabin. And as for being a pig
man again, and carrying a spear after the thumbscrews have been applied,
why, it simply won't bear thinking about!"

As he emerged on deck he looked about him keenly. Muhammed's was the
first figure which caught his eye. The Moor was sitting on the gunwale
opposite the companion, looking shoreward. And the shore, to Aylmer's
surprise, was very near on the starboard bow.

Suddenly he realized that it was not the mainland which he saw, but an
archipelago of islands girdled with reefs. Rockbound channels were
frames to pictures of the dun red African strand half a dozen miles
away.

He looked aft. The sun was not far from its setting, hanging in a red
disc above the distant hills of Algeria. The captain was at the tiller.
Beside him lounged Landon, watching a gray-painted torpedo boat which
had emerged from the shelter of the islands and was about to pass close
under their stern. The gold and crimson of the Spanish naval ensign
floated at her flagstaff.

Landon looked round as he heard the footsteps of the newcomers on the
deck. He nodded them a greeting without changing his seat, and did it
with a studied air of contempt.

"Well?" he said laconically.

Aylmer was silent. His glance traveled over Landon's head to examine the
war vessel as it passed.

The captain grunted something in an undertone. Landon laughed, and held
up the first and fourth fingers of his right hand horn-wise.

"The good Luigi advises me to avert the evil eye," he explained. "Does
that glance of yours threaten us, my affectionate cousin, does it?"

Aylmer sat back upon the boom and looked at the other squarely. The
child scrambled from his shoulder and went back along the deck to stand
at Muhammed's knee. But the Moor, after a quick, welcoming smile, showed
no further recognition of his presence. His glance, the glances, indeed,
of all on board, centered in the meeting of the two who eyed each other
across the slant of Signor Luigi's tiller.

Aylmer made a motion of his head towards Miller.

"You sent this man to bargain with me?" he said.

"No," said Landon. "I sent him to tell you my terms."

He laughed; he looked Aylmer insolently in the face and laughed again.

"The thick-headedness of you is what amuses me," he said. "The crass
incapability of understanding your own case. Order, respectability, good
feeling, as you call it--these have been propping you all your life. You
don't understand--how should you?--what it is to be in the hands of a
man who gives not a jot for any one of them." He snapped his fingers.
"Not that!" he added. "For honor, standing, the esteem of my fellows I
give nothing--nothing!"

"And yet chaffer to obtain them," said Aylmer, drily.

"I don't chaffer; I take," said Landon. "I am requiring them as mere
stage properties necessary to the carrying out of my other purposes.
Intrinsically they have no value for me."

"Unfortunately for you, you have neither the weapons to win them nor the
means to buy them," said Aylmer.

"Haven't I?" said Landon, slowly. "Haven't I?" He rose from his seat and
came a pace or two nearer. "Listen to me, you--you blazing fool!" he
snarled. "I have you here to break, as I will. See that you don't goad
me into doing it, for the mere pleasure of seeing you squirm. You give
me your promise to accept me, push me forward, vouch for me, in the
rotten mob you call society, or, by God, you'll be sorry before I've
done with you!"

Aylmer still stared relentlessly into the other's eyes.

"You haven't a thing that'll touch me--not a single thing!" he said. "My
life? Do you think that has a value for me above the hope of clearing
you from a decent family's path--into the gutter!"

Landon went white with passion. His fingers worked.

"By the Lord!" he said, and his eyes shot menacing lightnings towards
Miller, not towards his cousin; "by the Lord, am I to keep my hands off
him--after that?"

There was a sort of appeal in the question. There was malignance, there
was red anger, but there was entreaty, the cry of a slave to a master.
Claire recognized it; so did Aylmer, with amazement.

They both looked at the gray man.

Miller's gesture was all humility, all dejection.

"Don't exasperate him, Captain Aylmer," he pleaded. "He has weapons; he
has, indeed!"

Landon laughed malevolently.

"By God, I have!" he cried. "Your thick body and your ox's nerves? You
can pit them against me, if you like! What about your finer feelings, as
I suppose you'd call them? What about your honor? And--what
about--_hers_?"

He shot the question out fiercely, insistently, pointing at Claire.

A sudden dryness coated Aylmer's lips.

"What do you mean?" he demanded. He rose, too, towering over Landon from
the full height of his stature and that, indeed, seemed to have added
inches to itself since the other spoke.

But Landon, drunk with venom, did not flinch.

"Look at her!" he cried, still pointing. "Look at her! And if you defy
me, you shall have something more to look at before long! I'll deal with
her; I'll let these men have their will of her; I'll drag her through
filth enough--I'll--"

His voice broke hideously into a shriek of pain. Aylmer had flung off
the lashings on his wrists and continued the movement, as it were, into
one direct, smashing blow on Landon's mouth!

And Landon fell as a log falls, stark, inert, his head meeting the
tiller end in his fall with frightful emphasis. He rolled into the
scuppers at the captain's feet, bloody, disfigured, unconscious as the
deck itself.

There was a rush from the two deck hands. Muhammed came flying aft.
Aylmer dodged, landed his fist on the Moor's temple, evaded the hands
stretched out for him, and sprang for the rigging. Within the space of
seconds he was standing upon the great cross spar of the lateen, leaning
against the mast, and waving his arms in semaphore-wise towards the gray
stern of the torpedo boat as she slid away against the disc of the
setting sun.

The captain yelled aloud with fury.

"He is signalling to them!" he screamed. "God's Mother! If they see him
we're undone!"

A sudden light gleamed in Claire's eyes, a light of hope, of relief
and--bright above them all--admiration. This was a man. Her woman's
blood quickened to the knowledge that his man's strength had been used
brutally, splendidly, for her. She cried aloud her encouragement. She
waved her hand.

"Make them see you, make them!" she called. She beat her open hand upon
the taffrail in her passion.

The gunboat slowed. Half a dozen signal flags rushed up to her peak. The
white foam of her wake disappeared slowly with the stopping of her
engines. Captain Luigi cried out again; he addressed invectives to
things terrestrial and to celestial things apostrophes at a set value in
candles, using both forms of eloquence impartially to goad his
hesitating deck hands to pull Aylmer from his eyrie at the risk of their
lives. The mariners shook their heads.

And then, at the captain's ear, harshly, snippingly, between his teeth,
Miller spoke.

"Let go the halliards!" he hissed. "Let go the halliards!"

And Claire Van Arlen heard.

She cried out to Aylmer warningly, shrill in her despair. He did not
hear or, perhaps, in the intentness of his task, did not heed. She cried
out again.

Too late!

The two men flung themselves upon the ropes which held the great lateen
yard in place, slacked them, payed them out suddenly a couple of yards.
Aylmer tottered, rocked forward, and then maintained his hand hold upon
the mast. But this time the men reversed the operation. With a
tremendous effort they jerked the ropes. The spar leaped upwards!

And Aylmer shot into the air and landed stunningly upon the planking at
Claire Van Arlen's feet.



CHAPTER XXI

FATE STAYS HER HAND


Rescue, liberty, and, not least, triumph over Landon! These were all
possibilities, even probabilities, clear to Claire Van Arlen's
intelligence as she bent over Aylmer--clear, but undefined. Yet the one
outstanding, engrossing thought was that her champion had fallen in the
moment of victory. The blood was flowing from a deep cut on his
forehead; he was unconscious; the color had ebbed from his very lips. An
agony of apprehension seized upon her. He was dead! He was dead!

And then--the pulse of that relief will be quick in her to her dying
day--his eyes opened, he stirred. He did more than stir; he made efforts
to rise.

She held him masterfully; her voice was stern in her command to him to
lie still. And he looked up at her with an incredulous glance in which
humor had its part. He smiled--a puzzled smile. Suddenly remembrance
came back to him and his bewilderment became anxiety.

"The gunboat?" he asked hoarsely. "They saw me, they were slowing down!"

She nodded silently as she looked about her. They had floated within the
shadow cast by the towering bulk of the island nearest them. The last
red rim of the sun's disc had passed below the horizon. The dusk was
gathering. A mile away the gunboat was turning ponderously.

Rapidly she told him what she saw and he nodded a satisfied assent.

"They're done, now," he whispered triumphantly. "We have them in a cleft
stick!"

But Fate--listening Fate--shook her head.

It was Muhammed who had taken command of the situation, Muhammed who
roared his orders to hoist again the half-lowered sail, to let drift the
dingy from the stern, to stand by the halliards for a tack. He leaped
upon the tiller and flung the boat's prow round to point directly for
the land.

The freshening breeze from the northwest swelled out the great sail as
the panting sailors swung the yard aslant the mast. The water sang and
bubbled from the prow. The _Santa Margarita_ leaped landwards like a
living thing, straight for the cliffs of shadowing stone.

Captain Luigi, completely unnerved by the sudden crisis to which events
had soared, wailed protests without attempting interference.

"I call you to witness that I said he had the evil eye!" he cried. "I
call you to witness! Capture or destruction--there are no two ways to
it!"

"There is One God and one road to safety for a brave man," answered
Muhammed, as he leaned his strength upon the helm. "They call it
courage. Run out the French flag, _amigo_! They dare not fire on that,
here, in debatable waters, for all their claim to these islands as
within the grip of Spain."

A sudden pang of doubt shook Claire. The gunboat was completing its
turning movement--slowly--ah, how slowly! And yet? How could the
felucca, with no more than a fresh breeze to rely on, hope to evade
that greyhound of the seas? A spout of gray smoke burst from the gray
painted sides; the sound of a cannon shot echoed down to them among the
crags.

Muhammed laughed.

"Blank cartridge," he said derisively. "Within five minutes their faces
will be as blank. Sons of dirt, I spit upon you!"

The girl's apprehension grew. Confidence rang in the Moor's voice. He
smiled as one who had already triumphed. And still the felucca drove
shorewards, relentlessly towards the bare face of stone.

But the torpedo boat was gaining speed. The white lift of the foam was
veiling her bows; she ripped through the waters as a blade rips through
calico, directly, cleanly, tossing aside the waves. Another few
minutes--seven--six--perhaps less--and she must be alongside. And the
island cliff seemed to overhang them now; the great sail flapped as the
breeze beat back from the sheer rock against its breadth.

A second time Muhammed roared his orders. The sailors shifted the huge
spar around the mast, swinging it as on a pivot. The _Santa Margarita_
came about, dancingly.

The rush and boil of breaking foam on the seaward bow caught Claire's
ear. She glanced over the taffrail.

A comber was breaking on a great tooth of black rock within half a
cable's length of the boat. Not far ahead she saw the white after-spume
of another--and beyond that a third--a fourth--countless ones. They were
within a very labyrinth of reefs. And Muhammed, swerving the tiller
delicately from side to side, steered unshaken, his eyes piercing into
the swiftly coming gloom, the smile of victory growing round his lips.

She understood, and before she turned her eyes astern knew hope was
lost. The torpedo boat was slackening speed; the cream of her wake began
to slide past her sides and swirl round her bow as she slowed, went
astern, halted on the lips of danger, and then reluctantly turned.

A yell went up from the felucca as the crew saw themselves saved--a yell
of defiance.

Again the gray jet of smoke spurted from the gray port, and this time
the background of purple dusk showed the red tongue of the flame. The
sound of the report reached them, but not so swiftly as another sound--a
nerve-rending menace which shrieked in their very ears, as it seemed,
and passed, to thunder crashingly against the forehead of the crag. And
again Muhammed laughed and showed his white teeth, and roared to his
fellows to swing the yard-arm about as he spun the boat between two
waiting jaws of rock and sent her bounding out into the open before the
lash of the favoring breeze. And night fell over them--for Claire Van
Arlen the hopeless night of despair.

She looked up to find Miller standing beside her, looking down at
Aylmer's face with sombre, inquiring eyes. And she realized for the
first time that in that face the eyes were closed again, the lips
bloodless, the cheeks sunken. She gave an exclamation; she bent and
stanched the blood which still flowed from the wounded temple.

Miller picked up a bucket, seized a rope, attached it to the handle, and
slung it overboard. He placed it, brimmed with water, at her feet. She
looked up again, eyed him silently and without thanks, dipped her
handkerchief in the water and laved Aylmer's face. And Miller himself
remained silent, as if he would force the first comment from her, as if
he probed for information by mere inertness. Had he been heard? She
guessed that he was asking himself--and by force of silence, her--this
question.

A sudden instinct not to betray herself gripped her. Aylmer? Was not he
an example of a like reticence? He had not revealed the fact that his
hands were free till circumstances had revealed it, with a vengeance.
She would follow this example and so tell nothing. She pillowed Aylmer's
head gently upon a coil of rope and stood up.

"The hope of rescue is gone then?" she said quietly. "There is no chance
of their rounding the island, and encountering us later?"

He shrugged his shoulders doubtfully.

"They seldom carry search-lights--craft of that size, in the Spanish
navy, at any rate. No, Muhammed's seamanship has taken the trick this
time. Spanish captains do not waste coal lavishly, and what, after all,
have they to go on. Merely the words 'Help! Prisoners!' It might easily
have been the vagary of some half-drunken sponge-fisher."

She looked at him keenly.

"That was what he signalled?" she said. "You understood that?"

"I know the international code," he said simply. He looked down at
Aylmer again. "His escapade has not improved our position," he added.
"When Landon comes to himself--"

"He is not seriously wounded, then?" she cried in quick disappointment.
"I had hoped--I had prayed--"

"What?" he asked, as she hesitated.

"That he had been killed," she answered slowly. "Is there any escape
from the net of villainy in which he has us all entrapped?"

He looked at her silently, and the dawn of a hard smile glimmered about
his lips. He pointed aft.

"Will you come and look?" he said. "Perhaps I have undervalued your
prayers. I am no surgeon, but I would wager a larger sum on his reviving
than I would on the recovery of--this."

He touched Aylmer with the point of his foot. There was no ungentleness
in the action, but it seemed instinctive--the gesture of an autocrat or
of a dictator, seeing all men under his feet.

She gave a gesture of assent and followed him into the gloom cast by the
sail upon the stern. Landon lay within a foot of where he had fallen,
his head pillowed upon a tarpaulin. Muhammed had relinquished the tiller
to Captain Luigi and was dropping _aguardiente_ between the set lips and
the color was stealing slowly back into the cheeks which had been as
pale as Aylmer's own. Landon's eyes opened as Claire reached and stood
beside him.

They met hers at first without recognition. Then a gleam of feeling
flashed in them--a gleam which grew in fierceness as he gazed.

"I remember!" he muttered. He made a feeble effort to rise, which
Muhammed prevented by the steady pressure of a hand. "By the Lord, he
shall pay for it--and you!"

And then, meeting that glance, and stricken by the revulsion from the
hope which the events of the last few minutes had engendered, Claire
surrendered to a sense of despair. What could the future hold for her
except--the worst? As far as she was concerned, the deal with fate was
finished and she had lost finally. But even despair could not crush the
maternal, protective instinct which had sprung into being in the silo of
El Dibh, which had grown into full flower through the last dark hours in
the lazaret. She spoke quickly, on the spur of the moment.

"Him you cannot hurt," she answered. "He is escaping you; he is dying."

Landon struggled under Muhammed's restraining hand.

"Is he?" he cried, looking at Miller. "Is he? He's not going before I
get my hands on him! For God's sake, man, say he isn't! Say it isn't
true!"

Miller shrugged his shoulders apathetically.

"We'll do all we can," he temporized.

Landon gnashed his teeth and burst into hysterical weeping.

"Ah, but I wanted to have my will of him!" he cried. "It's he and all
the thousands like him that have put me here! The cursed hypocrites! I
slipped; I went against their code, and they jostled each other to
trample me when I was down! And I?" He shook his fist weakly into the
night. "I? I was no worse than the best of them. I was only myself--the
natural man--and they flung me out! And I could have repaid every stab,
every kick, on him--on him!"

He writhed and then suddenly steadied himself. Again his eyes focussed
evilly upon Claire.

"Go to him!" he ordered. "Go to him and do your utmost for him! Bring
him round and I'll be light with you; I'll save you--the worst of it.
Let him slip through your fingers, and by every devil in Hell I'll make
you pay double, double, and double that!"

She turned from him silently and in turning made a little stagger.
Miller's hand slipped under her elbow; for an instant she found that he
was supporting her. She stirred away from him in uncontrollable disgust.

A moment later she had pulled herself together; she murmured a
disjointed sentence of thanks, and moved away towards the scuppers where
Aylmer still lay motionless, realizing, as she reached it, that the gray
man was still at her side. He was looking at her keenly, but with an
impassive gaze which told her nothing.

She bent her face to the white lips. Faintly, but still distinct, she
felt the breath pass from them. She rose with a little gesture of
appeal.

"You must help me," she said. "We must get him below."

For a moment he hesitated. Then he passed his arms behind the other's
shoulders and lifted him. She bent and took his knees. Staggering again
at first, but with growing steadiness, she helped to half carry, half
drag him to the companion, into the cabin, to lay him, at last, on the
floor of the lazaret.

She drew off her jacket and arranged it under his head.

She rose and looked at Miller.

"Now, if they will give me food and water, I will do what I can," she
said simply. "Quiet is his best chance, absolute quiet."

He gave a little bow of assent.

"We must hope for the best," he answered. "You must rely on me all you
can; come into Landon's notice as little as possible. I will use my
influences, such as they are, for the best."

The hot throb of repulsion--of hate, even--throbbed up in her, knowing,
as she knew, that he was false to her, but she kept her face unmoved.
She nodded.

"Yes," she answered quietly, "unless--you think my duty is to let
him--die?"

His imperturbable face lost its calm for a moment. He was genuinely
startled.

"But no!" he cried quickly. "Things are not as bad as that! The threats
he used? Those were the results of shock, of delirium. I would prevent
that--I."

She looked at him very steadily.

"Yes?" she said. "You--a prisoner, like myself. How?"

He shrugged his shoulders vaguely.

"He is open to reason," he said. "He could not afford it; I could make
that plain to him, I have every assurance that I could."

He was looking at her searchingly--frowning, showing dissatisfaction
with himself for his slip. She was content to let it pass.

"Thank you," she answered. "You give me hope," and truly enough a wild,
incredulous hope had just arisen in her heart, for her gaze had been
still on Aylmer's pallid face at her feet.

The gray man still hesitated and then, with the air of one who has
probed an enigma the solution of which still escaped him, turned and
passed into the cabin. She heard his footsteps echo along the deck over
her head.

Aylmer's eyes opened, and then one of them closed again, in a wink!

She laid her finger warningly upon her lips. She bent till her lips
touched his ear.

"I knew it--I knew it!" she breathed joyfully. "Ah, but you nearly
spoilt it all. You smiled--I saw the beginning of it--when he made his
slip, and he might have seen it, too!"

He smiled again.

"The renegade!" he whispered. "I knew it before this last hour; I saw it
in his face when Landon came here, before. They have some understanding,
those two. And it was he who betrayed me--with his suggestion about the
halliards. I heard him, before they let them go!"

"And I!" she answered. "He is against us; we are alone, against them
all!"

"Where does his profit come in?" he asked, wonderingly. "What arguments
has Landon used; how can a man like him be the gainer?"

She shook her head.

"One has met him--in Gibraltar--in society," she said. "But do we know
anything of him; does any one know?"

He was silent for a moment.

"No," he said, at last. "No one knows. I have heard it spoken of, his
unknowableness, but no one has supplied a key to the mystery. I think--I
think if we win out of this I must set machinery to work in
Gibraltar--to find out."

"If!" she repeated sadly. "If!"

His lips set firmly.

"Not if," he answered resolutely. "When! Do you believe that men like
Landon win! You, yourself? Didn't you tell him that he would have to
pay, eventually. I'm going to present the bill--I. I know it; I have it
as a conviction!"

Her eyes glowed down at him. The dead roots of hope began to sprout in
her heart. The down-hearted, the _fainéant_? Has any natural woman a use
for such an one? No! Nature made you the leader, they cry to the male.
For God's sake, behave as one!

She offered no protest, no comment. She did not question his faith; her
matter-of-factness only asked for detail.

"Meanwhile?" she questioned. "Meanwhile?"

He made a little grimace.

"It is a gray prospect," he admitted. "I lie here, unconscious. I lie
physically--and by implication--morally. I feign myself as one on the
lip of extinction. I wait!"

She felt vaguely disappointed.

"You wait--till when?" she asked.

He smiled.

"Till a very old friend comes by," he answered. "She has seldom failed
me, and then my own laggardness was at fault. They call her
Opportunity."



CHAPTER XXII

THE PRISON


"What is to be the end?" asked Claire, suddenly, wearily. "What is to be
the end?"

Aylmer looked up from his pallet on the floor--looked at the
girl--looked at the walls of bare masonry--looked at the shaft of
sunlight which slanted through the barred window. For eight and forty
hours he had lain there, shamming, shamming, shamming. For three days
previous to his being brought to that place, he had lain as motionless
in the lazaret of the _Santa Margarita_.

Conceive it--you who walk abroad as you list! Nearly a week of inaction,
when all the time your blood is coursing healthily in your veins, your
feet itch for the road, and your wrath, above all, is suffering a
continual fever for which no remedy is presently available.

The picture, however, had its other side. Could he, in any other
circumstances, have advanced so far in intimacy with his companion?
When, in the ordinary intercourse of uneventful life, would the barrier
which she had raised against him have been flung down? Where else than
in this island prison of Salicudi would he have seen the glorious vision
of hope over that barrier's crumbling walls? Dwelling on these matters,
he was able to answer her pessimism with a genuine smile.

"When I first met you I told myself that I should have to play a waiting
game," he said. "Well, it is proving itself so, literally."

She flushed faintly.

"You must forgive me," she sighed. "We women are not taught to wait. And
in America we are allowed to be petulant, you know." She smiled. "You
Britishers have more sense of discipline. But an end? Surely you
yourself must want to see one? How long are you to lie there, paralyzed
for action?"

He was silent for a moment, and his eyes were shadowed.

"It is I who must ask forgiveness," he said at last. "Perhaps--I hardly
realized what it is--for you."

A throb of compunction stung her. She gave a little cry of protest.

"For me? It is a thousand times worse for you. I have liberty, in a
sense. They let me walk abroad, even, at times--I am not interfered
with--I can look out to sea and--and hope. I have you to lean on. But
you? You lie within these four walls and think, and think. Your only
support is within yourself. And I am a drag upon you."

And then she turned her face from the sudden passion in his eyes.

"Claire!" he said. "Claire!"

She did not answer in words. She made a little gesture which seemed to
plead for forbearance, for a postponement to an inevitable but far
distant morrow. She rose and walked to the window.

"There is a ship passing now," she reported. "Half a mile from land. I
can see her flag--the Union Jack. A Newcastle collier, I expect, by her
bulk and her grime. I suppose there are a score of unwashed deck hands
and heavers in her forecastle who would sweep this island bare of the
human vermin who infest it if we could let them know our need, if we
could signal--wave--act! Act? But to go on waiting? To have not so much
as a plan?"

He rose cautiously.

"There is no one in sight?" he asked.

She looked right and left, keenly suspicious.

"No," she said, at last. "I watched Luigi back to the houses after he
left our food. He and half a dozen more are at the landing place. Two or
three are on board the felucca, working her with sweeps into the shelter
of the little breakwater. Mr. Miller? He is sitting on a boulder,
watching--and like us, I suppose--waiting. What are we all doing but
that? Fate is to be the arbiter for all of us. We can offer no
interference."

He came up beside her, keeping in the shadow and peering cautiously
between the bars. His glance was directed at the _Santa Margarita_ as
the toilers at the sweeps slowly worked her to her moorings.

"They are making it the more difficult for us," he said slowly. "While
she lay out there in the open, she represented the weapon with which we
might have defeated Fate, if Fate is against us. Inside the breakwater
the edge of the weapon is blunt. Did Fate read my thoughts?"

She looked at him anxiously.

"You have had a plan?" she asked. "You have not been leaving all to
chance?"

"Wind--that is all I asked," he said. "A storm, a moonless night, and a
little luck. If I could have got on board the felucca with you and cut
her from her moorings, we would have played a deal with Fate then. We
would have enlisted her on our side, to take us where she willed."

Her eyes grew vivid with hope and with anxiety.

"But to get on board? We are locked in at night, bolted. And those dogs
of theirs are loose."

"That is it--they are loose," he said. "A few handfuls of food saved and
we can attract them to the window, and they will be quiet enough when
they are fed. It is merely a question of the getting out."

"And how?"

He pointed to a corner of the unmorticed wall.

"Their bars are sound enough, their bolts are out of reach of our
tampering. But the building itself? Its foundations date from the days
of Augustus, as likely as not. At night, while you slept, I tried its
stability, course by course. It was in that corner that I found the weak
spot. The lower stone I can remove at will. The one above it will fall
when the support of the first is removed. And I put pressure enough on
to the outer stones to know that a strong effort will thrust them away.
The road is open, when we choose to take it."

She clapped her hands softly. Her face glowed.

"Why not now?" she cried. "Why not choose the passing of a ship and then
signal--as you signalled to the torpedo boat?"

He shook his head.

"A warship is one thing," he objected, "a merchant ship another. We
should be poising our all on the intelligence of a look-out-man who
would be scanning the water, not the land, or of a third officer who
might not know the code international."

She sighed.

"So we wait," she said despondently.

"So we wait," he agreed. "But not for long." He was looking westward at
the sky.

"You see something?" she said quickly. "What?"

"Wind clouds," he answered. "Cirrus. Fate may be making her preparations
for to-night."

"To-night?" She repeated the word faintly, incredulously. "I wonder,"
she said slowly. "I wonder if, after all my yearning for action, I
shall--be brave when it really comes to--to-night?"

He looked down at her.

"And I?" he said. "Have I as good a chance as you to show courage?"

"You?" she answered wonderingly. "You are a man."

"Yes," he answered. "I am a man. And you, a woman, are dependent on me
and I am taking you into perils that I can only guess at, dangers that
lie absolutely in the hands of chance. For which of us is it easiest to
be brave, you or me?"

Her eyes dropped from his.

"What do you hint?" she temporized. "For me--why should it be easier for
me? The--the cases are equal, are they not?"

"No," he said quietly. "No, Claire. And you know that they are not. Not
because you are a woman, but because you are _the_ woman; because you
are you--and I--am myself--and love you!"

And this time there was a note in his voice which she had not recognized
before, vibrant, unrestrained, passionate. The thrill of it pulsed
through her; she felt it in her nerves, her very veins. She flinched
from it, she gave a tiny pant; the womanly instinct of evasion made her
draw back from him a startled pace.

"Isn't that the truth?" he asked, his voice hoarse with its intensity.
"Isn't it easy to be brave for oneself alone--easier than to be brave
for another?"

She stood looking at him, strangely, doubtfully, the shadow of dumb
entreaty in her eyes. But in her heart other shadows were fading to
disclose realities hitherto faintly suspected and half defined. Was this
the true meaning of the fear which had suddenly been born in the moment
of hope? Was it for his sake she paused upon the threshold of danger?
The protective instinct which she had recognized in herself with
wonder--had that grown into something more? Was it death with him or
life without him that she pictured as the worst that Fate could give?

The silence grew in tension but she could not break it. What was only
then revealing itself to her--could she reveal it to him? She drew back
another pace, she held out her hand as if she warded off the inevitable.

"I cannot tell," she said weakly. "But--but I think I could be brave for
myself--alone."

He made an exclamation, his arms went out to possess her, his eyes
shone--

"No!" she cried passionately. "No! Is it fair, is it right to take
advantage of our position; is it honorable?"

And then she regretted her words in the very speaking of them. The
passion faded from his face, a shadow veiled his eyes, he made a gesture
of contrition. And she? With feminine inconsistency she opened her lips
to undo what she had done, to make her victory defeat.

Again Fate intervened. Aylmer whispered warningly, slipped across the
flags, and stretched himself upon the pallet. One look through the
barred window explained his action. A hundred yards away a couple of
figures were advancing towards the building. She recognized Landon and
in his companion, Miller, talking vehemently.

She left the window and waited, sitting on the rough stool which was
placed at the pallet foot.

A minute later the sound of bolts withdrawn and a key in a lock echoed
under the stone arch. Landon entered alone, debonair, smiling, but with
eyes which were ominous of intention.

He looked down at the pallet.

"Our sufferer--our patient? Do we perceive no signs of progress?"

There was danger in his voice; she read it unmistakably.

She shrugged her shoulders.

"He is no different," she said apathetically. "He has spoken, once or
twice. I see no change."

"That is the misfortune of it all," said Landon. "You see no change. Can
your nursing be at fault--not from want of care, let me say at once, but
from want of knowledge? Must we call in further advice in consultation?"

His face was white and haggard below the soiled bandage which crossed
his forehead. The sharpness of his jaw, his sunken cheeks, made of his
smile a very evil thing. She flinched before it.

"I cannot tell," she answered wearily.

"His movements, now?" grinned Landon. "Do they give no indication of his
condition? Has he no conscious interests?"

The eyes below the bandage glittered and fear stabbed her suddenly. Were
they betrayed?

She shook her head.

"You see for yourself," she answered, and made a gesture towards the
motionless form on the pallet.

Landon laughed.

"No, I do not see," he said. "I am not a physician. I cannot walk to a
bedside and deliver sentences of death or reprieves to life like the
miracle mongers of Harley Street. Unconsciousness? How is it diagnosed?
Sometimes by actual experiment _in corpore vile_, is it not?" He leaned
over the bed. His hand slipped into a pocket and reappeared holding an
open penknife. He thrust it suddenly into Aylmer's arm.

She gave a cry of indignation; she seized his hand and dragged him back.

He laughed savagely and tried to fling her off. She threw her whole
weight upon his wrist, clinging to it.

And then he laughed again, with malignant enjoyment. He changed his
tactics. He no longer evaded her grip. He jerked her towards him. And
this time the penknife point found a new sheath. Deliberately he stabbed
it against her shoulder and--held it there!

She shrieked.

There was a stirring from the pallet bed. With a mighty leap Aylmer was
on his feet! His face was convulsed; his eyes were lightnings.

For the third time Landon laughed, triumphantly. In the same motion he
released his prisoner and sent her spinning against Aylmer's
outstretched arm. He himself was at the door and outside it, slamming
it, locking it, flinging home bolt after bolt before the two inside had
recovered from the sudden shock. A moment later he reappeared at the
window.

"Well, my early convalescent!" he mocked. "Have you no thanks for such a
sudden recovery? And you, sister-in-law, for such a lesson in the
healing art? Think of the efforts wasted on that malingerer. Aren't you
blushing for the ease with which you were deceived?"

And then the twinkle of wicked laughter faded from his eyes. He drew
near the window bars and glowered down at them evilly.

"Or are you blushing for yourself, you wanton!" he cried. "You who
deceived me into leaving you with him as a nurse, and knew that he
needed none. A little paragraph with hints--or more than hints, the
truth--about such a matter, and where do you stand? Are there society
rags in London and New York ready to accept that sort of matter? Yes,
virtuous cousin and sister-in-law, I think there are, I think there
are!"

Neither of them flinched. They looked at him fixedly and, in the girl's
case, almost wonderingly. And Landon read the message of her incredulity
with a chuckle of enjoyment.

"I keep on presenting surprises to you, do I not?" he grinned. "My
versatility, the quickness with which I seize new points of humor
impresses you?"

For a moment she was silent. And then, as if a force beyond her control
forced her to speak, she answered him.

"I did not believe in the possibility of there being a thing as vile as
yourself," she said. "I did not think God allowed such as you to live!"

The satyr-like grin broadened across his haggard cheeks. He leered down
at them.

"I revel in it!" he answered. "By the Lord! Till you've tried absolutely
unrestrained wickedness, till you've thrown off every sort of control,
till you're one with the devil and proud of it, you don't know what
enjoyment is!" His eyes glowed; he smote his fist ecstatically on the
stones. "It's great!" he cried. "Great!"

A gray figure came suddenly into view behind him. Miller's face showed
white against the shadow of the dusk which was heralding its coming by
the deepening azure of the sea and sky. And his glance seemed to hold a
significance which the prisoners were meant to read, but for which they
had no clue.

Landon heard him and wheeled.

He surveyed him slowly and then he laughed.

"I'm beyond you now, teacher!" he derided. "I used to admire you--the
callousness, the relentlessness--which you could put into a job! But I'm
way up above you. Decency had to be part of your stock-in-trade."

He laughed again, his harsh, cackling merriment, and there was a note in
it which struck a new chord of fear in Claire's heart. It was inhuman,
unintelligent, this laughter. It fell poignantly, horribly on the ear.

"To-morrow--_mañana_!" chuckled Landon. "I'm coming back with all my
friends. We'll give hours of daylight to the job and, by God! we'll make
a good one! Think it over; give it your attention through the night! My
terms, every word of them or--well, try and guess the persuasions I'll
use. Meditate on them; paint them up in your imaginations and then
you'll fall short! And as for restraints, remember that in my particular
case there isn't such a thing, not one!"

He stood staring down at them through a moment of leering
self-satisfaction, and then slowly, reluctantly, turned away. He took
Miller's arm and drew him insistently down the path. His evil laughter
came back to them shrill upon the evening breeze.

Inside their prison the two turned and confronted each other. Then
Aylmer spoke.

"He has defied God, and the judgment of God has fallen on him. He is
insane--that is evident! Insane with malice, with his surrender to the
devil and all his works."

Her lips were parched. She whispered.

"And to-morrow?" she questioned, thickly. "To-morrow--we shall have to
surrender, too. To him?"

He clenched his fists.

"No!" he said. "No! Not while Fate has given us to-night--to-night!"



CHAPTER XXIII

PADRE SIGISMONDI


The presage of the afternoon sky was amply fulfilled by midnight. The
western gale howled through the window bars and the sound of the sea's
thunder rolled up from the beach. For the Mediterranean it was a gale
beyond the normal, one that had borrowed strength from its Atlantic kin.
It lashed the green islands of the archipelago with unaccustomed
violence. The vine poles fell in ranks before its blast; the lava dust
whirled up in spirals; the pebbles clattered along the face of the
shingle. And yet there was something strange, noticeable, almost
ominous, about the tempest. It had none of the northern breath of ice.
It was a hot wind; in spring or summer, and had it risen in the south,
one would have called it sirocco and kept in the shadow throughout its
blowing. But this wind blew from the north and the month was December.
The islanders mused over the phenomenon debatingly.

Inside the prison the storm muffled sounds which, however, no listener
was abroad to detect. A common table fork his only implement, Aylmer was
levering the massive corner-stones inch by inch from their seating. The
lower one had already been removed, but the upper one, as expected, had
not fallen from its place. He panted as he put forth his strength upon
it. The ebb and flow of his pulses swelled in the half-healed scar on
his temple. Blood was flowing from a few superficial cuts upon his
fingers. He ground his teeth and tugged at the stone savagely, worrying
it as a terrier might worry a defiant rat. And then, with an unexpected
jerk, it fell out upon him bodily. He dropped backwards, the stone's
weight upon his leg.

He gave a half-muffled cry, not of pain, but of satisfaction. The rest
was easy; the road was open.

Then, as he panted in the relief of accomplished effort, Fate rebuked
his satisfaction with a sudden threat. A step sounded coming up the
gravel.

His temperamental coolness and presence of mind never stood a test
better. He stood up, raised each stone in quick succession, and placed
them swiftly, carefully, and silently beneath the coverlet of his
companion's bed. She flung herself down beside them. He drew his own
pallet into the corner from which the stones had been removed and lay,
his face to the wall, the huddle of the bed clothes hiding the opening.
A moment later a light shone through the window. The light of a lamp
illuminated a wrinkled Italian face.

The watcher blinked at them suspiciously, grunted, and then with a
half-articulate expression of satisfaction, turned away. The light
bobbed slowly off into the distance, flaring and guttering before the
force of the wind. Inside the prison a sigh went up--a chorussed echo of
relief.

"Landon is taking no chances," said Aylmer, in a whisper. "We are to be
visited, at intervals. That is evident."

He heard something like the sound of a sob in the darkness.

"It means defeat--this?" asked Claire. "Fate is setting her face against
us. We are not even to have our chance!"

"No!" he said grimly. "Fate is not against us. I feel it, I have
believed it all along. And if she is, then it is our duty to defy her.
After all, we can use the chief source of danger to defeat suspicion;
that is easy."

He rose cautiously and plucked the remaining stones from the hole. He
placed them in his own bed; he arranged matters carefully. And then he
made a motion towards the new-made opening.

"Will you lead?" he said quietly. "Will you be the first to
confront--Fate?"

She gave a little gasp.

"I?" she said, and hesitated, fear in her eyes.

"You, if you will," he answered simply. "Make your way out and hide
yourself in the nearest convenient shadow. Then, if he returns before I
can join you, await me. If not--" He shrugged his shoulders. "I shall be
at your heels."

She still paused, and her fingers clenched and unclenched.

"I did not expect--to be--separated," she breathed. "My strength--I did
not realize it at first--is coming all from you."

His hand went out into the darkness and touched her.

"From now on, it will be used in your service," he said quietly. "For
you and you alone." She felt the hand quiver. "Whether you ask it or
not, whether I am to be all to you in the future, or nothing. It will be
there--for your asking."

And then, because the need of that strength came upon her with a force
which she could not control, she gripped the protecting hand between her
fingers and--Fate alone knows why--raised it to her lips. The next
instant she had slipped past him in the darkness and was drawing herself
through the opening. She rose to her knees, to her feet. She stood out
upon the wind-swept earth, free. Free of the material prison behind her.
Had she not laid upon herself new bonds? It was a thought too new, too
indefinite, too strangely sweet. The tumult of her feelings was in
accord with the tumult of the night.

[Illustration: _She gripped the protecting hand between her fingers_]

She stood, expectant, her ears alert for sounds. There was no grating of
pebbles upon the path. But from the hole at her feet the faint rip of
clothing torn against the angle of the stone. The next instant Aylmer
had emerged, but did not rise. His hands, returning to the opening,
still worked at something within. And then she gave a little gasp. A
light shone at her feet. It made a tiny, yellow splash in the darkness
and fell--on Aylmer's face.

Terror paralyzed her; she stood as if turned to stone; her hands
clenched into her clothing upon her breast. And Aylmer lay as
motionless, the golden gleam falling directly into his eyes, which did
not even blink.

A sound broke the stillness--a sound which came from the far side of
their prison--and the light disappeared. She heard footsteps which
retreated; she recognized again the grunt which told of another
inspection made to the inspector's content. But what had saved
them--what?

Aylmer rose and stood beside her. His hand gently gripped her elbow and
drew her out into the roar and beat of the tempest. He headed inland;
the path which the sentinel had taken was the one which led towards the
shore.

A minute later she breathed her question. And he laughed lightly in the
darkness. The sound, incongruous as it seemed to her sense of
ever-menacing fear, thrilled her strangely. If he could laugh, was not
Fate laughing with him? Was there not a smile on the face of Hope?

"I was only just through the hole when he came, when he flashed his
lantern at what he supposed was my body, recumbent on the bed. I was
holding up the bed clothes _from outside_; I had not had time to shove
the stones back into place."

She shuddered at the nearness of the hazard. Supposing the man had come
at the very moment of escape--supposing?

"But the light?" she protested. "The light shone upon your face!"

He laughed again.

"The bed clothes had a hole in them!" he said. "I held them up into the
form of human shoulders, and through a rent his lantern beat directly on
my face! He could not, of course, see me, but I got a good view of him.
It was Luigi himself, this time. Has Fate been whispering to him, do you
think? Has she made him suspicious?"

She stumbled and caught at him to steady herself. He looked down in
sudden, quick compunction.

"It has been too much for you!" he said anxiously. "You are feeling
faint?"

"No!" she said quietly. "I am trying to think of it as a nightmare from
which I shall wake directly, but it is real! Whenever that comes home to
me it--it is a pain. Well, it will not be a long ordeal now, will it? We
meet Fate at the landing stage, and she will give her decision. Can we
unmoor the _Santa Margarita_ from inside the breakwater, or can we not?
She will know."

He nodded.

"In five minutes we, too, shall know. We are circling for the Marina
now. A couple of hundred yards and we shall be there!"

They strode on into the darkness, with eyes and ears alert. They heard
the battling of the waves against the stones of the tiny pier, but what
they did not hear was the sound of singing cordage in the felucca's
rigging.

Aylmer halted with a sudden, muffled exclamation.

"They have unshipped the mast!" he cried sharply, and this time she
recognized, even in his voice, the note of defeat.

She echoed his exclamation; she followed at his heels as he ran out upon
the little breakwater. No, there had been no room for mistake. The great
mast with its cross spar lay along the stone flags. The hull was snugly
berthed alongside it, within the tiny harbor. The dingy? There was none;
they had cast it loose when they fled from the torpedo boat through the
island channel.

For a moment he did not speak. He stood, looking silently at the
dismantled boat, the raging sea, the swinging lights of a passing
steamer. Then he turned and shook his head.

"To step that mast into place again is beyond one man's strength," he
said. "To fling ourselves out into that whirl on a mastless hull is to
court death inevitably. What is the alternative? We could stand in front
of the shed here, screened from view inland, and signal some passing
vessel with flares, if we had the means of making a light. That would
not be a good chance, but it has possibilities."

"And I have matches!" she said eagerly. "I have my chatelaine still. I
have even my purse yet. So far they have not robbed me."

He turned as she spoke and without comment ran back across the shingle.
He began to pluck handfuls of the dry, bent grass which found a sparse
livelihood in the belt of sand between the shore and the vineyards. He
returned, rummaged among the litter around the shed, broke up some
stray pieces of driftwood into chips, and thrust a lighted match among
the bents. A flame shot up, passed from the tinder to the wood, and
within a minute was a well-lit fire. He twisted the remaining handfuls
of grass into spirals, wetted them slightly in the sea, and held them to
the flame.

They burnt slowly with a red glow, as he swung them to and fro in the
wind; in dashes, in dots, in circles, he spelled messages into the
night, but no answering lantern or rocket came from the sea. And she
watched apathetically. For her hope was dead again, the hand of Fate had
closed. This was action; this helped them to avoid thinking, to avert
anticipation, but success was a matter outside her calculations. The
sense of nightmare closed down upon her again. The storm, the red
flashes against the purple darkness, the wild unaccustomedness of
everything heightened the illusion. But when would she wake? Ah, when
would she wake?

And then--she rubbed her eyes. A light--surely this was no freak of her
fevered eyesight?--danced into view within a couple of hundred yards of
the shore. For a moment it swung to the lift and surge of the waves
alone, but a moment later it rose half a dozen feet into the air, and
flashed and circled as the charred torch in Aylmer's hand was
circling--an answer to their message of despair. She gasped with
eagerness; she cried aloud.

Was it fancy or did another cry reach them through the thunder of the
waves?

The light stayed motionless for an instant, and then swung towards them.
Whatever vessel was bearing it had turned its prow towards the shore.
Aylmer caught up another glowing handful of bents and ran out to the
breakwater's end. Claire's heart beat in suffocating throbs as she
followed.

Again a cry reached them, and Aylmer waved his beacon vigorously. A
sudden shaft of moonlight sank through a rift in the flying clouds.

They saw it then--a dark mass which plunged and heaved among the white
crests, and drifted nearer and nearer. There was no sail set, but they
could see the rise and fall of a couple of great oars which steadied the
boat as it advanced by drifting only. It was less than a cable length
distant now, passing through the ring of rocks which guarded the harbor
entrance.

They held their breath. Ten seconds would do it, but ten seconds held an
infinitude of possibilities. If the boat broached to, if its prow,
indeed, deflected a couple of yards from the course, would not that give
Fate a chance to fling her scorn upon their rising hopes? Their eyes
were strained. Claire's hand was clenched till her nails seemed to sink
into the flesh of her palm. And then she gave a sigh of relief. The boat
had passed the outer rock, was heading straight for the inner harbor and
the calm.

Fate laughed harshly.

A gust stormed in from the sea, caught the boat's prow, swung it, caused
the port side rower to meet its strength too swiftly with his own. They
heard a crack--heard it distinctly above the uproars of the gale. The
oar had broken between the thole-pins; the rower was down.

There was another crashing sound, louder this time, and menacing. A
great sea raced beneath the laboring keel, lifted it, shook it, and
flung it aside, full upon the rock. The white gleam of the new-made
splinters reached them through the smother of the foam fifty yards away.

Aylmer cried out and raced back along the stones. His hands plucked at
the cordage which was folded about the felucca's mast, and drew out a
rope. He came back at speed, unwinding the coils as he came. He thrust
the loose end into her hands.

"Get a purchase against a stone and then hold on--hold on!" he ordered.
He flung off his coat.

She cried out in protest; she clung to him.

"No!" she cried. "No!"

Very gently, very firmly, her hand was drawn aside. He bent over her;
something touched faintly--very faintly--her lips. The next instant she
was alone. He had leaped--far out into the grip of the tide.

She caught her breath and clutched the rope; she flung herself down and
wedged her limbs behind a boulder. Fate was relentless, she told
herself, was cruel beyond even her darkest anticipations. For now her
one support was to be denied her; she was to be left alone. She set her
lips grimly. No, she would never see Aylmer again, but she would defy
Fate! She was to be crushed, but she would go down fighting; she would
be worthy of herself--and of him.

The vagrant shaft of moonlight was gone again; the darkness was
well-nigh impenetrable. The rope swung between her fingers unstraining.
The minutes passed one by one; the tension of expectancy plucked at her
nerves; she shivered, but not with cold. Even if it was the worst that
was to come upon her she wanted to know--to know.

The rope grew taut.

It was as if an electric shock thrilled her. She braced herself against
the stone, and her muscles tightened; slowly, using her strength to its
utmost but with steady effort, she began to haul it in foot by foot. It
came heavily but unceasingly, the coils unwinding fathom after fathom
at her side.

And then the strain ceased as suddenly as it had begun. A voice hailed
her out of the darkness, almost at her feet. A dark bulk rose at the
breakwater's edge.

Aylmer staggered towards her and laid something on the stones--something
which stirred uneasily but unavailingly, clogged, as it seemed, by the
weight of its sodden clothing.

She knelt beside it. She brushed the lank hair from a dripping face.

Aylmer waved her back.

"There is another!" he shouted. "Hold on if you can! Hold on!" and so
plunged back into the surf. For the second time she braced herself to
endure the strain--to wait--to agonize with expectation. And again Fate
played with her, racked her between hope and fear, drew out the strain
and then, as suddenly, relaxed it. Aylmer crept out upon the stones,
gasping, doggedly clinging to a new burden.

This time it was the bearer who staggered and fell, the burden who rose
unsteadily, and peered into his rescuer's face.

She dropped upon her knees beside him. Pale, clean-cut ascetic features
were lifted to hers. Two dark brown eyes inspected her with startled
incredulity.

And then the man rose and--the act was instinctive, it was
obvious--doffed his hat.

"Signora," he said in Italian. "Signora! This is Salicudi, is it not? I
am at a loss--I do not understand."

For a moment she hesitated, looking at him. The long black garment which
clung about him reached to his feet. Suddenly she recognized it, and,
with recognition, a little cry escaped her. It was a _soutane_. And
this was no sailor. She was confronted by a priest.

As she opened her lips to find a reply, something clattered behind her;
something rushed, calling upon the names of innumerable saints, out of
the darkness, and seized her shoulder. A harsh voice rang into the
echoes of the night.

"To me--to me, all of you! They are escaping! Blood of My Lady, the
prisoners are loose!"

The man in the soutane whirled fiercely upon the newcomer. And as he
turned the moon broke through the scurry of the drift and fell upon the
group in cold brilliance.

"Prisoners!" The voice was incredulous, wrathful, and above all full of
command. "Prisoners! You speak of--whom?"

The hand upon Claire's shoulder dropped. Her captor fell away as if
struck by a physical blow.

"Padre Sigi!" he stammered, and his voice was convincing of his
amazement. "Padre Sigi!"

The other nodded imperiously.

"Padre Sigismondi," he agreed. "At your service, my good Luigi. At your
service!"



CHAPTER XXIV

LUIGI'S HOSPITALITY


The smuggler's eyes expressed the limits of amazement. He stared at the
newcomer. He turned his glance to Aylmer, as if he sought information
there. He brought it back and focussed it upon the dripping _soutane_.
He made inarticulate noises of incredulity; he flung up his hands with
gestures of bewilderment.

"You arrive--how, reverend father?" he cried. "What have you used? The
wings of a bird, the fins of a fish?"

"The eyes of a God-fearing priest," retorted Padre Sigismondi. "I saw
signals being flashed from your island. With Emmanuele here," he pointed
to the dripping figure which still lay upon the stones, "I was passing
your abode of sin on my way to Stromboli. I had, in fact, no choice--I
was being blown there. I saw the signals, I say, but read no meaning in
them. Some unconfessed wretch needs extreme unction, say I to myself,
and steered among the teeth of your reefs. One of our sweeps broke at a
critical moment. This cavalier here leaped in to our rescue. I have not
properly thanked him yet because I am awaiting explanation of the words
I heard as you thrust yourself upon us. Prisoners, did you say? It must
be a cataclysm of morality which has made you a gaoler or a judge, my
wonderful Luigi."

The smuggler shivered and blenched.

"This man and this woman are in a sense prisoners," he allowed. "They
are not on good terms with our other--guests. We have had to restrain
their liberties."

Padre Sigismondi regarded him fixedly. The unfortunate Luigi's tongue
protruded with nervousness; his cheek muscles twitched. The priest
shrugged his shoulders as he turned to Aylmer.

"I arrive unceremoniously," he smiled, "but not inopportunely, it seems.
May I have your version of the extraordinary circumstances in which I
find the Signora and yourself, Signor?"

Aylmer smiled back at him.

"They are simple enough, father," he answered. "We are prisoners; there
is no need for our friend here to beat about the bush. At the
instigation of--of a certain enemy of ours, in whose pay the good Luigi
finds himself, we were kidnapped from the port of Melilla and brought
here. It was our signals you saw. May I add my profound regrets at the
misfortune you experienced in answering them?"

"The Church is a boat to the bad, but possibly a gainer in
righteousness," said the other. "I may be the means of preventing some
irretrievable sin on the part of these islanders. You were being held to
ransom, do I understand?"

The dripping figure at his feet stirred and rose weakly to a standing
posture. A cackle of laughter came from between the chattering teeth.

"The gaol-bird as gaoler--eh, but that is a rib-rending jest, Luigi. You
have imagination, _amico_, imagination and, it seems, opportunity. You
will go far!"

The sailor turned his wrinkled face on the abashed smuggler; his white
teeth flashed a prodigious smile. He seemed to find nothing
disconcerting in the situation, but desired to show quickness in seizing
its points of humor.

"He will certainly go far, my good Emmanuele," agreed Padre Sigismondi,
drily. "As far as the penal station on Procida if I am not hugely
mistaken, or unless he shows a most improbable repentance. What have we
here? Other warders in this private penitentiary?"

Footsteps clattered along the tiny causeway. With a rush, half a dozen
figures swept up to them through the moonlight, Landon at their head.
This was the answer to Signor Luigi's frantic shouts.

The rush wavered, hesitated, came to a halt. The islanders recognized
the grim, aggressive form in the _soutane_ with sharp exclamations of
amazement and alarm. Landon, without their experience, felt the
impalpable infection of their fear. He, too, halted, staring
mistrustfully at the priest and his companions.

He shook Luigi by the elbow.

"What is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

The smuggler made a deferential outward movement of his palms.

"It is a visit, an unexpected visit, from our--our vicar," he explained.
"It is the Padre Sigi--Sigismondi, I should say."

The padre stepped forward and spoke in crisp, imperturbable tones.

"I am peripatetic confessor to these islands, Signor," he said. "There
is a bitter need of six priests to each island, rather than six islands
to a priest. It is an abode of wickedness, this. That, perhaps, has not
been hidden from you?"

Landon kept a moment's silence. Then he smiled.

"I confess that I have not augmented its morality, in bulk, Signor," he
said. "In fact, by adding the two who stand behind you to its
population, I have done far otherwise. Instead of being where you find
them, they should be under lock and key."

"Why?" demanded the priest, laconically.

"Because they robbed me," answered Landon. "Because, for wicked purposes
of their own, they took from me--not gold, but what is beyond the price
of gold or buying--my only son."

"You accuse them of--kidnapping?" The good man's voice was coldly
incredulous.

Landon made a gesture of assent.

"Of that and of attempted murder. They hired Moorish desperadoes to
attack me, to ride me down."

"And you have made of yourself not only prosecutor, but judge, jury, and
keeper of their prison?"

"These things happened in Africa, outside civilized jurisdiction. Was I
to lack justice when it lay in the hollow of my hand?"

"Are there no consular courts? If not, you cannot bring your private
cause to private verdict in the dominions of the King of Italy, however
bad his title to the throne."

"Your reverence is a Legitimist?" grinned Landon.

"In every sense of the word, Signor. My sense of legitimacy finds your
arguments unsound."

He looked at Claire with an apologetic bow.

"And as a matter of fact, Signora, I have not heard your statement. How
does it vary from this gentleman's? Or does it, perhaps, corroborate
it?"

She looked at him very steadily.

"The man to whom you have been talking," she said slowly, "is, I think,
Signor, the worst man whom God permits to live."

He made a little gesture of protest.

"You have suffered at his hands--is that it? But your sentence is too
sweeping a one, is it not? Surely, Signora, surely?"

She shook her head.

"No!" she said determinedly. "Traitor, forger, thief--we know him to be
all these. And last, but not least, murderer. A murderer of souls. I do
not know if he has taken a fellow creature's life, but for five years he
racked into the numbness of despair the soul of my sister, who was his
wife."

He made a tiny exclamation of sympathy; he held up his hand as if he put
away from him a spectre of evil.

He looked back to Landon.

"You have heard, Signor?" he said.

"I have heard," said Landon, easily. "As a tale it has no originality
and therefore little interest for me. I have heard it a hundred times.
Your reverence found fault, a moment back, with my self-assumed status
of judge. Are you going to borrow the cloak which you do not permit me
to wear? You have heard both sides. To what proof can you refer a
decision?"

The long, lean figure drew itself up very rigidly.

"I am a sinful man myself, Signor. I make no decisions. But I have been
appealed to, as I understand, by those whom I find in your power. I
shall not permit your restraint of them to continue. You can refer any
grievance you have against them to properly constituted tribunals over
there." He lifted his arm and pointed south to where storm and night hid
Sicily.

He turned to Luigi.

"Emmanuele and I are, as you see, sodden to the skin. It may reach your
great intelligence, by degrees, that we need warmth and refreshment."

The smuggler made an apologetic gesture.

"But certainly, Reverenza. There is in the house a fire. My poor
provisions are at your service."

The priest looked towards Claire with another courtly doffing of his
hat.

"And you, Signora, and you, Signor, will add to my felicity by sharing
both with me?"

She looked at him gravely.

"They have not starved us; we had food a couple of hours ago," she said.
"But your company, here and to the mainland, is a boon straight from the
hand of God."

He inclined his head in assent.

"I am His servant, Signora," he said. "I thank Him for permitting me to
serve Him, in serving you. Shall we make our way to the house? The hour
must be close on midnight."

He made a motion towards the path. He looked imperturbably at Landon,
who, with Muhammed, still stood astride it.

"You appear to be blocking the lady's way, Signor," he said. "Not
intentionally, I dare to hope."

Landon shrugged his shoulders and drew aside.

"On the contrary, your reverence. Not for worlds would I stand between
you and refreshment--and sleep."

He looked at Muhammed with a half-sardonic, half-inquiring gaze as he
spoke. And there was a faintly emphasized inflection on the last two
words.

The Moor looked back at him impassively, and then drew aside with an
obsequious droop of the head.

But to Claire and, to a less extent to Aylmer, there was a queer,
indefinite sense of something which impended--something which racked
them with suspicion in the attitude of those about them. Landon's
surrender was too facile; Luigi's deference too pliant; Muhammed's
apathetic eyes were never less convincing of guilelessness. When they
reached the cottage, and stood with Padre Sigismondi before the blaze in
the great open hearth and watched the quick preparations which were
being made to improvise a meal, the unreality of their surroundings
seemed to grow in significance. No one interfered with them; no one even
noticed them. Luigi set the table; Muhammed busied himself with the
coffee-pot; Landon held the father's dripping garments to the blaze
while their owner assumed a sailor's trousers and jersey in an adjoining
room. It was too incredible, this sudden turning of tables. They looked
at each other doubtfully.

Their speculations received a sudden interruption. The door opened to
admit Miller.

He was half dressed. He blinked--it was apparent that he and sleep had
parted company a short half minute before.

"I heard noises," he said, and then his glance fell upon the two who
stood near the fireplace, side by side. His usual phlegm seemed to
desert him. He gave an exclamation.

"You!" he cried. "You!"

He wheeled towards Landon.

"Will you explain?" he cried harshly. "What is happening?"

"I entertain guests--a small, but select, family party," grinned Landon.

The gray man stared at him with still unappeased surprise. Then,
suddenly, his face cleared. He looked at Claire; he looked on beyond her
to Aylmer.

"You have met his terms? You see the hopelessness of it all; you have
been wise?"

His voice was smooth, now, and had lost its harsh tones of amazement. He
purred his approbation.

Aylmer laughed.

"We have been wise, my dear Miller," he agreed. He laughed again as
Padre Sigismondi briskly entered the room. He had the aspect of an
ascetic but experienced mariner in his new garb. He bowed to Miller
courteously but inquiringly. The inquiry, it was to be noticed, was
directed in part towards Aylmer and his companion.

But Aylmer offered no introduction. He drew forward a chair, and placed
it in front of the fire.

"A good roasting after your immersion? Let me prescribe that," he said.

The priest looked at him and then gave a cry of commiseration.

"But you yourself, Signor--you remain in your sodden clothes?"

"For a very simple reason, father," said Aylmer, smiling. "I was taken
prisoner, but not my luggage. I stand up in my belongings."

The house began to resound with the recriminations which the priest
addressed to Luigi. Why had he not provided the cavalier with a suitable
change of raiment while his own clothes dried? Why had he not done this;
why had he not done that?

The smuggler ran to and fro distractedly. A jersey came from one press.
A shirt from another. A cupboard supplied trousers; a deplorable collar
which had had no recent acquaintance with a laundry was even offered and
declined. Aylmer retired into the adjoining room, and Landon, on his
return, with imperturbable aplomb received and began to dry the wet
clothes he had taken off. Miller reviewed these proceedings with
unqualified amazement. Offered no key to the position, he proceeded to
probe for one.

"Your reverence has voyaged far?" he hazarded.

"More miles than I care to remember, Signor," said the other,
courteously. "But ever, alas, in a circle. My peregrinations have been
bounded, ever since my ordination, by Naples on the north and Palermo or
Messina in the south. I see much earth and sky and water, especially the
latter, but I add nothing to geography. I am amphibious, that is all."

His "ordination"? The gleam of discovery woke in Miller's eyes. A
priest, was it? But the presence of Aylmer and Miss Van Arlen--how was
that to be explained? And how far had the newcomer gauged the situation.

"Your reverence finds in us unexpected additions to your flock," he
said. "The population of Salicudi has increased since you last visited
it."

"To my very natural satisfaction," said Sigismondi, imperturbably. He
looked at the steaming bowl of polenta and the coffee-pot which Luigi
had set upon the table. Emmanuele came in, wrapped in a sheepskin coat
and grinning at the food expectantly. His master greeted him with a nod.
"It appears that we are to feast and feast alone, my son," he said.
"These friends of ours insist on having dined two hours ago. May the
Blessed bless to us this refreshment."

He seated himself and began to eat slowly, but with relish.

"Heat is a great tonic," he remarked reflectively. "The contents of this
bowl and, above all, of this admirable coffee-pot, will erase the
remembrance of the discomforts of the night. And then sleep, but not too
much of it. Luigi, my friend, we must be off at dawn."

The smuggler's eyebrows rose into arcs.

"How, Reverence?" he exclaimed. "At dawn, and whither, if you please?"

"By way of Celsa, where an infant awaits baptism--and my friends, I dare
to hope, will excuse the short delay--to Messina. Where else, my good
Luigi? That surely is the place where your guests can most conveniently
adjust their misunderstandings."

The smuggler shrugged his shoulders.

"I am at your service, father," he said, and looked vacantly at the
opposite wall. But the tail of his eye, Aylmer noted, was on Landon. Was
there a message, or inquiry, in it?

"All of us," said Landon, smoothly, "must find your proposition a very
practical one. May I hasten to add my approval of it?"

He looked smilingly at Aylmer, at Claire, lastly at Muhammed. The
Moor--was it Aylmer's fancy?--answered with a tiny nod. There was
sarcasm in this glance of Landon's; there was menace; there was--so
Aylmer told himself--malignant triumph.

Padre Sigismondi nodded absently. He presented his coffee-cup to the
Moor to be refilled, and as the brown liquid ran from the spout, watched
it with a slow, stolid abstraction. His mental alertness seemed to be
relaxing with physical refreshment. He offered no further remarks; he
plied his spoon upon the polenta slowly, and yet more slowly.

Suddenly Emmanuele, the sailor, dropped his cup in the act of taking a
more than usually copious draught. He looked stupidly at the coarse
crockery as it broke upon the floor.

Sigismondi shook a finger at him, a finger which, somehow, he seemed to
have under no proper command. "Careless one!" he mumbled. "Careless one!
Where are your manners?" And then, suddenly, as if he heaved back a
weight, he rose unsteadily to his feet. He threatened Luigi with his
clenched fist.

"Traitorous dog!" he cried, and fell senseless to the floor.

His companion stared at him stupidly, plunged forward as if to bring him
aid, and then fell, too, at his feet. The pair lay where they had
fallen, unmoving.

At the back of the room Landon broke out into pleasant laughter.

Aylmer darted forward and bent to shake Sigismondi fiercely by the
shoulder. Claire cried to him warningly.

Too late!

Landon and Luigi had flung themselves upon him from behind. Muhammed had
dropped a looped cord across his shoulders. There was a moment's
confusion--the corner of the table smashed under a chance blow--and then
stillness. Lashed with cords into rigidity, Aylmer lay upon the planks,
and Landon, gazing down, spat upon his upturned face.

"You clever fool!" he derided. "To think to have cornered me--me!"

He looked rapidly at his watch and turned to Luigi.

"It is five hours to dawn," he said. "Where is it we are to take them?
There is no possibility for delay?"

The smuggler threw out his hands with an air of fatalism.

"The headquarters of the Society--there is no other place!" he said.
"With this wind, four hours or less will see us there. They will charge
a commission; you will have to bear with that. But we shall have perfect
privacy and, if you will, perfected means of dealing with this man's
obstinacy. And there will be adepts, who will give you their assistance
for the pleasure of the thing."

Landon nodded.

"Do you hear, my friend, do you hear?" he cried, thrusting his foot
against Aylmer's cheek. "You have wriggled well in my coils--I grant you
that. You have twisted and, for the moment, escape seemed open--wide
open--before you. But against me? No one prevails there, no one!"

"One may--yet."

The voice was Claire's. Landon wheeled towards her.

"That shows a very determined optimism, sister-in-law," he said. "And
who, if the knowledge is not privileged?"

"God," she said quietly, and met his eyes unflinchingly.



CHAPTER XXV

FATE'S FINAL WORD


Storm, darkness, despair--these had been the sole comrades for the two
who lay bound in their old quarters in the _Santa Margarita's_ lazaret.
Within a few minutes of the moment in which Padre Sigismondi had
succumbed to the islander's treacherous hospitality, those who had
sought his protection had been prisoners once more, and the felucca's
mast had been stepped anew. For three hours it had bent before the
strength of the northern wind--the hot, oppressive breath which seemed
to blow no longer from Nature's lips but in her very face. For it was an
unnatural wind--in temperature, in the quarter from which it came, in
dampness. The rigging slackened in the humid gusts, but the great sail
bellied out magnificently. They had torn across the broad waste of
waters at racing speed. Captain Luigi announced with legitimate pride
that they had come a matter of five and fifty kilometres. The land
loomed up before them mountainously a short five miles away.

Landon peered into the darkness. Lights shone far to the left of their
position--lights in rows, lights white, lights dusky orange, and far
beyond the main mass of the illumination one red star which winked in
solemn intervals.

"Messina," explained Luigi, tersely. "The red beam? That is the Faro."

"And we land where?" asked Landon.

"Here, if the Holy Mother gives us her protection," said the skipper,
and pointed straight ahead. "In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred there
is no difficulty about it. The port police--there are three of them--are
cousins of my own and, it is needless to say, controlled by the Society.
In fifteen minutes you will see."

"The hundredth chance?" said Landon. "That is--?"

"The Carbineers, Signor. Or rather one Carbineer--Sergeant Pinale, who
has been at the bottom of many an honest contrabandist's misfortune.
_Brutta bestia!_ He will not keep to any ordered sequence in his goings
and comings. But the men of the Society will know. If they answer our
signals, all is well."

Landon looked at him debatingly.

"Who is to answer signals at this hour of the night, my good Luigi? Your
colleagues will be in their more or less virtuous beds."

The smuggler smiled a superior smile.

"The Society never sleeps, Signor, and it has trained the men in its
ranks to remember as much. High on the blank wall of hill above the port
is a watch-tower, though only a private dwelling-house to all seeming.
There is a need for the sons of the Mafia to have an open door into
Sicily at any moment of the day or night."

He called one of the hands to the tiller as he finished speaking and
went forward. He came back, holding a ship's lantern. There were wings
of glass on hinges on either side of it--one red, one green.

He knelt and busied himself in lighting it in the shelter of the
companion. The breeze had driven them right in under the shadow of the
land by now. The steep above the shore seemed almost to overhang them.
Here and there a faint oil lamp flickered along the Marina; a larger,
nearer, and brighter gleam was evidence of a tiny jetty which was washed
by waves which were dwindling under the protection of the land.

Luigi lifted his lamp and held it clear of the companion. Rapidly he
shut the green shield over the untinted glass, as rapidly opened it
again, shut the red wing twice in quick succession, and finally left the
green signal closed.

Landon's eyes probed the darkness. His companion stood silent, his face
raised towards the hill. There was no apprehension in his attitude, only
expectancy.

Quite suddenly it seemed that the wind had dropped. The shelter of the
shore might account for this in part, Landon mused, but surely not
altogether. It was weird, in a sense, this abrupt alternation to perfect
stillness after the uproars of the outer seas, but it was not
unpleasant. It gave one a sense of relaxation; but the heat, untempered
by the faintest breath of air, was incredibly oppressive. December was
aping the temperatures of August.

Luigi sighed contentedly and spoke.

"All is well, Signor. It remains to get our merchandise ashore."

Landon became aware of a blue speck of light in the darkness--a speck
which wavered, grew to a suddenly unexpected point of brightness and
disappeared. So quickly did it come and go, so evanescent was its
effect, that none but those who searched for it would have been likely
to give its appearance a second thought. It might have been caused by
the passing of a candle behind one of the many panes of frosted glass
which disfigure Italian villas in _villeggiatura_.

Luigi gave an order. The two deck hands clutched the halliards. The sail
was lowered. A moment later the anchor set the ripples herding towards
the shore as it plunged into the calm below the jetty. Landon and his
companion descended to the cabin.

Stretched on a bunk was Miller, sleeping the sleep of the justly tired.
He roused himself at their touch and sat up. He looked about him
meditatively.

"The wind has dropped, absolutely?" he said. "Since when?"

"Half an hour ago. We are in port," said Landon. "We are ready to land,
when you will."

The gray man smoothed the creases in his gray coat.

"When _I_ will?" he repeated. "I am a prisoner--the captive of your bow
and spear." He smiled with sombre sarcasm.

"That position is to be maintained?" asked Landon.

"Naturally. Your cousin may make my continued residence in Gibraltar
well-nigh impossible, otherwise."

"My cousin?" Landon repeated the words with a certain doubtfulness. "He
is my cousin," he said slowly, "and we sha'n't break one of his blood
except in one way. It's the girl, remember, that is our strong suit.
There's to be no bleating about that. To win, the trick has to be taken
with her alone."

Miller nodded woodenly.

"If I had the inclination to interfere, I have not the power," he said.
"Do you forget that I am a prisoner, like herself?"

"Yes," said Landon, and there was more than doubt in his expression
this time, there was suspicion. "I forget it all the time. I want your
assurance that _you_ won't!"

Miller made a gesture of assent.

"Let's get on," he said. "I understand that it's within a couple of
hours of dawn."

For an instant Landon hesitated. Then, with Luigi at his heels, he
entered the lazaret. Neither of them spoke. They bent and lifted Aylmer
methodically, holding him by his shoulders and his lashed ankles. They
bore him on deck. They gagged him with the cork float of a fishing-net
and left him, stark and motionless as a log. They turned back to the
cabin, and a minute later placed Claire Van Arlen beside him, as
helpless as himself.

The dingy--a new one, picked up in the island--was lowered. The
prisoners were thrust beneath the seats. A deck hand and Muhammed took
their places at the oars. Luigi steered; the child, half asleep and
wrapped in a blanket, drowsed at his feet. Miller and Landon sat on the
thwarts.

The two rowers dipped their oars without splashing in long, slow
strokes. The thole-pins were muffled with rags. The boat stole along in
the shadow of the jetty into the darkness which hid the port. It was
noiseless, ghost-like, this entry into the little haven. To the two dumb
prisoners who lay along the bottom of the boat it was ominous of hope
entirely lost.

They stifled under the cloaks which hid them; the perspiration dripped
from the rowers, despite the unhurried nature of their work. The weight
of a dozen atmospheres seemed to have replaced the exhilarating breath
which Sicily flings seaward from her sun-brimmed shores. Luigi, at the
helm, gasped and passed his hand across his eyes.

"Thunder in December! Not natural, Signor, but that is what we must
expect. I suffocate. _Per Dio!_ The bay is an oven."

He let the prow nose in towards the jetty. Moored boats began to appear
dimly, right and left of them. The lamplight from the Marina showed an
empty quay. Luigi steered for the shadow cast by a shed, and took the
ground silently on a strand of mud and garbage.

The deck hand drew in his oar and skipped nimbly ashore. Muhammed
followed him. They both laid their hands upon the painter. They bent
their backs to haul.

Two shadows appeared right and left of them, shadows which seemed to
have detached themselves from the framework of the shed. Something
clicked. A yellow beam flared out, full on Luigi's face.

He gasped, he yelled.

"God's Mother--the Carbineers!"

Landon leaped to his feet with a curse. He seized an oar; he thrust with
all his strength at the mud. And at the same moment the two on the
shore, struggling in their captor's hands, let fall the painter. The
boat shot out stern foremost into deep water.

From the shore came the sound of a struggle and then Muhammed's voice,
shrill in explanation.

"_Signori! Signori!_ I am not a contrabandist! I am a tourist; I can
prove it; I wish to offer no resistance; I place myself in your hands,
freely."

There was a grim laugh, and then the yellow beam of light which had been
withdrawn while the struggle proceeded, flung out its level rays again
and illuminated the boat.

"Surrender, Luigi!" shouted a stern voice. There was another click.
"Surrender, _stupido_! I have you covered; I give you five seconds
before I fire!"

The shrill voice of the captured sailor reinforced the argument.

"It is over--finished," he shouted pessimistically. "It is _Pinale_;
there is nothing more to be done!"

Luigi groaned and then flung up his hands.

"I give in!" he cried, and burst into a storm of hysterical sobs. "It
means Procida--this," he wept. "It means years in chains; it means half
the rest of my life snatched from me." He turned and smote at Landon in
the darkness. "I owe it to you, tempter!" he yelled. "Accursed of God,
you led me into this!"

Landon stumbled in his surprise and then leaped at him like a cat. There
was a shrill scream from the child as the swaying pair rolled down upon
the stern sheets, gripping, each of them, for the other's throat. The
boat rocked violently.

Again the stern command from the shore rang into the night. They gave it
no heed. Animal rage possessed them; they were no longer men but beasts,
fighting with hand and foot and knee, clawing, tearing, even biting as
the chance of conflict brought Luigi's lips within reach of his
assailant's cheek. They were lost to all human warning or control.

It was no human interference which separated them.

Fate played her hand--played it irresistibly, crushingly, played it with
a vindictive completeness such as even she has never used since her grip
fell upon her plaything--that toy of hers among a million million toys,
and which we call our world.

A roar, terrific, growing, menacing, filling the echoes, brimming the
heavy air, rolling out across the still waters of the bay, thundered
into the silence of the shore. The dim lamps upon the Marina shook;
crash upon crash echoed from buildings which could not be seen, but
which terror could picture in all the crude pigments of imagination and
despair! Beside the boat a huge crack rent the jetty in twain. Stones,
dashed from the crumbling buildings in the darkness, flung huge gouts of
spray over the two who wrenched themselves apart in her stern, over
their prisoners, over the child, who cried aloud in all the agony of
childish fear.

And then human voices joined the chorus--voices which expressed every
intonation of panic, of the horror which is built upon amazement, of the
unleashed emotions of men awaking to meet blindly the common hazards of
life and confronting chaos, illimitable ruin, a sudden unbarring of the
gates of Hell.

The struggle in the boat ceased. Wild curses became, on Luigi's lips, a
string of piteous appeals to the very saints whose names he had used a
moment before to point his blasphemies. Miller and Landon grasped the
oars.

But even the terrors of earthquake do not wreck the discipline of
Italy's Carbineers. The sergeant's warning was repeated thunderously.

Miller screamed an assent, a surrender. Landon answered with an oath.
The one endeavored to propel the boat shorewards, the other towards the
sea. It spun between their efforts; they yelled and gesticulated madly.

And again the sergeant's voice was heard, with a hundred other voices,
appealing to a God whose mercy was surely turned away.

For a moaning sound _tingled_ along the strand, and then silently, but
with the speed of a cataract, the sea sank back from the shore.

It plucked half a hundred boats from their anchorages; it gripped them
down into its trough. For full thirty seconds they fled upon this
monstrous tide of a tideless sea, hull crashing against hull, mast
beating against mast, a wrecked wilderness of spars and rigging,
tangled, coiled, the froth, the scum, as it were, upon that mighty
crest. And behind them went the _Santa Margarita's_ dingy, with bound
and free in equal helplessness.

Then, as if the sluice of some Cyclopean lock had been shut, the mighty
mill-race halted and a mountain grew upon the face of the deep. Huge,
black, awesome, it swung itself up, swelled higher and higher, hung
through an æon-long moment of horror, and then rolled back whence it had
come. And the menace of its coming left no tiniest coign of foothold for
hope in its path. Irresistible and relentless it moved along to destroy
every barrier of nature, every man-built obstacle with its might. Its
foam-plumed crest roared over the quayside and the Marina five fathoms
deep.

Like a chip upon the surface of a torrent which suddenly hastens to the
brink of the cascade, the boat and its burden of lives was snatched
along. The three who stood and gripped its gunwale saw the broad expanse
of the Marina before them, saw it seem to sink as they themselves rose
upon the flood, saw how they raced across it twenty feet above the level
of its flags. And they saw more--saw it with eyes which seemed to sear
their brains with anticipation, with despair.

This!

A long, irregular, deep-fronted row of dwellings, square to the sea,
square to the reeling ridge of ocean which was sweeping upon them as the
gust sweeps down upon the far-flung autumn leaves.

They called aloud in chorus; they challenged Fate with their despair.
And Fate replied.

The waters reached the walls; the huge sheet of spray shot high into the
night. But the dingy passed on uncrushed.

An alley opened before them--an alley through which they shot on the
roaring tide into the square beyond, sank down as the dwindling waters
sank and with their last effort of destruction reached, and were borne
into an arched opening girt about with trees. And then that, in its
turn, became a ruin of plaster and planks and stone. The wave completed
what the earthquake had all too thoroughly begun. The roof and walls
crashed down into a grim monument upon a living grave.



CHAPTER XXVI

DAWN COMES


Out of the darkness of insensibility consciousness came slowly into
being in Aylmer's brain, but memory lagged to join it. He was
bound--that he realized, and his teeth were immovable upon a gag. The
darkness was absolute and so, for the first few minutes through which
his senses woke, was the silence. He could feel rough slabs of wood
which cased his body in. He shifted uneasily and beat his temple upon a
plank. The sweat of terror broke out upon his brow. He was buried alive!
God help him! The worst that could happen to a living soul was his
sentence from the lips of Fate!

Something whimpered in the darkness; something stirred beside his feet.

In a flash came remembrance. The awful moment of disaster through which
he had been carried, blind, speechless, and bound, became a picture in
his brain--a picture the more vivid in that actuality had been hidden
from him and imagination had supplied details beyond the compass of the
real. He stirred afresh, he writhed, his bound wrists beat out upon the
air.

The whimpers ceased and words followed--words in a child's voice shaken
by fear. A trembling hand found Aylmer's sleeve, crept up it to his
cheek, and halted there in miserable hesitation.

"It's me--it's me!" whispered the voice. "Can't you speak? Oh, can't you
speak to me?"

And then the wandering fingers found the linen band which bound the gag
into place and was fastened behind Aylmer's head.

"Is that why?" said the child in eager discovery. "Is _that_ why?"

The band cut into Aylmer's cheek as the knot was twitched with all the
awkwardness of haste, but a moment later the pressure ceased. He spat
the gag from between his teeth.

"Little John!" he cried. "Little John! Are you hurt? are you able to
stand?"

The boy clutched him with a sort of desperation of relief.

"Oh, you _can_ speak--you _can_ speak!" he shouted joyously. "My head
aches and my shoulder doesn't move right, but I can stand. I can reach
nothing above my head--or right--or left."

There was a creaking of timber as he moved, stretching his hands, as was
evident, into the black emptiness about the boat. Aylmer's bound wrists
were lifted to reach him.

"Pick at them--as you did before, little John," he said. "Loose me, so
that we can search the darkness together."

The child's breath came in zealous pants as he tugged and pulled, but
the knots were tightly lashed and sodden with the sea. And his haste was
a handicap; he plucked and twisted ineffectually. And finally he
overbalanced himself and slipped.

He gave a cry of pain.

"I'm hurted--I'm bleeding!" he sobbed. "I fell against something that
cut!"

Aylmer's heart stood still. If the fall had injured the child severely,
if it had disabled him, if he were to lose consciousness--was this
horror of helplessness to be added to those which already had them in
their grip? He stretched out his arms towards the sound of the sobbing,
and this, as he did so, suddenly ceased.

Panic gripped him, only to be fought down. Slowly, and with painful
effort, he twisted himself round in the darkness till his bound wrists
found as their goal the child's cap which still covered his untidy mane
of curls. And these were wet and sticky.

The reason was not far to seek. The baling slipper lay below little
John's temple--the baling slipper mended with a rough strip of tin. And
this had cut through cap and curls, down to the bone. It had finished
what terror had begun. The boy had fainted.

Aylmer's first impulse was to use the whole of his tethered strength in
bringing consciousness back to the child--to what was, he considered,
his only chance of freedom. A moment later chance pointed a quicker
road. His knuckles met and were scarred by the frayed edge of the tin.
He gave an exclamation of impatience at his own dulness. What would cut
him would cut his bonds. Crouching down he managed to grip the slipper
between his knees and steady it there. And then he rasped his lashings
upon its edge.

A minute sufficed, or even less. The cord frayed, gave strand by strand,
and broke apart with a twang. He gasped with relief and fell to work
upon his ankles. As these bonds loosened and fell away in their turn, he
stood up, rising slowly and stretching his hands above his head. He
touched nothing.

He sighed not only with relief, this time, but with a faint tinge of
hope. And then he bent, felt his way past the still motionless child,
and touched, by chance's guidance, Claire Van Arlen's hair. And he gave
another exclamation of self-encouragement. For her cheek was warm.

He plucked the gag from her lips; his hands were already at her wrists
as she uttered his name. He thrilled to the anxiety in her voice.

"You?" she asked anxiously. "You? You were uninjured. I heard you speak
and--and, it seemed, to me that you--_flagged_--that you--were not you!"

"Yes," he answered quietly. "I had not found you then. I did not know--I
do not know it yet--how far you yourself were unhurt."

His fingers were unlashing her feet now. He heard her stir into a
sitting posture and, as her feet were freed, felt her rise to her knees.
Instinct bade him thrust out a hand as she did so, and she rocked up
against it. Her energy had been more than her strength; she leaned
against him panting.

For a full minute he held her, feeling her pulses throb against his,
fanned by her breath that panted past his cheek, one hand warm within
his own, one upon his shoulder. And through the darkness he sent out his
appeal to Fate. If the grim goddess had no farther favors in her store
for him, let her hand close upon him there. Might there be no more weary
struggles; might the end find him and the girl whose hand clung to his
in this intimate protection at once. Let death come in that moment, and
he would ask no more.

Fate gave no answer and the moment passed.

She gave a little sob and, still holding him, staggered to her feet.

"It is the stiffness, and the long hours bound. And the
anxiety--for--for you!" she murmured. "I am unhurt, indeed I am unhurt.
I have scarcely so much as a bruise upon me. And my chatelaine? That is
still at my waist. I have--have matches, if the sea water has spared
them!"

Light! Could they pierce this wall of darkness; could they actually hope
to see how and where they were caged? He scarcely dared to breathe as he
heard her silver chain of trinkets tinkle, and heard the rasp of the
match-head on the box. The red spark sputtered against the blackness and
then flared into yellow being as the wax took flame. They looked about
them with more than curiosity. With awe.

High above their head was an arch of masonry, massively mortised,
curving from a wall to a row of squat, solid pillars; and these last
flanked a pile of heaped rubble and stone. They were in a passage some
twenty feet long, closed at each end as the unwalled side was closed by
the wreck of the house above. It was a cloister. And the open courtyard
which it had rimmed was now a stupendous rubbish heap, massed high above
their heads with ruin.

They looked down. They still stood in the boat, and at Aylmer's feet the
child was huddled in unconsciousness, the blood still welling slowly
from the cut on his brow. Beyond them something indefinite and
unrecognizable lay in a dark heap upon the flags.

Aylmer stepped forward and bent over it.

It was the body of a man, clothed in the dark, red-striped uniform of
the Carbineers. His lips were grim and set. His right hand still
clutched the breach of a rifle. And at his belt was a lantern--the glass
broken, but the tin intact. Aylmer's hands trembled as they fell upon
this prize.

He wheeled back to his companion and touched the flame against the wick.
There was a moment's suspense, and then they sighed in chorus. For the
oil was unspilt. For a time, at least, darkness was not to be among the
terrors which menaced them.

Claire knelt and pulled the child upon her knee. She stanched the blood;
she dropped her handkerchief into the little pool of sea water which was
fast draining through the wrenched seams of the boat, and gently laved
the unconscious face. Little John stirred drowsily, opened his eyes
reluctantly, and looked up with wonder into her face.

He put his hand up weakly to his temple.

"It's--it's queer--and--and hurty," he whispered. "Muhammed? He would
make it well."

She pulled him to her tenderly.

"Does it hurt badly?" she asked. "Muhammed hasn't come to us--yet."

He looked wonderingly around him.

"The house--opened--and let us right in," he mused. "We came up on the
sea--right up--as fast as a train. And Dad? Dad was with us then."

She looked up questioningly at Aylmer. And he had gathered up the dead
Carbineer's cloak and was arranging it against the stern. He made a
motion towards it.

"Sleep is all the medicine we can give him," he advised. "Let him rest.
Meanwhile we must use the light while we have it."

She nodded quickly and laid the child gently down. He smiled at her
drowsily again, whispered a half-distinguishable appeal to be told when
the Moor "came back," and then nature's healing hand closed over his
eyes. He slept--the deep, dead sleep of exhaustion.

Aylmer raised the lamp. Together they paced the length of their prison.

The gray flags were bare except where the Carbineer's body lay. With a
little gesture of compassion, Aylmer straightened the stiffening limbs,
and covered the stern, unfaltering face with the dead man's
handkerchief. And then they passed on, to confront the hill of rubble
which closed the cloister's end. And here they halted, as they looked
down.

Claire shuddered.

A gray sleeve emerged from the stones and an open hand seemed to appeal
for the help which came all too late. Aylmer dragged fiercely at the
ruined wall. A block or two became unseated. These shouldered out others
to rumble at their feet.

A gray-clad body became exposed. They looked at it, instinct preparing
them to recognize what they saw. Battered and disfigured though it was,
they knew it for Miller's face.

For a moment they kept silence, looking at it fixedly. The eyes were
open, but death had wiped out from them the imperturbability which they
had held through life. Fear had gripped the gray man at the last. Horror
had been with him--even panic.

Aylmer leaned down and covered the fear-haunted eyes.

"He has gone, and taken his mystery with him," he said. "What his life
was we shall never ascertain. What led him to betray us? That is beyond
our learning. It may have been no more than fear and the desire to save
himself. I think there was something behind it all that has escaped us,
but"--he shrugged his shoulders as he looked about him--"what does it
matter now?"

He held the lantern at arm's length as he spoke, and looked searchingly
round. The gray stone ringed them in relentlessly. Was there any
expedient in which they could find a challenge to the arbitrary decree
of Fate? He saw none.

The girl at his side watched him. And then her eyes met his. And as he
spoke his voice was strangely gentle.

"God interfered between Landon and his evil purpose, as you said He
would. Perhaps, who knows, He may have other mercies reserved for us.
But in any case we must teach each other to be strong."

She nodded gravely.

"We are in His hands," she said, "and nothing can be as terrible as what
was threatened us by that vile man. The boy is safe. I have the help of
your presence. We must kill imagination with work."

He looked about him again, doubtfully.

"Work?" he questioned. "Have we the chance to work?"

"Isn't it obvious," she said. "That is a courtyard. Above the ruins
which brim it is the sky. If we use our strength and time to pluck a way
through that to life again, we shall, at least, not think."

He paced forward a yard or two and examined the heaped wreckage of
plaster, wooden beams, and stones. He hesitated.

"If we disturb it, there is just a chance of making our situation
worse," he hazarded.

She shook her head.

"No," she said significantly. "Not worse. God might answer us that way,
and save us suspense. And we shall, at any rate, have defied Fate to the
end."

"Yes," he said. "In that I am with you; we will do our best--to the
last. And if God's purpose falls upon us quickly, Claire, I thank Him
here and now that He has permitted me to share this bitter cup with you,
instead of draining that more bitter one which threatened an hour ago.
At least I am not leaving you in Landon's hands, alone."

"And I am not helpless while they work their vile wills upon you," she
answered. "Fate has been cruel enough, but she has spared us that. The
end? That is still her mystery. Let us forget it."

He smiled.

"There is much I can remember which will spare me that. What you have
been and done for me these last wild days--my memory will occupy itself
with that and hope--while I work to make hope true."

And then, still smiling as if he had plumbed the eyes of Hope and found
in them an answering smile, he laid the lantern on the flags and put his
hands upon the barrier of ruin which faced him.

He toiled vigorously but with caution. As he rolled the larger blocks
from their resting-place, he was quick to notice and to support the
beams or flagstones which they had buttressed with their weight. And he
used the first plank which tumbled out of the chaos as a lever upon its
fellows. At his feet Claire worked vigorously, sweeping out the plaster
which filled the openings as he made them, rolling aside the unseated
stones to give him room, lending her lesser strength to aid his, when
some task was trying his powers to the utmost.

For a couple of hours they toiled silently, and a gap had been hewn into
the debris--a gap which seemed to be ceaselessly filled as the
accumulations rolled into it from above, but an opening, nevertheless,
which spoke of progress, which showed a reward for effort, which even
pictured, faintly and indistinctly, a vision of hope. If their strength
lasted? Was there not a chance, a tiny, elusive, but possible chance?

It was the remembrance that uninterrupted effort would fatigue them to a
point where their strength would be taxed beyond recovery which made
Aylmer at last call a halt. They went and sat beside the sleeping child.
To economize the light, they extinguished the lamp.

And then--they rubbed their eyes.

A tiny beam of light, dim, faint, gray but distinguishable, was filtered
down into their prison at the point where one of the cloister pillars
reached an arch. It fell upon the flags in a little circle.

Aylmer reached it in two strides. He gave an exclamation.

"It is a pipe from the spouting of the roof," he cried. "I see the sky.
I see the sky!"

She was at his side in an instant. In her turn she looked up into the
hollow of the tube, to see light. She gave a little gasp.

"It's wonderful--wonderful!" she breathed. "Only that little way up--ten
feet, twelve, perhaps, and freedom. And we are here!"

"It means two things of infinite importance!" he rejoined. "Air and, in
all probability, water. If the gutter which discharges into this is
still intact, we shall receive the rain when it comes. And after
earthquake it comes, invariably."

She was not paying him attention. Her eye was still fixed below the tiny
opening; she continued to look up as if the tiny disc of brightness
fascinated her, as if she would drink draughts of the outer air thus
delivered to them as if from an immense cistern.

And then the emotion of sudden discovery illuminated her face.

"We can signal!" she cried. "We can attract attention! We have only to
thrust a rod up through that, and it will tell our tale. Surely there
are rescuers at work by now; a whole city cannot be left to its fate!"

His eyes glistened.

"God sent that thought to you--God himself!" he cried. "We must have a
rod; we must make one!" He turned and re-lit the lantern. He examined
the splintered woodwork of the boat with a calculating eye.

Wood was at their service in plenty, but the tools to deal with it were
wanting. Neither of them possessed a knife. He searched the pockets of
the dead, but had no success. For a moment they stood regarding each
other in incredulous despair. Surely Fate, after bracing them with this
hope, was not going to torture them by withdrawal? And then Aylmer's eye
fell upon the baling slipper.

He lifted it with a gesture of relief; he tore the strip of tin from off
it and held it up.

"That is our blade!" he cried. "We have only to pare down splinters till
they will pass through the pipe, and the thing is done."

He picked up a piece of planking as he spoke, worked the metal into the
grain till a split began to gape, and then, wrapping a piece of
tarpaulin round each end of his impromptu blade, worked it to and fro
and downwards. A thin sliver of wood was the result--one about eighteen
inches long.

He repeated the operation, slowly and carefully. As each lath was split
and pared, he passed it to his companion and she spliced the ends with
strips of gray cloth. And these? Aylmer took them from the dead body at
the end of the cloister. Miller, in death, was helping to repair some of
the injuries for which his life was responsible.

They worked methodically, without haste, but with every care. Two hours
later they had a twelve-foot staff laid out at their feet. To the top
they attached a little flag, also of gray. They divided it into halves,
thrust the upper half into the pipe, attached the lower one to it, and
then pushed the whole upwards to the full extent of Aylmer's reach.
Claire peered anxiously into the hole. She gave a great cry of relief;
her eyes filled with sudden tears.

"The flag is outside!" she cried. "There is no doubt of that; it is a
certainty. While it was wrapped round the head of the staff inside the
tube, it hid all light from me. And now light has come again--dim, but
there still. It slips down between the staff and the sides. The flag is
out in the air--the air!"

He nodded.

"All that remains, then, is to keep it moving--to show that human beings
are holding its other end. We must work ceaselessly."

He looked round at her as he spoke. Her eyes were bent on him earnestly,
meditatively. And there was something in her gaze for which he had no
clue.

She spoke, and so supplied it herself.

"I think we shall be rescued now," she said quietly. "I feel a certainty
about it, an instinct. Yes, I think we have defeated Fate. We shall come
back into life again, you and I."

He understood. Through the wild days in the boat and on the island, Fate
had given no chance for either of them to probe the future. Hope had
had so tiny a place in their thoughts--hopelessness had so immeasurably
absorbed them all. And now? Was she allowing herself to dwell on life as
it would affect them untouched by Fate, and free? Was she mentally
rearranging her attitude to him?

Fate would supply her own answer. He turned and doggedly began to work
the flagstaff up and down.

A tension of silence was over them as they waited. The hours went by.
With a little gesture she came, took the pole from his hand, and bade
him rest. He surrendered it quietly, spent ten minutes in massaging his
stiffened muscles, and then took it again. It was queer, this sudden
reticence which had arisen between them. It was as if while Fate delayed
to speak, all other words were futile. And her answer might come at any
moment or--God help them--not at all.

The hours lengthened. The thin rays which still filtered through the
half-closed pipe grew dim and at last died altogether. Night had come.

Aylmer turned with a little shrug, placed a plank beneath the butt of
the staff to keep it in position, and came back to the boat.

"There is no need to fatigue ourselves through the darkness," he said.
"Till daylight shows our flag again, we had better rest, to be strong
for to-morrow. Shall we sleep?"

She looked at him curiously, and then answered with a little nod.

"Sleep," she agreed. "You are tired, tired. And wake strong; your
strength--God knows--has been tried enough."

There was something restrained in her voice; something which again
escaped his comprehension, but his fatigue was overmastering. He
stretched himself upon a couple of flags. Sleep overcame him instantly.

Was it a moment later that he awoke in answer to her cry? So he
believed, but as a matter of fact midnight was long past. She had lit a
match; she was holding it to the wick of the lantern.

Her eyes were wide and bright with excitement. She pointed towards the
pipe.

"I could not rest!" she cried. "No, I could not sleep and know that
rescue might be passing by. I have worked at the staff ceaselessly and
now! Now it is gone!"

He sprang towards her.

"Gone!" he repeated. "Gone!"

"They are there--above us--men--men who know we are here. They pulled it
up, out of my hands!" She made a gesture which pled for silence.
"Listen!" she cried. "Listen!"

A tinkling sound came from the pipe and then a tiny bottle sank into
view, dangling from a string. He seized it. It was warm.

"Soup!" he cried. "Food! That is their first thought for us! And I had
forgotten that I was starving. I had forgotten it absolutely!"

He held it to her lips. She put out her hand in protest, but his gesture
was inexorable. She gave a queer little laugh, shrugged her shoulders,
and drank. He took the half she left him and drank in his turn. He tied
the bottle again to the string and shook it. It disappeared and was
lowered again, this time with wine. And half a dozen little rolls
dropped at their feet. They ate, they waked the child and fed him, they
sat, and from above the sound of pick and mattock in the hands of men
who toiled furiously thundered down to them. They speculated how and
whence the first sight of rescue would appear. They laughed in high,
excited tones. Expectancy had them in its grip to the exclusion of all
other emotions.

And then, with a sudden roar and crash, an avalanche of rubble poured
into the hole which they had dug into the mass of debris. And with it
came a man in sailor uniform who mixed anathema and congratulation in
excited but fluent French. He wept, he fell upon Aylmer's neck and
embraced him, he kissed the child and Claire's hand. Slowly they toiled
at his heels, helped by a dangling rope, out into the red glare of a
dozen torches which were held by seamen of the French Marine.

And one of the two officers who directed them called upon the name of
God and all His saints to emphasize his amazement.

It was Rattier who held and shook their hands a hundred times. Rattier,
incoherent, swearing, every vestige of his taciturnity ravished from him
by emotion, plying them with a thousand questions, raining tears upon
little John Aylmer's wondering face.

They reached the market square. They looked upon the ruin which covered
the devastated earth in the wan light of the slowly coming dawn.

Five miles away, swinging at her mooring opposite the ruined port of
Messina was a white-hulled boat--a boat which they looked at with
wistfully incredulous eyes. They whispered her name.

"_The Morning Star?_" they wondered. "_The Morning Star?_"

"What else?" cried the commandant, exultantly. "That Spanish torpedo
boat--did you think nothing was to be heard from her? You disappeared.
Two days later comes the news from Malaga of a felucca, going east with
prisoners on board. Would that not induce your father, Mademoiselle, to
put two and two together? The Melilla port authorities supplied the name
of that felucca and her destination--Sicily. He arrived two days back. I
have seen him, we spoke together, and then God knows all our energies
and thoughts have been with these poor wretches ashore. Down in Messina
your own countrymen and the Russians are doing marvels. The _Diomède_
was the only French ship, alas, in harbor, but we have others coming
from Tunis, from Algiers, from Marseilles. We need every worker we can
get. What you have suffered thousands are suffering still."

Aylmer gave a quick, decided little nod. He looked at Claire.

"You will let one of these sailors see you on board?" he said. "Paul
will spare one to escort you."

She looked at him, startled, a little bewildered, even.

"And you?" she asked. "And you?"

He made a gesture towards the chaos which covered shore and hill.

"Can I leave the work which calls me, knowing what I know?" he asked.
"Paul has put my duty into words. What I have suffered, others are
suffering yet. Would you think well of me, if I left it?"

She looked at him with a smile that told of appreciation, approval, of
something (or was hope a lying glass?) more than these.

"No!" she said quietly. "No!" She hesitated a moment.

"And when I have found my father, eased his mind, delivered to him his
grandchild whom he owes to you, rested, made myself strong to work, will
you come for me to do my part? Will you come--then?"

As the dawn rose over Messina's city of the dead, in John Aylmer's heart
rose the dawn of hope fulfilled. Her eyes? What message did they not
give? He read it as plainly as he knew he would read it at their next
meeting--from her lips.

He lifted her hand. His moustache swept it.

"Till then, Claire," he whispered. "Till then, Beloved."



CHAPTER XXVII

SHADOWS GO


Dawn flushed into full daylight as the sun rose upon the ruined city.
Morning dragged its length to midday and midday merged in afternoon. And
the workers toiled on doggedly, burrowing, hewing, climbing, flinging
their energies, risking their lives, against the inanimate barriers of
destruction. Italian and Frenchman, Englishman and Russian vied with
each other in deeds of humanity against the common foe. Nor was that foe
content with the victory already won. Further shocks furrowed the
stricken shores: ruin became more complete, danger more menacing, but
the toilers worked on.

Aylmer's rescuers had gone aboard their ship and had been replaced by a
new relay. He himself remained. The pressing needs of those who lay, as
he had lain, in living tombs around him were first in his mind. But
another thought was ceaseless. Certainty--that was what he asked.
Certainty of Landon's fate. He scarcely allowed himself to realize how
he hoped--_yearned_--to know definitely that Landon was dead. He simply
contemplated it as a matter of completeness, as news that would bring
infinite relief to those on board _The Morning Star_. If he were alive?
He set his lips grimly. Though law was suspended, order out of gear,
Landon should meet his deserts. If not by instruments of Italian
justice, then by Aylmer's own hands--by the law of retribution, not the
law of revenge.

He dropped the mattock which he had been wielding. He stood up and
straightened himself, turning his eyes from the wearying expanse of
wreckage towards the sea.

A boat was running up beside the ruined jetty. Before the mooring ropes
were cast ashore a tall figure leaped from it--a figure clad in a
_soutane_.

Aylmer made an exclamation, hesitated, and then clambered down the walls
and ran across the uneven flags, holding out his hand.

Padre Sigismondi flung up his arms. His gesture was one of incredulous
relief.

"But the Signora?" he cried, stricken with sudden apprehension. He
panted, his eyes were vivid with anxiety. "The Signora?"

As Aylmer answered with the one vital word, the priest cried aloud
again. He lifted his face towards the sky and made the sign of the
cross.

"Safe!" he repeated. "Safe! If there was a single hope left to me amid
the horrors which have overwhelmed us, it was that. I told myself that
God, who allowed me to fail in my duty to you through my arrogant
self-confidence, might be saving you in the midst of--and by--this
destruction. When I came to myself and found you gone, I writhed. My
friend, I cast myself upon the ground in the agonies of my
self-reproach. Not to have plumbed the wicked devices of these men--I,
who have worked among them a score of years!"

Aylmer gripped his hand.

"You, yourself?" he inquired. "You come here--how?"

"One of the many boats which were speeding to Messina--some, alas, with
no charitable intent, I fear--saw my signals and took me off. And now?
One scarcely knows where to begin. How can one confront such a disaster
with one's puny efforts? God send me His strength! My own is as water!"

A shout echoed to them suddenly from the group of sailors. One stood up
and waved to them with his neckcloth.

Aylmer made an answering gesture. He took the priest's arm.

"Begin here, father," he said quietly. "Some of those we have found are
alive, but death's claim, I fear, is relaxed for no more than an hour or
two. They need your offices. It may be for such an one that they are
signalling to us now."

They hurried across the square. They climbed the pyramid of ruin.

The sailors were looking down at something which lay at their
feet--something brown, and white, and vivid red.

The quartermaster pointed to a crevice in the masonry.

"There is a hollow," he explained. "We pulled him out by the arms,
which--God forgive us--are broken. There are in there, perhaps, others.
His eyes imply it. Words are beyond him."

The priest gave a startled exclamation. Aylmer echoed it. Disfigured,
battered, crushed as it was, they recognized the figure in the
blood-stained _djelab_ of brown.

A growing dimness was clouding Muhammed's eyes. The quick pant of his
breathing weakened as they watched. But a flash of feeling illuminated
the pallid features as the Moor's glance reached and dwelled upon
Aylmer's face.

His lips moved.

"The child?" he asked in a faint whisper. "The Sidi Jan?"

Padre Sigismondi darted an inquiring look at his companion and then
knelt beside the dying man.

"The child is well," he answered gravely. "Yourself? Is there no message
to give, no delivery of your soul you wish to make? Time is short for
you. Use it, and me, as you wish."

The brown eyes searched the priest's features with a queer disdain, as
it seemed--or was it, perchance, compassion. The stiffening lips became
more grimly resolute.

"I proclaim!" said the Moor. "I proclaim that there is One God--One
God--," and passed, unfaltering, to meet Him.

For a moment there was silence. Aylmer broke it.

"Perhaps we owe him more than we think," he said slowly. "The boy? That
was always his first care. Perhaps he stood between the child and harm.
I believe that he would have done so in the face of the child's father
himself!"

Sigismondi drew a fold of the _djelab_ over the bruised face.

"The God to whom he appealed is his judge," he said. "Let us leave it in
His hands. The living, now, my friend. It is not here that we can
concern ourselves with the dead."

They turned to the sailors. Half a dozen blocks had been rolled from the
opening, which gaped wide over an empty darkness. The quartermaster
slung himself carefully down into it and slowly disappeared.

A moment later they heard his voice.

"A rope," he demanded. "Here is one who is, at least, warm."

They passed down a rope carefully. Aylmer's heart became suddenly
audible to himself. What would appear; what had Fate still in store for
him?

Again the quartermaster's voice echoed from the darkness with
directions. The sailors bent their backs and hauled.

A face appeared in the opening, travelling upwards.

Aylmer felt no surprise. This was the expected, the inevitable. Landon
was dragged out into the day--Landon--alive.

They laid him silently at his cousin's feet.

And as Aylmer looked down he felt a thrill of what must have been nearly
akin to sympathy. God help the mutilated wretch!

His arms hung beside him limp and helpless, the fractured bones
distorted in hideous angles. There were marks as of burns upon his face.
But the supreme horror was in the sockets which held nothing
recognizable as human eyes. Coals might have lain within them--coals
pressed down to find their quenching there.

He moaned ceaselessly, swinging himself from side to side. And then
words came slowly, piteously, one by one.

"Oil!" he gasped. "For God's sake, a little oil--upon my eyes!"

Sigismondi shuddered. Then he bent and placed his hand compassionately
on the scarred temple.

"As soon as it can be found, my brother," he said. "Try to keep your
courage while we do our utmost. We have to carry you--where you can be
treated."

The tortured wretch moaned again and made an instinctive effort to raise
a hand to his face. He shrieked as the shattered bones failed him,
shrieked and cursed in hideous blasphemies. His brain began to wander
upon the border-line of delirium.

"Hours--days--weeks," he wailed. "Broken--broken! Immovable and always
in agony--burning--my eyes--my eyes! And the rain--running over them
and bringing more agony--and more--and more. And unable to move a
finger. My feet hanging in emptiness--my hands crushed in upon
me--crushed--crushed--crushed!"

The quartermaster made a gesture of infinite compassion.

"The room had been newly plastered, do you see?" he whispered. "He was
caught bodily--in the closing of the walls--as a nutcracker closes. And
he was held and crushed--like the nut. The lime was deep upon his
face--and when the rain came, washing it in--eating him--" He turned
away with another pregnant motion of his hands, as if he put from him
the picture which imagination conjured up.

Aylmer leaned down and spoke.

"We are going to take you from here," he said. "We are going to lift
you. Be prepared."

Landon's groans ceased. His body became suddenly rigid with attention.

"Jack?" he whispered incredulously. "Jack?"

"It is I," said Aylmer gravely. "I--am unhurt."

Landon's face grew yet more distorted.

"Claire?" he muttered eagerly. "Claire--is gone?"

A light gleamed tempestuously in Aylmer's eyes and then as quickly died.
His voice was even and restrained.

"She is safe, and well," he said. "She is on her father's yacht."

An inarticulate howl of rage burst from Landon's lips. He rocked himself
to and fro; he made as if he would beat his broken hands upon the
stones.

"God! If they'd suffered alongside me, if they'd been there, if they had
given me groan for groan, I could have stood it--enjoyed it--damn them,
I could have laughed with the lime in my eyes, if they'd been there--if
they'd been there!"

He jerked himself to a sitting posture; he writhed backwards and
forwards. His spite was a sort of ecstasy, possessing him, freeing him,
as it seemed, from even the sense of pain.

Aylmer made a significant motion. He bent and slipped his arms beneath
Landon's shoulders. The quartermaster lifted his knees.

Landon struggled in their arms.

"Let me be!" he cried. "Let me stand. Damn you, let me stand upon my own
feet!"

They hesitated. Then with a shrug the quartermaster laid down his
burden.

"This is no place for a blind man to pick his way," he remonstrated. "To
get down, Monsieur, you have to poise yourself along the wall thirty
feet above the square."

Landon stood panting and leaning against his cousin. The spasms of agony
were convulsing his face.

"I will not be carried," he panted. "I'll walk upon my feet--like a
man."

They looked at each other, hesitating.

"But your arms?" protested Aylmer. "Your arms?"

The breath hissed between Landon's teeth.

"My arms!" he repeated. "God! If I'd my arms! You--you must lead
me--carefully--carefully. Put your hand upon my shoulder; keep
close--close."

For a dozen yards he tottered along, and the sweat broke out astream
upon his scars. And then he halted, and stumbled.

The quartermaster instinctively put a hand upon one of the broken
wrists. Landon shrieked, and cursed him hideously.

"Monsieur might have fallen," apologized the man. "My excuses, Monsieur,
but it was so quick--so near--the danger. The drop is sheer, do you see,
sheer down to the square."

Landon gasped. "Which side?" he asked thickly. "Which side?"

"The right," said Aylmer. "Lean away from me, inwards, to the left!"

Landon drew a deep breath.

The next instant he had flung himself against Aylmer's guiding hand,
outwards, to the right!

For the second time the quartermaster cried aloud and stretched out a
hand. But it was not Landon's sleeve which it reached, but
Aylmer's--reached and gripped it while the two bodies reeled upon the
crumbling edge and sent the flying blocks down to break into powder upon
the solid flags below.

And then, where two had struggled, one alone remained and clung. Landon
had gone. Like the blocks he lay thirty feet below--broken.



CHAPTER XXVIII

FATE SMILES AT LAST


A pall of mist and driving rain closed upon the city as evening fell, as
if Nature flung a veil between herself and the handiwork of her
passions. Through it the launch of the _Diomède_ threaded the network of
the shipping.

Warmly red against the ghost-like paintwork, the ports of _The Morning
Star_ beamed up out of the smother. Aylmer held up his hand. Silently,
with stopped engines, the boat slid up to the accommodation ladder, and
as silently Aylmer swung himself aboard.

With a gesture of farewell to the boat's crew and one of greeting to the
sailor at the gangway head, he passed into the companion and went below.
In the doorway of the saloon he halted.

Two figures sat at the table, a picture book open before them. Claire's
arm was about her little nephew's shoulder. His face was turned up to
hers, but his finger still pointed to the page which they had been
studying.

"And was he brave, enormously brave?" he was asking. "As brave as--as
Muhammed?"

"Braver than Muhammed," she said quietly. "Because he was--good."

He debated a moment.

"As brave as the pig man, then?" he suggested. "He's been good, always?"

Aylmer stepped forward.

"Not always," he said smiling. "Not even often. But just as much as he
knew how to be."

The glances which met his were startled but full of welcome. With a
cackle of delight little John ran from his seat.

"It's him, himself--the pig man!" he cried.

Aylmer smiled and held out his hand.

Then he turned.

In Claire's eyes the surprise had vanished. They were full of inquiry,
of an agony of question. Her lips were pale and faltered over the words
which would not come.

He nodded, gravely, significantly.

She gave a little gasp. The color rushed to her cheeks, flooded to her
brow. As if some strong chord of tension had broken in her breast, she
leaned against the table, quivering.

"Yes," said Aylmer, quietly. "That shadow is lifted from our lives. He
is gone--God's hand fell upon him--as you told him it would. The future
of this life," he laid his fingers tenderly upon the child's head, "is
in your hands now." He paused. "And my life, Claire--that is yours, too,
to deal with, as you will."

She lifted her head.

The wave of emotion had passed and left her calm again. The haggardness,
the anxious lines, were smoothed. Only in her eyes remained the mist of
unshed tears. And as the mist sinks from the face of the risen sun, so
the shadow of passed sorrow fled before her dawning smile. Slowly she
came towards him.

With a sigh of infinite content her hands reached out to--and placed
their surrender in--his.


       *       *       *       *       *


By E. PHILLIPS OPPENHEIM


THE ILLUSTRIOUS PRINCE

Mr. Oppenheim's new story is a narrative of mystery and international
intrigue that carries the reader breathless from page to page. It is the
tale of the secret and world-startling methods employed by the Emperor
of Japan through Prince Maiyo, his close kinsman, to ascertain the real
reasons for the around-the-world cruise of the American fleet. The
American Ambassador in London and the Duke of Denvenham, an influential
Englishman, work hand in hand to circumvent the Oriental plot, which
proceeds mysteriously to the last page. From the time when Mr. Hamilton
Fynes steps from the _Lusitania_ into a special tug, in his mad rush
towards London, to the very end, the reader is carried from deep mystery
to tense situations, until finally the explanation is reached in a most
unexpected and unusual climax.

No man of this generation has so much facility of expression, so many
technical resources, or so fine a power of narration as Mr. E. Phillips
Oppenheim.--_Philadelphia Inquirer._

Mr. Oppenheim is a past master of the art of constructing ingenious
plots and weaving them around attractive characters.--_London Morning
Post._



By ANTHONY PARTRIDGE

The Author of "The Kingdom of Earth"


PASSERS-BY

This new novel by Anthony Partridge, whose absorbing romance, "The
Kingdom of Earth," met with instant favor, has London for its scene. But
when you have read it you will admit that real London, as well as
imaginary Bergeland, is a source of fascinating romance.

The heroine of "Passers-By" is a street singer, Christine, who comes to
London accompanied by Ambrose Drake, a hunchback, with a piano and a
monkey. The fortunes of these two are strangely linked with those of an
English statesman, the Marquis of Ellingham, who in his youth has led a
wild and criminal career in Paris as the leader of a band of thieves and
gamblers, the Black Foxes. Here is the material for a thrilling tale in
which mystery breeds adventure and culminates in love.

The first chapter plunges the reader into an interest-compelling maze of
events, and the attention is held to the end by a series of dramatic
situations and surprises.

Mr. Partridge is now reckoned among the favorite novelists of the day.
His first book was "The Distributors," the story of a great London
mystery. Then came "The Kingdom of Earth," one of the popular novels of
1909. "Passers-By" is his third book.



_By_ JOHN IRONSIDE

THE RED SYMBOL

_A Swiftly Moving Mystery Story_


Here is a tale of love, mystery, and adventure, that opens with a rush
and holds the interest unflagging to the end. If you like a stirring
love story, prepare to be fascinated by the charming but baffling
heroine; if you enjoy an absorbing mystery, be ready to cudgel your
brains over a perplexing one; if you care for adventures that thrill,
follow Maurice Wynn through the mad whirl of events that befall him when
he goes to Russia and becomes involved with a secret society of
Nihilists. Better yet, if you're fond of a rattling good yarn, one which
combines all three elements, love, mystery, and action, in just the
right proportions, take up "The Red Symbol," and when you have turned
the last page, with nerves all tingling, you will regret that you're not
just starting.

This swiftly moving narrative promises to be one of the most popular
novels of 1910.



By MRS. CHARLES N. CREWDSON

AN AMERICAN BABY ABROAD


When the American baby's mother hurries off from London to Egypt, where
her husband is ill with fever, the baby, in company with its colored
nurse and a friend of its mother's, follows more leisurely. The trio
stop at Oberammergau to see the Passion Play, in Rome to witness a
special mass conducted by Pope Leo,--in a word, do more or less
sightseeing, until they finally reach Cairo, where much more exciting
events befall them. The description of the places they visit is enhanced
by a pleasant vein of humor, and an attractive love episode sustains the
interest. It is an extremely entertaining story, light and vivacious,
with brisk dialogue and diverting situations--just the book for summer
reading.

A series of characteristic pictures, by the well-known artist, Mr. R. F.
Outcault, and Modest Stein gives additional charm to the volume.





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