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Page 42
Hugh Carden Ali spoke wearily, being stricken with love. For ten solid
minutes the woman had talked round her subject. Intuitive, she scented
danger; usually fearless, her whole being was sick with apprehension;
desperate, she dug her nails into her flesh and essayed to reach her
goal by a roundabout way.
Then she stopped, sighed, and cast down her eyes; then raised them
beseechingly when the man spoke.
"Fearing to use force against the--the woman who thou sayest is loved
by the man thou lovest--and may the prophet bear witness that thy tale
is as full of turnings and twistings as the paths in the bazaar in
which thou spinn'st thy web--thou would'st tear her from him by craft.
Explain thy seemingly futile words, and hasten thy lying tongue, for
behold the hour of dawn approacheth."
And the wrath in the voice was such as to hurl the woman pell-mell over
the cliff of discretion down into the depths of her own undoing.
"She, the white woman, walks in the bazaar, yea, even at noon and at
sunset. Perchance one evening, lured by the tale of the riches of the
house of Zulannah, might not her feet stray within the portals at the
setting of the sun. And behold, the key of the great door is within
these hands, and--and------"
The man's hands lay quietly on his knees as he leant forward, and the
shadow thrown by the flowering plants hid the twin pools of murder in
the depths of his eyes.
"And------?" he whispered.
"And------" she whispered back, "would the white man, thinkest thou,
take to wife her who had passed a night in the house of the courtesan?
Would he not, without waiting for explanation, throw her into the filth
of the bazaar, leaving her for the first comer to pick up, and turn
himself to------"
She leapt to her feet, screaming, as his fingers closed round her wrist
in a grip of steel; mad with fury, she tore her raiment and hair,
raving obscenities in the vilest language of the lowest reaches of the
bazaar, oblivious of the dogs which reared and fell and reared
unceasingly behind her.
"The white woman who trapeses the bazaar unveiled," she screamed. "The
white virgin who flung herself into thy arms, in the market-place, thou
trafficker in foreign harlots, the------"
Hugh Carden Ali, the son of his father to the inner-most part of his
being in the horrible scene, had made one little sign, and the dogs
were upon her.
With a sickening scrunch one caught the side of her head in the steel
jaws which stretched from the nape of the neck to the corner of the
mouth; with a sharp snap the other drove its fangs into the muscle
behind the dimpled knee.
They pulled her down and stood stock-still, as these dogs are trained
to do; then with crimson saliva dripping from the jaws, crimson lights
shining in the eyes, let go their hold and stood looking alternately
from master to quarry, with slowly wagging tails.
There was no sign of anger in the man as he sat tranquilly upon the
cushions, the amber mouthpiece of the _nargileh_ between his lips; no
sound of wrath in the gentle voice which bid the Ethiopian eunuch to
remain prostrated upon the floor, until the arrival of the other
slaves, who could be heard pelting through the house from every
direction in answer to the summons of the gong.
"Idrabuh," he said quietly to four of the terror-stricken domestic
staff, pointing to the eunuch. "Upon the soles of the feet so that he
walketh not for many a day--if ever." And as the wretch was dragged
screaming from the room, he beckoned to four others, and pointed to the
body of the woman. "Carry that out and throw it in the street, in such
wise that it is not known from whence it came. Touch not the jewels,
lest thou sharest thy brother's fate."
With falcon upon wrist and blood-stained dogs at his heels, he passed
out of the ill-fated court to his own apartment, and, having bathed and
dressed himself, to his body-servant's grief, in hot, European
riding-kit, with boots from Peter Yapp, tucked the cleansed dogs of
Billi in beside him, and raced his car to the Obelisk which is all that
remains upright of the Biblical City of On.
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