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Page 7
"That's so," said Meakim, approvingly. "It makes it more sociable."
"It's a funny place," continued Carroll. The wine had loosened his
tongue, and it was something to him to be able to talk to one of his
own people again, and to speak from their point of view, so that the
man who had gone through St. Paul's and Harvard with him would see it
as such a man should. "It's a funny place, because, in spite of the
fact that it's a prison, you grow to like it for its freedom. You can
do things here you can't do in New York, and pretty much everything
goes there, or it used to, where I hung out. But here you're just your
own master, and there's no law and no religion and no relations nor
newspapers to poke into what you do nor how you live. You can
understand what I mean if you've ever tried living in the West. I used
to feel the same way the year I was ranching in Texas. My family sent
me out there to put me out of temptation; but I concluded I'd rather
drink myself to death on good whiskey at Del's than on the stuff we
got on the range, so I pulled my freight and came East again. But
while I was there I was a little king. I was just as good as the next
man, and he was no better than me. And though the life was rough, and
it was cold and lonely, there was something in being your own boss
that made you stick it out there longer than anything else did. It was
like this, Holcombe." Carroll half rose from his chair and marked what
he said with his finger. "Every time I took a step and my gun bumped
against my hip, I'd straighten up and feel good and look for trouble.
There was nobody to appeal to; it was just between me and him, and no
one else had any say about it. Well, that's what it's like here. You
see men come to Tangier on the run, flying from detectives or husbands
or bank directors, men who have lived perfectly decent, commonplace
lives up to the time they made their one bad break--which," Carroll
added, in polite parenthesis, with a deprecatory wave of his hand
toward Meakim and himself, "we are _all_ likely to do some time,
aren't we?"
"Just so," said Meakim.
"Of course," assented the District Attorney.
"But as soon as he reaches this place, Holcombe," continued Carroll,
"he begins to show just how bad he is. It all comes out--all his
viciousness and rottenness and blackguardism. There is nothing to
shame it, and there is no one to blame him, and no one is in a
position to throw the first stone." Carroll dropped his voice and
pulled his chair forward with a glance over his shoulder. "One of
those men you saw riding in from the meet to-day. Now, he's a German
officer, and he's here for forging a note or cheating at cards or
something quiet and gentlemanly, nothing that shows him to be a brute
or a beast. But last week he had old Mulley Wazzam buy him a slave
girl in Fez, and bring her out to his house in the suburbs. It seems
that the girl was in love with a soldier in the Sultan's body-guard at
Fez, and tried to run away to join him, and this man met her quite by
accident as she was making her way south across the sand-hills. He was
whip that day, and was hurrying out to the meet alone. He had some
words with the girl first, and then took his whip--it was one of those
with the long lash to it; you know what I mean--and cut her to pieces
with it, riding her down on his pony when she tried to run, and
heading her off and lashing her around the legs and body until she
fell; then he rode on in his damn pink coat to join the ladies at
Mango's Drift, where the meet was, and some Riffs found her bleeding
to death behind the sand-hills. That man held a commission in the
Emperor's own body-guard, and that's what Tangier did for _him_."
Holcombe glanced at Meakim to see if he would verify this, but
Meakim's lips were tightly pressed around his cigar, and his eyes were
half closed.
"And what was done about it?" Holcombe asked, hoarsely.
Carroll laughed, and shrugged his shoulders. "Why, I tell you, and you
whisper it to the next man, and we pretend not to believe it, and call
the Riffs liars. As I say, we're none of us here for our health,
Holcombe, and a public opinion that's manufactured by _d�class�e_
women and men who have run off with somebody's money and somebody's
else's wife isn't strong enough to try a man for beating his own
slave."
"But the Moors themselves?" protested Holcombe. "And the Sultan? She's
one of his subjects, isn't she?"
"She's a woman, and women don't count for much in the East, you know;
and as for the Sultan, he's an ignorant black savage. When the English
wanted to blow up those rocks off the western coast, the Sultan
wouldn't let them. He said Allah had placed them there for some good
reason of His own, and it was not for man to interfere with the works
of God. That's the sort of a Sultan he is." Carroll rose suddenly and
walked into the smoking-room, leaving the two men looking at each
other in silence.
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