A Son of the Sahara Part 44

The bath-room lay beneath the stone gallery, with fretted and columned arches where more roses clung and climbed, opening directly on the scented quiet of the garden. It was a huge basin of white marble, about thirty feet across and deep enough to swim in, with a carved edge, delicate as lace.

Pansy was in no mood to appreciate her fairy-like surroundings. And the beauty of her prison in no way softened her heart towards her captor.

As she splashed about in the bath, over the high walls came the sound of bells, like church chimes wrangling in the distance on an English Sunday.

Wistfully Pansy stopped and listened to them. She was travelled enough to recognize them as camel bells; some train coming to this barbaric city.

When she returned to the dim, gilded room, breakfast was awaiting her; an ordinary Continental breakfast.

She pecked at it, too sick at heart to eat. Then she sat on, awaiting Edouard's appearance. He had parted with her the previous night, promising to come and see her when she was installed in the Sultan's palace.

It was evening before he came. Pansy greeted him eagerly. All day she had dreaded that her captor might appear. But she wanted to see him, to satisfy herself about her father.

Edouard's visits to her were purely professional, and brief. Always his idea was to get away, for his conscience p.r.i.c.ked him where Pansy was concerned. He was used to his patron's wild ways, and he knew the girl's position was not of her own choosing.

"Will you tell the Sultan I want to see him?" she said when he rose to go.

"Hasn't he paid you a visit yet?" the doctor asked with surprise.

"No, and I'm so worried about my father."

Edouard left, promising to deliver her message. But he came the next day, saying the Sultan had refused to grant her an interview.

"I wonder why he won't see me," she said drearily.

Edouard wondered also.

That evening he dined with his friend and patron, not in a gorgeous Eastern apartment like Pansy's, but in one that was decidedly Western in its fittings and appointments. And the Sultan was attired as Pansy had seen him several times in Grand Canary, in black dress-suit, white pleated shirt and the black pearl studs.

Dinner was over before Edouard approached the subject of the girl-prisoner.

"If I were you I'd see Miss Barclay," he said. "This suspense won't do her any good. She frets all day about her father."

"It's not in my plans to see her just yet," the Sultan replied.

Edouard glanced at him.

Then he did what for him was a bold thing, fat and comfortable and fond of his easy berth as he was. He challenged his royal master concerning his intentions towards the captive girl.

"What are your plans with regard to Miss Barclay?" he ventured. "She's not one of the sort who can be bought with a string of pearls or a diamond bracelet."

"I'm going to marry her," the Sultan said easily.

Edouard experienced a feeling of relief, on his own account as much as Pansy's.

The doctor studied her with renewed interest the next day when he paid her his usual visit.

"If I sent a note to the Sultan, do you think it would be any use?"

Pansy asked him anxiously, the moment he had done with professional matters.

"It would do no harm at any rate," he replied.

Pansy got to her feet quickly.

She knew Edouard was in touch with her captor--a prisoner like herself she imagined, but free to come and go because of his calling. She did not know he was a man so faithful to his master that the latter's smallest wish was carried out to the letter.

Going into the alcove where her belongings were, Pansy seated herself on the edge of a couch, with a writing-pad on her knee. For some minutes she stayed frowning at a blank piece of paper. It was so difficult to know what to say to this savage chief who held the lives of her father and friends in his hands.

After some minutes thinking she wrote:

"To the Sultan Casim Ammeh.

Perhaps you do not know that I am very rich. Any price you may ask I am prepared to give for my father's life and freedom, for the lives and freedom of my English friends who are also your prisoners, and for my own. The ransom will be paid to you in gold. All you will have to do will be to mention the sum you want, and allow me to send a message through to my bank in England.

Pansy Langham Barclay."

The note was put into an envelope, sealed, addressed and taken out to Edouard.

On handing it over, however, Pansy suddenly recollected that the Sultan, for all his wealth and power, might be ignorant of the arts of reading and writing.

"Can he read French?" she asked.

An amused look came to the doctor's face.

"If he can't make it out, I'll read it to him," he replied.

It was evening before Le Breton got the note. Le Breton again as Pansy knew him, in khaki riding-suit, just as he had returned from a ride on her old race-horse, that had been brought to his camp the day of her capture, and was now in the palace stables.

The note was lying on his desk, with the name that Pansy now hated--the Sultan Casim Ammeh--written on the envelope in her pretty hand.

A tender look hovered about his mouth as he picked up the letter and read it. Again the girl was "doing her best" for some helpless creatures--his prisoners. Although the fact filled him with an even greater admiration for Pansy, it did not lessen his hatred for her father.

He sat down and dashed off a brief reply in an a.s.sumed hand.

"All the gold in Africa will not buy my vengeance from me.

Casim Ammeh."

His answer reached Pansy with her dinner, reducing her to despair.

It seemed that nothing she could do would have any influence with this savage ruler.

Hopeless days followed; days that brought her nothing but a series of elaborate meals. Yet she knew that life went on around her; a life quite different from any she had been accustomed to.

Morning and night she heard faint voices wailing from unseen minarets.