Tales of Secret Egypt Part 27

I killed time somehow or other until the dinner hour; and the train, which now reposed in a siding, became a rendezvous for those who desired to patronize the dining-car. Evidently no sleeping-cars were available (or perhaps that idea was beyond the imagination of the native officials), and having left a trail of tobacco smoke along the princ.i.p.al native street, I turned into my apartment which I shared with the ants, mosquitoes--and the other things.

An examination of my rooms by candle-light revealed the presence of a cupboard, or what I thought to be a cupboard, but opening the double doors I saw that it was a window, latticed and overlooking a lower apartment; so much I perceived by the light of an oil lamp which stood upon the table. Then, stifling a gasp of amazement, I hastily snuffed my candle and peered down eagerly at that incredible scene....

Nahemah, longer veiled, was sitting at the table, and opposite to her was seated the hideous wall-eyed attendant!

They were conversing in low tones, so that, strive as I would, I could not overhear a word. You ask me why I spied upon the lady's privacy in this manner? For a very good reason.

Midway between the two, upon the rough boards of the table, lay Lure of Souls, twinkling and glittering like a thing of incarnate light.

I observed that there was a door to the room below, almost immediately opposite the window through which I was peering ... and this door was opening very slowly and noiselessly. At least, _I_ could hear no noise, but the one-eyed man detected something, for suddenly he started up and did a remarkable thing. s.n.a.t.c.hing up the diamond from the table, he clapped it into the eyeless cavity of his skull and turned in a twinkling to face the intruder.

Then the door was thrown open, and Hamilton leapt into the room.

I could scarcely credit my senses. Honestly, I thought I was dreaming.

Hamilton's whole face was changed: a hard, cunning look had come over it, and he held a revolver in his hand. Nahemah sprang to her feet as he entered, but he covered the pair of them with his revolver, and pointing to the one-eyed man muttered something in a low voice. Rage, fear, rebellion chased in turn across the evil features of One-eye; but there was something about Hamilton's manner that cowed.

Manipulating the sunken eyelids as though they had been of rubber, the guardian of the veiled lady slipped the diamond into the palm of his hand and tossed it, glittering, on to the table.

Hamilton's expression of triumph I shall never forget. One step forward he took and was about to s.n.a.t.c.h up the gem when--out of the dark cavity of the doorway behind him stepped a second intruder.

It was the Rev. Mr. Rawlingson!

The reverend gentleman's behavior was most unclerical. He leapt upon the unsuspecting Hamilton like a panther and screwed the muzzle of a revolver into that gentleman's right ear with quite unnecessary vigor.

"You have been wasting your time, Farland!" he snapped in a voice that was quite new to me. "That is, unless you have turned amateur detective."

He made no attempt to reach for the diamond, but just held out his hand, and with his eyes fixed upon Hamilton, silently commanded the latter to hand over the gem. This Hamilton did with palpable reluctance. Mr. Rawlingson, who, though still clerically garbed, had discarded his spectacles, slipped the stone into his pocket, s.n.a.t.c.hed the revolver from Hamilton's hand and jerked his thumb in the direction of the open door. Hamilton shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the room. For scarce a moment did Rawlingson's eyes turn to follow the retreating figure, but the chance was good enough for the wall-eyed man.

He launched himself through s.p.a.ce like nothing so much as a kangaroo, bearing Rawlingson irresistibly to the floor! With his lean hands at the other's throat he turned his solitary eye upon Nahemah, muttering something gutturally. After a moment's hesitation she ran from the room.

Twenty seconds later I was downstairs, and ten seconds after that was helping Rawlingson to his feet. He was considerably shaken and boasted a very elegant design in bruises which was just beginning to reveal itself upon his throat; but otherwise he was unhurt.

"I have lost her, Mr. Fane!" were his first words. "She knows this part of the world inside out. I have no case against Farland, but I am sorry to have lost the woman."

Was my mind in a whirl? Did I think that madness had seized me?

Replies both in the affirmative; I was simply staggered.

I always go to pieces with this part of the yarn, being an unpractised narrator, as I have already explained; but I may relieve your mind upon one point. I never saw Nahemah and the one-eyed man again, nor have I since set eyes upon Hamilton. Mr. Rawlingson, the last time I heard from him, was in similar case.

The explanation of the whole thing was something of a blow to me, of course. The lily of Damascus who had fascinated me so hopelessly was no Eastern at all; you will have guessed as much. She was a Frenchwoman, I believe; at any rate they had a long record up against her in Paris. She had gone out after Lure of Souls, and very ingeniously had made me her instrument. As Mr. Rawlingson explained to me, what had probably taken place was this:

The harmless scorpion, specially brought along for some such purpose, had been thrown into the chief officer's cabin from the open porthole by the one-eyed villain. That had been the cue for Nahemah to drop the shirt b.u.t.ton, and, whilst the occupants of the cabin were in confusion, to toss the diamond out on to the deck where her accomplice was waiting. The search of their effects had been futile, of course; no one had thoughts of searching the eye-cavity of her Eastern companion.

Where did Hamilton come in? Hamilton was one James Farland, an American crook of the highest accomplishments, known to the police of the entire civilized world. He, too, had gone out for Lure of Souls, but the woman, his professional compet.i.tor, had proved too clever for him.

The Rev. Mr. Rawlingson? He was Detective-Inspector Wexford of New Scotland Yard. Yes, it's a rotten story, from a romantic point of view.

III

THE SECRET OF ISMAIL

I

Mustapha Mirza knew it--Mustapha Mirza, the blind Persian who makes shoes hard by the Bab ez-Zuwela and in the very shadow of the minarets of Muayyad; Ha.s.san es-Siwa of the Street of the Carpet-sellers in the Mski, Ha.s.san, who, where another man has hands, has but hideous stumps, knew it, and because of him it was that Abdl Moharli sought it--Abdl the mendicant who crouches on the steps of the Blue Mosque muttering, guttural, inarticulate, and pointing to the tongueless cavity of his mouth. Now I know it; but not from Abdl Moharli: may Allah, the Great, the Compa.s.sionate, defend me!

I say "May Allah defend me," yet I am no Moslem; I have no spot of Egyptian blood in my veins. No, I am a pure Greek of Cos, of Cos the home of the loveliest women in the world; and my mother was one of these, whilst my father was a Cretan, and a true descendent of Minos.

My story perhaps will not be believed, for always it has been my fate to be maligned. You will ask, perhaps, what I was doing in the Mazi Desert between Beni Suef and the Red Sea, but I reply that my cotton interests--for I have cotton interests in the Delta--often lead me far afield. You do not understand the cotton industry or this explanation would be unnecessary. It is only those who do not understand the cotton industry that speak of _hashish_. _Hashish!_ I leave it to the Egyptians and the Jews to deal in _hashish_; I am neither a Jew nor an Egyptian, but a Greek of Cos, who would not soil his hands with such a trade--no.

Upon my business, then, my legitimate business, I found myself with a small company of servants encamped by the Wadi Araba. At the Wadi Araba I had a commercial acquaintance, a sheikh of the Mazi Arabs.

Those villains who say that he was a "go-between," that my business was not with him, but through him with a port of the Red Sea, dare not say as much to my face; for there is a law in the land--even in the land of Egypt, now that the British hold power here.

I had reached the point, then, whereat it was my custom to meet my business acquaintance and to discuss certain affairs in which we were interested. My servants had erected the tent in which I was to sleep, and the camels lay in a little limestone valley to the west, their eyes mild because they knew that the day's work was ended; for it is a foolish mistake to suppose that the eye of a camel is mild at any other time. The camel knows the secret name of Allah--and that name is Rest.

The violet after-glow, which is the most wonderful thing in Nature, crowned the desert with glory right away to the porphyry mountains.

I stood at my tent door looking westward to the Nile. I stood looking out upon the waste of the sands, the eternal sands which are a belt about Egypt; and my thoughts running fleetly before me, crossed the desert, crossed the Nile, and came to rest in the verdant, fertile Faym, its greenness sweet to look upon in the heat of such an evening, its palms fashioned in ebony black against the wondrous sky.

Yes, I, who am a Greek, love the Faym more than any spot on earth; the modern clamor and dust of Cairo are hateful to me, although my business often takes me there, and also to Alexandria, the most European city in the East, and to me the most detestable. But my business is in the Delta and it is a good business, so why should I complain?

I stood at my tent door, and I thought of many things, though little of the matters which had brought me there; a faint cool breeze fanned my brow, and about me was that great peace which comes to Egypt with the touch of night. My servants were silent in their encampment, and the shrieking of the camels had ceased. About me, then, all was sleeping; only I was awake, only I was there to receive Abdl Moharli and his secret--the secret of Ismail.

By the pattering of his bare feet upon the sand, I first learned of his coming, but for a long time I could not see him, for his way led him through the valley where the camels slept, and a mound obscured my view. But presently I heard his panting breaths and his little delirious cries of fear, which were like sobs, and presently, again, I saw him staggering over the slope. At the sight of me he uttered one last gasping cry and fell forward on his face unconscious--like a dead man.

I hurried to him, stooped and raised him. His face was dreadful to look upon. His eyes were sunken in his skull, and his flesh shrivelled as by long fasting. His beard was filthy, knotted and unkempt, and his hair a black mat streaked with dirty gray. He was thin as a mummy and the bones protruded through his skin. He was as one who is dying from excess of _hashish_.

Ah! I know how they look, those poor fools who poison themselves with the Indian hemp. I wonder Allah does not strike down the villain who places that poison within their reach. I use the term "Allah" because my business brings me much in contact with the natives, but I am no Moslem, as I have related. Father Pierre of Alexandria can tell you how devoted a Christian I am.

Drink and food revived him somewhat; and as I sat beside him in my tent that night he babbled to me, half deliriously; he raved, and to another it might have seemed the fancies of a poor madman which he poured into my ears. For he spoke of a secret oasis and of a sheikh who had lived since the days of Sultan Kalan; of a treasure vast as that of Suleyman--and of magic, black magic; of the trans.m.u.ting of gold and the making of diamonds.

But I, who am a Greek, and one who has lived all his life between Alexandria and the Red Sea; I who know the Garden of Egypt as another knows the palm of his hand--I detected in this delirium the shadow of a truth. To me it became evident that this wretched being who had fled, a hunted thing, over the trackless desert for many days and nights--it became evident to me, I say, that he spoke of the far-famed secret of Ismail.

You would ask: What is the secret of Ismail? I would tell you, ask it of Ha.s.san the Handless, of Mustapha, the blind Persian of the Bab ez-Zuwela; better still, ask it of any son of the Faym, of any man of the Mazi. None of them will answer you, for none save Ha.s.san and Mustapha knows the strange truth--Ha.s.san and Mustapha, and Abdl Moharli ... and no one of these three knows all, nor will reveal what he knows.

Ah! how my heart leapt and how my eyes must have gleamed in the darkness of the tent, yet how cold a fear clutched at the life within me. The night seemed suddenly to become a thin curtain veiling eyes that watched, the empty desert a hiding-place for unseen mult.i.tudes that listened; the faint breeze raising the flap of the tent, ever so gently, ever so softly, a.s.sumed the shape of a malignant hand that reached for my throat, that sought to stifle me ere the secret, the deathly secret of Ismail should be mine.

Abdl Moharli was the name of this wanderer; and as he spoke to me, gulping down great draughts of water between the words, ever he glanced to right and left, over his shoulder and all about him.

"It is four days from here," he whispered hoa.r.s.ely; "due south in the direction of the porphyry quarries and the Mountain of Smoke. There is a tiny village and all the inhabitants are of the race of Sad Ebn al As, being descendants of the companion of the prophet. I had long supposed that this race of heretics was extinct; but it is not so, O my benefactor; with these eyes, have I seen the houses wherein they dwell. By the strategy of which I have spoken did I penetrate to their secret dwelling-place and win their unsuspecting love."

And then, clutching me to him with his bony hands, he spoke in hushed and fearful tones of the house of the Sheikh Ismail Ebn al As. It was the fabled treasure of this holy man which had been the lodestone drawing Abdl Moharli out into the desert. Something of his fear, of his constant apprehension seized upon me too; and as he glanced tremblingly first over this shoulder and then over that, so likewise did _I_ glance, until I seemed to crouch in a world of spies listening to a secret greater than that of the Universe.

I p.r.o.nounced the _Takbir_, "Great is the Lord!"--a superst.i.tious custom which I have acquired from my business acquaintances. I made the sign of the Cross and called upon the name of the Holy Virgin.

Almost I feared to listen further, yet I lacked the courage to abstain.

"Not with mine eyes have I beheld the treasure of Ismail," he whispered to me, this shadow of a man, this living mummy, those same eyes rolling in their sunken sockets; "nor with mine ears have I heard it named. These hands have never touched it; yet the secret of Ismail is _my_ secret."