The Palace of Darkened Windows Part 30

"It is a very delightful situation," he returned blandly, looking about with dancing eyes. "To be again your host, even in so poor a place as this old house of the Sheik--and the place has its possibilities, Mademoiselle. It is romantic. Your window overlooks that desert you were so anxious to see. The sunsets----"

"Captain Kerissen, I must say that you use a very strange way to keep me your guest!"

"I might respond that any way was justifiable so that it kept you a guest.... But you wrong me. Did I not bring you safely out from that quarantine, as you besought me?" His smile was mockery itself.

"But you did not bring me to my friends. I do not like your sending me here, without explanation," she returned, trying to be very wise and speak quietly and not rouse him to anger. "We pa.s.sed a city where the American flags were flying over a house, and I could have gone there."

"I am sorry you do not care for my hospitality. I did not know that I was displeasing to you."

"It is those ways that are displeasing to me. I----"

"Then you shall change them," he laughed. "That will give me pleasure.... But I did not come in the dead of this night, half sick and fatigued, to find such welcome. Come, you must smile a little and sit down at the table with me. Here are delicacies I sent from Cairo."

Smilingly he seated himself at the divan by the table and lifted the covers from the plates, nodded satisfaction at the food, and began to help himself, while she stood there, motionless.

Without looking up, "Will you not help me to the Apollinaris, Mademoiselle?" he suggested. "My right hand, you see, is not as it should be. There is a bottle opener on the tray."

Feeling a fool, but unwilling to provoke a crisis, Arlee tugged at the cork and poured him a gla.s.s of the sparkling water and then a gla.s.s for herself, which she thirstily drank. "How did you hurt your hand?" it occurred to her to say.

"By playing with fire--the single pastime of entertainment!" He spoke gaily, but his lips twitched. "But will you not sit down and join me? This caviar I recommend."

"I do not care to eat."

"No?" He finished his sandwich and drained his gla.s.s, talking banteringly the while to her. She did not answer. Something told her that the time of explanation between them was coming fast; he had ceased to play with his good fortune, ceased to feel he could afford to wait and look and fancy. He had come urgent, in the dead of night. His mood was teasing, mocking, but imperative.... Slowly she moved toward the unlatched door.

Alertly he was before her; the bolts shot home. "Ah, pardon, but I was negligent! We might be interrupted--and also," he laughed, as if deprecatingly, "I have foolish fears that you are so dream-like that you will vanish like a dream without those earthly bars. Locks are for treasures.... And now where is that welcome for me? I came in that door on fire to see you, and your eyes froze me. I came to love--you made me mock. Shall we begin again? Will you be nice now, little one, be kind and sweet----"

"Captain Kerissen, you make it impossible for me to like you at all!

Why do you treat me like this? You shut me in this house like a prisoner. If you--if you care for me at all," stammered Arlee, "you would not treat me so!"

"And how, then, would I treat you?" he inquired slowly.

"You would--you would take me to my own people and give me back my independence, my dignity. Then there would be honor in your--your courtship. I----"

"Would you come back to me?"

"I----"

The lie choked her. And the pa.s.sion of anger which had flared in her that afternoon sprang up in flame again; the candlelight showed the hot blood in her cheeks. "I shall not come to you if you keep me here!" she gave back fearlessly.

"But here I can come to you. And the preliminaries are always stupid--I have no desire to reenact them. I am well content with where we have arrived. Be content, also."

She stared back at his smiling face. And all she thought was, "Shall I defy him now, or try to hold him off a little longer?" She had ceased to feel afraid; her blood was on fire; it was battle now between them; perhaps a battle of the wits a little longer, then----

"In America men do not make love by force," she flung at him. "You are mad, Captain Kerissen! You will be sorry if you go on like this.

If you wish to marry me you must give me the freedom of choice. You must give me time. I must have a minister of my own faith. Do you think I will submit to this? You make me hate you!"

"Hate is often love with a mask," he laughed, his eyes fixed on the spirited, flushed face, the flashing eyes, the defiant mouth. "And do not quote your America to me. You are done with America."

"You say that? You forget who I am! My brother--I tell you my brother will----"

"Do I not know the risks?" His eyes narrowed. "But your brother will ask in vain. He will not see you--until we reappear as husband and wife. I will take you to the Continent, then I will give you everything a woman wants, luxury and jewels--the pearls of my ancestors I will hang on you. These have no woman of mine worn. You shall be my adored, my dearest---- Oh, you must not turn from me," he pleaded, his voice sinking softer and softer as he stole closer to her. "You know that I am mad for you. You have bewitched me, little Rose, you have made me strong and weak in a breath. I am clay in your hands. Be sweet, be kind, be wife to me----" His hot hand gripped her arm. He bent over her, and she sprang back, her hands flung out before her.

"Oh, wait!" she cried beseechingly. "Wait--please wait."

"Wait? I have waited too long!" His voice was a snarl now. The mask of indolent mockery was gone; his face was stamped with cruelty and greed. "_Nom d'un nom_, I am through with this waiting!"

She sprang back before his approach, then whirled about to face him, trying to beat him back with words, with reason, with appeal.

Insanely he laughed and clutched at her as she flew past his outstretched arms; in the corner he pinioned her against the wall and gripped her to him.

Terror gave her the strength of two--and his hand was bandaged.

Desperately she attacked it, and as his laughter changed to curses, she wrenched free once more and flew across the room. With both hands she seized the candles and flung them into the pillowed divan; holding the last two to the draperies. Like magic the little flames zigzagged up the cotton hangings.

He threw himself upon the fire, dragging down the hangings, beating on the cushions, but the corner was ablaze. Overhead the flames seized cracklingly on the dry wood and darted little red tongues over the dry surface and a scarlet snake ran out over the carved ceiling.

In utter wildness Arlee had carried the last candle to the open hamper and the garments there caught instant fire. She was oblivious of the sparks falling about her, oblivious of the increasing peril.

When Kerissen ran to the door, tearing open the bolts, furiously cursing her, she gave him back the ghost of his earlier mocking laughter and threatened him with a blazing cloth as he turned to drag her from the room.

But the fire reached her fingers and she flung the cloth at him, to have him trample it under foot as he sprang toward her again.

"Would you be burned--be marred?" he shouted at her. "You are mad, you----"

Behind him the door opened. Behind him a tall figure appeared through the thickening smoke. She saw a face she knew; a voice she knew cried out her name:

"Arlee!"

"Oh, here!" she cried and flung herself toward him.

"Not unless you want another?" said Billy B. Hill to the Captain, turning his gun suggestively.

One tense instant the three faced each other in that flaming room, then with a sound of impotent fury, Kerissen turned and darted out the door. But as Billy turned to follow, his hand on Arlee's, there was a sound of sliding bolts.

"Burn, burn, then! Burn together!" called a hoa.r.s.e voice through the wood.

Hill flung himself against the door; it was unyielding. On the other side the taunts continued. He ran to the window, catching up the little table as he ran, and rained a fury of blows with the table against the close-carved screen. The wood splintered and broke; he wrenched a side away, and dropping his gun in his pocket he crashed through the hole and hung on the outside by his hands.

"Climb out on my shoulders," he commanded, and Arlee climbed--how, she never knew. For one instant she had an impression of hanging out over an abyss with fire crackling in her face; the next instant the soles of her feet were smarting and her eyes still seemed to see stars.

There was a run, stumbling, with Billy's hand sustaining her, and then she was on a camel, clutching the saddle as the beast rose swiftly in response to urgent whacks, and beside her Billy was on another. Some one on foot goaded the beasts into a startled run, and behind them yells and screeches were growing louder and louder.

Over her lurching shoulder she had one last glimpse of a burning building and saw flames pouring from the roof, and the room where she had been an open furnace, and then she turned her face toward the dark ahead.

"Hang tight," Billy was calling to her, and she saw him lean over and lash both camels into furious speed. "Some one is riding after,"

and then he turned and shot his gun warningly into the air.

The yells behind them stopped. But after some moments they heard a camel snarl, and knew that some one was still back there in the darkness, hanging on their trail. So they rode hard ahead, into the enveloping night, over the rolling dunes, with the wind leaping and tearing and hurling the sand in their faces, as if the very elements were fighting against them.

It was a strange chase and a hot one, pounding on and on, racked with the wild, lurching flight, deeper and deeper into the yellow-gray night that welcomed them with more strident blasts and more stinging particles of sand.