by Sax Rohmer
“Indeed!” said Graham dryly. “Well, I hope I may have the pleasure of meeting this mysterious notability before I leave the country.”
“Unless you journey across the sands for many days, it is unlikely. For when he comes into Egypt he reveals himself to none but the supremely good,” — Graham stared— “and the supremely wicked!” added Mohammed.
The poetic dragoman having departed, Graham leaned over to his wife, who had sat spellbound, her big blue eyes turned to the face of Mohammed throughout his romantic narrative.
“These wild native legends appeal to you, don’t they?” he said, smiling and patting her hand affectionately. “You superstitious little colleen!”
Eileen Graham blushed, and the blush of a pretty Irish bride is a very beautiful thing.
“Don’t you believe it at all, then?” she asked softly.
“I believe there may be such a person as Ben Azreem, and possibly he’s a very imposing individual. He may even indulge in visits, incognito, to Cairo, in the manner of the late lamented Hárûn er-Rashîd of Arabian Nights memory, but I can’t say that I believe in welees as a class!”
His wife shrugged her pretty shoulders.
“There is something that I have to tell you, which I suppose you will also refuse to believe,” she said, with mock indignation. “You remember the Arabs whom we saw at the exhibition in London?”
Graham started.
“The gentlemen who were advertised as ‘chiefs from the Arabian Desert’? I remember one in particular.”
“That is the one I mean,” said Eileen.
Her husband looked at her curiously.
“Your explanation is delightfully lucid, dear!” he said jocularly. “My memories of the gentleman known as El-Suleym, I believe, are not pleasant; his memories of me must be equally unfavourable. He illustrated the fact that savages should never be introduced into civilised society, however fascinating they may be personally. Mrs. Marstham was silly enough to take the man up, and because of the way he looked at you, I was wise enough to knock him down! What then?”
“Only this — I saw him, to-day!”
“Eileen!” There was alarm in Graham’s voice. “Where? Here, or in Cairo?”
“As we were driving away from the mosque of the Whirling Dervishes. He was one of a group who stood by the bridge.”
“You are certain?”
“Quite certain.”
“Did he see you?”
“I couldn’t say. He gave no sign to show that he had seen me.”
John Graham lighted a cigarette with much care.
“It doesn’t matter, anyway,” he said, carelessly. “You are as safe here as at the Ritz.”
But there was unrest in the glance which he cast out across the prospect touched by moon-magic into supernatural beauty.
In the distance gleamed a fairy city of silvern minarets, born, it seemed, from the silvern stream. Beyond lay the night mystery of the desert, into whose vastness marched the ghostly acacias. The discordant chattering and chanting from the river-bank merged into a humming song, not unmusical. The howling of the dogs, even, found a place in the orchestral scheme.
Behind him, in the hotel, was European and American life — modernity; before him was that other life, endless and unchanging. There was something cold, sombre, and bleak in the wonderful prospect, something shocking in the presence of those sight-seeing, careless folk, the luxurious hotel, all that was Western and new, upon that threshold of the ancient, changeless desert.
A menace, too, substantial yet cloaked with the mystery of the motherland of mysteries, had arisen now. Although he had assured Eileen that Gizeh was as safe as Piccadilly, he had too much imagination to be unaware that from the Egypt of Cook’s to the Egypt of secrets is but a step.
None but the very young or very sanguine traveller looks for adventure nowadays in the neighbourhood of Mena House. When the intrepid George Sandys visited and explored the Great Pyramid, it was at peril of his life, but Graham reflected humorously that the most nervous old ladies now performed the feat almost daily. Yet out here in the moonlight where the silence was, out beyond the radius of “sights,” lay a land unknown to Europe, as every desert is unknown.
It was a thought that had often come to him, but it came to-night with a force and wearing a significance which changed the aspect of the sands, the aspect of all Egypt.
He glanced at the charming girl beside him. Eileen, too, was looking into the distance with far-away gaze. The pose of her head was delightful, and he sat watching her in silence. Within the hotel the orchestra had commenced softly to play; but Graham did not notice the fact. He was thinking how easily one could be lost out upon that grey ocean, with its islands of priestly ruins.
“It is growing rather chilly, dear,” he said suddenly; “even for fur wraps. Suppose we go in?”
II
The crowd in the bazaar was excessive, and the bent old figure which laboured beneath a nondescript burden, wrapped up in a blue cloth, passed from the noisiness out into the narrow street which ran at right-angles with the lane of many shops.
Perhaps the old Arab was deaf, perhaps wearied to the point of exhaustion; but, from whatever cause, he ignored, or was unaware of, the oncoming arabeeyeh, whose driver had lost control of his horse. Even the shrill scream of the corpulent, white-veiled German lady, who was one of its passengers, failed to arouse him. Out into the narrow roadway he staggered, bent almost double.
Graham, accompanied by Mohammed, was some distance away, haggling with a Greek thief who held the view that a return of three hundred and fifty per cent. spelled black ruination.
Eileen, finding the air stifling, had walked on in the direction of the less crowded street above. Thus it happened that she, and the poor old porter, alone, were in the path of the onward-whirling carriage.
Many women so placed would have stood, frozen with horror, have been struck down by the frantic animal; some would have had sufficient presence of mind to gain the only shelter attainable in time — that of a deep-set doorway. Few would have acted as Eileen acted.
It was under the stimulus of that Celtic impetuosity — that generous madness which seems to proceed, not from the mind, but from the heart — that she leapt, not back, but forward.
She never knew exactly what took place, nor how she escaped destruction; but there was a roaring in her ears, above it rising the Teutonic screams of the lady in the arabeeyeh; there was a confused chorus of voices, a consciousness of effort; and she found herself, with wildly beating heart, crouching back into the recess which once had held a mastabah.
From some place invisible, around a bend in the tortuous street, came sounds of shouting and that of lashing hoofs. The runaway was stopped. At her feet lay a shapeless bundle wrapped in a blue cloth, and beside her, leaning back against the whitewashed wall, and breathing with short, sobbing breaths, was the old porter.
Now, her husband had his arms about her, and Mohammed, with frightened eyes, hovered in the background. Without undue haste, all the bazaar gradually was coming upon the scene.
“My darling, are you hurt?”
John Graham’s voice shook. He was deathly pale.
Eileen smiled reassuringly.
“Not a bit, dear,” she said breathlessly. “But I am afraid the poor old man is.”
“You are quite sure you are not hurt?”
“I was not so much as touched, though honestly I don’t know how either of us escaped. But do see if the old man is injured.”
Graham turned to the rescued porter, who now had recovered his composure.
“Mohammed, ask him if he is hurt,” he directed.
Mohammed put the question. A curious group surrounded the party. But the old man, ignoring all, knelt and bowed his bare head to the dust at Eileen’s feet.
“Oh, John,” cried the girl, “ask him to stand up! I feel ashamed to see such a venerable old man kneeling before me!”
“Tell him it is — nothing,” said Gra
ham hastily to Mohammed, “and — er — —” — he fumbled in his pocket— “give him this.”
But Mohammed, looking ill at ease, thrust aside the proffered bakshîsh — a novel action which made Graham stare widely.
“He would not take it, Effendi,” he whispered. “See, his turban lies there; he is a hadj. He is praying for the eternal happiness of his preserver, and he is interceding with the Prophet (Salla— ‘lláhu ‘aleyhi wasellum), that she may enjoy the delights of Paradise equally with all true Believers!”
“Very good of him,” said Graham, who, finding the danger passed and his wife safe, was beginning to feel embarrassed. “Thank him, and tell him that she is greatly indebted!”
He took Eileen’s arm, and turned to force a way through the strangely silent group about. But the aged porter seized the hem of the girl’s white skirt, gently detaining her. As he rose upon his knees, Mohammed, with marks of unusual deference, handed him his green turban. The old man, still clutching Eileen’s dress, signed that his dirty bundle should likewise be passed to him. This was done.
Graham was impatient to get away. But ——
“Humour him for a moment, dear,” said Eileen softly. “We don’t want to hurt the poor old fellow’s feelings.”
Into the bundle the old man plunged his hand, and drew out a thin gold chain upon which hung a queerly cut turquoise. He stood upright, raised the piece of jewellery to his forehead and to his lips, and held it out, the chain stretched across his open palms, to Eileen.
“He must be some kind of pedlar,” said Graham.
Eileen shook her head, smiling.
“Mohammed, tell him that I cannot possibly take his chain,” she directed. “But thank him all the same, of course.”
Mohammed, his face averted from the statuesque old figure, bent to her ear.
“Take it!” he whispered. “Take it! Do not refuse!”
There was a sort of frightened urgency in his tones, so that both Graham and his wife looked at him curiously.
“Take it, then, Eileen,” said Graham quickly. “And, Mohammed, you must find out who he is, and we will make it up to him in some way.”
“Yes, yes, Effendi,” agreed the man readily.
Eileen accordingly accepted the present, glancing aside at her husband to intimate that they must not fail to pay for it. As she took the chain in her hands, the donor said something in a low voice.
“Hang it round your neck,” translated Mohammed.
Eileen did so, whispering:
“You must not lose sight of him, Mohammed.”
Mohammed nodded; and the old man, replacing his turban and making a low obeisance, spoke rapidly a few words, took up his bundle, and departed. The silent bystanders made way for him.
“Come on,” said Graham; “I am anxious to get out of this. Find a carriage, Mohammed. We’ll lunch at Shepheard’s.”
A carriage was obtained, and they soon left far behind them the scene of this odd adventure. With Mohammed perched up on the box, Graham and his wife could discuss the episode without restraint. Graham, however, did most of the talking, for Eileen was strangely silent.
“It is quite a fine stone,” he said, examining the necklace so curiously acquired. “We must find some way of repaying the old chap which will not offend his susceptibilities.”
Eileen nodded absently; and her husband, with his eyes upon the dainty white figure, found gratitude for her safety welling up like a hot spring in his heart. The action had been characteristic; and he longed to reprove her for risking her life, yet burned to take her in his arms for the noble impulse that had prompted her to do so.
He wondered anxiously if her silence could be due to the after-effects of that moment of intense excitement.
“You don’t feel unwell, darling?” he whispered.
She smiled at him radiantly, and gave his hand a quick little squeeze.
“Of course not,” she said.
But she remained silent to the end of the short drive. This was not due to that which her husband feared, however, but to the fact that she had caught a glimpse, amongst the throng at the corner of the bazaar, of the handsome, sinister face of El-Suleym, the Bedouin.
III
The moon poured radiance on the desert. At the entrance to a camel-hair tent stood a tall, handsome man, arrayed in the picturesque costume of the Bedouin. The tent behind him was upheld by six poles. The ends and one side were pegged to the ground, and the whole of that side before which he stood was quite open, with the exception of a portion before which hung a goat-hair curtain.
This was the “house of hair” of the Sheikh El-Suleym, of the Masr-Bishareen — El-Suleym, “the Regicide” outcast of the great tribe of the Bishareen. At some distance from the Sheikh’s tent were some half a dozen other and smaller tents, housing the rascally following of this desert outcast.
Little did those who had engaged the picturesque El-Suleym, to display his marvellous horsemanship in London, know that he and those that came with him were a scorn among true sons of the desert, pariahs of that brotherhood which extends from Zered to the Nile, from Tanta to the Red Sea; little did those who had opened their doors in hospitality to the dashing horseman dream that they entertained a petty brigand, sought for by the Egyptian authorities, driven out into ostracism by his own people.
And now before his tent he stood statuesque in the Egyptian moonlight, and looked towards Gizeh, less than thirty miles to the north-east.
As El-Suleym looked towards Gizeh, Graham and his wife were seated before Mena House looking out across the desert. The adventure of the morning had left its impression upon both of them, and Eileen wore the gold chain with its turquoise pendant. Graham was smoking in silence, and thinking, not of the old porter and his odd Eastern gratitude, but of another figure, and one which often came between his mental eye and the beauties of that old, beautiful land. Eileen, too, was thinking of El-Suleym; for the Bedouin now was associated in her mind with the old pedlar, since she had last seen the handsome, sinister face amid the throng at the entrance to the bazaar.
Telepathy is a curious fact. Were Graham’s reflections en rapport with his wife’s, or were they both influenced by the passionate thoughts of that other mind, that subtle, cunning mind of the man who at that moment was standing before his house of hair and seeking with his eagle glance to defy distance and the night?
“Have you seen — him, again?” asked Graham abruptly. “Since the other day at the bridge?”
Eileen started. Although he had endeavoured to hide it from her, she was perfectly well aware of her husband’s intense anxiety on her behalf. She knew, although he prided himself upon having masked his feelings, that the presence of the Bedouin in Egypt had cast a cloud upon his happiness. Therefore she had not wished to tell him of her second encounter with El-Suleym. But to this direct question there could be only one reply.
“I saw him again — this morning,” she said, toying nervously with the pendant at her neck.
Graham clasped her hand tensely.
“Where?”
“Outside the bazaar, in the crowd.”
“You did not — tell me.”
“I did not want to worry you.”
He laughed dryly.
“It doesn’t worry me, Eileen,” he said carelessly. “If I were in Damascus or Aleppo, it certainly might worry me to know that a man, no doubt actively malignant towards us, was near, perhaps watching; but Cairo is really a prosaically safe and law-abiding spot. We are as secure here as we should be at — Shepherd’s Bush, say!”
He laughed shortly. Voices floated out to them, nasal, guttural, strident; voices American, Teutonic, Gallic, and Anglo-Saxon. The orchestra played a Viennese waltz. Confused chattering, creaking, and bumping sounded from the river. Out upon the mud walls dogs bayed the moon.
But beyond the native village, beyond the howling dogs, beyond the acacia ranks out in the silver-grey mystery of the sands hard by, an outpost of the Pharaohs, where a ruined shri
ne of Horus bared its secret places to the peeping moon, the Sheikh of the Masr-Bishareen smiled.
Graham felt strangely uneasy, and sought by light conversation to shake off the gloom which threatened to claim him.
“That thief, Mohammed,” he said tersely, “has no more idea than Adam, I believe, who your old porter friend really is.”
“Why do you think so?” asked Eileen.
“Because he’s up in Cairo to-night, searching for him!”
“How do you know?”
“I cornered him about it this afternoon, and although I couldn’t force an admission from him — I don’t think anybody short of an accomplished K.C. could — he was suspiciously evasive! I gave him four hours to procure the name and address of the old gentleman to whom we owe the price of a turquoise necklace. He has not turned up yet!”
Eileen made no reply. Her Celtic imagination had invested the morning’s incident with a mystic significance which she could not hope to impart to her hard-headed husband.
A dirty and ragged Egyptian boy made his way on to the verandah, furtively glancing about him, as if anticipating the cuff of an unseen hand. He sidled up to Graham, thrusting a scrap of paper on to the little table beside him.
“For me?” said Graham.
The boy nodded; and whilst Eileen watched him interestedly, Graham, tilting the communication so as to catch the light from the hotel windows, read the following:
“He is come to here but cannot any farther. I have him waiting the boy will bring you.
“Your obedient Effendi,
Mohammed.”
Graham laughed grimly, glancing at his watch.
“Only half an hour late,” he said, standing up, “Wait here, Eileen; I shall not be many minutes.”
“But I should like to see him, too. He might accept the price from me where you would fail to induce him to take it.”
“Never fear,” said her husband; “he wouldn’t have come if he meant to refuse. What shall I offer him?”
