He took the envelope from her hand, and turned quickly away. He felt that he had changed colour. For it was addressed in the handwriting of . . . Mlle. Dorian!
"Thank you, Mrs. M'Gregor," he said, and turned into the dining-room.
Mrs. M'Gregor proceeded about her household duties, and as her footsteps receded, Stuart feverishly tore open the envelope. That elusive scent of jasmine crept to his nostrils. In the envelope was a sheet of thick note-paper (having the top cut off evidently in order to remove a printed address), upon which the following singular message was written:
"Before I go away there is something I want to say to you. You do not trust me. It is not wonderful that you do not. But I swear that I only want to save you from a great danger. If you will promise not to tell the police anything of it, I will meet you at six o'clock by the Book Stall at Victoria Station--on the Brighton side. If you agree you will wear something white in your button-hole. If not you cannot fine me there. Nobody ever sees me again."
There was no signature, but no signature was necessary.
Stuart laid the letter on the table, and began to pace up and down the room. His heart was beating ridiculously. His self-contempt was profound. But he could not mistake his sentiments.
His duty was plain enough. But he had failed in it once, and even as he strode up and down the room, already he knew that he must fail again. He knew that, rightly or wrongly, he was incapable of placing this note in the hands of the police . . . and he knew that he should be at Victoria Station at six o'clock!
He would never have believed himself capable of becoming accessory to a series of crimes--for this was what his conduct amounted to; he had thought that sentiment no longer held any meaning for him. Yet the only excuse which he could find wherewith to solace himself was that this girl had endeavoured to save him from assassination. Weighed against the undoubted fact that she was a member of a dangerous criminal group what was it worth? If the supposition of Gaston Max was correct, "The Scorpion" had at least six successful murders to his credit, in addition tot he attempt upon his (Stuart's life and that of "Le Balafré" upon the life of Gaston Max. It was an accomplice of this nameless horror called "The Scorpion" with whom at six o'clock he had a tryst, whom he was protecting from justice, by the suppression of whose messages to himself he was adding difficulties to the already difficult task of the authorities!
Up and down he paced, restlessly, every now and again glancing at a clock upon the mantelpiece. His behaviour he told himself was contemptible.
Yet, at a quarter to six, he went out--and seeing a little cluster of daisies growing amongst the grass bordering the path, he plucked one and set it in his button-hole!
A few minutes before the hour he entered the station and glanced sharply around at the many groups scattered about in the neighbourhood of the bookstall. There was no sign of Mlle. Dorian. He walked around the booking office without seeing her and glanced into the waiting-room. Then, looking up at the station clock, he saw that the hour had come, and as he stood there staring upward he felt a timid touch upon his shoulder.
He turned--and she was standing by his side!
She was Parisian from head to foot, simply but perfectly gowned. A veil hung from her hat and half-concealed her face, but could not hide her wonderful eyes nor disguise the delightful curves of her red lips. Stuart automatically raised his hat, and even as he did so wondered what he should have said and done had he suddenly found Gaston Max standing at his elbow! He laughed shortly.
"You are angry with me," said Mlle. Dorian, and Stuart thought that her quaint accent was adorable. "Or are you angry with yourself for seeing me?"
"I am angry with myself," he replied, "for being so weak."
"Is it so weak," she said, rather tremulously, "not to judge a woman by what she seems to be and not to condemn her before you hear what she has to say? If that is weak, I am glad; I think it is how a man should be."
Her voice and her eyes completed the spell, and Stuart resigned himself without another struggle to this insane infatuation.
"We cannot very well talk here," he said. "Suppose we go into the hotel and have late tea, Mlle. Dorian."
"Yes. Very well. But please do not call me that. It is not my name."
Stuart was on the point of saying, "Zâra el-Khalâ then, "but checked himself in the nick of time. He might hold communication with the enemy, but at least he would give away no information.
"I am called Miska," she added. "Will you please call me Miska?"
"Of course, if you wish," said Stuart, looking down at her as she walked by his side and wondering what he would do when he had to stand up in Court, look at Miska in the felon's dock and speak words which would help to condemn her--perhaps to death, at least to penal servitude! He shuddered.
"Have I said something that displeases you?" she asked, resting a little white-gloved hand on his arm. "I am sorry."
"No, no," he reassured her. "But I was thinking--I cannot help thinking . . ."
"How wicked I am?" she whispered.
"How lovely you are!" he said hotly, "and how maddening it is to remember that you are an accomplice of criminals!"
"Oh," she said, and removed her hand, but not before he had felt how it trembled. They were about to enter the tea-room when she added: "Please don't say that until I have told you why I do what I do."
Obeying a sudden impulse, he took her hand and drew it close under his arm.
"No," he said; "I won't. I was a brute, Miska. Miska means 'musk,' surely?"
"Yes." She glanced up at him timidly. "Do you think it a pretty name?"
"Very," he said, laughing.
Underlying the Western veneer was the fascinating naïvete of the Eastern woman, and Miska had all the suave grace, too, which belongs to the women of the Orient, so that many admiring glances followed her charming figure as she crossed the room to a vacant table.
"Now," said Stuart, when he had given an order to the waiter, "what do you want to tell me? Whatever it may be, I am all anxiety to hear it. I promise that I will only act upon anything you may tell me in the event of my life, or that of another, being palpably endangered by my silence."
"Very well. I want to tell you," replied Miska, "why I stay with Fo-Hi."
"Who is Fo-Hi?"
"I do not know!"
"What!" said Stuart. "I am afraid I don't understand you."
"If I speak in French will you be able to follow what I say?"
"Certainly. Are you more at ease with French?"
"Yes," replied Miska, beginning to speak in the latter language. "My mother was French, you see, and although I can speak in English fairly well I cannot yet think in English. Do you understand?"
"Perfectly. So perhaps you will now explain to whom you refer when you speak of Fo-Hi."
Miska glanced apprehensively around her, bending further forward over the table.
"Let me tell you from the beginning," she said in a low voice, "and then you will understand. It must not take me too long. You see me as I am to-day because of a dreadful misfortune that befell me when I was fifteen years old.
"My father was Wali of Aleppo, and my mother, his third wife, was a Frenchwoman, a member of a theatrical company which had come to Cairo, where he had first seen her. She must have loved him, for she gave up the world, embraced Islam and entered his harêm in the great house on the outskirts of Aleppo. Perhaps it was because he, too, was half French, that they were mutually attracted. My father's mother was a Frenchwoman also, you understand.
"Until I was fifteen years of age I never left the harêm, but my mother taught me French and also a little English; and she prevailed upon my father not to give me in marriage so early as is usual in the East. She taught me to understand the ways of European women, and we used to have Paris journals and many books come to us regularly. Then an awful pestilence visited Aleppo. People were dying in the mosques and in the streets, and my father decided to send my mother and myself and some others of the h
arêm to his brother's house in Damascus.
"Perhaps you will think that such things do not happen in these days, and particularly to members of the household of a chief magistrate, but I can only tell you what is true. On the second night of our journey a band of Arabs swept down upon the caravan, overpowered the guards, killing them all, and carried off everything of value which we had. Me, also, they carried off--me and one other, a little Syrian girl, my cousin. Oh!" she shuddered violently--"even now I can sometimes hear the shrieks of my mother . . . and I can hear, also, the way they suddenly ceased, those cries . . ."
Stuart looked up with a start to find a Swiss waiter placing tea on the table. He felt like rubbing his eyes. He had been dragged rudely back from the Syrian desert to the prosaic realities of a London hotel.
"Perhaps," continued Misko, "you will think that we were ill-treated, but it was not so. No one molested us. We were given every comfort which desert life can provide, servants to wait upon us and plenty of good food. After several weeks' journeying we came to a large city, having many minarets and domes glimmering in the moonlight; for we entered at night. Indeed, we always travelled at night. At the time I had no idea of the name of this city but I learned afterwards that it was Mecca.
"As we proceeded through the streets, the Assyrian girl and I peeped out through the little windows of the shibriyeh--which is a kind of tent on the back of a camel--in which we travelled, hoping to see some familiar face or someone to whom we could appeal. But there seemed to be scarcely anyone visible in the streets, although lights shone out from many window, and the few men we saw seemed to be anxious to avoid us. In fact, several ran down side turnings as the camels approached them.
"We stopped before the gate of a large house which was presently opened, and the camels entered the courtyard. We descended, and I saw that a number of small apartments surrounded the courtyard in the manner of a caravanserai. Then, suddenly, I saw something else, and I knew why we had been treated with such consideration on the journey; I knew into what hands I had fallen--I knew that I was in the house of a slave-dealer!"
"Good heavens!" muttered Stuart--"this is almost incredible!"
"I knew you would doubt what I had to tell you," declared Miska plaintively; "but I solemnly swear what I tell you is the truth. Yes, I was in the house of a slave-dealer, and on the very next day, because I was proficient in languages, in music and in dancing, and also because--according to their Eastern ideas--I was pretty, the dealer, Mohammed Abd-el-Bâli . . . offered me for sale."
She stopped, lowering her eyes and flushing hotly, then continued with hesitancy.
"In a small room which I can never forget I was offered the only indignity which I had been called upon to suffer since my abduction. I was exhibited to prospective purchasers."
As she spoke the words, Miska's eyes flashed passionately and her hand, which lay on the table, trembled. Stuart silently reached across and rested his own upon it.
"There were all kinds of girls," Miska continued, "black and brown and white, in the adjoining rooms, and some of them were singing and some dancing, whilst others wept. Four different visitors inspected me critically, two of them being agents for royal harêms and the other two--how shall I say it?--wealthy connoisseurs. But the price asked by Mohammed Abd-el-Bâli was beyond the purses of all except one of the agents. He had indeed settled the bargain, when the singing and dancing and shouting--every sound it seemed--ceased about me . . . and into the little room in which I crouched amongst perfumed cushions at the feet of the two men, walked Fo-Hi."
CHAPTER IV. MISKA's STORY (concluded)
"OF COURSE, I did not know that this was his name at the time; I only knew that a tall Chinaman had entered the room--and that his face was entirely covered by a green veil."
Stuart started, but did not interrupt Miska's story.
"This veil gave him in some way a frightfully malign and repellent appearance. As he stood in the doorway looking down I seemed to feel his gaze passing over me like a flame, although of course I could not see his eyes. For a moment he stood there looking at me; and much as his presence had affected me, its effect upon the slave-dealer and my purchaser was extraordinary. They seemed to be stricken dumb. Suddenly the Chinaman spoke, in perfect Arabic.
"'Her price?' he said.
"Mohammed Abd-el-Bâli, standing trembling before him, replied:
"'Miska is already sold, lord, but----'
"'Her price?' repeated the Chinaman, in the same hard metallic voice and without the slightest change of intonation.
"The harêm agent who had bought me now said, his voice shaking so that the words were barely audible:
"'I give her up, Mohammed--I give her up. Who am I to dispute with the Mandarin Fo-Hi?' and performing an abject obeisance he backed out of the room.
"At the same moment, Mohammed, whose knees were trembling so that they seemed no longer capable of supporting him, addressed the Chinaman.
"'Accept the maiden as an unworthy gift,' he began--
"'Her price?' repeated Fo-Hi.
"Mohammed, whose teeth had begun to chatter, asked him twice as much as he had agreed to accept from the other, Fo-Hi clapped his hands, and a fierce-eyed Hindu entered the room.
"Fo-Hi addressed him in a language which I did not understand, although I have since learned that it was Hindustani, and the Indian from a purse which he carried counted out the amount demanded by the dealer and placed the money upon a little inlaid table which stood in the room. Fo-Hi gave him some brief order, turned and walked out of the room. I did not see him again for four years--that is to say until my nineteenth birthday.
"I know that you are wondering about many things and I will try to make some of them clear to you. You are wondering, no doubt, how such a trade as I have described is carried on in the East to-day almost under the eyes of European Governments. Now I shall surprise you. When I was taken from the house of the slave-dealer, in charge of Chunda Lal--for this was the name of the Hindu--do you know where I was carried to? I will tell you: to Cairo!"
"Cairo!" cried Stuart--then, perceiving that he had attracted attention by speaking so loudly, he lowered his voice. "Do you mean to tell me that you were taken as a slave to Cairo?"
Miska smiled--and her smile was the taunting smile of the East, which is at once a caress and an invitation.
"You think, no doubt, that there are no slaves in Cairo?" she said. "So do most people, and so did I--once. I learned better. There are palaces in Cairo, I assure you, in which there are many slaves. I myself lived in such a palace for four years, and I was not the only slave there. What do British residents and French residents know of the inner domestic life of their Oriental neighbours? Are they ever admitted to the harêm? And the slaves--are they ever admitted outside the walls of the palace? Sometimes, yes, but never alone!
"By slow stages, following the ancient caravan routes, and accompanied by an extensive retinue of servants in charge of Chunda Lal, we came to Cairo; and one night, approaching the city from the northeast and entering by the Bab en-Nasr, I was taken to the old palace which was to be my prison for four years. How I passed those four years has no bearing upon the matters which I have to tell you, but I lived the useless, luxurious life of some Arabian princess, my lightest wish anticipated and gratified; nothing was denied me, except freedom.
"Then, one day--it was actually my nineteenth birthday--Chunda Lal presented himself and told me that I was to have an interview with Fo-Hi. Hearing these words, I nearly swooned, for a hundred times during the years of my strange luxurious captivity I had awakened trembling in the night, thinking that the figure of the awful veiled Chinaman had entered the room.
"You must understand that having spent my childhood in a harêm, the mode of life which I was compelled to follow in Cairo was not so insufferable as it must have been for a European woman. Neither was my captivity made unduly irksome. I often drove through the European quarters, always accompanied by Chunda Lal, and closely veiled, an
d I regularly went shopping in the bazaars--but never alone. The death of my mother--and later that of my father, of which Chunda Lal had told me--were griefs that time had dulled. But the horror of Fo-Hi was one which lived with me, day and night.
To a wing of the palace kept closely locked, and which I had never seen opened, I was conducted by Chunda Lal. There, in a room of a kind with which I have since become painfully familiar, a room which was part library and part mandarah, part museum and part laboratory, I found the veiled man seated at a great littered table. As I stood trembling before him he raised a long yellow hand and waved to Chunda Lal to depart. When he obeyed and I heard the door close I could scarcely repress a shriek of terror.
"For what seemed an interminable time he sat watching me. I dared not look at him, but again I felt his gaze passing over me like a flame. Then he began to speak, in French, which he spoke without a trace of an accent.
"He told me briefly that my life of idleness had ended and that a new life of activity in many parts of the world was about to commence. His manner was quite unemotional, neither harsh nor kindly, his metallic voice conveyed no more than the bare meaning of the words which he uttered. When, finally, he ceased speaking, he struck a gong which hung from a corner of the huge table, and Chunda Lal entered.
"Fo-Hi addressed a brief order to him in Hindustani--and a few moments later a second Chinaman walked slowly into the room."
Miska paused, as if to collect her ideas, but continued almost immediately.
"He wore a plain yellow robe and had a little black cap on his head. His face, his wonderful evil face I can never forget, and his eyes--I fear you will think I exaggerate--but his eyes were green as emeralds! He fixed them upon me.
"'This,' said Fo-Hi, 'is Miska.'
"The other Chinaman continued to regard me with those dreadful eyes; then:
"'You have chosen well,' he said, turned and slowly went out again.
"I thank God that I have never seen him since, for his dreadful face haunted my dreams for long afterwards. But I have heard of him, and I know that next to Fo-Hi he is the most dangerous being in the known world. He has invented horrible things--poisons and instruments, which I cannot describe because I have never seen them; but I have seen . . . some of their effects."
The Golden Scorpion Page 13
