“There is apparently no sign of your husband in the house,” he said and his voice was sharp. “Can you describe to us what he looks like?”
“He is about medium height,” Melina said slowly. “Brown hair, clean shaven. He has a very nice face! He was wearing a white dinner jacket.”
“So are several hundreds of my other guests,” Moulay Ibrahim growled.
“Well, I suppose he looks rather American,” Melina said.
“American?”
It was a question and Melina nodded her head.
“Yes, I am English, but my husband is American. We haven’t been married very long. Where can he have got to, do you imagine?”
It seemed as if the fact that Bing was American had lightened the tension.
Moulay Ibrahim’s voice was certainly more affable now and Melina pressed home her advantage.
“I expect he is lost looking at your pictures or something,” she said. “It would be just like Bing to forget all about me.”
“Well, we must certainly see if we can find him for you,” Moulay Ibrahim said.
“I suppose he would not have gone back to the town to buy me some aspirin?” Melina suggested.
“It seems a long way to go for anything so simple,” Moulay Ibrahim replied. “He had only to ask one of my servants. Several of them speak English and I am sure that they could have procured exactly what he wanted with very little difficulty.”
“Perhaps he felt embarrassed to trespass on your hospitality,” Melina said. “It would be just like him to go miles to fetch me something I wanted. He is so considerate and kind although he is a little absent-minded. I think Americans make the best husbands in the world.”
She stopped speaking to look up into Moulay Ibrahim’s face and she saw, partly in relief and partly with apprehension, that the suspicion had gone from his eyes and that a very different expression had taken its place.
There was something in the way he looked at her, something in the faint smile at the corners of his mouth, which told her that here was danger of another sort.
“You are very pretty,” Moulay Ibrahim said softly. “Your husband is a lucky man.”
His eyes flickered over her red hair and the soft curves of her figure so that she felt as if he mentally undressed her.
She turned quickly away from him to look out of the window into the darkness.
“I cannot think where my husband can be,” she sighed.
“Tomorrow will you let me show you a little of the East as it should be seen?” Moulay Ibrahim asked.
She knew it was an invitation with a double meaning and that it insinuated far more than the simplicity of the words. She tried to answer lightly, moving a little further away from him.
“I don’t know if we shall be here tomorrow. We have stayed longer than we intended so that we could come to your party.”
“If you are here, may I send a car to fetch you?”
“I shall have to ask my husband.”
“Your husband is not included in the invitation!”
There was no disguising now the sudden light in his eyes nor the expression on his lips.
Melina drew herself up.
“I don’t think I understand you,” she said.
“I think you do,” he replied. “No woman can really be stupid when it concerns her own charms and you are so very lovely.”
“I am flattered that you should think so,” Melina answered, her voice cold.
He put out his hand suddenly and took hers. Her fingers were very small and ineffective as they struggled against his.
“Don’t fight me,” he said. “I think it was karma that we should meet. I saw your face at the window and it was imprinted in my mind. The face of an angel or rather of a woman so entrancing that the dark streets of Fez were for one moment transformed. I never thought to see you again and yet here you are in my house. And we are alone.”
“I don’t suppose we shall be alone for more than a moment or two,” Melina said. “Even if my husband has gone into the town, he should be back by now.”
“Perhaps he has lost his way. Don’t worry about him. Let this moment work its own magic. Cannot you feel how my heart is beating, how my whole being yearns for the smile from your lips? Look at me!”
Without consciously meaning to do so, Melina looked up. He was trying to hypnotise her, she thought, seeing his dark eyes, large and strangely penetrating, gazing down into hers compellingly, while his hand seemed to be drawing her closer and ever closer.
“Look at me,” he was saying again in a low insisting tone, but with a superhuman effort she shook herself free, pulling her hand violently from his and running to the window to draw in deep breaths of the night air.
“Go away!” she cried. “Go away from me at once. I know what you are doing!”
“Why are you afraid?”
Now his voice was caressing and he was coming nearer to her slowly and purposefully.
She wanted to scream, but she felt as if her voice died in her throat.
Moulay Ibrahim was standing just behind her and she felt that at any second his arms would be round her.
With a lithe movement she evaded him,
“I can hear my husband,” she exclaimed. “He is coming!”
Running across the room, she dragged open the door.
There were two men on either side of it, but she did not stop to look at them. Instead she ran with all the speed she could command down the corridor towards the brightly lit landing at the far end. She only paused and looked back when she reached the top of the grand staircase and could see the crowds milling around the hall below and climbing the red carpet to the first floor.
Moulay Ibrahim was standing outside the door of the bedroom she had just left, speaking to his servants. He was making no attempt to follow her, he was not even looking in her direction and yet she had the uneasy feeling that he had by no means forgotten her.
Bing. Where could Bing be? If she left now, how could she ever find him again?
She had a sudden idea and, descending the stairs to the first floor, she ran along the corridor that was directly below the one she had just left, until she found the entrance to the twisting stone staircase they had originally climbed up.
She listened for a moment in case she should hear Moulay Ibrahim or one of his servants descending that way and when there was no sound she slipped off her shoes and ran down the stairs in her stockinged feet until she reached the ground floor.
In a few seconds she found herself not in the courtyard, as she had expected, but outside the back of the house. She put on her shoes and then stood for the moment confused.
She had thought somehow that she would find Bing or signal to him from the courtyard, but this was a different part of the villa.
There were lights in some of the lower windows, but the top ones were in darkness.
It was then, just as she was about to turn and go back, that she saw something silhouetted against the skyline.
There was a man on the parapet of the roof – a man with his shoulders hunched moving swiftly towards the corner of the house. It might be one of Moulay Ibrahim’s servants and yet she had a feeling that it was not.
She stood for a moment striving to see if it was Bing and wondering how she could signal to him.
And then a trick that her father had taught her many years ago, of whistling with two fingers in her mouth, came to her mind. It was an errand-boy’s whistle, a whistle that one could expect to find only in the back streets of London.
She put her fingers between her lips and blew. Just for a moment the figure against the roof seemed to keep absolutely still and then a face looked over the parapet and something in the shape of the head told her unmistakably that it was Bing.
He whistled back and pointed to where the parapet ended and she thought that she understood what he meant.
She started to walk quietly past the lighted windows. The ground was flagged with tiles, there was a sudden stench fr
om a dustbin and she knew that some of the rooms she was passing must be the kitchens.
A cat started out of the shadows and startled her.
Now she was nearing the corner of the house and she looked up searching for Bing against the skyline.
There was no sign of him and she was ready to scream with fear until she saw him swarming down a drainpipe – coming down hand over hand with an agility which made her think of a sailor descending the mast of an old sailing ship.
She held her breath as she watched him. Supposing he slipped? Or supposing he landed beside her with a broken leg?
Instead he jumped the last few feet to the ground and came hurrying to her side.
“Why did you leave the room?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you that now,” she said, “but we must get away.”
“Is anything the matter?” he asked, surprised at the agitation in her voice.
“How can you ask that?” she questioned, her tone almost hysterical. “Did you – did you find the child?”
“We must not stay here talking,” he said. “Let’s go back to the lawns.”
“No!” she answered. “No, we must not do that. Don’t you understand? They are looking for you.”
“Who is?”
She had not heard Bing speak in quite that manner before.
“Moulay Ibrahim and his servants.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” he said. “Did he suspect who you were?”
“He was very suspicious at first,” Melina said, “And then – then he had other – ideas that distracted him.”
“What ideas?”
“He – he tried to hypnotise me. Oh, Bing! Let’s get away.”
“The devil he did!”
Bing was surprised. This was something, she thought, that he had not anticipated.
“All the same,” he said after a moment, “I don’t want to leave now.”
“Why not?” Melina asked. “The child is here?”
“I know which room he is in. Later on in the evening there might be a chance.”
“I doubt it,” Melina said. “They are on their guard now. I told him that you might have gone to the town to fetch me some aspirin. It was the only excuse I could dream up of why you were away so long.”
“That was clever of you.”
There was warm approval in his voice.
“I don’t want to see Moulay Ibrahim again,” Melina said. “I am afraid of him. Bing, he is a horrible man.”
“That is the understatement of the week,” Bing agreed with a hint of laughter in his voice.
He was drawing her away from the house as they spoke down into a part of the garden that had not been lit. They could hear the sound of the music, they could see the lights in the distance, but they were apart from it all like spectators watching a scene set on a distant stage.
“Bing, what are you going to do?” Melina asked him.
“The boy is in the third room from the end on the top corridor. The windows look out to the side and not either to the front or the back of the house. He has guards outside his door and there is, too, someone with him. I could hear the child talking.”
“With so many people to guard him, what can you do?” Melina asked.
“That is what I am trying to figure out. It’s not going to be easy.”
“It’s impossible!” Melina cried. “Did anyone see you?”
“I’m not certain,” Bing replied. “I had to pass one servant on my way and I told him in Arabic that he was wanted below. He obeyed me, but if he has reported what I said it might cause trouble.”
“Then we have to get away,” Melina said. “Can’t you see that nothing you can do now will be of the slightest help?”
She stopped. Bing was feeling in all his pockets.
“Damn!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Damn! I thought I heard something fall.”
“What is it?” Melina asked.
“My glasses,” he said. “The dark glasses I wear in the daytime. They were in my pocket. I never knew when I might not want to be disguised and, when I was shinning up on that roof, I had to go through a trapdoor in the ceiling – it was the only way I could get up. I caught my coat and I thought I heard something fall behind me.”
“Where did you drop them?” she asked.
“Not far from the boy’s room,” he answered grimly and they both knew what this admission meant.
“They will know that somebody’s been there,” Bing went on with a sigh in his voice, “and it will not take Moulay Ibrahim long to put two and two together and realise that it was a certain Mr. Cutter whose wife chose a second floor bedroom to feel faint in.”
As he spoke, they both looked back at the house.
A door at the back by the kitchens suddenly opened and a golden light came streaming out. Against it they saw two or three servants.
“They are looking for you,” Melina said quickly. “I know it. I am absolutely certain of it. Come on, we have to get away.”
“How could I have been such a damned fool?” Bing asked bitterly.
“You couldn’t help it,” Melina soothed him. “It’s the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone.”
“It’s the kind of stupidity that costs lives,” Bing said grimly. “And I think you are right, they are looking for us. Come on! In amongst the guests is much the safest place.”
He took her hand and they ran through the unlit part of the garden until, panting a little, they joined the guests wandering among the flowers. Now in the brilliance of the floodlit house and the brightly lit gardens, they both instinctively looked up at the villa.
Moulay Ibrahim had come onto the terrace. They could see him standing talking to a rather more elaborately dressed servant who Melina had guessed was a kind of Major Domo.
He was giving instructions. His arm went out in a wide gesture embracing, it seemed to her, even the car park on the farther side of the house.
“They are going to search everywhere,” she said breathlessly. “We have to get away.”
Bing did not pause to argue. He started to lead her at quite a swift pace through the perambulating guests.
“Bing, where are you going?”
It was Lileth Schuster who cried out to him and now she stepped forward to stand in front of them both.
“I forgot to ask you,” she said, “where are you staying? There’s such a crowd here we may easily lose each other and I must see you tomorrow.”
“We are at The Jasmin Hotel,” Bing answered.
“Oh, so are we,” Lileth cried. “How wonderful! I’ll telephone you tomorrow morning. We must make plans, lots of plans.”
These, Melina thought, obviously would not include her because she looked and spoke only to Bing.
“Yes, telephone tomorrow morning,” Bing said abruptly and turned to pass on.
“You’re not going surely?” Lileth asked. “I want to dance with you again and I know that Ambrose has only been waiting to find Melina.”
“We will meet you both in a quarter-of-an-hour at the fountain,” Bing said. “There is someone we have to see at this moment.”
Lileth turned away satisfied and Melina gave an hysterical little laugh as, free of her, they hurried on towards their car.
They climbed into it and Bing started up the engine.
“Suppose they stop us at the gate?” Melina asked fearfully.
“They’re not going to,” Bing answered. “Hold tight!”
He drove the car towards the main gate. As they reached it, a servant, who had obviously been talking on the telephone to the house, stepped out as if to stop them. Bing shot past him. The car almost took his arm off and the man stepped back just in time.
“Look back,” Bing commanded. “What’s he doing?”
“He is staring after us,” Melina reported. “No, I think he’s gone to the telephone.”
“We’ve just done it,” Bing sighed.
He started to drive quickly down the hill towards the town and
then suddenly he went slower, stopped and began to back into a sandy side-track that led off the tarmac road.
“What are you doing?” Melina asked apprehensively.
“I want to wait here a moment,” Bing said. “Do you mind?”
“No, of course not,” Melina said. “But why?”
“You’ll see,” Bing answered. “At least, I think so.”
He switched off the engine and lights and they sat in silence.
Melina wanted to ask questions, but something in Bing’s attitude prevented her.
Then suddenly there was the sound of a car coming down the road and she saw him bend forward. It was travelling fast – a big limousine with its lights full on despite the moonlight, which made everything very clear.
It flashed past them and Melina saw a chauffeur in the front and what appeared to her to be two men in the back. She heard Bing utter an exclamation beneath his breath and realised that this was what he had been waiting for.
“I thought there were two men in the back of that car,” she hazarded, hoping that he would appease her curiosity.
“Yes, there were two men,” he answered. “Two men with a small boy sitting between them.”
Chapter 8
“What do we do now?” Melina asked in a whisper.
“We get the hell out of here!” Bing replied grimly.
He jumped out of the car, saying as he did so,
“I’ll have a look round and see if the coast’s clear.”
Melina suddenly felt terrified of being left alone. She scrambled out of her side of the car and tried to run after Bing who was already climbing up the rocky incline that rose sharply behind the car towards a number of stunted trees.
As the ground was sandy, Melina’s satin shoes were soon full of grit and sand, and by the time she reached Bing’s side she was limping.
He reached out his hand and caught hold of her arm above the elbow as she came up to him.
“Keep low,” he said. “I want to see if there is a car parked at the end of the road.”
Bending almost double and drawing Melina along with him, Bing began to move through the trees.
They had gone only a short way when the sound of an engine behind them made him turn his head. Just for a moment he was still and then, as his fingers tightened on her arm until it was painful, Melina gave a little gasp of horror.
Love Is Dangerous Page 12
