“No, of course not, but think back over everything that happened on the whole journey. I know what an excellent memory you have for detail. Did anyone come and speak to him? Did you hear him talking on the telephone? You must have stopped for lunch. Was there anything which, thinking back now, seemed to you unusual or perhaps a clue to what I am after?”
“It seems such a strange thing to ask,” Lileth said slowly.
“Listen, Lileth, this is desperately important. Someone’s life depends on it, someone I am trying to help, to rescue, if you prefer the word. Now do you understand?”
“But what has Moulay Ibrahim to do with it?” Lileth enquired. “You are not asking me to believe that he is likely to kill someone?”
She hesitated a moment and then smiled.
“I believe he might kill. He has a kind of brutal look about him at times. It’s that which makes him so exciting.”
“Think, Lileth! Think!” Bing insisted.
“I am trying to make you jealous,” Lileth said poutingly, “but you are not playing.”
“I don’t have the time to play,” Bing said angrily. “This is of vital importance, Lileth. When I saw you arrive with Moulay Ibrahim tonight, I was standing with a crowd of natives outside the hotel. I felt that in some extraordinary way you were the link I have been waiting for. Do you remember how you used to laugh about my intuition? How I used to know about things almost before they happened? Well, that same intuition makes me certain tonight that you can tell me what I want to know. So think! If you ever loved me, Lileth, think now!”
Lilith’s eyes harrowed.
“So it’s as important as all that, is it?”
“More important than I can ever explain in words.”
Lileth was silent for a moment and, watching her, Bing knew that she was thinking, calculating something.
Then with a little glint in her eyes she asked,
“Where is your wife? Does she know what this mission of yours is all about?”
“Melina is trying to help me.”
“And I shall be very surprised if she’s much use,” Lileth said. “You don’t love her, Bing. You never have loved her, I know that.”
“I don’t want to discuss her,” Bing said quickly.
“I wonder if you really are married?” Lileth suggested shrewdly. “You lied to me about your Godfather and the oil wells. Perhaps you have lied about Melina as well.”
“The time is passing,” Bing said desperately. “I cannot stay here. I have so much to do. Concentrate, Lileth, on what I have asked you. Nothing else is so important at the moment.”
“Nothing else?” Lileth asked softly.
“Nothing else except that I should rescue this – this person if I can find him,” Bing said.
Lileth swung her feet off the chaise longue and stood looking at her reflection in the mirror.
“I told you that I was thinking of you before you came here, Bing,” she said softly, “I was thinking, too, that I was still beautiful and the love we had for each other would not die easily. Very well, I’ll tell you what you want to know – but on my terms. Are you prepared to accept them?”
Bing, too, had risen to his feet. There was no expression on his stain-darkened face, but his eyes were suddenly alert and watchful as he answered,
“And what are your terms?”
Lileth turned round to face him and, as she did so, she released the sash of her wrap and the soft material swung back to reveal a glimpse of her white skin and the curves of her pointed breasts.
“My terms are very simple, Bing,” she answered. “They are that you should come back to me.”
Bing’s eyes met hers and they stared at each other across the intervening space between them. For a moment he did not speak and then he asked,
“Do you really mean this?”
“You know that I always mean what I say,” Lileth answered.
Bing did not reply and after a moment she added,
“Is the price too high for the information that I have? I am certain that I know what you wish to hear.”
“How can I be sure of that?” Bing asked almost harshly.
“It’s a gamble you have to take,” Lileth said. “Well, is the answer yes or no?”
For a moment she thought that she had lost and then she saw Bing capitulate.
“Tell me what you have heard,” he said, “and I will come back to you – if I am still alive!”
“Do you swear it?” Lileth insisted.
“I swear it,” Bing replied.
Chapter 11
Melina was becoming frightened.
It was hours since Bing had left her. He had told her that he might be some time as he wanted to move around the town and see if he could hear anything that would give him a clue to where the child was being kept prisoner.
“Try not to worry,” he had said. “You will be safe here and I promise you I will be back as soon as I possibly can.”
It did, in fact, seem to be a safe hiding place although it was so near the marketplace. The only visitors had been a few small children and when they had seen Bing and Melina sitting on the steps of the tomb they had run away as if they knew they were doing wrong in encroaching on sacred ground.
The sun was still high when Bing left and Melina lay in the shadow of the trees and listened to the birds chirping above her as she wondered if any other girl had ever found herself in a more extraordinary predicament or taken part in a more fantastic adventure.
How little she had guessed when she took the job with Mrs. Schuster that this would be the outcome. How little she had thought then that the adventure would not only bring her the thrill of excitement but love.
She knew now that she was falling more deeply in love with Bing every moment.
It was hard not to show him how much she loved him, not only by the expression in her eyes when she looked at him but in her longing to touch him, to cling to him when he left her, to run towards him with a joy that was beyond an indication of relief when he returned.
Twilight came swiftly, then the darkness, and, as the moon began to climb the skies, Melina decided that she would do something that she had been longing to do ever since they first came to the garden. She would have a proper wash.
She slipped off her clothes and stepped into the little broken fountain where she had washed before, and felt the pleasure of the cool water on her hot body and the joy of being clean after the dust and the sticky heat of the djellabah.
She did not dare linger over her bathing, knowing that Bing might be back at any moment and apart from the fact of her not wishing him to see her naked she had the idea that he would be annoyed at her taking such a risk.
She just had time to rub herself clean and then to run to the shadow of a tree where she had left her clothes before she thought she heard someone coming.
It was a false alarm. It must have been a cat or a stray dog rummaging its way through the bushes but it was enough to make Melina scurry into her clothes and pull the djellabah quickly over her head.
Then, as she waited apprehensively, the movement was gone and there was only the silence.
She took her time, therefore, to stroll across the garden and back to the comfortable mound of grass that they had used as a mattress.
There was a little stack of food on one side of it that Bing had brought earlier in the day. There was also fruit and several bottles of mineral water, rather unpleasant and gassy, but which he had told her was the only drink he could buy except an Arab version of Coca-Cola.
Melina was not hungry. She was only waiting and hoping with every nerve of her body for Bing’s return.
“I love him!”
She whispered the words and felt that they were an expression of love such as no one had ever given before.
“I love him!”
How simple it was to say that and how difficult in reality to face the fact that, although she loved him, he did not love her.
Did he really still want Lil
eth Schuster?
She was beautiful, Melina thought with a stab of jealousy, beautiful and charming enough where any man was concerned. It was only that she had been in a position to see beneath the surface and know how hard and tyrannical those lovely eyes could be and how sharp the tongue that would only utter honeyed words when there was anyone of importance about.
“Oh, Bing! Bing! She will hurt you! She will break your heart!” she whispered to the trees and thought that her love was great enough for her to give him up if she believed it meant his happiness – but not to someone like Lileth Schuster.
The hours went by and still Bing did not come. Now Melina began to feel really afraid. Suppose something had happened to him? Suppose he made some wild crazy attempt to rescue the child by himself, and had failed? Supposing he was Moulay Ibrahim’s prisoner or, worse still, killed or injured by one of the guards?
How would she ever learn what had happened to him and what should she do herself?
She saw herself waiting and waiting all through the night and perhaps all through tomorrow before she would be forced to find some British person, perhaps a Consul or someone in authority, who she could tell her incredible story to.
Was it likely they would believe her? Bing was working on his own, he had said that often enough.
Would anyone credit it that an English girl, sacked from one job, would entertain the possibility of another in which she pretended to be a stranger’s wife and found herself abandoned in a ruined garden dressed in a djellabah and a very dilapidated evening dress? It would be funny, Melina thought, if it was not so frightening.
She stood up and tried to peer through the bushes that bordered the broken wall. She dared not push her way through them for that might draw attention to herself and would be, indeed, madness, but she could see nothing and hear nothing except for the very distant sounds from Djemaa El Fna.
Miserably she went back to the improvised bed and sat there playing a game she had played as a child.
“I will count to fifty and then he will come.”
She had counted slowly and deliberately, lingering over each number so as to spin it out.
“I will count one hundred – ”
“I will count five hundred – ”
Actually he came when she had reached four hundred and thirty-two and, just for a moment, because she was afraid she thought that it was not Bing but a stranger. A man came through the bushes and stood in the moonlight and Melina drew a deep breath.
And then she saw it was Bing and ran towards him.
“Bing! Bing! I thought you were never coming!”
The djellabah fell back from her head as she ran and, as she reached him, she put out her arms in sheer gladness as she flung herself against him, her head with its halo of red-gold curls vivid in the moonlight, her face turned up to his, her lips parted in excitement.
“I have been so frightened that something had happened to you. But you are here! Thank God you are here!”
Without thinking what she did she pulled him close to her and then his arms went round her and he held her suddenly with a strength and a passion that checked the words as they flowed from her mouth.
For a moment her eyes were wide with surprise and then his lips were on hers, kissing her hungrily, greedily, and with a fierceness she had never known and never dreamt he would show.
It seemed to her that his kisses were desperate and yet she could not analyse them.
She could, after her first astonishment at his violence, be aware only of the leaping flame within her body as without her conscious volition she responded to his kisses with a wildness that equalled his own.
It was as if the world spun around them. She knew nothing save that Bing was kissing her and that she loved him.
She was beyond thought, only aware of the glorious breathless feeling within her throat, the throbbing of her heart, the sudden heaviness of desire that seemed to close her eyes.
She wanted him to go on kissing her forever and she felt as if time stood still because he was doing so.
And then abruptly, almost as fiercely as he had taken her in his arms, Bing set her aside. He pushed her from him so that she stumbled and almost fell.
He walked away from her and stood with his back to her without speaking.
Then he took a handkerchief from inside his native robe and wiped his forehead.
“You go to a man’s head, Melina,” he said in a queer strangled voice that she did not understand.
“Bing! Oh, Bing!”
She hardly breathed his name and, in a tone that was suddenly harsh, he said,
“There’s no time to talk of anything now but our plans. I have a lot to tell you. Come over here.”
He walked away without waiting for her towards the grass mound.
Melina watched him go. There was a singing in her ears and she felt as if her whole body tingled at the miracle of his kiss.
It was with an effort that she remembered the child, the reason they were here, Bing’s mission, the danger they were in. Did any of it matter, she longed to ask, beside the fact that she loved him and, because he had kissed her in such a glorious way, he must love her?
“Melina!”
He called to her across the garden and his voice was sharp.
“I’m coming!”
She forced herself to speak ordinarily, to come down from the clouds to the firm earth below. Bing had work to do. Their personal lives could not intrude upon it until it was completed. She understood that.
She must force herself to help him, to do nothing that might in any way seem an obstacle in the path of duty.
Feeling as if her legs had turned to cotton wool and conscious that her lips were burning, Melina walked across the moonlit space to the shadows of the trees where they had made their little home.
Bing was already seated on the grass, his arms clasping his knees. He did not look up as she arrived, but stared ahead of him as if he was concentrating fiercely, so that she dropped on her knees beside him and said nothing for a minute or so, not daring to interrupt.
“I know where the child is!” he said at length, and it seemed to her that there was some strange undercurrent of feeling in his voice, but ostensibly his tone was hard, brusque and businesslike.
“You have found him!” Melina breathed. “How wonderful! Where is he?”
“In the House of the Doves,” Bing answered. “It’s a large, rambling, native house that was once the Palace of an important family who have gradually died out. There’s only one old man living there and he is ill. It is a clever place to choose because no one in Marrakesh would connect the house in any way with Moulay Ibrahim.”
“He is staying there too?” Melina asked him breathlessly.
Bing shook his head.
“No, he is too clever for that. He is staying at The Mamounia Hotel. He has a large suite there and will doubtless be entertaining a number of friends and politicians. It’s a perfect cover for his own activities.”
“Is the child guarded?” Melina asked.
“Naturally,” Bing answered sharply, as if impatient at her question. “Moulay Ibrahim has seen to that.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I have thought of a plan and I have already discussed it with Ahmed and his family. There is one chance in a million that we can pull it off, so it is desperately dangerous.”
He was silent again and after a second or two Melina ventured to say timidly,
“Aren’t you going to tell me about the plan?”
“I am going to tell you,” Bing said, “and then ask you whether you will help me or whether you won’t.”
“I can answer that now,” she said eagerly.
He held up his hand to stop her.
“Wait!” he said. “You haven’t heard yet what it is.”
Because she recognised by the serious tone of his voice that this was not a moment for her to make protestations of fidelity, Melina was silent.
“T
he house is in the native quarter of the town,” Bing began. “It’s a large building, but the only entrance is through an opening off a narrow street. The gateway leads into a courtyard on the right hand side of which are kitchens.”
“Yes,” Melina sighed, wondering why he was troubling to explain all this to her.
“I went with Ahmed to have a look at the gateway,” Bing continued. “There are two guards standing at the door and at night the place is barred and bolted and it would be impossible for anyone to get in. The only chance is in the daytime when the doors are open to allow the servants and those who deliver food to enter.”
“But the guards?” Melina questioned.
“They are there and they carry weapons beneath their cloaks,” Bing said dryly.
It appeared to Melina an almost impossible task to pass them, but she knew that Bing had some plan and therefore she was silent until he continued,
“Ahmed knows the baker who brings the freshly baked bread each morning. He calls there and his wife accompanies him, carrying live chickens for the cook who wants five or six every day.”
Bing’s voice died away and Melina began to see what he was trying to tell her.
“You mean that we should go instead of the baker and his wife?” she said.
“The baker has agreed,” Bing answered, “because he is hard-up and his elder daughter wishes to get married. It’s a great risk on his part, but the money tempted him.”
“And once – we get in – ” Melina stammered.
“We haven’t got as far as that yet,” Bing answered. “I could go alone – which I should prefer to do – but the baker tells me that he is always accompanied by his wife and the guards, who are local men and who always watch the door, not merely because there is an extra visitor in the house, might ask questions if she did not appear.”
“But why should a man who is ill want guards?” Melina asked out of curiosity.
“Because he is very rich and it gives him a sense of self-importance,” Bing replied. “These minor Sheiks and local Princes like to think that they have their own private army. Moulay Ibrahim has been wise enough to turn that to his own advantage.”
Love Is Dangerous Page 17
