CHAPTER XXV

"_He that has patience may compass anything_."

RABELAIS.

Ben Kelham sat near the balustrade on the verandah of Shepheard's Hotel

just after breakfast, pretending to read the morning paper, whilst

trying to make up his mind.

Sybil Sidmouth and her mother, owing to lack of accommodation, brought

about by the crush of visitors in the huge caravanserai, had gone to

the Savoy; for which the man was secretly thankful.

He wanted to eat out his heart all by himself in the appalling

loneliness which had overwhelmed him when, on ringing up Heliopolis the

night before, he had learned that Damaris and the duchess had

transferred themselves to Luxor.

And you simply cannot indulge in your particular brand of _malaise_ or

dolour with an extreme optimist sitting opposite you at meals, or

adjacent to your elbow at most other times.

He anathematised the postal system of Egypt; his own haste in accepting

the girl's refusal; the oriental imagination which magnified cats into

lions; but, above all, the wash of that steamer (upon which Damaris had

returned from Denderah) which had re-floated his own craft and sent him

racing full steam ahead for Cairo.

Another hour of the infernal wait on the sandbank, and he would have

transferred himself to one of the scores of small boats and been

ferried across to Luxor, where he would have dined at the Winter Palace

Hotel, whilst waiting to catch the express to Cairo, and perhaps have

seen his beloved in the dining-room, or have heard that she was staying

there.

He was thoroughly irritated as he pondered in his deliberate way as to

the best thing to do.

Should he take the first train back to Luxor, or, as the duchess had

not seen fit to acquaint him as to her movements, should he stay where

he was, write her a letter, or send a telegram and wait for an answer?

Anyway, he was irritated enough to scowl at the commissionaire who was

rating a woman whom he had seen hanging about the street, doubtless

with intent of soliciting a nickel coin from one of the great white

race as he--or she--descended the steps to stroll along the street.

She made a few choice remarks upon the undoubted inclusion of a pig in

the commissionaire's parentage, in a curiously sibilant voice, then

limped away with a distressing swing of her body from the hips.

"Can't you keep those people quiet?" Kelham demanded angrily, as he

moved a chair further back, and lit a cigarette.

An hour had passed, in which he had come to no decision, when Fate, in

the shape of a page-boy, offered him the just-arrived, local morning

paper, which he took and read, with only half a mind upon the gossipy

contents.

"By Jove!" he suddenly exclaimed. "If that isn't a bit of luck!

Here's the very excuse for getting down there without kind of thrusting

myself upon them." He flattened out the paper and again read through

the paragraph which gave a most extraordinarily detailed account of the

immensely wealthy Hugh Carden Ali, his career at Harrow; his travels;

his stables in the desert; his birds and a hundred and one other

details calculated to interest those who like reading about other

people's most intimate affairs. It ended: ". . . Being a great

sportsman, the strange story of lion which is causing such uneasiness

and is likely to do harm to the Luxor season, has taken him to his

Tents of Purple and Gold, one of the wonders of modern Egypt and which

lie in the desert a little distance from the well-known Colossi."

He did not frown this time as he folded the paper and turned to watch

the commissionaire in conclave with a coal-black Ethiopian who, clad in

crimson tunic, enormous turban and with scimitar rattling at his side,

tendered an envelope.

"Yes, yes," said the hotel servant. "I will see that it is delivered

into the gentleman's own hands. And, tell me"--he lowered his voice as

he winked his eye--"has she returned from Alexandria?"

Qatim was caught in a quandary, and he cursed the vanity which had

urged him to don his most resplendent garments upon his errand to the

great hotel, to which he had come after a violent argument with

Zulannah.

With a heart full of hatred, and agony in her twisted limbs the woman

had hung about the streets in front of the hotel until she had seen the

man for whom she had felt such a sudden and fleeting love, and who was

the primary cause of her disfigurement.

Hurt him she must, if only as a balm to her own physical and mental

agony; and in what better way than by destroying his faith in the white

girl he loved?

Hence the letter, written hastily in the hovel and consigned to the

care of the Ethiopian, who, in return for his assistance, had demanded

backshisch in the shape of a pink leaf covered with strange black marks.

The woman's presence in the great city in her deplorable state was the

last thing he wanted to be known; so he lied--clumsily.

"Nay; she is in Alexandria," he blurted out.

The commissionaire slowly winked an eye.

"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not," and chuckled as the negro turned

hastily and strode away in the direction of the bank.

And thus came it to be known in the bazaar that Zulannah the courtesan

had returned to the great city.

And a little later, Ben Kelham felt no tweak at the string with which

Fate had hobbled him to his destiny, when, on hearing his number

called, he took the letter from the page-boy, turned it over, and

looked at it on each side, as we do when curious, but not

over-interested; then he opened it idly, read it and crushed it in both

hands.

It was written in the execrable English Zulannah had picked up in her

few years of cosmopolitan intercourse with different nationalities; it

was in vile hand-writing and was as despicable a method of revenge as

an anonymous letter usually is.

It ran after this fashion:

"If you want to find your white woman go and look for her in the ruins

of Karnak, at night, in the arms of her half-caste lover, Hugh Carden

Ali."

And the woman who had limped back to the street, sniggered behind her

veil as she watched the man tear the letter into shreds, while he sat

and thought out an answer to this second problem.

"It's a damnable lie. My Damaris and good old Carden! I expect

they've met, but who------" He sniffed at his hands suddenly. "Pah!

Now, where have I smelt that scent before?--filth!" He sat with his

hands to his nose, then frowned as, under the suggestion of the

perfume, the picture of a lovely woman clad in silks and satins and

wearing rich jewels rose before him.

"My God!" he said slowly, as the full significance of it all dawned

slowly upon him. "Of course! She--she invited me to--to visit

her--and I refused. By all that's clean and decent, if I don't make

her pay for this! And it's Carden, too, who can tell me the best way

to set about it. The harlot! I wonder if I shall have to wait until

evening for a train." He clenched his hands until the knuckles showed

white, as he unseeingly watched a woman limp down the street. "I'll

make her sorry she was ever born."

He need not have worried on that point. Fate was dogging those

unsteady feet back to the hovel.

The spreading of a prairie fire is slow compared to the speed with

which news runs through the bazaar. The servants in the big house in

the big garden went sullenly about their various tasks of tidying and

clearing up the courtesan's home, whilst little knots of people,

composed principally of women, stood about in the vicinity of the gate.

It was the first time the tyrannical woman had been absent upon a long

journey, and the relatives and friends even unto a most distant

generation of her servants had taken advantage of it to visit the house

and examine its, to them, surpassing luxury.

The Ethiopian, with his mind fixed only upon the bank, had taken but

little interest in the house itself, and had visited it but rarely, and

then only for the sake of appearances; so that the visitors had become

more and more brazen, as the days passed, fingering the satins, sitting

upon the cushions, feasting on the floor.

Bes, the monstrous keeper of the lions, had become prime favourite with

the men, and the neighbourhood had resounded with the roars of the

brutes at night as they fought for their food.

Also was there something savage in the way the women visitors had

fingered and touched everything, and had visited every corner of the

building. They were fat or thin, plain or passably good-looking; they

were all hideously poor, and in their heads they had the echo of the

gibes their menfolk had cast at them, when, returning with empty

pockets, they had boasted of great conquests.

Which boasting the sillies had believed, thinking, as all women think,

that their own particular male has been specially favoured of the gods

and is therefore an Adonis in the eyes of every other woman.

There was an indefinite air of trouble in that quarter of the bazaar

which increased with the heat of the day. Household matters were

neglected, whilst the women foregathered to talk; words were few, but

gestures were quick and expressive; the servants, wondering at the

absence of the Ethiopian, grumbled as they worked; they had been paid

no wages in their mistress's absence, and were on the verge of mutiny.

Brave words! When they knew that they would fall flat upon their faces

at the first swish of her satin robes.

They waited all the day, and no definite word came of the woman's

return. They waited until the stars twinkled and they still waited

with the terrible patience of the East. Why they waited they could not

have told you. They dared not set upon her if she passed in her

litter; she wielded too great a power through her beauty and wealth for

that; but as the hours passed, they moved softly to and fro, as moves

the wretched beast in his cage at feeding-time, whilst a look of

cunning allied to cruelty shone in the soft brown eyes.

It only required a spark to start the conflagration.