by Sax Rohmer
Therefore, what did Agapoulos see in Safiyeh?
It was a problem which made Zahara’s head ache. She could not understand why as her power of winning men increased her power to hold them diminished. Safiyeh was a mere inexperienced child — yet Agapoulos had brought her to the house, and Zahara, wise in woman’s lore, had recognized the familiar change of manner.
It was a great problem, the age-old problem which doubtless set the first silver thread among Phryne’s red-gold locks and which now brought a little perplexed wrinkle between Zahara’s delicately pencilled brows.
It had not always been so. In those early days in Cairo there had been an American boy. Zahara had never forgotten. Her beauty had bewildered him. He had wanted to take her to New York; and oh! how she had wanted to go. But her mother, who was then alive, had held other views, and he had gone alone. Heavens! How old she felt. How many had come and gone since that Egyptian winter, but now, although admiration was fatally easy to win how few were so sincere as that fresh-faced boy from beyond the Atlantic.
Zahara, staring into the mirror, observed that there was not a wrinkle upon her face, not a flaw upon her perfect skin. Nor in this was she blinded by vanity. Nature, indeed, had cast her in a rare mould, and from her unusual hair, which was like dull gold, to her slender ankles and tiny feet, she was one of the most perfectly fashioned human beings who ever added to the beauty of the world.
Yet Agapoulos preferred Safiyeh. Zahara could hear him coming to her room even as she sat there, chin in hands, staring at her own bewitching reflection. Presently she would slip out and speak to Harry Grantham. Twice she had read in his eyes that sort of interest which she knew so well how to detect. She liked him very much, but because of a sense of loyalty to Agapoulos (a sentiment purely Egyptian which she longed to crush) Zahara had never so much as glanced at Grantham in the Right Way. She was glad, though, that he had not gone, and she hoped that Agapoulos would not detain her long.
As a matter of fact, the Greek’s manner was even more cold than usual. He rested his hand upon her shoulder for a moment, and meeting her glance reflected in the mirror:
“There will be a lot of money here to-night,” he said. “Make the best of your opportunities. Chinatown is foggy, yes — but it pays better than Port Said.”
He ran fat fingers carelessly through her hair, the big diamond glittering effectively in the wavy gold, then turned and went out. Sitting listening intently, Zahara could hear him talking in a subdued voice to Safiyeh, and could detect the Egyptian’s low-spoken replies.
Grantham looked up with a start. A new and subtle perfume had added itself to that with which the air of the room was already laden. He found Zahara standing beside him.
His glance travelled upward from a pair of absurdly tiny brocaded shoes past slender white ankles to the embroidered edge of a wonderful mandarin robe decorated with the figures of peacocks; upward again to a little bejewelled hand which held the robe confined about the slender figure of Zahara, and upward to where, sideways upon a bare shoulder peeping impudently out from Chinese embroidery, rested the half-mocking and half-serious face of the girl.
“Hallo!” he said, smiling, “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“I walk very soft,” explained Zahara, “because I am not supposed to be here.”
She looked at him quizzically. “I don’t see you for a long time,” she added, and in the tone of her voice there was a caress. “I saw you more often in Port Said than here.”
“No,” replied Grantham, “I have been giving Agapoulos a rest. Besides, there has been nobody worth while at any of the hotels or clubs during the last fortnight.”
“Somebody worth while coming to-night?” asked Zahara with professional interest.
At the very moment that she uttered the words she recognized her error, for she saw Grantham’s expression change. Yet to her strange soul there was a challenge in his coldness and the joy of contest in the task of melting the ice of this English reserve.
“Lots of money,” he said bitterly; “we shall all do well to-night.”
Zahara did not reply for a moment. She wished to close this line of conversation which inadvertently she had opened up. So that, presently:
“You look very lonely and bored,” she said softly.
As a matter of fact, it was she who was bored of the life she led in Limehouse — in chilly, misty Limehouse — and who had grown so very lonely since Safiyeh had come. In the dark gray eyes looking up at her she read recognition of her secret. Here was a man possessing that rare masculine attribute, intuition. Zahara knew a fear that was half delightful. Fear because she might fail in either of two ways and delight because the contest was equal.
“Yes,” he replied slowly, “my looks tell the truth. How did you know?”
Zahara observed that his curiosity had not yet become actual interest. She toyed with the silken tassel on her robe, tying and untying it with quick nervous fingers and resting the while against the side of the carved chair.
“Perhaps because I am so lonely myself,” she said. “I matter to no one. What I do, where I go, if I live or die. It is all — —”
She spread her small hands eloquently and shrugged so that another white shoulder escaped from the Chinese wrapping. Thereupon Zahara demurely drew her robe about her with a naive air of modesty which nine out of ten beholding must have supposed to be affected.
In reality it was a perfectly natural, instinctive movement. To Zahara her own beauty was a commonplace to be displayed or concealed as circumstances might dictate. In a certain sense, which few could appreciate, this half-caste dancing girl and daughter of El Wasr was as innocent as a baby. It was one of the things which men did not understand. She thought that if Harry Grantham asked her to go away with him it would be nice to go. Suddenly she realized how deep was her loathing of this Limehouse and of the people she met there, who were all alike.
He sat looking at her for some time, and then: “Perhaps you are wrong,” he said. “There may be some who could understand.”
And because he had answered her thoughts rather than her words, the fear within Zahara grew greater than the joy of the contest.
Awhile longer she stayed, seeking for a chink in the armour. But she failed to kindle the light in his eyes which — unless she had deluded herself — she had seen there in the past; and because she failed and could detect no note of tenderness in his impersonal curiosity:
“You are lonely because you are so English, so cold,” she exclaimed, drawing her robe about her and glancing sideways toward the door by which Agapoulos might be expected to enter. “You are bored, yes. Of course. You look on at life. It is not exciting, that game — except for the players.”
Never once had she looked at him in the Right Way; for to have done so and to have evoked only that amused yet compassionate smile would have meant hatred, and Zahara had been taught that such hatred was fatal because it was a confession of defeat.
“I shall see you again to-night, shall I not?” he said as she turned away.
“Oh, yes, I shall be — on show. I hope you will approve.”
She tossed her head like a petulant child, turned, and with never another glance in his direction, walked from the room. She was very graceful, he thought.
Yet it was not entirely of this strange half-caste, whose beauty was provoking, although he resolutely repelled her tentative advances, that Grantham was thinking. In that last gesture when she had scornfully tossed her head in turning aside, had lain a bitter memory. Grantham stood for a moment watching the swaying draperies. Then, dropping the end of his cigarette into a little brass ash-tray, he took up his hat, gloves, and cane from the floor, and walked toward the doorway through which he had entered.
A bell rang somewhere, and Grantham paused. A close observer might have been puzzled by his expression. Evidently changing his mind, he crossed the room, opened the door and went out, leaving the house of Agapoulos by a side entrance. Crossing the little courtyar
d below he hurried in the direction of the main street, seeming to doubt the shadows which dusk was painting in the narrow ways.
Many men who know Chinatown distrust its shadows, but the furtive fear of which Grantham had become aware was due not to anticipation but to memory — to a memory conjured up by that gesture of Zahara’s.
There were few people in London or elsewhere who knew the history of this scallywag Englishman. That he had held the King’s commission at some time was generally assumed to be the fact, but that his real name was not Grantham equally was taken for granted. His continuing, nevertheless, to style himself “Major” was sufficient evidence to those interested that Grantham lived by his wits; and from the fact that he lived well and dressed well one might have deduced that his wits were bright if his morals were turbid.
Now, the gesture of a woman piqued had called up the deathless past. Hurrying through nearly empty squalid streets, he found himself longing to pronounce a name, to hear it spoken that he might linger over its bitter sweetness. To this longing he presently succumbed, and:
“Inez,” he whispered, and again more loudly, “Inez.”
Such a wave of lonely wretchedness and remorse swept up about his heart that he was almost overwhelmed by it, yet he resigned himself to its ruthless cruelty with a sort of savage joy. The shadowed ways of Limehouse ceased to exist for him, and in spirit he stood once more in a queer, climbing, sunbathed street of Gibraltar looking out across that blue ribbon of the Straits to where the African coast lay hidden in the haze.
“I never knew,” he said aloud. And one meeting this man who hurried along and muttered to himself must have supposed him to be mad. “I never knew. Oh, God! if I had only known.”
But he was one of those to whom knowledge comes as a bitter aftermath. When his regiment had received orders to move from the Rock, and he had informed Inez of his departure, she had turned aside, just as Zahara had done; scornfully and in silence. Because of his disbelief in her he had guarded his heart against this beautiful Spanish girl who (as he realized too late) had brought him the only real happiness he had ever known. Often she had told him of her brother, Miguel, who would kill her — would kill them both — if he so much as suspected their meetings; of her affianced husband, absent in Tunis, whose jealousy knew no bounds.
He had pretended to believe, had even wanted to believe; but the witchery of the girl’s presence removed, he had laughed — at himself and at Inez. She was playing the Great Game, skilfully, exquisitely. When he was gone — there would soon be someone else. Yet he had never told her that he doubted. He had promised many things — and had left her.
She died by her own hand on the night of his departure.
Now, as a wandering taxi came into view: “Inez!” he moaned— “I never knew.”
That brother whom he had counted a myth had succeeded in getting on board the transport. Before Grantham’s inner vision the whole dreadful scene now was reenacted: the struggle in the stateroom; he even seemed to hear the sound of the shot, to see the Spaniard, drenched with blood from a wound in his forehead, to hear his cry:
“I cannot see! I cannot see! Mother of Mercy! I have lost my sight!”
It had broken Grantham. The scandal was hushed up, but retirement was inevitable. He knew, too, that the light had gone out of the world for him as it had gone for Miguel da Mura.
It is sometimes thus that a scallywag is made.
IV
THE STAR OF EGYPT
As Grantham went out by the side door, Hassan, soft of foot, appeared. Crossing to the main door he opened it and walked down the narrow corridor beyond. Presently came the tap, tap, tap of a stick and a sound of muttered conversation in some place below.
Hassan reentered and went in through the curtained doorway to summon Agapoulos. Agapoulos was dressing and would not be disturbed. Hassan went back to those who waited, but ere long returned again chattering volubly to himself. Going behind the carven screen he rapped upon the door of Zahara’s room, and she directed him to come in. To Zahara, Hassan was no more than a piece of furniture, and she thought as little of his intruding while she was in the midst of her toilet as another woman would have thought of the entrance of a maid.
“Two men,” reported Hassan, “who won’t go away until they see somebody.”
“Whom do they want to see?” she inquired indifferently, adjusting the line of her eyebrow with an artistically pointed pencil.
“They say whoever belongs here.”
Zahara invariably spoke either French or English to natives, and if Hassan had addressed her in Arabic she would not have replied, although she spoke that language better than she spoke any other.
“What are they like? Not — police?”
“Foreign,” replied Hassan vaguely.
“English — American?”
“No, not American or English. Very black hair, dark skin.”
Zahara, a student of men, became aware of a mild interest. These swarthy visitors should prove an agreeable antidote to the poisonous calm of Harry Grantham. She was trying with all the strength of her strange, stifled soul not to think of Grantham, and she was incapable of recognizing the fact that she could think of nothing else and had thought of little else for a long time past. Even now it was because of him that she determined to interview the foreign visitors. The mystery of her emotions puzzled her more than ever.
She descended to a small, barely furnished room on the ground floor, close beside the door opening upon the street. It was lighted by one hanging lamp. On the divan which constituted the principal item of furniture a small man, slenderly built, was sitting. He wore a broad-brimmed hat, so broad of brim that it threw the whole of the upper part of his face into shadow. It was impossible to see his eyes. Beside him rested a heavy walking-stick.
As Zahara entered, a wonderful, gaily coloured figure, this man did not move in the slightest, but sat, chin on breast, his small, muscular, brown hands resting on his knees. His companion, however, a person of more massive build, elegantly dressed and handsome in a swarthy fashion, bowed gravely and removed his hat. Zahara liked his eyes, which were dark and very bold looking.
“M. Agapoulos is engaged,” she said, speaking in French. “What is it you wish to know?”
The man regarded her fixedly, and:
“Senorita,” he replied, “I will be frank with you.”
Save for his use of the word “senorita” he also spoke in French. Zahara drew her robe more closely about her and adopted her most stately manner.
“My name,” continued the other, “does not matter, but my business is to look into the affairs of other people, you understand?”
Zahara, who understood from this that the man was some kind of inquiry agent, opened her blue eyes very widely and at the same time shook her head.
“No,” she protested; “what do you mean?”
“A certain gentleman came here a short time ago, came into this house and must be here now. Don’t be afraid. He has done nothing very dreadful,” he added reassuringly.
Zahara retreated a step, and a little wrinkle of disapproval appeared between her pencilled brows. She no longer liked the man’s eyes, she decided. They were deceitful eyes. His companion had taken up the heavy stick and was restlessly tapping the floor.
“There is no one here,” said Zahara calmly, “except the people who live in the house.”
“He is here, he is here,” muttered the man seated on the divan.
The tapping of his stick had grown more rapid, but as he had spoken in Spanish, Zahara, who was ignorant of that language, had no idea what he had said.
“My friend,” continued the Spaniard, bowing slightly in the direction of the slender man who so persistently kept his broad-brimmed hat on his head, “chanced to hear the voice of this gentleman as he spoke to your porter on entering the door. And although the door was closed too soon for us actually to see him, we are convinced that he is the person we seek.”
“I think you are
mistaken,” said Zahara coolly. “But what do you want him for?”
As she uttered the words she realized that even the memory of Grantham was sufficient to cause her to betray herself. She had betrayed her interest to the man himself, and now she had betrayed it to this dark-faced stranger whose manner was so mysterious. The Spaniard recognized the fact, and, unlike Grantham, acted upon it promptly.
“He has taken away the wife of another, Senorita,” he said simply, and watched her as he spoke the lie.
She listened in silence, wide-eyed. Her lower lip twitched, and she bit it fiercely.
“He went first to Port Said and then came to London with this woman,” continued the Spaniard remorselessly. “We come from her husband to ask her to return. Yes, he will forgive her — or he offers her freedom.”
Rapidly but comprehensively the speaker’s bold glance travelled over Zahara, from her golden head to her tiny embroidered shoes.
“If you can help us in this matter it will be worth fifty English pounds to you,” he concluded.
Zahara was breathing rapidly. The fatal hatred which she had sought to stifle gained a new vitality. Another woman — another woman actually here in London! So there was someone upon whom he did not look in that half-amused and half-compassionate manner. How she hated him! How she hated the woman to whom he had but a moment ago returned!
“Then he will marry this other one?” she said suddenly.
“Oh, no. Already he neglects her. We think she will go back.”
Zahara experienced a swift change of sentiment. She seemed to be compounded of two separate persons, one of whom laughed cruelly at the folly of the other.
“What is the name of this man you think your friend has recognized?” she asked.
The big stick was rapping furiously during this colloquy.
“We are both sure, Senorita. His name is Major Spalding.”
That Spalding and Grantham were neighbouring towns in Lincolnshire Zahara did not know, but:
“No one of that name comes here,” she replied.
“The one you heard and — who has gone — is not called by that name.” She spoke with forced calm. It was Grantham they sought! “But what happens if I show you this one who is not called Spalding?”