by Pamela Kent
“I will let you know when I leave,” he told her, and she wondered why he should say that. “But, now, tell me—how are you and the Bey getting along?”
“Mehmet Bey?”
“Of course. He is the Bey around here! Lord of the Zor Oasis, and all that that means! And when you’ve as much money as he has, it can, and does, mean a good deal! Jacqueline was telling me she had lunch with you today.”
“Yes.” She paused. “You seem to know everyone,” she remarked.
He smiled a little inscrutably.
“I’ve always made it my business to know as many people as possible—particularly influential people. You never know when they’re going to be able to give you that lift up in the world. The Bey is, or could be, full of influence where I’m concerned, but he doesn’t happen to like me. Perhaps you’ve heard the story?”—studying her through a faint haze of cigarette-smoke.
“Yes,” Susan admitted again. Suddenly she felt a surge of indignation against him. “You had no right to allow me to give you a lift that night. You knew very well that the very last person the Bey wishes to have around here just now is you, and yet you let me—you let me do something that might have cost me my job immediately!”
His smile became more amused.
“Why,” he asked softly, “was he violent towards you? Did he accuse you of being in some sort of league with me, and threaten to throw you out as he once threw me?”—gnawing at his lower lip as if he was trying to subdue a rather primitive emotion.
“Of course he didn’t throw me out!” But he could tell by the way in which she flushed that something unpleasant had happened on the night of her arrival. “But he did see you in the car, and he was—annoyed!”
Nick Carlton laughed rather harshly, and then patted her arm penitently.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I know exactly what you mean by ‘annoyed.’ The Bey is a tiger when roused, and if I’d been your father”—he looked at her suddenly, and more seriously—“I wouldn’t have considered your taking on this job for five minutes. You’re hardly the type to introduce into a household of that sort—young and inexperienced, and newly out from England. You’re not the type to be overruled or browbeaten. You’re not even Ayse’s type.”
“And what type is Ayse?” she asked quietly.
He shrugged slightly.
“Oh, submissive, where her brother is concerned. She’d never put up a fight for anything she really wanted—not if it was against his wishes,” with a touch of bitterness.
“Then what are you doing here?” she wanted to know, with rather more insistent quietness.
“Nothing that need cause you the slightest concern”—smiling again with amusement. “Nothing to do with Ayse.”
“But you know you are not welcome here in the oasis.”
“Oh, quite. But the oasis doesn’t belong lock, stock, and barrel to Mehmet Bey, and I have a perfect right to come here and visit my own particular friends.” He tried to persuade her to have another drink, but she refused, already anxious to be gone—a little afraid, away down at the roots of her being, because her unwary footsteps had brought her here, and there was Mehmet Bey to return to. Mehmet Bey, of whom she was not really afraid, but who was well described as a tiger. “And amongst my friends I number Jacqueline Dupont.”
“But she—she is a friend of—”
“Mehmet Bey?” He smiled more crookedly this time. “True. It hasn’t taken you very long to discover that, has it? But, all the same, I’m having dinner with her tomorrow night.”
“You are?” But Susan’s expression revealed that she found all this a little beyond her. “You mean to say that she stopped here tonight to invite you?”
“Exactly”—tapping a cigarette on the lid of his case, while his hard blue eyes gleamed inexplicably. “You see, Jacqueline doesn’t happen to be afraid of anyone—any more than I am!—and she certainly isn’t afraid of Mehmet Bey.”
Susan stared at him thoughtfully, but recalling the confident manner in which the widow had slipped her hand inside the Bey’s arm, and smiled with that look of open provocation up into his face, she decided that this was probably true. Jacqueline Dupont, for all her diminutive size, was not afraid of any man. But if she was in love with the handsome mixture of French, Turkish, and Arab blood—surely an unpredictable mixture, if nothing else?—why should she even wish to invite a man like Nicholas Carlton to dine with her?
Nicholas laughed gently at her obvious bewilderment, and stood up.
“Don’t attempt to puzzle it out,” he recommended. “Jacqueline is simply Jacqueline, lovely, wealthy, and now free as air! And I am full of devious plans, but sincerely glad that Ayse has got you with her. You’ll probably do her a lot of good, and she may teach you a certain amount of the resignation of the East.”
But she realized that his eyes were mocking her. “You don’t honestly mean that you would—attempt to compete with the Bey?” she asked, a curious feeling like breathlessness attacking her as she waited for his answer.
It came while he bent over her with a certain amount of familiarity and drew her, by her shoulders, to her feet.
“Not compete with him, my dear,” he replied, “but one never knows what might happen. You might feel glad one day to know that I’m standing by. And in the meantime I’d better take you back.”
Susan declined, however, to allow him to accompany her to the end of the palm grove, and he merely smiled with amusement when she insisted on their parting before any eyes could observe them in the silent white house of her employer. But as she sped on across the open space in the last of the light the question that occupied her mind was:
If Mehmet Bey could take action in the case of a sister, what would be his reaction when he learned that the man he had already dealt with once was attempting to come between him and a woman he proposed one day to marry?
Upstairs in her own room Susan bathed and changed hurriedly for the evening meal. She had allowed herself only a very short time to do this, and when she went downstairs at last she had the feeling that much of her haste must show in her face and that the uneasy feeling almost like guilt that was actually weighing her down a little was given away by her expression also.
At night they dined in a huge room lighted by swinging bronze lanterns, with a flower-decked, polished table that looked like an island of color and sparkle in the midst of a sea of rugs and gleaming flooring. The servants who waited on them were white-robed, dignified, and silent, and Susan always felt as if she had strayed into a copy of the Arabian Nights when one of them stood behind her chair, and she knew that he towered above her.
Ayse always looked absolutely lovely in the evenings, her Paris gowns the most mouth-watering things Susan had ever set eyes on. By contrast with them her own simple couple of evening dresses looked cheap and rather pathetic, or so she thought, although they were certainly not in the least pretentious. One of them was white and extremely simple, the other a filmy grey that foamed about her like a grey mist and did much for her pastel coloring and insubstantial build. In fact, under the swinging lanterns she provided an admirable foil for the curious animal magnetism of the other two, and the almost lush quality of their good looks.
Tonight she had hastily donned her grey dress, and Mehmet Bey’s eyes rested on her rather frequently while the meal progressed. The expression in his eyes was queerly contemplative, and it made her feel uneasy after a time. Had he, she wondered—in the strange, secret fashion he had of observing these things—actually seen her himself when she was crossing that open space beyond the walls of the house before dinner? And was he proposing to ask her questions later on?
If he was—and if he had seen her—he didn’t appear to be suffering from any strong feeling of annoyance. In fact, there was a faint, enigmatic, smile on his lips, and whenever he addressed her, or addressed one of the servants who always bowed in acquiescence, there was a lazy, good-humored note in his voice.
After dinner they had their coffee
served to them in the main salon, and then some disturbance in the quarters of the indoor female staff took Ayse away for a short while to investigate. When she returned, her brother had invited Susan to enjoy a breath of air in the patio, and with a knowledgeable look in her eyes Ayse withdrew once more, only this time upstairs to her own quarters.
In the patio Susan was feeling even more nervous, and even more anxious, than she had felt during dinner. The moon hadn’t risen, the shadows were thick and black in the colonnades, and the tall figure of Mehmet Bey was just another shadow, m spite of his white dinner-jacket. She could see the glowing end of his cigarette, and the fragrance of the tobacco was oddly exciting, but the uneasy sensation that he was merely waiting to pounce—verbally, if nothing else—made her shiver suddenly with apprehension.
Instantly she felt his fingers lightly touch her arm.
“You’re cold?” he asked, and his voice was unusually soft.
“No. No,” she repeated, and was glad that they were not seated, and that she could move away from him a little and make the excuse that she wished to move forward along the path. But an unwary step brought her in contact with the edge of the marble basin into which the fountain played, and this time it was his arm that saved her—an arm that refused to let her go immediately.
“If you’re cold,” he said, and she thought there was a faint laugh in his voice, “there is something that is the matter with you. Are you by any chance afraid?”
“Afraid?” she echoed feebly, and looked away from the dark face that loomed between her and the stars. “What—what would I be afraid of?”
“There are one or two things,” he replied, unmistakable amusement in his voice this time, although it was still very soft, “and I will enumerate them if you wish.” He dropped his arm from about her shoulders, but took a light grasp of her elbow instead. “You could feel apprehension in case you tumble in amongst the water-lilies in this basin, or because the shadows are rather intense, and shadows can hold unpleasant things. Or because you feel shut away here in the heart of Zor Oasis, and you don’t feel yet that you know either Ayse or myself very well. At the moment we are strangers to you, foreigners you don’t pretend to understand. We have strange ways—we are a strange mixture of bloods!”
Susan was silent, but she had never been so conscious of anything in her life as that touch of his on her arm. It was making something inside her feel defenceless and drained of strength.
“Really, you are a very bold young woman to come here and live amongst us—you who are so very English, as I said at lunch-time today!” Susan could still find no words, and he went on in an almost imperturbable voice:
“Then, amongst the other things you might be afraid of, there is the hour, and the spot the fact that you are a very attractive young woman, and I, as a member of the opposite sex, might have become aware of it!”
At that Susan freed her arm, and managed to find her voice.
“You told me that you had given your word to my father that I would be safe here in your house,” she reminded him.
“Oh, quite,” he agreed smoothly. “And you are, absolutely safe! I was merely suggesting possible reasons why you shivered as you did a few moments ago, if you really are not cold? Normal reactions, shall we say, to—certain sets of circumstances? As I said before, the hour and the spot! ... Our desert nights have a different quality from your English nights, don’t you agree?”
“Y-yes,” she admitted, and bit her lower lip hard. Beneath the smoothness of his voice she detected a desire to amuse himself, and for some reason that “And you are, absolutely safe!” didn’t carry with it the reassurance he obviously meant it to convey. She even felt that such a reassurance could have been more tactfully put, and that once she had brooded upon it a little she would discover reasons for feeling vaguely humiliated. But he was obviously pursuing a line of thought. “A final reason why you could be feeling just a trifle—uneasy—could have something to do with a guilty conscience,” he observed, looking upwards as the moon at last appeared above the high wall of the courtyard, and cast a flood of silver light all about them.
Susan blinked in the sudden radiance, and at the same time her cheeks burned hotly.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said stiffly.
“Don’t you?” He looked down at her almost languidly, and she saw that his eyes were smiling, the tiny colorful lights in them temporarily quiescent, and mere pin-points in the brilliance of the moon rays. “Oh, Miss Maldon—Susan! I heard Ayse calling you Susan, this evening, and perhaps it would be less formal if I did so, too! Do you deny that you took a stroll in the direction of the village after tea?”
Susan felt her heart sink. So he had known, after all! All through dinner he had known, while his eyes were studying her in that strange contemplative fashion!
“Well?” she demanded, feeling herself stiffen, and more or less bracing herself for the wrath to come.
But it didn’t come. He merely looked at her with something that might have been contempt, and explained:
“There is very little that happens here in the oasis that I do not get to know about sooner or later. There are always eyes to see, and tongues to report what has been seen. You might find it useful to remember that in future.”
Susan moistened her lips.
“You mean that I shall always be spied upon?”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“I wouldn’t call it spying, but naturally you arouse interest. You are—if you’ll forgive me for saying so—not one of us, and Nicholas Carlton is not one of us, either. And, by the way, how did you find him?”
“I had no idea he was still here,” she answered, trying to subdue an inclination on the part of her voice to tremble slightly, although she was speaking no more than the truth.
“In that case it must have been a pleasant surprise for you when you discovered that he was.” He leaned his broad shoulders against one of the marble pillars which supported the colonnade, and although his voice was still sleepy, and his eyes remained sleepy, also, she recognized a note of warning in the former. “Don’t be too trustful, Susan! Nicholas Carlton may inscribe loving messages in your books, and he may be a friend of your father, but he is not the type for you! You would be wise to put him out of your thoughts.”
Susan felt indignation rush up over her, and she wondered what he would say if she asked him whether his spies had reported the visit of Jacqueline Dupont to Nicholas. But perhaps in the oasis she was recognized as “one of us,” and her movements would not be reported on.
“I think it’s intolerable that I should have to give an account of a simple walk to the village,” she exclaimed, as she turned in her anger towards the house. “I don’t think I like it at all!”
“Poor Susan!” he remarked, infuriating her with the suggestion of contempt in his voice. “Is it because he is a fellow-countryman of yours, and you feel very much alone here? Or is it something more serious than that?”
“Whatever it is,” she replied through her teeth, “it is nothing to do with you.”
“Ah, but that is where you are wrong,” he told her, coming abruptly nearer to her and actually catching her for a moment by her wrist. “So long as you remain here in the oasis you are as much my concern as my sister Ayse, and until I hand you back to your father I shall see to it that you do nothing rash.”
“Dear me!” she exclaimed, feeling the urge to mock at him, too. “You make me sound like a parcel you are temporarily responsible for! Is that the Arab attitude to women? Creatures you can pass on when you no longer have any need for them?”
For an instant she all but recoiled before the abrupt change that came over his face. It suddenly looked like a pale-carven mask in the moonlight, and the eyes grew dark and glittered at her.
“So you think of me as an Arab, do you?” he said.
“I ... No, of course not! ...” She was bewildered because he had taken what she had said so unexpectedly amiss, and because
her words seemed to have infuriated him. “But you are—you are partly Arab, aren’t you?”
“I am partly Arab, partly Turkish, and partly French! To you, that no doubt spells a complete mongrel?”
“I certainly don’t think it spells anything of the kind.” She winced as his fingers bruised her wrist. “Please! You are hurting me!”
“I’m sorry!” He released her immediately, and stood back. “That, no doubt, was the Arab in me,” he told her, one side of his handsome mouth twisting unpleasantly. “But”—still looking a little pale, and immensely aloof—“I might as well tell you that I am as proud of my Arab blood as I am of the blood of my noble French ancestors. And my mother’s family does rank as a very noble family in France. On the death of my uncle I shall be the Comte de St. Just de Beauvoir. Does that make you feel more secure, since you unfortunately find yourself where you are?”
Susan realized that by mentioning the Arab attitude to women she had done something she would have been wiser to have refrained from doing. But it was impossible to recall her words now, and as the hostility remained in his face she turned quietly away.
“If you’ll excuse me,”‘ she said, “I’d like to go to my room. Or perhaps Ayse might want me...”
“You are not a servant,” he said. “At this time of night there is little Ayse can expect from you. But I shall expect to see you tomorrow morning early! Unless”—with a cold and slightly sneering smile—“Jacqueline has provided you with yet another reason for feeling afraid?”
At that, she turned back to confront him for a moment.
“I am not afraid,” she told him quietly. “I am not afraid of anything!”
“Good!” he exclaimed, but she felt certain he was mocking her. “Then all that remains is to put you to the test!”
CHAPTER FIVE
BUT in spite of her brave words, when the following morning dawned and the little Arab maid-servant who had been deputed to wait on her brought her a pair of Ayse’s jodhpurs, Susan, at the thought of what awaited her, felt a faint sinking of the heart.