City of Palms

by Pamela Kent

  And she told him about the disappearance of the jug of lemonade.

  His frown became much more marked, and he gave vent to a disturbed whistle.

  “I don’t like it, Susan,” he said. “I wish you’d go home. I wish your father had been a little more careful before he wished this job upon you.”

  “But it’s a very good job, and I like it—and I’m not going home,” she said quite firmly. “And, in any case, I think we’re both making a frightful mistake. The jug of lemonade had nothing at all to do with Ayse’s being taken ill.”

  “But it was prepared for you, and if you had drunk some of it instead of Ayse it would have been you who would have been taken ill—and it’s just possible you haven’t such an excellent constitution as Ayse! Think of that, Susan,” he said, grimly.

  “But—why? Why?” she demanded. “Why should anyone wish to poison me?”

  “I can think of an excellent reason,” Arnwood told her. “And I’m not at all sure that I like the idea of this desert trip ahead of us!”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BUT the desert trip was something that had been finally decided upon, and Jacqueline saw to it that nothing interfered with the plans that had been made. She came over constantly from the Villa of Stars, not waiting for invitations to either lunch or dinner, and once she arrived in the middle of breakfast and announced her intention of staying for the remainder of the day.

  She seemed to take it for granted that she was always welcome, and although Raoul sometimes treated her to a form of detachment that Susan would have found more than discouraging, the widow seemed hardly to notice it—perhaps because there were other occasions when he humored her as if she was someone rather special, with a right to make demands.

  Susan watched them one night disappearing into the darkness of the patio together, while she helped Ayse sort records in the main salon, and the stab of almost primitive jealousy and envy that tore through her frightened her for a few moments. They were separating dance records from orchestral pieces, and Ayse was concentrating on the task while Arnwood attended to the turn-table, and only Susan wished all at once that she was miles from where she was.

  She thought of the two out there in the darkness of the patio, the man’s tall figure in his well-cut dinner jacket that was always crisply white, and the tiny figure of the fascinating French widow pressed close to his side. For when Susan had seen them last, Jacqueline’s hand, with its scarlet-tipped fingers, had been clutching eagerly at his arm. And, no doubt, as soon as the velvety gloom, that always lay crouched beneath the colonnades at this hour before the moon rose and sailed into the clear sky above the outer walls, engulfed them and wrapped them about with a mantle of protectiveness, Jacqueline would press even closer to him. And Susan could see her lifting that exciting mouth of hers up to him eagerly—the same eagerness that had been so evident when she caught at his arm and drew him towards the open windows.

  Susan looked down at the record that had snapped in her hands, and as she uttered a dismayed sound Ayse looked at her and saw that she was unusually pale, with a strained look stamping itself in every line of her features.

  “You have a headache?” Ayse demanded quickly, sympathetically. “Or you are very tired, perhaps? As we are leaving so early in the morning, don’t you think it would be as well if you went to bed now and got as much, rest as possible?”

  Susan looked back at her rather blankly, and apologized for breaking the record.

  “It is nothing,” Ayse answered, and removed the pieces from her hand and cast them indifferently into a waste-paper basket. “But it is important you should be fresh when we start off tomorrow morning.”

  And then they both caught the sound of a car starting up in the outer courtyard, and as Susan lifted her head unconsciously and was obviously listening intently, Ayse’s expression grew soft and understanding, and she touched the other girl’s arm gently.

  “It is Raoul taking Jacqueline back to her villa,” she said. “She is leaving her own car here, so that it will be waiting for her when we get back from our trip. It is quite a sensible arrangement,” she added, as if she wanted to say something that would remove that faintly wounded look from the other’s face.

  Susan nodded, and tried to smile lightly.

  “Of course,” she said. “Of course.”

  And then she made her excuses and left the room, aware that the man and the girl left behind would abruptly dissolve into one another’s arms as soon as they were sure they were quite alone, and feeling as if she was the only odd man—or woman—out, in the whole of that desert quiet and peacefulness.

  But when she reached her room she knew that she felt no immediate urge to undress and go to bed, even if they were to make an early start in the morning, and instead she went outside on to her balcony. Many nights she had stood here, and watched the stars, dipping and wheeling above her, and many nights she had wondered how she was going to feel when the time arrived for her to leave the oasis. In England the stars would seem like mere pin-points after those exciting golden worlds that strewed the heavens above her.

  In England there would be no ice-cool desert breezes reaching her as the moon waned, no sudden lighting of the whole width of the sky when dawn broke with a rush. No whispering of palms —endlessly whispering palms—in the stillness that preceded the dawn, or solitary star caught up like a jewel in that great arc of blue that would hold so much brazen heat as the day advanced.

  It would be like that in a few hours, Susan thought, as she stared over her balcony rail at the unseen lemon trees and oleanders in the courtyard below. And just as she was thinking how very dark it was down there where the mosaic paths criss-crossed one another, she saw that that darkness was pierced by a sudden minute eye of light that advanced along a path towards her.

  The light faded and died, and then grew brighter as it became stationary below her balcony. She heard a voice addressing her softly, and she only just managed to conquer the instinct to withdraw hurriedly.

  “You ought to be in bed, little one.”

  Susan held her breath, clutched at the balcony rail, and said nothing.

  “Why aren’t you in bed? Don’t you know we’re making an early start?”

  “Yes,” she answered, and told herself that since he had come straight from seeing Jacqueline Dupont back to her villa, and their good night had no doubt been a pleasantly intimate one, he had no right to allow that note that was almost caressing to enter his voice when he spoke to her.

  “Is anything wrong?” he wanted to know, as he stood looking up at her, his cigarette extinguished because he seemed to have forgotten that he held it between his fingers.

  “No, of course not,” she called back, hastily.

  “You don’t sound very convincing,” he replied, and then, to her startled concern, obtained a foothold in some trellis-work below her balcony and started to swarm up a marble pillar until he reached the balustrade beside which she stood, and landed on the balcony beside her without even appearing out of breath. He dusted his hands lightly and smiled at her in the faint rays of light that streamed from her bedside lamp in the room behind them.

  “Oh, you might have fallen!” she gasped, the distress in her tones so unconcealed that his smile vanished abruptly, although his eyes gleamed strangely. “How could you do anything so rash?”

  “Not really rash,” he assured her. “I’ve been accustomed to climbing to these balconies ever since I was a child, and I haven’t broken my neck yet. I don’t usually climb them at this hour of the night—or, rather, morning!—in order to interview a fair lady, but on this occasion the lady does happen to be very fair, and she also ought to have retired long since. Susan!” He advanced towards her and took both her hands, holding them, however, quite lightly and gently. “Do you realize that in another twenty-four hours from now you will be right out in the heart of the desert, well away from even this kind of civilization? And I don’t suppose you consider we’re very civilized here, do you?
”

  “Of course I do,” she answered breathlessly, feeling her heart beating so quickly and wildly that it was difficult to speak at all, especially as he retained possession of her hands.

  His white teeth gleamed down at her again. “Well, the Oasis of the Sparkling Wells hasn’t any hot and cold running water, and you won’t have a bedroom to sleep in—only a tent to interpose a covering between that small head of yours and the stars.” He looked up at them consideringly as they paled against the blue, and then downwards at her soft, fair curls. “I wonder how you’ll like it, Susan? I wonder whether you’ll wish yourself back here, or in that little room in London where you used to live?” The expression in his eyes struck her as baffling and extraordinary, and there was a curious undercurrent of something like excitement in his voice. “You musn’t ever go back to that little room—I loathe the thought of it!—and I want you to like sleeping in a tent in the desert as much as I do, Susan! I want you to love the freedom of it!”

  His hands gripped hers so tightly that she winced, and he dropped them instantly.

  “Do you think you’ll like it, Susan?”

  “Yes,” she confessed, feeling suddenly as excited as that undercurrent in his voice—unless it was his voice that had actually inflamed her—“I know I will!”

  “Good girl!” There was approval in his voice this time—infinite approval. “And now, although you can’t have more than a couple of hours, you must go to bed! But we’ll be resting for the greater part of the day tomorrow. We can’t travel in the heat.” He captured one of her hands again, looked at it as if he wasn’t quite certain what to do with it, looked into her face as if there was a great deal of indecision in his mind about other things, too, and then vaulted to the balcony rail.

  When she opened her eyes, after feeling temporarily sick with concern, he was standing on the firm ground below the balcony, and she could hear the laugh in his voice as he called up to her.

  “I still haven’t broken my neck! Make the most of your couple of hours, Susan, and don’t worry about oversleeping. You’ll be called when it’s time to get up.”

  Three hours later she was in the saddle, and Raoul was riding beside her over the yielding, dust-colored ground.

  It still was not quite light, and the shapes of palms, and even horses and riders, looked unreal and shadowy against the backcloth of luminous sky. Susan could see Ayse and her doctor riding ahead of them, and behind them came a string of baggage horses in the charge of servants. Raoul’s own personal servant, Ibrahim, a dignified, elderly man, was responsible for both servants and the safe transport of all the necessary equipment.

  It was deliciously cool and fresh at that hour, and there was even a slight breeze stirring the feathery tops of the palms, Susan, in spite of her brief period of sleep, felt alert and awake to all the possibilities that might lie ahead, and once more excitement stirred in her deep down at the roots of her being. She felt that if only it remained cool like this, and with her growing confidence in the saddle, she could go on for hours, just trotting quietly at Raoul’s side, knowing that he looked sideways at her occasionally, and that so long as she remained near to him she was absolutely safe.,

  It was almost soothing to her just then, that feeling of security because she was close to him. She had a curious certainty that he was not likely to betray impatience because she was such an inexperienced rider, and this gave her a confidence that she might not otherwise have had at an hour of the morning when vitality is normally a little low.

  As the sky brightened and the sun appeared above the rim of the desert in a blood-red haze, her confidence grew, and her feeling of appreciation, because this was something completely novel that was happening to her, expanded also. And not even when the power of the sun began to make itself felt, and she was glad to remove her headscarf and don the sun helmet Ayse had provided her with, did she begin noticeably to flag, or wish she was anywhere other than where she was.

  By that time they had been joined by Jacqueline and Carlton, together with the former’s servant Khalil. They had all three been waiting on the edge of the palm grove, and Jacqueline obviously expected Susan to drop back into obscurity when she appeared on the scene, and that she would be the one who would ride throughout at Raoul’s side.

  But Raoul made it clear immediately that under no circumstances was Susan to drop back. Carlton smiled a little at the sight of the discomfited look on the widow’s face when she realized that one, at least, of her carefully-laid plans had already gone awry.

  The discomfiture lasted for a full hour after she had joined them, and although Carlton plainly did his best to make up to her for an initial feeling of frustration, she was not by any means in a sunny mood when they made their first halt for breakfast.

  By that time Susan was beginning to wonder how long she would be able to keep going, and she sank down gratefully in the shelter of a little group of palms while the horses were led away and Ibrahim began his preparations for breakfast. Ayse and Arnwood wandered off alone together somewhere, but Jacqueline dropped down beside Susan and looked slightly peevish as Raoul responded to her demand for a cigarette.

  “Your pupil is doing very well,” she remarked, as she exhaled smoke languidly, but although she was referring to Susan she did not look towards her. “But I suppose you feel that unless you keep a strict eye on her we might manage to leave her behind somewhere.”

  “Whatever happens we will not do that,” Raoul replied, but although his eyes rested on Jacqueline’s face with an amused look in them, there was such an unmistakable note of decisiveness in his voice that her expression lightened hardly at all. She surveyed him for a few moments with a kind of half-wondering look in her eyes—as if he had started to display tendencies she had never dreamed he possessed, and she was not at all sure she approved now that it seemed he did actually possess them—and then looked away and forced a brilliant smile to her lips for the benefit of Nick Carlton, who was lounging near her.

  The halt for breakfast did not occupy very much time, and then they rode for, another hour, by which time the sun was so hot that even the veterans were glad to make the second halt. This was to be a more permanent one, for they were not to move again until the following morning, and Susan watched fascinatedly as the baggage mules were relieved of their burdens and the tents went up, and she found that she and Ayse were to share one.

  It was, to her amazement, quite a roomy tent, and the bedding looked as if it would be really comfortable. Ayse, who had done this sort of thing so many times in her life that there was no longer very much novelty about it for her, smiled as she saw the astonishment in Susan’s eyes, and demanded:

  “Did you think we were going to sleep in a tent like those goat-hair ones the Bedouin sleep in?” There was a small village of them nearby, and Susan had noted with interest a woman in a bright red dress and a turban-like headcloth, with a tall earthenware jar on her shoulder, preparing to draw water from a well. The tiny colony was protected by some straggling palms, and as a backcloth to the tents, and the woman drawing water in the heat of the day, they formed a picture Susan knew she would remember all the rest of her life, and think about often when she got back to England.

  But, in the meantime, there were days and nights in the desert ahead of her, and that first night was even more memorable than the sight of the woman filling her pitcher at the well.

  After an excellent and beautifully served lunch, they all rested in their tents, and Susan found she was so tired that she drifted into deep and dreamless slumber until Ayse shook her awake in time to wash and change into something suitable for the evening. There was no question of changing into an evening dress, but a cool linen frock felt pleasant after jodhpurs, and by the time she had vigorously brushed her hair in front of the portable mirror on the tiny camp dressing-table and added a discreet amount of make-up to her face, Susan felt fit to come in contact once more with the others.

  Ayse had washed and changed ahead of her, and gone
out in search, no doubt, of her Nicholas, and Susan had to emerge alone form the tent. She was conscious of eyes looking towards her at once, and realized they were Jacqueline Dupont’s. The widow had changed into another pair of her excellently-cut riding-breeches, and was wearing one of the vivid-hued blouses she affected, and smoking a cigarette in a long ivory holder. She was sitting on a camp chair with Raoul beside her. From somewhere behind the tents came the scent of a cooking-fire, and in front of them the wide expanse of open desert, as well as the whole wide arc of the sky, was palpitating with color that was the result of a magnificent sunset.

  Susan felt the breath catch in her throat as she looked at it, and looking at it realized that there was nothing between her and those angry-looking ridges of shallow sand, beyond which lay more ridges, and an occasional dune here and there. No house—no habitation of any sort or kind—nothing to prevent her from walking straight out into that wilderness of color and becoming hopelessly lost and forgotten if she kept on walking long enough.

  The sudden awe in her face—the little feeling of horror which gripped her for a moment—was quite unconcealed as she stood and gazed into the setting sun, and Raoul stood up quickly and went to her. Taking her by the elbow, he smiled down at her with a faintly quizzical gleam in his eyes.

  “Yes, this is the end of civilization as you know it, for a few days, at least.” he told her. “But come and have a drink and you won’t find it nearly so awe-inspiring.”

  She looked a little shamefacedly up into his face, but his sudden, firm touch on her arm had given her back all the reassurance she needed. But for the fact that Madame Dupont was still watching her with a curious, tight, shuttered look on her face she would have known an extraordinary contentment just then.