City of Palms

by Pamela Kent

  The dimness, too, after the glare outside, was a little difficult to get used to, and Susan found herself stumbling against an unseen wall and being prevented from cracking her head by Carlton, who was just behind her.

  “Don’t knock yourself out!” he said, smiling at her through the gloom. And then he seemed to notice that she was looking paler than usual, and suggested sitting down for a few minutes on the divan bed in the corner. “We’re not leaving for another hour or more,” he told her, “and it’s cooler in here than outside. Let’s have a cigarette while the others see all they want to see.”

  But Susan would have preferred to follow the others, except that, possibly as a result of her disturbed night—and she seemed to have had a good many disturbed nights, as she suddenly realized, since leaving England—she was feeling rather weary, and she also was feeling the heat. So she allowed him to light her a cigarette—a thing he often did for Jacqueline before passing it over to her—and then sat down side by side with him on the frayed pile of cushions in the corner.

  The smell of decay that escaped from them caused her nose to wrinkle, and Carlton also looked a little disgusted.

  “Fancy actually living in a place like this,” he said. “Living and cooking and sleeping—for that’s what an Arab family would do in a hut of this size! I’ve seen them living in such cramped quarters that it was amazing there were any of them alive after one night in such a place. And yet they do survive, and multiply, and but for the fact that this village has acquired a bad name this particular hut would probably be housing a family.”

  “I think I’d rather live permanently in a tent than in here,” Susan remarked, looking about her with strange revulsion.

  Carlton smiled at her over the tip of his cigarette.

  “Have you enjoyed living in a tent?”

  “Yes.” She glanced at him quickly, and then away. “I’ve enjoyed it very much.”

  “Even though Jacqueline is a member of the party?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  He elevated one eyebrow, and looked at her quizzically.

  “Don’t you? Then you don’t know that Jacqueline is determined to get Raoul? He’s so much wealthier than her first husband, and, of course, so very much more presentable, that she’s made up her mind not to let him escape her—and she certainly won’t let a little thing like you stand in the way. Poor Susan!” he murmured, with an indolent, caressing note in his voice. “Can’t you see any other man but Raoul when he’s around?”

  Susan felt herself flushing painfully.

  “I really don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said—although, of course, she did—“and I don’t think we ought to sit here any longer. The others will miss us—”

  “Frightened of being compromised?” he enquired, mockingly.

  “Of course not!” she answered indignantly, and made to stand up, but he was drawn down again by both his lean, strong hands. He held her as if he was certain she would make another attempt to escape, but at the same time his voice remained light and amused.

  “Don’t you realize, Susan, that we hardly ever have anything to say to one another nowadays? After all, I was introduced to you in a completely respectable manner by your father, and you haven’t made it very easy for me to keep an eye on you, have you? I shall feel bound to report to your father, when I see him, that you seem to be losing your heart to your employer, and—”

  “Let me go!” Susan cried, suddenly furiously indignant, and this time she very nearly succeeded in breaking from his hold. But not quite, for he held her with a brutality that secretly amazed her, while he went on talking in that annoying, drawling voice of his.

  “Silly little Susan! One day you’ll realize there are better fish in the sea than a man of mixed blood! A man another woman has earmarked for herself!...”

  And then, while Susan tensed to tear away her hands, he seemed to become interested in something above her head, and as soon as he let her go, other hands caught her and secured her strongly something foul-smelling and coarse was flung over her head, not only excluding all the air but enclosing her in a bewildering nightmare of darkness, and she felt as if steel thongs were bound about her ankles.

  “All right, Khalil,” she heard a voice say faintly, before her senses left her. “You needn’t make too thorough a job of it!...

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  WHEN Susan came up out of the swirling clouds of darkness that had held her, it was to discover that there was no longer anything over her head, but there was a tight gag in her mouth that prevented her from uttering a sound.

  She was on something that moved, and all around her was the blood-red light of sunset. She looked up into a face that loomed immediately above her, and in the angry light she recognized it as a face she had seen bending over Jacqueline during the service of alfresco meals—a dark, unfriendly face, with a kufiyya hiding part of it, and a rope-like igal holding the headdress in place.

  She seemed to hear the echo of a voice saying: “All right, Khalil—you needn’t make too thorough a job of it!” and realized that this was Khalil who was supporting her in front of him on a horse, and that they appeared to be journeying right into the sunset, and as far as she could see there was no one else in sight.

  It was impossible for her to say anything because of the gag in her mouth, and her hands were tied, so that she could do nothing to attract his attention, or make him realize that she was no longer unconscious. She made a wriggling movement with her body, and that caused him to look down at her, but the look in his eyes caused her to quail, and when he ordered her in a harsh voice to “Lie still’ she lay still, but only because of the venom and the unpleasantness in those eyes.

  A little later she made another attempt to attract his attention, but this time he thrust her head down into the coarseness of the burnous in which she was enveloped, and the stifling folds must have caused her to lose consciousness again, for when she once more became aware of things about her there were stars above her head, a fire was crackling near to her, and she was lying on a blanket on ground that smelled cool and sweet.

  She was no longer gagged or tied, and the man Khalil—for she was now quite certain it was Khalil—ordered her to sit up, and handed her a wooden bowl brimming with something which she found out afterwards was buttermilk. And although it tasted slightly salty, it not only slaked her thirst but revived her sufficiently to enable her to find her voice and demand quaveringly where she was, and by whose orders she was being taken wherever it was she was being taken.

  “Where are the others?” she demanded. “Where—where—?”

  “Be silent,” said Khalil, who had only a few words of English. “Be silent, and you will not be hurt.”

  “But I demand to know where I am! I—” Her throat felt cracked and sore, as if she had swallowed large mouthfuls of grit, and, no doubt because of the recent treatment she had received, she felt weak and slightly light-headed. “Where are the others?” she insisted, a sob of sheer terror rising up in her throat because of the blackness, and the knowledge that she was alone with one man in what appeared to be a lost world of desert. There were not even any palms growing near them. There were no signs of any other animals apart from the one that had brought them, and that was cropping the scanty herbage not far away. No one!...

  She made several attempts to get Khalil to speak to her, to give her some sort of reassurance at least, but he remained obstinately silent, not even bothering—as she realized—to listen to her after a time. And presently he lay down beside the dying flames of his fire and, wrapped in a blanket, slept as if the circumstances were completely normal and his conscience was clear of anything that could possibly disturb it.

  Susan slept at last, because terror and bewilderment induced a kind of torpor that gradually stole over her, and her brain grew too numb even to ponder the riddle of her own plight.

  The next day they travelled on in the same manner as before, Susan sharing the sad
dle of a rangy grey that also had to carry large saddlebags, making it impossible for any real speed to be achieved. And yet Susan had the feeling that speed was Khalil’s secret wish. He grunted at her occasionally, but apart from that he hardly spoke, and when they had to halt for a meal, or shelter from the fierceness of the noonday sun, he went about the task of watering the long-suffering horse, or preparing a primitive repast, in the silence she found it impossible to penetrate.

  Ahead of them, towards evening, there were low hills, and when they drew nearer to these hills starker mountains appeared behind them—the mountains of the Iranian plateau had Susan but known. But she did realize that the aspect of the desert was changing, and as they began to climb it was less and less like desert. They arrived at a tent village tucked away softly between hilly slopes, where a stream was flowing between banks of tall poplar-like trees. A woman trailing a bright dress carelessly in the dust went down to kneel at the water’s edge and fill a pitcher, and when she saw Susan she stared as if she had never seen anything quite like her before. Susan had had no opportunity to wash either her face or her hands all day, and her skin felt burning with heat, as well as grimed with dust. As soon as she was more or less thrust out of the saddle, and on her feet once more, she went down eagerly to the edge of the stream to join the woman kneeling there, and somewhat to her surprise Khalil made no attempt to interfere with her ablutions—the most, welcome she had ever performed in her life.

  The woman had a kindly, even beautiful face, and her hair was plaited with charms, and she wore a turban-like head-dress that rested just above her eyebrows. She saw Susan struggling with an inadequate pocket-comb to restore order to her tangled locks, and withdrew into a tent and came back with a much larger comb, which she offered to Susan. The latter tried a few words of her recently acquired Arabic on her, and was bitterly disappointed when she found that they were not understood. The woman spoke a dialect that was quite unknown to her, and any faint hope she had suddenly entertained that someone who looked so kindly—also a member of her own sex—might in some way be able to come to her rescue, died as if it had never been.

  She saw Khalil talking with a group of men who had emerged from the tents. Presently it became clear that what he was bargaining for was another horse, and as this plainly meant that they had a long way to ride yet, her heart sank lower than ever. She had half hoped, when they arrived here, that there might be someone whom she could bribe, or who would perhaps be willing, to help her get back to civilization in the form of Zor Oasis, which must be known to tent-dwellers. But when Khalil wasted no time in putting her up on the horse for which she had seen him hand over money, and turned down offers of refreshment that were pressed on them because he was consumed with anxiety to proceed on their way, that hope died, too.

  She saw the woman looking after them as they rode away from the tents—not onwards into the mountains, but back again into the desert region they had left—and she felt that someone who might have been a friend was puzzled because she had made such an unexpected appearance in the obvious custody of a man like Khalil. But if the latter had shown an urgent desire to waste as little time as possible before the brief halt where they had obtained her mount, once they were heading back into the desert his urgency quite plainly possessed him.

  Even after the light faded he forced Susan to continue in the saddle, drooping with fatigue though she was, and as she had never ridden in the dark before she had little control over her mount, and she felt certain he was abusing her roundly in his own tongue every time he had to check his own pace in order to go to her assistance, because the spirited mountain mare looked like proving too much for her.

  But that night, when they finally did halt, although she was so physically weary that she refused all offers of food and simply crawled into her blanket when it was laid down for her, her mind was no longer bogged down by numbness, and the horror of her situation pressed upon her like the nightmare she wished it was. She was not afraid of Khalil, for she sensed he was merely carrying out instructions he had received, and although he was not particularly happy about carrying them out, he was the type to do so doggedly and sullenly—perhaps because his reward would be highly gratifying when it was all over. But Khalil was Jacqueline Dupont’s servant, and if it was Jacqueline Dupont who had given him his instructions, then it meant that the widow had actually arranged an abduction because a previous attempt to remove an unwanted English girl from her path had failed.

  Susan shivered at the thought of the determination that lay behind such a reckless decision to have her carried off—almost underneath the eyes of the rest of the picnic party in the Oasis of the Sparkling Wells! Carlton, of course, had lent himself to the plot—which seemed unbelievable when one realized he was a fellow-countryman—and his method of detaining her in the mud hut had all been part of the plan. While he talked to her someone else had approached and gagged and tied her up, and no doubt as soon as she was quiescent and unconscious she had been smuggled out the back way, and Khalil had then bundled her on to a horse and set off with her.

  There had been little danger of this extraordinary conduct being observed at that somnolent hour, because the others had all been lingering in the shade of the huts, and no doubt when it was discovered that she had vanished Jacqueline had skilfully put them on to a completely wrong scent. She had almost certainly seen to it that a great deal of time was wasted before she was looked for at all, and with Carlton to back up everything she said, the others must have been in a state of complete confusion.

  But even so—whatever Jacqueline’s final plans for Susan might be—Nicholas Arnwood would not permit her to disappear in a mysterious fashion and make no effort to find out what had happened to her. Raoul Mehmet Bey would never allow her to vanish and do nothing whatsoever to ensure she was brought back with as little delay as possible.

  Susan remembered that he had both expressed anxiety, and looked anxious, because she had wandered alone in the moonlight, and she had been rather amazed because of his anxiety. Had he had any doubts at all about Jacqueline, and, if he had, might not her rescue be nearer than she thought?

  For although Jacqueline might be clever, and apparently without any sort of scruples, Raoul had always appeared a match for her. She had never been able to do quite as she wished with him, and perhaps that was because he knew her very well, and knowing her well he was the better able to cope with her.

  Susan felt a moment’s hope, and then the hope was extinguished when she remembered the jug of lemon squash beside her bed in that luxurious bedroom at the Villa of Stars. If Jacqueline had been clever enough to get away with that—and it might so easily have worked out in the way she wanted!—then why should a simple thing like an abduction defeat her?

  This wasn’t England—this was the Iraqi desert, and anyone could become lost in a desert! Lost and never heard of again!...

  And then Susan, trying to fight against waves of demoralizing panic, forced herself to see Raoul’s dark, strong face again, and his hard mouth and strange eyes were not those of a man who would permit her to become lost for ever when he had passed his word to her father that she would be safe with him!

  For that reason alone he would move heaven and earth to find her! ... She didn’t know why she was so certain of that, but she was. And she hugged the conviction to her as if it was her one possibility of comfort as at last she fell into an exhausted doze beside the dead embers of the fire.

  The next morning the heat seemed greater than ever, but for the first time the sky was not brazen blue, and although the sun shone powerfully it was as if its rays were being diffused through a curtain of gauze. By noon angry yellowish clouds were sailing across that curiously lifeless blue, and even Susan knew by this time that clouds were unusual at that season of the year. She saw Khalil look up once or twice at the sky, and she sensed that he was not pleased with what he saw. He frowned and muttered, and when the air grew strangely thick and heavy, and distant dunes were blotted out as if the
y no longer existed, he brought the horses to a halt, and ordered Susan to dismount.

  She had been following him lifelessly ever since they left their camping place that morning, hardly caring whether she kept him in sight, but aware that he was almost consumed by impatience because her horse was threatening to go lame, and it looked as if they might even have to abandon it. But when he suddenly dragged her from her saddle and thrust her down behind him while he made the horses kneel in the sand, she knew that something more than impatience was troubling him now. She had never seen horses go down at a solitary word of command as those two did, and in addition they were whinnying as if with sudden fright, and their eyes rolled uneasily. When she looked towards the vanished dunes and saw a slow, rippling movement—like the rippling movement of an enormous, incoming wave, making straight towards them—she remembered something Jacqueline had said before ever they started out on this desert trip.

  She, Susan, had just remarked that she had never slept in a tent, and Jacqueline had observed almost evilly that a tent in the desert was pleasant unless a strong wind arose. In other words, a sandstorm!...

  “What is it?” she managed to ask Khalil, as she crouched beside him, and already her mouth felt full of flying grains of sand, and she did not need his grunted reply:

  “Big wind! Keep your mouth covered, and your head down!”

  She realized now why he had made the horses kneel. Their bulk was interposing a barrier between them and that shifting world of sand that was coming straight at them, and although her nostrils were revolted by the body-scent of Khalil, she pressed against him in desperation, because already it was difficult to breathe.

  The air was filled with a noise like the flapping of giant sails, and the sky had darkened, although the sun was still forcing a reddish pathway through the flying sand. But as the crest of the advancing wave broke slowly almost on top of them, even that faint reddish light was blotted out, and it seemed to Susan that absolute night blackness descended. She could hear the horses shrieking like human creatures, and Kahlil had his red-and-white checked kufiyya drawn down over his face, and his head was pressed against the side of the horse nearest to him. For how long they remained like that Susan never knew, but at last it seemed to her that there was a temporary lull, and gaspingly she lifted her head and saw that the whole face of the desert had altered, just as if it was a map that had been redrawn, or an earthquake had upset it. Hills that had not been there before were rising high in front of her, and round the side of one of those hills two blurred figures fought their way towards the spot where she and Khalil were crouching.