The Irishman laughed and drew a notebook from his pocket. ‘I’ll book ’em,’ he said, ‘though ’tis meself that’s the loser, and I’ll stay the night in this miserable dwelling av yers that ye have the impertinence to call an hotel—free of charge—to be evin with ye!’
Macgregor solemnly poured two tots of whiskey from the sample to seal the bargain; he pushed the water bottle towards O’Flaherty. ‘What sort of a trip did ye have this time?’ he inquired.
‘Foine—’twas down the Waddy Soura to Tamtert and Ksabi that I wint. Three months av it I had, and back yisterday to Sidi-bel-Abbes with three hundred and fifty good English pounds in me pocket—all out av those black heathin’ divils.’
‘What can I do for you, Mrs. Wayland?’ asked Macgregor, looking over the Irishman’s shoulder.
O’Flaherty turned to see a girl standing hesitant on the other side of the wire fly-door that led to the small lounge.
The door swung open noiselessly as she gave it a slight push. ‘I’m looking for my husband, Mr. Macgregor,’ she said. ‘Have you seen him?’
‘No, Mrs. Wayland, I have not,’ replied the hotel proprietor promptly. ‘Ye’ll verra likely find him in the bar, I’m thinking.’
‘He’s not there,’ she answered quickly, ‘I’ve looked. He went out at eleven this morning, and it’s nearly four now—I can’t think where he is; he said he’d be back for lunch.’
She could not have been much more than twenty, but there were already little tell-tale lines about the corners of her mouth, and under her large eyes there were violet shadows. She was obviously unhappy and ill at ease, but very pretty in her muslin frock and big hat as she stood framed in the doorway.
The Irishman had been studying her closely. ‘Faith, ‘tis in distress she is, the poor child,’ he was saying to himself. ‘Ruin, me bhoy, ‘tis up to you entoirely,’ and suiting the action to the thought he bowed to her.
‘Madam, if ye’ll be pardoning the impertinence, can I be av any assistance to ye now—’tis Ruin O’Flaherty that I’m called, afther my ould grandfather.’
She looked at him gravely for a moment. ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so, Mr. O’Flaherty, thank you all the same. I expect he will turn up.’ With a faint smile she went back into the lounge.
O’Flaherty shook his head. ‘Sure, ‘tis a sweet soul she is, and a brute is that husband av hers to leave her so lonesome the livelong day.’
He finished his drink, and with a nod to Macgregor went out into the street. He made a few more calls and disposed of a further fifteen cases of his whiskey before dinner, which he took in a modest semi-European restaurant.
When he had finished he strolled about the streets enjoying the cool of the evening after a day of scorching heat. Turbaned merchants and white-robed Bedouins, Spahis, and Turcos mingled in the crowd. They were no new sight to Ruin O’Flaherty; he had lived among them for many years, and spoke their languages fluently.
After a while he left the boulevards for the Arab quarter, where few Europeans were to be seen. It always amused him to watch these slow-moving, dignified people, who sat solemnly drinking in groups in front of the cafés or cross-legged in the roadway listening intently to a story-teller. For a little time he stood near one himself. The orator was telling of the days when the Arabs had been a great people, ruling by the favour of Allah from Constantinople to Khartoum, and from Eastern Persia to the North of Spain.
Then he seated himself at a marble-topped table outside an Arab restaurant and ordered coffee—the thick, black, highly sugared beverage that he had grown to love.
Mysterious veiled women flitted past him and burly negroes wearing the fez set jauntily on the back of their crisp curls. Lean pariah dogs prowled by, nosing amongst the heaps of refuse in the gutters, searching for offal. Somewhere not far away a woman was strumming on a guitar, and the sound of her mournful, plaintive song floated down from the roof of the flat-topped house where she sat. In the dark slit above the narrow alley which was the street the heavens were a pall of velvet blackness lit by innumerable stars.
The face of the girl came back to O’Flaherty. He wondered if she had found her truant husband yet. She called up old memories to his mind; perhaps the resemblance was only fancied—time had dulled the image of that other girl for whose sake he had left Ireland to make his fortune. He had loved her to distraction, but fortune had been long in coming. Three years later he had learnt that she was married to a wealthy horse-dealer in Dublin.
‘ ’Tis a fool ye are, Ruin, me bhoy,’ he admonished himself, ‘gettin’ all sintimental like a young gossoon.’ He paid his reckoning and made his way slowly back to the hotel.
On the verandah near the door he found her sitting—a pathetic little figure muffled in a cloak. It was growing chilly—the nights in Algeria are cold; he hesitated on the step and then turned to her.
‘I’m trustin’ ye’re husband’s come back. Mrs. Wayland?’ he said quietly.
‘Oh, it’s you, Mr. O’Flaherty,’ she spoke rather gladly. ‘No, I’m still waiting for him.’
‘Ah, ’tis a shame now,’ he exclaimed, sitting down beside her, ‘an’ phwat’ll he be doin’ all this toime away.’
‘I can’t think,’ she replied a little tearfully. ‘I’m afraid he must have met with an accident.’
‘Have ye inquired at the hospital?’ he asked.
‘Yes, Mr. Macgregor sent down for me, but Jim was not there.’
The crowd in the street had thinned—it was growing late, and one by one they were seeking their dwellings.
‘I’d be makin’ some inquiries for ye meself,’ he volunteered, ‘but shure at this hour the bazaars’ll all be empty, and the people I know sleeping in their beds—there’s little we can do but wait, I’m afeerd.’
Her fleeting smile of thanks was only vaguely discernible in the shadows, and for a little while they sat in silence. The musical cry of a muezzin from the minaret of a nearby mosque calling the true believers to prayer and meditation broke the stillness. It announced the hour of midnight.
A black Biskari boy clad in worn but once gorgeous garments approached them in the darkness; he was the hall porter of the hotel.
‘You come in now, yes? Me going close up hotel.’
They rose in silence and went inside.
‘Ye’ll be goin’ to bed now, Mrs. Wayland, and not worryin’ over that husband o’ yours?’ The big Irishman bent over the girl.
‘I’m afraid I couldn’t sleep,’ she replied. ‘I’d rather sit up for a little while.’
‘Faith now,’ he insisted, ‘it’s yer bright eyes ye’ll be after spoiling’ by losin’ yer sleep; ‘twill do ye a power o’ good to be restin‘.’
She shook her head as she sat down in the lounge. ‘Please dont worry about me—I’d rather wait up.’
He was so sorry for her that he did not like to leave her there alone, and sitting down beside her endeavoured to make the time pass more quickly by his chatter.
At first she said little as he talked of his nomad existence, but presently she began to talk about herself. She said that she had been on the stage; her parents were dead, she had little money, and no influence; she had soon discovered that she had little talent as well. No other opening offered, however, so she had had to stick to it. After a couple of dreary years in the provinces she had accepted an offer to come out to Cairo for a season because the pay was high. There she had met Jim Wayland. That had been a little over three months ago.
It did not take much imagination on O’Flaherty’s part to guess that she had jumped at the chance of leaving the theatre. He quite realised the sort of hell it must be for any girl decently brought up to live with the touring companies out from home. He wondered what Wayland was like.
They talked on, growing strangely intimate in the silent hours, despite their short acquaintance. The missing husband did not return, and the fumed oak clock ticked steadily on towards morning.
‘Don’t you ever want to go home?’ s
he asked him once.
‘Phwat would be the use av it at all?’ he shrugged. ‘Time was when I would have been glad enough to be in the ould country, but thin I was poor. Now that I’ve a decent bit put away and there’s no need for me to go trapesing round the world, I kape on from the habit. Sure, I’ve neither kith nor kin av me own to return to—and home’s a poor place without friends.’
‘Why don’t you marry?’ she suggested.
‘Ah, come, now,’ he laughed, ‘an’ who’d be marryin’ the loikes av meself?’
‘I should think a lot of nice girls would be pleased to,’ she answered seriously. ‘You’re so kind you’d make any woman a good husband.’
He noted the shade of bitterness in her voice, and wondered once more what Wayland could be like. He questioned her again as to her husband’s possible whereabouts.
It seemed that they had only been in Oran the last two days. Her husband had mentioned a man named Barry whom he had gone out to see that morning; she did not know his address. He had also spoken of a Frenchman called Ribereau, who kept a café in the Rue de Lourdes—she herself knew no one in Oran.
They sat on side by side as the hours dragged slowly by; once or twice she suggested that he should leave her, but she did not show any intention of going to bed herself, and he would not desert her. Not until the faint grey light of dawn came through the wire blinds did either of them realise how long they had been sitting there.
The Irishman rose and stretched his cramped limbs. ‘Faith,’ he ejaculated, ‘d’ye know ’tis close on foive av the clock, Mrs. Wayland?’
She stood up quickly. ‘Is it, really—and I’ve kept you up all night. I’m so sorry.’
‘Now, ’tis foolishness to say that, an’ ye know ut; sure, it’s been a rale pleasure to talk to ye this night, an’ it’s loike ould times to hear the sound av a decent woman’s voice.’
‘It’s very nice of you to say that,’ she smiled, ‘but now I insist on your going to bed.’
‘I’m doin’ no sich thing, Mrs. Wayland’; he laid a hand on her arm. ‘ ’Tis meself that’s the man av the party, an’ it’s yerself that’s goin’ to yer bed this minute, while I step out and look around for that husband av yours.’
She made no more than a show of protesting, and he led her to the foot of the staircase. ‘Be off with ye now,’ he said kindly, ‘and I’ll bring him back to ye, as sure as me name’s O’Flaherty, I will.’
He paused to nod farewell to her as she turned on the landing; then, unlocking the door, let himself out into the street. The sun had already leapt above the horizon, heralding another day of blazing heat.
As he walked the deserted ways shapeless bundles of rags in arched doorways rose shivering and stretched themselves into the semblance of humanity. Lean beggars with unsightly sores and shrivelled limbs, toothless old hags, the scum of Oran, sunk so low that they had not even the corner of a hovel which they might call their own. Beggars leading a precarious existence, living from day to day on the alms they gathered from the pious Mussulman who gave charity for the love of Allah.
O’Flaherty went straight to the café in the Rue de Lourdes; that was the only line of inquiry he had to go on. A slatternly negress and a tousled waiter were making a pretence of cleaning the place when he arrived; Monsieur Ribereau, he learned, was upstairs asleep in bed.
After judicious tipping the waiter agreed to go up and wake him. O’Flaherty sat down to wait. The Frenchman arrived; a fat man in a gaudy dressing-gown with round, surprised dark eyes.
Yes, he knew Monsieur Wayland. The previous evening he had taken an aperitif with Monsieur Barry; he had not seen either of them since.
O’Flaherty thanked him, and got the address of Barry’s office; it seemed that his house was some way outside the town. Then the Irishman took his departure.
He found Barry’s office easily enough, but it was not yet open, so he went to a nearby café and made an early breakfast, then he returned. Barry had not yet arrived, but a young Frenchman was in charge; it appeared that Barry was a shipping agent. O’Flaherty sat down to wait.
A little after nine a car drew up and a thin man with a sallow, parchment-like complexion got out; he was followed by a big, rather fresh-faced fellow with blue eyes and curly hair. The first proved to be Barry, and immediately O’Flaherty spoke to him the second man came forward.
‘I’m Wayland,’ he said, ‘what’s the trouble?’
‘No trouble at all,’ declared O’Flaherty angrily, ‘but what ye’ve made fer ye poor wife. It’s a disgrace ye are, leaving her all night the way ye have, and herself not knowing phwat had become of ye.’
‘Steady on,’ said the fair man, ‘didn’t she get my message?’
‘Sure she did not, an’ it’s worryin’ her heart out she’s been.’
‘I say,’ exclaimed Wayland. ‘Poor kid—I had a terrific lot of business to attend to last night with Barry, here; we had to see another man as well, so I arranged to stay over at his place for the night.’ He turned suddenly on his friend. ‘What the devil happened to that boy of yours, Barry? Why didn’t he deliver my note?’
Barry shrugged his slim shoulders. ‘Sorry, Wayland, he’s reliable enough as a rule, but you know what these people are if they get a fit all of a sudden to go on a bust or something.’
‘I’ll get back to the hotel at once,’ said Wayland, with a worried look; ‘she must have been scared out of her wits. I’ll talk to that boy of yours with the end of a stick when I see him.’ He looked at O’Flaherty. ‘Very good of you to come along—if you’re going back, we’ll go together.’
It was a perfectly reasonable explanation, and the Irishman, his temper slightly mollified, fell into step beside Wayland.
At the hotel the latter left him and went straight up to his wife’s room. O’Flaherty had a word with Macgregor, and sought his bed for a few hours’ belated sleep.
When he came down the hot afternoon sunshine was streaming through the hotel windows. Mr. and Mrs. Wayland were sitting together in the lounge—she rose immediately to greet him.
‘Oh, Mr. O’Flaherty,’ she smiled, ‘we’ve been hoping to see you again; if you’re not fixed up we’d be so pleased if you’d dine with us tonight.’
He smiled all over his good-natured face. ‘Now, that’s charming av ye, Mrs. Wayland. It had been my intention to take the boat over to Cartagena today, but sure it’s too late by the look av the clock.’
‘I’m afraid it’s through me that you’ve missed it,’ put in Wayland. ‘All the more reason you should let us stand you a dinner, at least. I’ll get Barry and Ribereau to come along, and we’ll make it a bit of a party—what about a drink?’
‘Well, and why not, to be sure; it’s meself that’ll be glad to hear the tinkle av ice in a horse’s neck.’ O’Flaherty drew a chair up to their table.
He reckoned Wayland to be about forty, a decent enough fellow in his way, but too fat for his age; his fresh-coloured face was not altogether healthy. O’Flaherty did not think him half good enough for the girl.
She did not seem quite at her ease, but that, he thought, might be because they had had a row about the night before.
It was agreed that they should dine at Ribereau’s place; he would let them have his private room. Barry was telephoned to, and accepted. They met at the café in the Rue de Lourdes at a little before eight.
O’Flaherty always enjoyed a junketing, and over dinner he let himself go. The eyes of the girl were on him, and half unconsciously, because of their gaze, he became gayer and more entertaining. He chaffed her about her solemnity, and she obviously did her best to play up to him, but for some reason she seemed unable to throw off the nervousness and constraint she had shown in the afternoon.
It was Barry who suggested a game of poker when the meal was over. O’Flaherty agreed readily enough; he was fond of the game and flattered himself that he was a pretty strong player—good enough to hold his own with most people if the luck of the cards was not against him
. Mrs. Wayland stood up. ‘Don’t let’s play tonight,’ she said, ‘I’m tired.’
Wayland’s blue eyes showed wide surprise. ‘Well—’ he said. ‘I’ve never known you refuse to play before—still, you stand out, if you like. It’s only a baby game we play, Mr. O’Flaherty,’ he added to his guest.
The Frenchman had already fetched the chips, and was counting them out in piles on the table. It was like a thousand other games of poker that have been played in every corner of the world before—the stakes were moderate enough when the game began, and the luck seemed fairly even. As the evening wore on the limits were increased. O’Flaherty held good hands, but the luck began to run strongly against him. Mrs. Wayland sat smoking, or stood behind one or other of the men, watching the play.
Just before midnight O’Flaherty won a handsome Jackpot on four kings. For some moments the girl had been sitting quietly on the sofa. Out of the corner of his eyes he caught an angry glance from Wayland in her direction. She stood up as the next hand was dealt and walked round the table, pausing behind the Irishman’s chair. His hand was a good one, but he went down heavily; he felt a little sick as realisation suddenly came to him, and laid down his cards.
The whole thing was a put-up job, and he’d tumbled into it like an unlicked cub. The girl was tipping off her husband and the others when to chuck in or when to raise him according to the cards he held—they were nothing but a bunch of crooks practising the oldest and simplest form of card-sharping in the universe.
He looked at the faces of the three men again, and the scales dropped from his eyes. The fat Frenchman was a crook, if ever there was one, in spite of his wide eyes. Barry’s lean, wrinkled face was as hard as nails, the glib Wayland’s weak blue eyes wavered and fell under his steady glance.
His thoughts leapt back to the day before—the girl was a decoy. She must have overheard him in the office telling old Macgregor that he’d made a pile on his trip. Then when he’d gone out she’d tipped off her husband to stay the night with his friend, and sat there on the doorstep waiting to make a fool of him.
Mediterranean Nights Page 18