I confess it was weird. Elsie shrank by my side. ‘Suppose they were to attack us, Brownie?’
‘Thin the sheikh here would never get paid,’ Dr. Macloghlen put in with true Irish recklessness. ‘Faix, he’ll whistle for his money on the whistle I gave him.’ That touch of humour saved us. We laughed; and the people about saw we could laugh. They left off scowling, and pressed around trying to sell us pottery and native brooches. In the intervals of fanaticism, the Arab has an eye to business.
We passed up the chief street of the bazaar. The inhabitants told us in pantomime the chief of the town was away at Asioot, whither he had gone two days ago on business. If he were here, our interpreter gave us to understand, things might have been different; for the chief had determined that, whatever came, no infidel dog should settle in his oasis.
The women with their veiled faces attracted us strangely. They were wilder than on the river. They ran when one looked at them. Suddenly, as we passed one, we saw her give a little start. She was veiled like the rest, but her agitation was evident even through her thick covering.
‘She is afraid of Christians,’ Elsie cried, nestling towards me.
The woman passed close to us. She never looked in our direction, but in a very low voice she murmured, as she passed, ‘Then you are English!’
I had presence of mind enough to conceal my surprise at this unexpected utterance. ‘Don’t seem to notice her, Elsie,’ I said, looking away. ‘Yes, we are English.’
She stopped and pretended to examine some jewellery on a stall. ‘So am I,’ she went on, in the same suppressed low voice. ‘For Heaven’s sake, help me!’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I live here—married. I was with Gordon’s force at Khartoum. They carried me off. A mere girl then. Now I am thirty.’
‘And you have been here ever since?’
She turned away and walked off, but kept whispering behind her veil. We followed, unobtrusively. ‘Yes; I was sold to a man at Dongola. He passed me on again to the chief of this oasis. I don’t know where it is; but I have been here ever since. I hate this life. Is there any chance of a rescue?’
‘Anny chance of a rescue, is it?’ the Doctor broke in, a trifle too ostensibly. ‘If it costs us a whole British Army, me dear lady, we’ll fetch you away and save you.’
‘But now—to-day? You won’t go away and leave me? You are the first Europeans I have seen since Khartoum fell. They may sell me again. You will not desert me?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘We will not.’ Then I reflected a moment.
What on earth could we do? This was a painful dilemma. If we once lost sight of her, we might not see her again. Yet if we walked with her openly, and talked like friends, we would betray ourselves, and her, to those fanatical Senoosis.
I made my mind up promptly. I may not have much of a mind; but, such as it is, I flatter myself I can make it up at a moment’s notice.
‘Can you come to us outside the gate at sunset?’ I asked, as if speaking to Elsie.
The woman hesitated. ‘I think so.’
‘Then keep us in sight all day, and when evening comes, stroll out behind us.’
She turned over some embroidered slippers on a booth, and seemed to be inspecting them. ‘But my children?’ she murmured anxiously.
The Doctor interposed. ‘Is it childern she has?’ he asked. ‘Thin they’ll be the Mohammedan gintleman’s. We mustn’t interfere wid them. We can take away the lady—she’s English, and detained against her will: but we can’t deprive anny man of his own childern’.
I was firm, and categorical. ‘Yes, we can,’ I said, stoutly; ‘if he has forced a woman to bear them to him whether she would or not. That’s common justice. I have no respect for the Mohammedan gentleman’s rights. Let her bring them with her. How many are there?’
‘Two—a boy and girl; not very old; the eldest is seven.’ She spoke wistfully. A mother is a mother.
‘Then say no more now, but keep us always in sight, and we will keep you. Come to us at the gate about sundown. We will carry you off with us.’
She clasped her hands and moved off with the peculiar gliding air of the veiled Mohammedan woman. Our eyes followed her. We walked on through the bazaar, thinking of nothing else now. It was strange how this episode made us forget our selfish fears for our own safety. Even dear timid Elsie remembered only that an Englishwoman’s life and liberty were at stake. We kept her more or less in view all day. She glided in and out among the people in the alleys. When we went back to the camels at lunch-time, she followed us unobtrusively through the open gate, and sat watching us from a little way off, among a crowd of gazers; for all Wadi Bou was of course agog at this unwonted invasion.
We discussed the circumstance loudly, so that she might hear our plans. Dr. Macloghlen advised that we should tell our sheikh we meant to return part of the way to Geergeh that evening by moonlight. I quite agreed with him. It was the only way out. Besides, I didn’t like the looks of the people. They eyed us askance. This was getting exciting now. I felt a professional journalistic interest. Whether we escaped or got killed, what splendid business for the Daily Telephone!
The sheikh, of course, declared it was impossible to start that evening. The men wouldn’t move—the camels needed rest. But Dr. Macloghlen was inexorable. ‘Very well, thin, Mr. Sheikh,’ he answered, philosophically. ‘Ye’ll plaze yerself about whether ye come on wid us or whether ye shtop. That’s yer own business. But we set out at sundown; and whin ye return by yerself on foot to Geergeh, ye can ask for yer camels at the British Consulate.’
All through that anxious afternoon we sat in our tents, under the shade of the mud-wall, wondering whether we could carry out our plan or not. About an hour before sunset the veiled woman strolled out of the gate with her two children. She joined the crowd of sight-seers once more, for never through the day were we left alone for a second. The excitement grew intense. Elsie and I moved up carelessly towards the group, talking as if to one another. I looked hard at Elsie: then I said, as though I were speaking about one of the children, ‘Go straight along the road to Geergeh till you are past the big clump of palms at the edge of the oasis. Just beyond it comes a sharp ridge of rock. Wait behind the ridge where no one can see you. When we get there,’ I patted the little girl’s head, ‘don’t say a word, but jump on my camel. My two friends will each take one of the children. If you understand and consent, stroke your boy’s curls. We will accept that for a signal.’
She stroked the child’s head at once without the least hesitation. Even through her veil and behind her dress, I could somehow feel and see her trembling nerves, her beating heart. But she gave no overt token. She merely turned and muttered something carelessly in Arabic to a woman beside her.
We waited once more, in long-drawn suspense. Would she manage to escape them? Would they suspect her motives?
After ten minutes, when we had returned to our crouching-place under the shadow of the wall, the woman detached herself slowly from the group, and began strolling with almost overdone nonchalance along the road to Geergeh. We could see the little girl was frightened and seemed to expostulate with her mother: fortunately, the Arabs about were too much occupied in watching the suspicious strangers to notice this episode of their own people. Presently, our new friend disappeared; and, with beating hearts, we awaited the sunset.
Then came the usual scene of hubbub with the sheikh, the camels, the porters, and the drivers. It was eagerness against apathy. With difficulty we made them understand we meant to get under way at all hazards. I stormed in bad Arabic. The Doctor inveighed in very choice Irish. At last they yielded, and set out. One by one the camels rose, bent their slow knees, and began to stalk in their lordly way with outstretched necks along the road to the river. We moved through the palm groves, a crowd of boys following us and shouting for backsh
eesh. We began to be afraid they would accompany us too far and discover our fugitive; but fortunately they all turned back with one accord at a little whitewashed shrine near the edge of the oasis. We reached the clump of palms; we turned the corner of the ridge. Had we missed one another? No! There, crouching by the rocks, with her children by her side, sat our mysterious stranger.
The Doctor was equal to the emergency. ‘Make those bastes kneel!’ he cried authoritatively to the sheikh.
The sheikh was taken aback. This was a new exploit burst upon him. He flung his arms up, gesticulating wildly. The Doctor, unmoved, made the drivers understand by some strange pantomime what he wanted. They nodded, half terrified. In a second, the stranger was by my side, Elsie had taken the girl, the Doctor the boy, and the camels were passively beginning to rise again. That is the best of your camel. Once set him on his road, and he goes mechanically.
The sheikh broke out with several loud remarks in Arabic, which we did not understand, but whose hostile character could not easily escape us. He was beside himself with anger. Then I was suddenly aware of the splendid advantage of having an Irishman on our side. Dr. Macloghlen drew his revolver, like one well used to such episodes, and pointed it full at the angry Arab. ‘Look here, Mr. Sheikh,’ he said, calmly, yet with a fine touch of bravado; ‘do ye see this revolver? Well, unless ye make yer camels thravel sthraight to Geergeh widout wan other wurrud, ’tis yer own brains will be spattered, sor, on the sand of this desert! And if ye touch wan hair of our heads, ye’ll answer for it wid yer life to the British Government.’
I do not feel sure that the sheikh comprehended the exact nature of each word in this comprehensive threat, but I am certain he took in its general meaning, punctuated as it was with some flourishes of the revolver. He turned to the drivers and made a gesture of despair. It meant, apparently, that this infidel was too much for him. Then he called out a few sharp directions in Arabic. Next minute, our camels’ legs were stepping out briskly along the road to Geergeh with a promptitude which I’m sure must have astonished their owners. We rode on and on through the gloom in a fever of suspense. Had any of the Senoosis noticed our presence? Would they miss the chief’s wife before long, and follow us under arms? Would our own sheikh betray us? I am no coward, as women go, but I confess, if it had not been for our fiery Irishman, I should have felt my heart sink. We were grateful to him for the reckless and good-humoured courage of the untamed Celt. It kept us from giving way. ‘Ye’ll take notice, Mr. Sheikh,’ he said, as we threaded our way among the moon-lit rocks, ‘that I have twinty-wan cartridges in me case for me revolver; and that if there’s throuble to-night, ’tis twinty of them there’ll be for your frinds the Senoosis, and wan for yerself; but for fear of disappointing a gintleman, ’tis yer own special bullet I’ll disthribute first, if it comes to fighting.’
The sheikh’s English was a vanishing quantity, but to judge by the way he nodded and salaamed at this playful remark, I am convinced he understood the Doctor’s Irish quite as well as I did.
We spoke little by the way; we were all far too frightened, except the Doctor, who kept our hearts up by a running fire of wild Celtic humour. But I found time meanwhile to learn by a few questions from our veiled friend something of her captivity. She had seen her father massacred before her eyes at Khartoum, and had then been sold away to a merchant, who conveyed her by degrees and by various exchanges across the desert through lonely spots to the Senoosi oasis. There she had lived all those years with the chief to whom her last purchaser had trafficked her. She did not even know that her husband’s village was an integral part of the Khedive’s territory; far less that the English were now in practical occupation of Egypt. She had heard nothing and learnt nothing since that fateful day; she had waited in vain for the off-chance of a deliverer.
‘But did you never try to run away to the Nile?’ I cried, astonished.
‘Run away? How could I? I did not even know which way the river lay; and was it possible for me to cross the desert on foot, or find the chance of a camel? The Senoosis would have killed me. Even with you to help me, see what dangers surround me; alone, I should have perished, like Hagar in the wilderness, with no angel to save me.’
‘An’ ye’ve got the angel now,’ Dr. Macloghlen exclaimed, glancing at me. ‘Steady, there, Mr. Sheikh. What’s this that’s coming?’
It was another caravan, going the opposite way, on its road to the oasis! A voice halloaed from it.
Our new friend clung tight to me. ‘My husband!’ she whispered, gasping.
They were still far off on the desert, and the moon shone bright. A few hurried words to the Doctor, and with a wild resolve we faced the emergency. He made the camels halt, and all of us, springing off, crouched down behind their shadows in such a way that the coming caravan must pass on the far side of us. At the same moment the Doctor turned resolutely to the sheikh. ‘Look here, Mr. Arab,’ he said in a quiet voice, with one more appeal to the simple Volapuk of the pointed revolver; ‘I cover ye wid this. Let these frinds of yours go by. If there’s anny unnecessary talking betwixt ye, or anny throuble of anny kind, remimber, the first bullet goes sthraight as an arrow t’rough that haythen head of yours!’
The sheikh salaamed more submissively than ever.
The caravan drew abreast of us. We could hear them cry aloud on either side the customary salutes: ‘In Allah’s name, peace!’ answered by ‘Allah is great; there is no god but Allah.’
Would anything more happen? Would our sheikh play us false? It was a moment of breathlessness. We crouched and cowered in the shade, holding our hearts with fear, while the Arab drivers pretended to be unsaddling the camels. A minute or two of anxious suspense; then, peering over our beasts’ backs, we saw their long line filing off towards the oasis. We watched their turbaned heads, silhouetted against the sky, disappear slowly. One by one they faded away. The danger was past. With beating hearts we rose up again.
The Doctor sprang into his place and seated himself on his camel. ‘Now ride on, Mr. Sheikh,’ he said, ‘wid all yer men, as if grim death was afther ye. Camels or no camels, ye’ve got to march all night, for ye’ll never draw rein till we’re safe back at Geergeh!’
And sure enough we never halted, under the persuasive influence of that loaded revolver, till we dismounted once more in the early dawn upon the Nile bank, under British protection.
Then Elsie and I and our rescued country-woman broke down together in an orgy of relief. We hugged one another and cried like so many children.
8. THE ADVENTURE OF THE PEA-GREEN PATRICIAN
Away to India! A life on the ocean wave once more; and—may it prove less wavy!
In plain prose, my arrangement with ‘my proprietor,’ Mr. Elworthy (thus we speak in the newspaper trade), included a trip to Bombay for myself and Elsie. So, as soon as we had drained Upper Egypt journalistically dry, we returned to Cairo on our road to Suez. I am glad to say, my letters to the Daily Telephone gave satisfaction. My employer wrote, ‘You are a born journalist.’ I confess this surprised me; for I have always considered myself a truthful person. Still, as he evidently meant it for praise, I took the doubtful compliment in good part, and offered no remonstrance.
I have a mercurial temperament. My spirits rise and fall as if they were Consols. Monotonous Egypt depressed me, as it depressed the Israelites; but the passage of the Red Sea set me sounding my timbrel. I love fresh air; I love the sea, if the sea will but behave itself; and I positively revelled in the change from Egypt.
Unfortunately, we had taken our passages by a P. and O. steamer from Suez to Bombay many weeks beforehand, so as to secure good berths; and still more unfortunately, in a letter to Lady Georgina, I had chanced to mention the name of our ship and the date of the voyage. I kept up a spasmodic correspondence with Lady Georgina nowadays—tuppence-ha’penny a fortnight; the dear, cantankerous, racy old lady had been the foundation o
f my fortunes, and I was genuinely grateful to her; or, rather, I ought to say, she had been their second foundress, for I will do myself the justice to admit that the first was my own initiative and enterprise. I flatter myself I have the knack of taking the tide on the turn, and I am justly proud of it. But, being a grateful animal, I wrote once a fortnight to report progress to Lady Georgina. Besides—let me whisper—strictly between ourselves—‘twas an indirect way of hearing about Harold.
This time, however, as events turned out, I recognised that I had made a grave mistake in confiding my movements to my shrewd old lady. She did not betray me on purpose, of course; but I gathered later that casually in conversation she must have mentioned the fact and date of my sailing before somebody who ought to have had no concern in it; and the somebody, I found, had governed himself accordingly. All this, however, I only discovered afterwards. So, without anticipating, I will narrate the facts exactly as they occurred to me.
When we mounted the gangway of the Jumna at Suez, and began the process of frizzling down the Red Sea, I noted on deck almost at once an odd-looking young man of twenty-two or thereabouts, with a curious faint pea-green complexion. He was the wishy-washiest young man I ever beheld in my life; an achromatic study: in spite of the delicate pea-greeniness of his skin, all the colouring matter of the body seemed somehow to have faded out of him. Perhaps he had been bleached. As he leant over the taffrail, gazing down with open mouth and vacant stare at the water, I took a good long look at him. He interested me much—because he was so exceptionally uninteresting; a pallid, anæmic, indefinite hobbledehoy, with a high, narrow forehead, and sketchy features. He had watery, restless eyes of an insipid light blue; thin, yellow hair, almost white in its paleness; and twitching hands that played nervously all the time with a shadowy moustache. This shadowy moustache seemed to absorb as a rule the best part of his attention; it was so sparse and so blanched that he felt it continually—to assure himself, no doubt, of the reality of its existence. I need hardly add that he wore an eye-glass.
The Lady Sleuths MEGAPACK ™: 20 Modern and Classic Tales of Female Detectives Page 147