by Susan Barrie
“I ... Oh, yes, thank you,” she answered. And then she added hastily: “It wasn’t a very serious indisposition.”
“Nevertheless, the tray of dinner that was taken to your room on my orders was brought away untouched. You couldn’t have been feeling in the least like yourself.”
“I—I had a headache,” she said lamely.
He nodded. His dark eyes were very penetrating.
“That was what Mademoiselle Descarté told me. She was quite anxious about you.”
“That was kind,” she observed, just as lamely.
He lighted himself a cigarette, and she thought that the expression on his face was a little cynical.
“Mademoiselle Descarté has a horror of sick people, and I wouldn’t say that kindness as you probably understand it is one of her leading characteristics,” he remarked. “But it is quite possible you have made an impression on her. Anyway, she didn’t want you disturbed last night.” Steve walked to the edge of the terrace and looked out across the garden, and he followed her.
“All this, color and beauty—this warmth—is entirely new to you, is it not so?” he asked, the curious quality of softness in his voice that could invade it at times. “You like it here? And you like my villa?”
“I think it’s wonderful here,” she assured him, “and your villa is a thing of beauty. If I owned it I don’t suppose I’d ever want to leave it.”
He smiled, that faintly crooked smile that was always a little cynical. “You’d find the heat trying after a time—especially in the height of summer, when everything is scorched up—and even beauty palls if you have to endure too much of it for too long.” This was a somewhat curious thing to say, she reflected, when he was anticipating an entire lifetime with someone as beautiful as Gabrielle Descarté—or, if she wasn’t his eventual choice, Rosalie Trent, or the enchanting Madelon Villennes.
She looked up at him thoughtfully, and their eyes met. Clear blue eyes and experienced, unfathomable dark ones.
“You have that look of freshness and untouchable youth this morning which I find so attractive,” he told her. “You were wise to have an early night last night.”
Instantly a sense of guilt practically overwhelmed her.
“It was undoubtedly the heat,” he went on, “and possibly the glare that was too much for you. Tangier is rather a lot to take in all in one day, especially if you are not used to such places. But by the time you have finished with this cruise you will be well accustomed to them.”
There was a certain satisfaction in his voice, as if the thought of the amount of experience she would have gained by the time the cruise was ended was a thought that gave him a certain amount of pleasure. He also continued to gaze at her in such a way that she wondered whether her swinging gold hair was a cause of offence, just as she: had wondered once before, and whether her simple gingham dress, worn with a wide belt that emphasized the excessive slimness of her waist, was a little too youthful for one who was employed to fulfil a responsible role. Although so far, apart from acting the part of a sort of lady’s maid on occasion and a frequent general carrier and executor of minor missions, she did not feel she had done much to earn the generous salary she was being paid.
“This morning you will see things that will cause you to open your eyes,” he observed rather suddenly; “but you must not keep them open too long, or remember the unpleasant things too vividly. Life in this part of the world is not easy for a lot of people, and that you will probably have impressed on you. But forget it, for there is nothing you can do about it ... and there is so much in life which you can do something about! Tell me,” he broke off to ask the question suddenly, “did your father enjoy having you with him when he was painting pictures in Italy, and Spain? Did you give him confidence, and help him to paint good pictures?”
“I ... I don’t know,” she answered, rather wonderingly. “At least, I think he liked having me with him.”
Then for the first time it struck her how odd it was that her father had painted pictures on the Continent, and Timothy Strangeways was dedicated to the same sort of life.
“But he never received very much for his pictures?” the Comte inquired.
“No,” she answered.
“A pity,” he said.
She shook her head, and the golden cloud of hair swung so that it fascinated him ... or appeared to fascinate him.
“But I had a good life.” She defended the life she had led on limited means. “And I still think England the most beautiful place in the world.”
“And I think France is the most beautiful place in the world,” he said firmly.
A laugh crept into her blue eyes.
“Perhaps one day I shall show you a part of England that even you, Monsieur le Comte, will agree is untouchable,” she said, “and you will show me a part of France...”
And then she broke off, coloring vividly. What was she saying to such a man...? Her employer! And she such a very ordinary employee! But, to her astonishment, and also to her relief, he said gravely:
“Perhaps! Who knows?”
And then Rosalie Trent made her first appearance of the day on the terrace, and the conversation ended. Soon the long cream chauffeur-driven cars were gliding away from the front of the house, and in a very short while they were in the gloom of the Medina, and Steve had to exercise her mind as to the best manner in which she could slip away.
Gabrielle gave her several meaning glances as they trailed like a flock of sheep in the wake of a shepherd after the Comte, who knew all the dark alleys of the Medina rather better than most white men who lived near the area, through the sunless atmosphere of the souks. It was true that the open shops filled with bright leather goods and trinkets, gaudy raiment and piles of fruit, made patches of color that were welcome in the prevailing gloom, but the narrow streets with their constant off-shoots and overhanging houses pressing towards one another were a strange and forbidding world to one who had never seen them before.
Steve had the conviction that should one miss the main party—or deliberately evade it, as she intended to do—and wander off on one’s own, the danger of becoming hopelessly lost was a very real danger indeed. And every time a blind beggar stalked past her, tapping with a stick—and it seemed to her that Tangier was full of blind beggars—or a fierce tribesman from the Riff brushed her out of his path, a cold horror grew upon her at the thought of becoming lost; and she wondered whether she could ever summon up the resolution to detach herself from the rest of the party. And when she did how she would ever find her way to Timothy.
In a shop draped with the most wonderful carpets, which Gabrielle admired loudly, she felt herself poked in the back by the latter, and when she looked round quickly Gabrielle was making secret signs to her.
“I’d love to buy a carpet, but I understand you have to do a lot of haggling over it,” the French girl cried to her host. “Do you think you could do the actual bargaining for me, Léon? I haven’t any Arabic, and you speak it so beautifully, and they wouldn’t be likely to cheat you as they would me.”
He smiled at her in the indulgent fashion he reserved for her.
“Of course. But there’s no question of cheating if you know the rules. It’s simply a matter of patience and perseverance, and that means time. But I’m afraid the rest will get slightly bored if I ask Abdulla here to take us into his inner room and show us his best and most cherished pieces.”
“Oh, but I’m sure they wouldn’t be in the slightest degree bored.” Gabrielle swiftly negatived that. “And if they don’t feel like hanging about Signor Valdoli, or Mr. Heritage, take them back to the cars? And I’d like Miss Blair to slip along to the post office for me and see if there’s any mail. I’m expecting rather an important letter...”
“All mail is taken up to the villa with the utmost promptitude if it’s for myself, or any one of my guests,” the Comte informed her, a faintly quizzical gleam in his eyes. “I see to that.”
She laughed, a hint of ve
xation in her laughter, and then pressed his arms and looked at him reproachfully.
“I’m trying to be tactful, but you won’t allow me to be anything of the kind,” she reproved him. “It’s too bad of you, Léon, for it’s Miss Blair who wishes to call at the post office, since she desires, I believe, to send a telegram ... rather a personal telegram! Isn’t that so, Miss Blair?” looking at her over her shoulder.
Steve instantly flushed and looked completely uncomfortable, and Raoul decided this was his opportunity to make hay while the sun shone ... or rather, while the sun didn't shine in the souks.
“I’ll take you,” he offered at once. “I’ll be delighted to act as your escort, Mademoiselle Blair. And since we’ve both probably had enough of this dingy warren...”
But his half-brother frowned on the idea immediately.
“No one is going to leave this party until we’re out of the Medina,” he said. “It’s the easiest thing in the world to get lost unless you know the place as well as I do, and if Miss Blair is anxious to send a telegram she can do so before we return home, or over the telephone when we get back to the villa.”
And Steve thought the look he directed at her was definitely displeased, and just a little surprised.
“If Miss Blair is really anxious about her telegram I can see her safely to the post office,” Neil Heritage offered quite unexpectedly. He had been standing looking on in a very bored fashion, and it was plain that the contents of the watchful Abdulla’s shop had neither interest nor novelty for him. As he explained, during his days on an ocean-going liner he had more than once escorted a party of passengers round the souks of Tangier, as well as Algiers, and other ports along the Atlantic seaboard and Mediterranean shores, and because he was obviously someone to be trusted, the Comte had to give the matter some sort of thought. Heritage smiled at Steve, his sailor-blue eyes a little whimsical. “Is it so important that you’d prefer not to wait until we get back to the villa, Miss Blair?”
With Gabrielle’s compelling look upon her Steve answered with a look of confusion:
“Yes, as a matter of fact, it is. And I’d prefer not to have to wait.”
The Comte’s face grew cold as he studied her. She had the feeling that his surprise had grown ... no doubt on account of her obstinacy, when he plainly didn’t want the party broken up.
“Very well,” he agreed at last, grudgingly. “It is inconvenient, and I don’t approve, but you must go if you wish. Heritage, I shall hold you responsible for Miss Blair’s safety. Remember that!”
Heritage smiled easily at him.
“I will remember,” he promised, and then turned to Steve. “If we get lost together I shall never dare to do anything but remain lost, for Léon will tear me apart. He is quite fierce when he is annoyed!”
CHAPTER SEVEN
OUTSIDE the dark little shop, smelling strangely of wool that at some time or other—in many instances long, long ago—had been dipped in the Tigris, and other less easily accountable odors, Steve drew a deep breath. This was something, but it was not enough. She had to explain to Neil Heritage that it was not the post office she wanted so urgently to visit, and that more than anything else she wanted to be rid of him ... as soon, that was, as they were both free of the Medina.
He took her hand and drew it through his arm' as they walked the narrow ways, and she was glad to cling to him at times because of the slippery steepness of the mean streets. And without the Comte’s commanding presence there was not quite the same feeling of security.
But Heritage had not forgotten his way about; and he talked to her cheerfully as he maintained a very firm grip of her arm. Up till now she had had very little opportunity to talk to him, but having escaped the main party he didn’t seem in the least anxious to rejoin them with as little delay as possible, and as they neared the entrance to the Kasbah he suggested an interlude for refreshments if she was willing.
“What about getting ourselves an iced lolly, or a glass of mint tea, or coffee, or something of the sort? We can send off your wire, and then if I remember rightly there’s a cafe on the Place de France—”
But she shook her head quickly.
“I’m sorry, but it isn’t that I want to send off a wire. There’s someone I want to meet ... have to meet!”
His expression as he looked down at her was difficult to read. There was not a great deal of surprise in it, and it was faintly quizzical.
“Have to meet?” he echoed her. “You mean you’re impelled by an overwhelming desire to get in touch with this person? In which case I imagine I can safely take it that it’s a man! Or is it a question of a different kind of compulsion?”
“I’m afraid I can’t explain.” She had changed the gingham dress for a sleeveless white dress that was caught in at the waist with a violet belt, and there was a violet ribbon holding back her soft fair hair. Her eyes were particularly deep and blue—almost violet—and he wondered why it had never struck him before that she was unusually attractive. “It’s important that I meet this—this person—and he does happen to be a man, but there’s nothing personal about it. I’ve just arranged to meet him, and ... that’s all I can say about it!”
There was a quiet finality about her voice, a decision about the line of her lips that sent his eyebrows up a trifle.
“But weren’t you running rather a risk arranging to meet someone in your employer’s time? Supposing he’d absolutely refused to allow you to leave the rest of the party?”
She looked confused, although there was nothing censorious about his tone, but the thought of Tim waiting for her with his reply to Gabrielle’s letter, and the morning passing rapidly, made her anxious to cut short the conversation and leave him. It wasn’t that she felt urgently that Gabrielle must receive her reply to her letter, but she had more or less given her word to Tim Strangeways that she would not fail him. If his story was true, he was hard up and he needed money ... and through Gabrielle he might be helped.
Although whether she would press for an invitation for him to the Comte’s villa was something that she would sort out!
“I’m sorry,” Steve said hurriedly, looking up at Heritage a trifle pleadingly. “I’d rather you let me go now, if you don’t mind, and I can find my own way. I can’t possibly get lost now that you’ve brought me so far.”
“Where have you arranged to meet this man?” She told him, and he took her by the arm again and led her across the square, filled with white-hot sunlight, into which they had emerged and insisted on stopping a taxi and putting her into it.
“I can’t allow myself to be shot of you so easily,” he told her through the window, “so you’ll have to agree to meet me again after you’ve kept your appointment. If you don’t I’ll never dare to come face to face again with my host! There’s an old Moorish garden near here where it’s cool beneath the trees. Anyone will direct you to it, and I’ll wait for you there.”
The taxi shot away, and she had barely time to nod before he was out of sight, and to her infinite relief she was not more than a quarter of an hour late when she alighted in the forecourt of the hotel she had visited the previous evening.
Tim Strangeways was on the lookout for her, and he opened the taxi door for her.
“I was afraid you weren’t coming,” he admitted, and she saw relief on his-face. She also saw a look of admiration for the slender whiteness of her figure, and the shining gold hair.
“You ought to wear a hat,” he told her, as he led her up the steps and into the hotel. “And haven’t you a pair of dark glasses?”
“I have,” she confessed, and produced them from her bag, “but I was in such a state of agitation this morning that I never thought of wearing them. It was difficult for me to get away.”
“Yes?” he said, and looked at her for an explanation. She gave it and he whistled slightly.
“Gabrielle isn’t the soul of tact, is she? She might have made things easier for you than that. But that’s like Gabrielle ... always a little spite
ful, and no doubt she hoped to get you into trouble at the same time that she was making use of you! However, you’re here, and that’s the important thing.” His eyes told her that he had spared her quite a few thoughts since their first meeting. “I’ll order your coffee for you. Or would you rather have a cool drink?”
“No, please!” She laid a gloved hand on his arm, and he could tell that she was still in the grip of a certain amount of agitation. “I’ll have to go at once, if you’ll give me that letter for Mademoiselle Descarté. I simply daren’t take a long time over rejoining the others, for I’m supposed to be visiting the post office, and that wouldn’t take me very long. Not even if I say the place was full, and I hate telling a lot of unnecessary lies. I hate deceiving anyone.”
“I’m sure you do,” he said soothingly, patting her hand, “but I hate the thought of being deprived of your company so quickly, and I’ve been looking forward to this moment all morning. But I do realize you’ve every reason to be in a hurry.” He looked at her wryly. “It isn’t as if I can be certain that I’ll see you again.”
She held out her hand for the letter.
“Please won’t you give me the letter, and let me go at once?”
He removed it from his breast pocket, and she tucked it into her handbag.
“Do you think we’ll ever meet again? How long do you think you’ll stay in Tangier?”
“I haven’t an idea, but I shouldn’t think it would be long.”
“And then you set sail again in that luxurious yacht lying out there in the harbor.” He cast a glance towards the collection of ships of all sizes bobbing on the sparkling water, with the hazy shape of Spain in the far distance rising behind them. “I wish I had a seaman’s certificate, and then I might get a job and go sailing with you. I do know something about radio, but I’ve no doubt your employer has all the vacancies filled?”