Book the Third: THE FINDING (continued 2)

"You call her Queen? ..." The lustrous dark eyes of the white-haired lady studied the fine face, and dwelt on the superb lines of the gracious womanly figure for an instant before she said: "And you are right! C'est une physionomie très noble! I have seen Queens and Empresses in Europe—and here in Asia, who would have looked like peasants beside her! ... As for the arrangement of the date—that is not for me to make—or for my nephew. It is she who gives orders—in this house!"

"But I thought that like myself, Miss Forbis was a stranger! I understood from her," said Trixie munching her third cream-cake, "that though Mr. Hazel is a great friend and pal of hers in England, she has never visited this house before."

The reply was given with Eastern dignity:

"When I, who am fifty-eight, was a child, her father came to Alexandria. My grandfather, who was then living—entertained him as a King.... His daughter has never entered the house before,—and the house is the house of Hazaël. But the stones of it would call to her 'Mistress!' if the lips of Hazaël were dumb...."

The sudden fire that had lightened in the soft dark Eastern eyes died out of them, and the olive face resumed its sad tranquillity. But not before Lady Wastwood had realised a piquant, baffling strangeness, in the relations between Kathy Forbis and these Alexandrian Jews....

"One has one's own secrets wild horses wouldn't drag from one," was her quaint mental comment, "and so, of course, have others. But mysteries and Kathy Forbis don't seem to go together. Why—"

Trixie broke off, for at that particular juncture the huge left hand of the little Syrian lady's big black nephew was coolly drawn from its supporting sling, and stretched towards a dish of fruit upon a tray that stood near. And there came to the Commandant's ears the full, warm voice of Katharine:

"No, thanks! I learned to distrust green figs the first week I spent in Egypt. And—I think you were told yesterday at the Hospital not to use that wounded arm! ..."

"You see, I forget," said the big man, very humbly and apologetically. "It's only a flesh-cut, and doesn't hurt, as I told the Assassin-in-charge. And I'm left-handed—like the Hun who slashed me with his sword as he tried to pot me with his revolver. Has it been dressed since yesterday? ... Oh, yes, I had to report at the General Hospital this morning, and they looked to it all right. And I kiboshed the C.M.O. about my living at home. They're fearfully crowded for space at the General—and don't want well men blocking the wards—luckily for me...."

He laughed, and as he stuffed his bandaged arm back into the sling, the gleam of a ring on the third finger of his left hand,—a great antique ring in a pale greenish gold setting, attracted Trixie's eye. The eye gleamed,—for a similar signet was always worn by Katharine. Could it be,—Oh, really!—it couldn't—Couldn't be possible!—that Edward Yaill's successor would be this colossal Jew....

"Of course, being a woman myself," Trixie reflected, "I ought to be used to women having—even before the War came to effect a fusion between the classes—such astonishing, Extraordinary, INCOMPREHENSIBLE tastes in men! And naturally, after being engaged to Yaill all those years—an officer of the old Conservative type,—thoroughbred to the backbone, conversant with Society, high-tempered, rather irritable, affectionate, gentle, tinged with Celtic melancholy; this man—what is he?—must be a complete change. Dressed as a Territorial Tommy, living as an Alexandrian Jew merchant, talking in the shibboleth and with the accent of the modern City Nut,—the young man of the Theatrical Syndicate and the West End Supper Club—dashed with something out of the Book of Kings! Dear me! I'd like to shriek with laughter—if I didn't feel nearer shedding tears of vexation at the idea of my splendid Kathy caring for the kind of person who says to a woman 'Where'll you perch?' when he wants her to sit down."

Preoccupied with the absorbing theme, Trixie returned but absent replies to Mrs. Hazaël's mild observations; and conversation languished between the pair. Until the Commandant's languid attention was prodded to wakeful keenness by a chance observation on the part of her host's aunt....

"I do not know, Miladi...." This in reply to some reference to the wearer of the ring similar to Katharine's. "My nephew John Hazaël was educated in England. He has been in business in the City of London—he never was in Egypt until he came here with the English soldiers, to fight the Turk who has driven us from our homes in Palestine!" The sad dark eyes lightened fiercely, the drooping figure straightened, the toneless voice vibrated with passion as Mrs. Hazaël went on: "Before then I had not seen my brother's son. Indeed, knowing him to be Epikouros,—I had thought of him but little! Imagine what for me it meant to find John Ben Hazaël the image of his grandfather! ... For they are alike, Miladi—as citron resembles citron,—though the years of one were a hundred, and the other is but thirty-five. True, he has not learnt to observe our ancient customs, nor has he been reared according to the Law. He is blind to the beauty and splendour of the glorious Hebrew religion. But even as a myrtle in the midst of the Desert remains a myrtle,—John Hazaël, the eldest son of John, the son of Eli Ben Hazaël,—will live the life and die the death of a good, believing Jew!"

"To know that," Trixie returned, conscious of feeling her way amidst unseen pitfalls, "must be a great pleasure to you, Madame...."

"I do not look for pleasure," came the sad-toned answer. "And comfort there is none for me, whom the Turk has stripped of all. When this terrible War broke out in Palestine, Miladi, I had a husband,—and two sons,—and a daughter!"—A convulsion rippled under the olive skin of the withered face as the waters of a lonely forest-pool will stir on a windless day.... "My son Jacob they took first,—to labour with the road-gangs between Sailed and Tiberias.... My daughter—my Esther, my darling and my treasure—the golden joy of her father's heart—"

"Pray, pray, do not tell me!" Lady Wastwood whispered entreatingly, for the speaker's dark eyes were bloodshot and her mouth had twisted in the involuntary grimace of weeping with difficulty restrained, "I can guess something terrible.... Please believe that I deeply feel for you!—I who have lost husband and children too! ..."

"'Husband and children! ...' Achi nebbich! ..."

The little grey woman bowed her lace-draped head, and folded her jewelled hands in her grey silk lap as she continued:

"But such deaths were those of my loved ones, Miladi, that nothing that you could imagine could approach the terror of the truth! Yet it might have been worse—oh, infinitely!—had not Jacob possessed the courage of a lion. He shot his sister, Miladi, in the room of her destroyer,—and turned the pistol on himself and died also! ..." There was a clang of pride in the dull tear-soaked voice. "Then Reuben Ben Ephraim—who was with Jacob in the den of the hyena—Hamid Bey Effendi—Commander of the Turkish soldiers at Nazareth"—there followed some rapid guttural words in a tongue unknown to Trixie, probably a bitter Hebrew curse upon the hated name.... "then Reuben, seeing both dead, escaped by the Mercy, and sent word to us, me and my husband—in our house near Jaffa—of what had befallen the children of our love! ... And hearing that the vengeance of Hamid was to be wreaked upon us, my husband Isaac, the uncle of John Hazaël! ... may Peace be upon him! as it is our custom to say—Isaac escaped to Beirut with our last child, Benjamin. Miladi—the fierce wolves seized them. They both died in prison at Beirut—under the Turkish rods! ... The young child first, Miladi—under the eyes of his father.... Then the father!—Peace be upon them both! ... And the shock of the news killed Eli Ben Hazaël, for he was close upon a hundred.... Thus am I widow, and childless, and fatherless in this house that has sheltered my people for more than sixteen centuries. Ah, Miladi!—I have made you weep! ... I have no tears—they were all shed long ago!" She rose, a little tragic figure in her old-fashioned silk gown, and held out to Trixie a withered, jewelled hand. "My nephew is looking at me.... He wishes me to show you the garden, while he speaks of business with Mademoiselle Forbis...." A slight cry escaped her as her eyes went to the window, and a faint gleam of pleasure lightened in their hopelessness as she lifted the wasted, glittering hand: "See! O see! Look, Miladi! ... Look, my children! ... Once again, the swallows have come! ..."

There had been no swallows a moment previously. Summer in the North, warmer that year of 1917 than in the three preceding, had delayed their autumn journey overseas. Now the deep blue sky above the tamarisk and acacia Nilotica,—the vine-draped sycamore figs, the tall imperial palm-trees, the orange and lemon groves, and the myrtle and rose-thickets behind the house in the Rue el Farad, were crossed and recrossed by innumerable downy black-and-white bodies, borne upon darting, quivering pinions, and the continuous twitterings of the fig-birds were drowned by their shrill squeaks....

From the eaves of the round-tiled roof of the loggia, where some old nests were yet remaining, a rope of swallows swayed and dangled; clinging one to the tail of another—the weight of the whole rope sustained by the first usurper of the disputed nest.... A moment more and the feathered rope resolved into its original atoms. They rose in a cloud,—squealing, wheeling, hovering and poising, and launched themselves in joyous chase of the flies and mosquitoes, whose deadliest enemies they are....

And then one of the darting things—possibly a new-fledged stranger—keen on the capture of some gauze-winged morsel, flew in at the window, and hawked about the room....

The blue sky frescoed on the ceiling by the ancient artist, framed in its trellis of dimmed and faded roses, must have deceived the eager bird. Its upward flight ended in the tiniest thud possible.... Vitality quitted its infinitesimal being.... It dropped, a mere puff of black and white feathers, at Katharine Forbis's feet....

"Again.... Each year, the same thing happens! A bird is killed—just in this way. It is sad, but there's no help for it...." sighed Mrs. Hazaël. "Throw it away, dear Mademoiselle, it is only a dead bird! ..."

But Mademoiselle, who had picked up the tiny body to cherish and croon over, did not follow her hostess's advice. To sense the divine quality of maternity inherent in Katharine's beauty, you had to see her petting an invalid, or a child. Or as now, with some helpless, injured creature,—looking at it under drooped eyelids of soft solicitude, cherishing it with compassionate touches of deft, womanly hands....

Those kind hands had touched John Hazel, yesterday, in helping the Hospital surgeon and Sister with the dressing of his wounded arm.... It was not until their contact had sent shocks of keen, scarce bearable delight thrilling through nerve and tissue, that John Hazel had discovered—what you have guessed ere now....

All the night through he had lain awake, living those moments over, and over!—cursing himself for a fool thrice soaked in folly, a bally idiot, and a presumptuous cad.... But daylight had found him no whit more wise, nor one iota less besotted; even more gnawed with desperate hunger to feel her cool breath fanning his bared shoulder, and know the rapture of her touch again....

Now the soft, compassionate eyes, the tender touch and the sweet solicitude were given to a bird, while the man hungered. John Hazel, one is compelled to own—was keenly jealous of the stunned swallow—as the thorn-like beak opened and shut, and the sealed eyelids quivered apart—and Katharine's cry of womanly joy greeted these signs of life....

"It isn't dead, dear Madame!" she cried gaily to the Syrian lady, as she dipped a finger-tip in a flower-vase that stood near, dropped some water in the open beak, and wetted the velvety head.... The swallow quivered in her palm, gasped convulsively and swallowed the water; swallowed another drop given in the same way, and regaining strength, struggled to free itself from the protecting hand....

"Kiss it, Trixie, and give it a message for its little brothers! ... Now you shall go, my dear," said Katharine, when, Lady Wastwood having dutifully kissed the top of the bird's head, she touched the featherless, velvet crown with her own lips. Then, still cherishing the struggling bird in her cupped palms, she passed through the door at the head of the divan, stepped out upon the loggia, and with a sweep of her long arm, sent the captive, squeaking with rapture, to rejoin its long-winged comrades in the playgrounds of the air.

"How's that, Umpire?" she called to John Hazel, following with attentive eyes the rocket-like upward rush. "It rather sets one thinking"—she broke off in the middle of the sentence as John stooped beneath the lintel of the doorway, and joined her on the loggia.

"Thinking of what?" he asked, for her face was grave and troubled.

"Of prisoners and captives," Katharine answered, "and what they must feel when their fetters are broken and their dungeons lie behind them, and the free sky is over them and the free earth underfoot.... Talking of earth, I rather think you promised to show me your garden, or if you didn't I should like you to.... Your aunt has spirited Lady Wastwood away—" She nodded at Trixie's tall, thin retreating shape, upright and workmanlike in its badged, light-weight smasher hat and short-skirted khaki cotton-drill uniform; as side by side with Mrs. Hazaël's black lace mantilla and old-fashioned trailing grey silk gown, it turned the corner of a myrtle-hedge, and was lost in the shrubbery. "And I rather want to consult you.... There's a seat under that moss-cup oak—it is a moss-cup, isn't it?—it's getting beautifully cool, and the tree looks nice and shady. And you could smoke—or I could—and talk comfortably there...."

He got her green-lined sun-umbrella and insisted on holding it over her, as they crossed the verdant, well-watered lawn to the patriarchal moss-cup oak of Miss Forbis's desire. A curve-backed, scroll-ended seat of red granite stood under its wide-spreading branches. Near the seat was a great bed of balsam and heliotrope.

"Oh, sweet, sweet!" He had gathered a huge handful of the fragrant-flowered, nettle-leaved plant and laid it on Katharine's knee as she seated herself, and her sentences were broken with rapturous sniffs. "How I—do—love—the smell of heliotrope! ... I thought it heavenly in England,—but it was nothing to this! ... And the view of the house from where I sit! ... Who would have dreamed that behind the hideous whitewashed wall of your courtyard, so much of the wonderful lost city of Alexander the Great, and of the Ptolemies, in whose Museum Euclid and Aristophanes, and Hypatia were Professors,—lay snugly tucked away!" She went on wistfully:

"Tell me why I feel as though my heartstrings were tangled up in the foundations of this dear, dear house of yours, and there were memories and voices in the stones of the walls! ... Why don't you smoke? ..."

"I will if I may.... It'll keep off the mosquitoes. May I offer you one?" He produced a case.

"No, thanks! I'll smoke mine. Yours look good, but too large and solid for feminine creatures to appreciate. Though when I worked at the Front in France, I've been glad to fall back on Army Gaspers. Or ten sou packets of the rank Régie beloved by the Poilu."

"You used to smoke before the War?" He asked it as he gave her a light, and she answered, as the Turkish tobacco kindled, breathing out a delicate puff of the fragrant bluish vapour:

"After a luncheon or dinner-party, one smoked—just to keep other people in countenance. But afterwards—in France—and here, to quiet one's jangled nerves!"

"You don't look like a woman with jangled nerves," he said, considering her steadily.

"Perhaps not, but still they play up sometimes.... Look at the swallows—they've already begun to build! In the corner of the window of that big upper room with three large windows latticed up, and groups of columns between them—and a dome, rising behind the pediment—it is a pediment, isn't it? that long triangular stone? ..."

The deep voice said to her:

"No one ever uses that room where you see the swallows building. It is kept locked all through the year except on one day...." The great brown hand pointed to the three windows below the pediment, the deep voice so like and so unlike John Hazel's went on: "There is an altar in that room with a Christian shrine beneath it.... We strip the gardens bare each year to make the chapel beautiful,—we who have been Guardians of the Shrine for more than sixteen hundred years...."

"But—but this is a Jewish house! ..."

"That is quite true." The brown hand waved. "The house belongs to Jews indeed, but it was not theirs always.... Nor do we break the Jewish Law in honouring the dead. Should you, who are of his race and faith, desire to visit the chapel ... here is the key.... Whenever you will, I am ready to take you there."

IX

He rose, and took from his pocket, and held out to Miss Forbis, a flat metal spatula of Eastern make, attached to a silver chain. She looked from the clumsy object in the big brown hand to the grave face above it, whose dense black eyes had a reddish glow; and saw that his temples and blue-shaven upper-lip and jaws glistened with points of moisture, though the sun had but the tempered heat of these first days of November, and a sea-breeze coming out of the West whispered among the leaves.

"How am I of his race?" she asked, after a moment's hesitation. "Please be good enough to keep the key.... One of these days I may muster curiosity to visit the shrine in the chapel. Just now, to tell the truth, I want more to talk to you. I've put it off, as one does dodge sorrowful things, but now I've got to tell you...." Her voice wavered and her lips were tremulous. "It has to do with the letter you brought me from Palestine...."

"I am quite as anxious to hear as you are to tell me. But first, Miss Forbis, you must visit the shrine in the chapel. You ought to have gone there before, but you wished to see the garden, and your wish is a command here,—I could only obey! But now—"

He offered her the clumsy key, coolly and imperturbably. There was incredulity in her tone, as she inquired:

"You don't mean that I must go, whether I wish it or do not?"

"I am sorry to coerce you," he said with stern distinctness. "You must understand that. But, before we hear the Sunset Call to Prayer from the Mosque of Sidi Amr, it is necessary that you should visit the shrine. Understand me—it is incumbent upon you as the representative of your family. You have to!"

"'Have to! ...'"

She rose to her feet, and her angry eyes swept over him contemptuously. To be ordered about by this man was intolerable—absurd.... They faced each other, and the old gulf opened and yawned between them—as it had in the drawing-room at Kerr's Arbour, eight months before.

"'Have to!' ... You rather forget yourself, don't you, Mr. Hazel? ..."

"I do what is my duty in enforcing respect to him!"

He drew himself to his towering height, folded his great arms, and looked at her calmly.

He spoke again, and the profound tones vibrated through her, like the sound of a Buddhist temple-bell....

"Through the centuries since he died for the Faith of the Nazarene, Christian priests have blessed his ashes on one day in every year. Not even when Alexandria lay in cinders and ruin, was there lacking a son of the Hazaël to guard his relics here. But since Marcus Fabius the Tribune came here on his way to Britain with the Tenth Legion of Constantine,—and the son of Marcus, Florens Fabius—journeyed from Rome twenty years later,—and the Crusaders Fulk and Hew came eleven hundred and sixty years after, and Bishop Ralph in 1809, and Philip in 1881, to kneel before his shrine; no heart filled with his blood has beaten in the lonely chamber, no lips warm with his life have touched the chilly stone."

The clang of the great voice ceased to oppress her sense of hearing. She bent her noble head in splendid humility, a great lady, rebuked by the descendant of an Hebrew steward, and said:

"You have reproached me very justly. My only excuse is—that I did not understand!"

He went with her across the lawn, and ushered her through the loggia door into a passage, and up a wide staircase leading by one short flight of steps to the single floor above. She took the curious Eastern key he silently offered her, and put it in the lock of the door he had stopped at. The lock yielded easily....

"Won't—won't you come too?" she whispered, oppressed with an increasing sense of awe, and John Hazel's voice answered from behind her:

"We are the Guardians of the Shrine, and yet we may not enter. It would not be according to the Law!"

Thus Katharine went in alone, her heart-beats quickened by the startled whirr of wings, as the busy swallows quitted their nest-building in the upper corner of one of the three tall windows, filled in with lattices of carved and painted marble, and looking on the garden, now all golden in the rays of the westering sun.

The ceiling rose to a frescoed dome, with an opening at the apex. The spice of incense and the perfume of flowers yet sweetened the still air of this place of memories. It was a revelation of wonderful art, its dome and walls covered with ancient frescoes, representing in all the opulent symbolism of early Christianity, the anchor, the palm, the Dove with the olive-branch; the Vine, the heavy ear of Wheat, the Fish, the Chalice encircled with rays of glory,—the Good Shepherd carrying His lamb. The carved and inwrought and costly screens of cedar and ebony-wood were all inlaid in mother o' pearl, silver and ivory. Nothing had been spared in money or labour, to perfect this—the replica in miniature, of the interior of a Coptic Christian Church. Save that seemly, exquisite neatness, and scrupulous cleanliness reigned here instead of dust and dirt, spider-webs, and bird and bat-droppings; and the disquieting disorder which too often, in the East, prevails in such a sacred place....

Katharine passed over the mosaic floor of red and green porphyry and grey crystalline syenite, and through the central opening in the latticed outer screen. The gates stood open, showing an altar, wrought of black Egyptian basalt, standing under a baldaquin of inlaid ebony-wood borne on four carved and inlaid columns, the rich embroidered curtains of the baldaquin being drawn back. Four man-high candlesticks of silver, holding great unlighted tapers, were set one at each corner of the basalt altar. On the altar was an upper covering of rich silk, embroidered with gold. On this were a censer of silver open-work, a silver-gilt or golden incense-box, and two golden candlesticks of magnificent workmanship flanked the usual copy of the Four Gospels, sealed in a gold and jewelled case.

Three silver lamps hung before the altar. In the central lamp alone burned a tiny votive flame. The altar was not raised above the floor.... Its front was uncovered, and a small square opening in this resembled a doorway.

In the cavity revealed by the opening stood an alabaster urn of funerary type and evidently of great antiquity. Katharine, kneeling on the upper step of the little sanctuary, could, despite the tempering of the light by the screens and window-lattices, clearly distinguish below the Greek monogram of the Sacred Name, in irregular lines of incised Roman capitals,—still rusty-bright with antique gilding,—the epitaph in faulty Latin:

"MARTYR CHRISTI, AMICVSPAVPERVM.

EGO PHILOREMUS FLORENS FABIVS. CLARISSIMVS. PRÆTOR VECTIGALIVM ÆGVPTORVM. ALEXANDRIA. SEPTIMVS ANNO AVGVSTI MAXIMIANVS ÆGYPTI IMPERATORIS. QUE VIXIT. ANN. XL. MENS. V.D. VII. MENSIS OCTOBRIS IDIBUS. PORTA SPEI INTROGRESSVS SVM."

A rough translation of which might run:

"The Martyr of Christ, the Friend of the Poor. I, Philoremus Florens Fabius, of Senatorial Rank, Receiver-General at Alexandria of the Taxes of Egypt. In the Seventh Year of the Reign of Cæsar Maximianus, Emperor of Africa. Aged Forty Years, Five months and Seven Days. On the Ides of October, Entered in at the Gate of Hope."

X

Katharine Forbis came out of the chapel, noiselessly shutting the door behind her, and stood, looking silently down at a man who knelt there. He raised the head that had been bowed nearly to the floor, and rose to his feet at the sound of her footstep, removed his cap, and, standing aside made room for Miss Forbis to pass him before he re-locked the door. Then he followed her downstairs, through the passage and doorway leading to the loggia, and back into the garden they had left....

Copts with tied-back sleeves and tucked-up gelabiyehs were moving among the flower-beds with wheeled tanks and syringes, setting water running in the channels bordering the paths of the rose-alleys and shrubberies. Already the perfume exhaled from wet rich soil and dampened petals freshened the air, and the sultry heat had abated. Coolness was coming with the short Eastern twilight, the sky above, and to the west, was streaked with pomegranate and amber; the elongated shadow of the house, with its dome and pediment and flat loggiaed roofs, stretched dusky-blue over the grass to the foot of the red granite seat under the moss-cup oak.

Katharine's heliotropes were lying on the seat, faded already but still exhaling sweetness.... As she lifted them from the hot red stone, the faint south breeze brought to her across the crowded buildings, and the traffic of Khedive street, the mellow voice of a muezzin from the minaret of the Mosque Sidi Amr, crying, as it cries thrice a day, from thousands of minarets in four world-continents:

"Allah is most great! I witness that there is no God but Allah! And Mohammed is the apostle of Allah! Come to prayer! Prayer is better than work! Come to salvation! God is most great! There is no God but Allah!"

When the voice from the mosque, and its myriad human echoes had vibrated into silence, and the distant noise of the crowded streets had rolled back into hearing again,—Katharine said to the man who stood silently beside her, his khaki cap dangling from his big right hand:

"Mr. Hazel, you have to forgive in me an indifference that may have wounded you. But until I found myself in that chapel, in the presence of the reliquary urn that speaks of his martyrdom, my ancestor was no more to me than a legendary old Roman, who lived and died in a remote Past, in a distant part of the world. But since I said a prayer for him before that altar, it was—as though he had only died a month or two ago! ... Now, it crushes me to realise that through more than sixteen centuries, you and yours have guarded those ashes in the urn! ..."

"It is true. Since the forefather of Ephraim—you have seen Ephraim—it was he who attended you here from Montana—brought back the ring to Alexandria, and the widow opened the sealed packet—the wishes of the Founder of the House of Hazaël have scrupulously been carried out. There has always been a Christian hand to clean the lamp and feed it with oil daily, and place fresh flowers in the vases on one day in the year.... Though I have heard that in the days of the Great Earthquake—when fifty thousand people perished in the fire or were buried beneath the ruins,—there was no oil for the famine that then prevailed...."

The deep monotonous voice that spoke in somewhat archaic English—was and was not the voice of John Hazel.... And suddenly, with a shudder and a crisping of the nerves as she looked at and listened to him,—Katharine doubted whether he realised that he was speaking at all....

"Chosroes the Persian King," the deep voice went on, "laid siege to the city,—and the Arab Amru, general of Omar's Saracen armies,—wrested it from the Persians and held it:—but before the urn,—hidden in a secret chamber of this dwelling, the votive lamp burned still! And as a weaker hawk by suddenness snatches a quail from a hawk that is by far the stronger—and as the stronger pursues and wrests it from the first, even so the Greeks took Alexandria by cunning from the Saracens—and the Saracens won her back again—yet the lamp went on burning, for the hands that tended it were faithful, and the children of Hazaël's children's children were sedulous to do his will. Then in the Fourteenth Century of your Christian Era came the Crusaders and sacked and spoiled the city. But the lamp was not quenched even then! ... Nor when the French seized Alexandria—nor when the British took and held it—nor when they ceded it to Mehmet Ali—did the lamp cease to burn.... Jewish oil is very good, and Jewish hearts remember! The Past is living as the Present in the mind of the Jew. The negress whom you saw to-day, and her husband Zaid, are Christians. It is they who are entrusted—like their forerunners, with the keeping of the place...."

His tone changed. He spoke now in his own clipped and slangy vernacular.

"By the way—I want to say—with reference to the apology you were—so—gracious as to offer me, that I think it was awfully ripping of you! But for a thing I said, a bit back, that rather rattled you.... I don't apologise at all! ..."

"Dear John Hazel, I haven't even asked you!" In her frank, womanly, impulsive way, she stretched out a hand and lightly pressed his. "I have learned from you the priceless worth of Jewish loyalty and Jewish honour;—and a devotion for which I don't know even how to begin to express my gratitude and esteem! Unless in some way like this—"

He started, and his dark hand clenched; for carried away by an irresistible impulse, Miss Forbis had bent aside and brushed it lightly with her lips. The instant the impulse had had its way she realised her mistake.... For the man's great frame quivered from head to foot as though the ague fit of fever were upon him.... He mastered the trembling with an effort that left him rigid; and said,—his face yet stiffly averted and his black eyes bent upon the ground:

"You asked me a good many months ago,—I don't mistake—for I remember everything you've ever said to me!—if I thought that you and I had ever lived on earth before now?" He went on as she bent her head, sensing the movement rather than seeing it. "What I said then, I say again! ... I don't believe either of us is by way of making a second visit to this little old planet.... But somehow we are influenced by those who have passed on! Not by the hanky-panky, table-rapping, automatic pencil-scribbling Spooklets you summon up as with your thumbs crossed,—points downwards—and your little fingers jammed against those of your right-and-left hand neighbours,—you sit round a rubber-covered table in a stuffy, darkened room.... Spirits of dead poets who've forgotten how to turn a rhyme!—dead historians who mix up Alexander the Great with Napoleon the Little—and perpetrate howlers that would disgrace a Fourth Standard Board School kid.... Dead Editors who can't spell for peanuts.... And dead chemists who're knocked out by the formula of H2O!"

He moved behind the seat and sat on the other end of it, crossing his long legs, slipping his left arm from the sling, and nursing a big-boned knee in both powerful hands as he went on:

"Put it that those who carried in their blood the germs that you and I have sprung from—living on the Other Side as conscious Intelligences,—are permitted by the Divine Power Who rules things visible and invisible,—to sway us, help us, prompt our actions, check our impulses and desires—and you have what I believe, concentrated down to tabloid form! On the whole, your Catholic faith in Guardian Angels isn't much unlike it. Only, instead of a bright-winged spirit hovering somewhere near me, I've felt as though a big old man, dark and strong, like my father,—was keeping his eye on me.... And the bias of the lead he gave,—quite definite when you shut your eyes—and felt back in the dark of your mind along the spider-thread that led to him,—was definitely for Right and clearly opposed to Wrong! ..."

Hugging his knee, he looked for the first time directly at Katharine, since that swift incautious touch of her lips had levelled the last barrier, and turned his blood to flame. There was no shamed consciousness in the pure eyes that met his.... She listened, and his thoughts were mirrored in the swift changes of her face....

"I didn't shape out this theory of mine, till I was getting close on thirty. I'd lived all my life amongst Christians and Jews who faithfully believed in Nothing!—and what one saw, and touched and tasted was quite enough for them and for me! That I ran anything but straight, there's not the least earthly use denying...." His memory went back to Birdie Bright, and others of her liberal sisterhood, and a dusky flush burned under his tawny, sun-baked skin. "But when the War broke out, and I joined the London Terriers—and saw men dying in the mud of France and Flanders, as up to date I'm seeing 'em die in the dirt of Palestine!—the advantage of living clean and being ready to answer to one's number came home to me as it never had before.... And Life was sweet, because it was so damnably uncertain! ... Men dealt Death every hour to the son of some mother, and no one could have guessed when it mightn't be his turn! Fellows used to tell me I killed men as if I liked doing it!—and I'm bound to admit I did! ... They said I sang as I fought,—in Hebrew one learned bloke swore it was! Though, as I hardly knew a word,—it couldn't have been the truth. But this is true, that in the blinding thick of the scrap I'd feel that big man near me.... I've seen him—or as good as!—signing and waving me on.... And when I came back to Hospital, and got that letter from Jaffa, and took over the Title Deeds, and the Guardianship of the Ashes; and put on the onyx signet-ring—"

"Then?" Her clear eyes were intent upon him....

"Then, instead of one old man, big and dark and brawny, strangely dressed—standing somewhere back of me, grimly willing me on; I seemed to be—I seem now!—to be looking back through Time down an interminable line of such men.... And the biggest of all the big old men is right away at the end! ... That's all! ..." He put down the knee he had nursed.

"We Catholics believe that the souls of our dead love us and pray for us; and by Our Lord's permission—may sometimes help us in need. Do you think—do not answer unless you wish!—that he—your Big Old Man—ever suggests answers to you? ... Or prompts you with knowledge having reference to bygone matters? ... Forgotten, old, long-buried things, of which you could not otherwise know? ..."

"I think—" He turned his face to Katherine, and it was no longer stern and grim, but wore the toothy, cheerful grin of Private Abrahams—"that sometimes that Biggest Old Man of All is quite close to me. Towering up over my head, and sticking out all around me! And the thing he wants I've got to do, and the line he points I follow. And have to until Kingdom Come, and All the Rest, Amen! ..."

"Is he huge and tawny-brown with coarse curls of jet-black hair—and a great beard—and a fillet of white leather, set with green stones—round his forehead? ... Has he a face much like yours, but stern as Destiny? ... Is he wrapped in a great black mantle with a hood like a Dominican's? Does he wear immense thigh-boots and carry an iron-shod staff? ..."

The memory of her dream, months back at Kerr's Arbour, had prompted Katharine's question. John Hazel turned and looked at her in utter amaze.

"That's how I see him, but how do you come to know? ..."

"I don't know,—but I saw a man like that in a dream, once.... I seemed to be in danger, threatened by evil beings, and he came to the rescue. That's absolutely all! But, let me out of the depth of my own ignorance, give you a word of warning. This strange gift of yours ought to be held reverently. Kept a profound secret, and never under any circumstance? whatever submitted to a stranger's control. You understand?"

"All right! I'll be wide—O!" His black eyes snapped as he answered, and she went on:

"Now to come back to usual things, look at this flower, and tell me whether you know it?" She was holding out to him a withered spike of multifold white blossoms, exhaling a faint and delicate smell:

"That lily-thing...." He took it carefully in his big fingers. "All through October it was blooming in Palestine. Acres and acres of it—all white and yellow—when I left the Front to come down here. Smells nice!" He sniffed at it cautiously. "Something between a West End church got up for a Society wedding,—and the hall of a house blocked up with florist's boxes—where there's going to be a first-class funeral.... Presently, when the Spring comes along, there'll be scarlet tulips, and rose and purple anemones, and pink-and-white turncap lilies, and flowers I couldn't as much as name to you—miles and miles of 'em swarming over the plains, and covering the knees of those old Judæan Hills. The name of this is asphodel. I forget who told me! Where did you get it? ... I haven't seen it here! ..."

"It came in the letter you brought me from Palestine...." She took back the withered flower and slipped it back within her blouse. His eyes followed it, and she went on: "It is of the letter I wanted particularly to speak to you. For it tells me that Julian—my brother—is alive! ..."

"And a prisoner! ..." He spoke with certainty....

"And a prisoner at a Turkish labour-camp!"

"What are you going to do? ..."

Her bosom heaved in a perplexed sigh. Her broad brows knitted, and her clear eyes were clouded as she turned them upon John:

"Move Heaven and earth in any way possible to get my poor boy out of that earthly hell! Meanwhile one must wait, I suppose—"

"Does it strike you as a case likely to benefit by waiting?"

"No!—and in spite of that there is nothing to do but wait. Unless—unless you, who were so prompt to help in those troubled days at Kerr's Arbour, could suggest any—definite plan of action to me now? ..."

"I'll do my best, you may be sure!"

"I know you will," she responded gratefully. "But first I must put you in possession of the facts. Julian—"

"Is at Shechem.... I know it already.... No!" For her eyes had cried out to him "Edward! ..." "From another informant than Colonel Yaill. The airman who brought me here,—an Egyptian reconnaissance-officer I met at Salonika—happens to be on special duty at the Palestine Front just now.... Wing-Major Essenian Pasha.... Perhaps you've heard the name? ..."

She thought, and answered:

"Yes, I have often seen it mentioned in Despatches, in association with feats of aviation; bombing-raids carried out single-handed for the most part; dazzling reconnaissances over strongholds held by the enemy...."

"That's my man. 'A vivid personality,' my mother'd have ticketed him.... He was an officer of the Khedive's Artillery in prehistoric ages—at the time of the Egyptian Army Revolt under Arabi Pasha. That was about 1881. And he was with Hicks Pasha's Expedition in 1883—against the Mahdi—which got wiped out by the Baggara near El Obeyd.... He had a command under Baker Pasha in 1884, and was with the Dongola Relief Advance,—and with the Khartoum Column in 1897 ... Emin Pasha was a pal of his—and Gordon thought no end of him.... When the South African War of 1900 broke out he'd retired—was living at Ismailia—as a wealthy Egyptian ex-officer of Engineers.... Took up aviation and started a Flying Club here in Alexandria about 1911.... Gave the Club an aërodrome—with hangars and everything!—the big place you've seen near the Water Works,—and another at Ismailia where he lives—and another on the Upper Nile! ... And as he flies like Satan, the Government snapped at him, when he volunteered for the Royal Flying Corps in 1914...."

"He must be a brave man! ..."

"Got nerve enough for anything! ... And to look at him you'd guess him to be thirty-five as the limit.... Yet there are old men here in Alexandria who've known him since they were gay young Johnnies,—and they're ready to bet their wigs and false teeth that he's always been the same! ..."

"Could Essenian Pasha be of use in this particular emergency? ..."

"You mean your brother's case? ... He had the facts from me at Salonika.... I said the brother of a friend of mine—a Chaplain serving with the Expeditionary—was missing since the storming of Scimitar Hill and supposed to have been killed.... And I mentioned his being a Catholic priest, and added his name, and a few particulars. For instance, I'd heard from the landlady at the Cross Keys, Cauldstanes, months ago, that Father Forbis was very handsome. 'As like oor Miss Forbis as gin they were twins'—I can't do her Scotch for peanuts, 'but blue-eyed and wi' fair hair.'"

"It is true. Except about us being so much alike," she said, her eyes now openly brimming over. "For Julian has almost the beauty of an angel, and when he sings, the voice of one. My father worshipped him.... So did Mark—and I for that matter! ... So did the priests and the students at the Seminary, the Prior and the Fathers at the Monastery, and the officers and men of the Brigade with which he served.... You should see the letters they wrote me when his death was reported. And now!—Don't be scared!—I'm not going to cry."

She brought out a little filmy handkerchief and dried the tears bravely, and put it away again....

"Crying isn't of any use. Forget that I was stupid enough to shed tears!—they are over and done with now. Tell me how your friend of the R.F.C. could help us in this strait?"

John Hazel hugged his knee again, and said, with knitted eyebrows:

"You mean, how I think, and he believes, he could help us,—since he dropped down in our lines the day after Sheria. He'd been doing a lot of reconnaissance over Hebron and Shechem, and a shell from a Turkish A.A. had burst near them—and Captain Usborn of the Engineers, his observer—was lying over, stone-dead—behind his Lewis gun.... Shot through the head. See—this is the bullet that did it!" He slipped two fingers inside a front-pocket of his tunic, drew out and showed her the dented cone of lead....

"Isn't that," her fine brows frowned, "rather a gruesome relic to carry? ..."

"Well, you know!—that's as you happen to look at it. I wasn't out for mascots—the thing came my way, and so I just froze on.... And"—he dropped the bullet back again, "then Major Essenian Pasha sent for me, and asked me—I'd flown with him several times near Salonika—"

John Hazel spoke in a low voice calculated just to reach her ear:

"He asked me whether I'd replace Usborn on the flight back to Ismailia,—if permission could be wrested from the Powers that Be? ... Then he went on to tell me of something he'd got from an Arab, with reference to a British prisoner in the labour-camp at Shechem. A Catholic priest, a tall fair man, astonishingly handsome,—who was suffering brutal ill-usage at the hands of Hamid Bey...."

"'Hamid Bey!'" She caught at the name. "Colonel Yaill speaks of that man in my letter.... He is the Turkish Commandant of the prison-camp at Shechem." ...

"He ought to be Commandant of a Division in Hell, going by what I've heard of him! By the way, may I ask you not to mention his name in the hearing of my aunt.... For we Hazaëls," said John with a bitter sneer—"have a little family score of our own to settle with His Excellency, Hamid Bey, Miralai of the Shechem Prison Camp...."

"I shall not forget. I will make a point of being careful! ... But forgive me if I ask you again, how you think this officer—Major Essenian Pasha—could help my brother now? ..."

"Well, for one thing, knowing the lie of the camp pretty well, the Pasha could carry a passenger.... A man who'd be prepared for risks—to some place in the neighbourhood of Shechem. At night, of course I mean,—and drop him there quietly, and fly back at a stated hour—and pick him up again! He could even—given a suitable machine, made to carry more weight and bulk than a mere two-seat scouter—pick up two men near Shechem—and take them to the British lines!"

She drank in the words, her fascinated gaze fixed on the long mahogany-hued hawk-face, which held her with the unwavering stare of its glowing black eyes. She asked with a catch in her hurried breath:

"And the—the 'man prepared for risks,' who would undertake to venture—?"

"Disguised as a Bedawi of a tribe on good terms with the Turks.... I know enough Arabic to get on with. That takes the edge off the risk ... lessens the handicap! Call the chances seventy-five to one against—" said John Hazel coolly,—"and I suppose you wouldn't be so much over the estimate! ..."

"But"—she heard her voice coming from a long way off, out of a breathless stillness: "where is the man who would undertake so perilous a thing?" Edward! her heart throbbed in her, he is thinking of Edward! ...

John Hazel answered quietly:

"You see the man here! ..."

"You? ..."

Her heart gave a great leap against Yaill's hidden letter, stopped—and then went on beating again:

"You mean yourself?—and I thought—"

"I told you I estimated the chances against, at seventy-five to one. So it isn't quite the sort of job you start another man on! It's the kind of thing you calculate to carry through on your own hook. The only thing that badgers me is the chance that your friend the Colonel—"

Their eyes met. He went on, slowly syllabling the words:

"Might be—calculating to play his own game about when I start mine. And for us to clash—"

The startled intake of her breath did not escape him. She finished:

"Would be fatal.... Yes—I can understand! ..."

"For us to clash would bally well upset the apple-cart. You've no idea when Colonel Yaill—"

"He has not named a date! ..."

"But he is going to have a shot at getting your brother out of that labour hell at Shechem...." He studied her face, with its clear eyes and sweet determined mouth.... "And he's told you so in confidence—and you're not going to give away the show! ... Of course you're right! Still—you'll own—it's a bit of a handicap.... 'Too many cooks....' But I'm forewarned, so we'll hope the broth won't be spoiled! Wish we could send the Colonel the tip—but in that line there's nothing doing! One thing I'm sure of. He'd know me again wherever he happened to knock up against me!—and I'd know him if I saw his skin nailed on a gate!" She shuddered, and he added, as a short, slight, dark-skinned officer came out at the lower door opening on the loggia, ushered with scrupulous respect by the black-robed Ephraim. "Now,—may I present to you Major Essenian Pasha? ... He has something to say to me on the quiet about this—projected excursion, or he wouldn't have dropped in here! ... Lives at Ismailia, as I've said.... And before him, better drop no hint of knowing what I've told you.... I'll explain later, why I think it best...."

She said, proudly rearing her beautiful head on her long white throat:

"You need fear no incautious betrayal of your confidence from me...."

XI

John Hazel got up from the granite seat, saluted Miss Forbis, and moved with long strides across the lawn, to meet the visitor....

With strained interest Katharine watched the meeting. The Egyptian Flying Officer, a dark-skinned, bright-eyed, wiry man, whose short and slight, but muscular and active figure was set off by his well-cut uniform of khaki cotton-drill,—said something in a rapid undertone as he met Hazel. Hazel replied. Their colloquy lasted barely a minute, but to Katharine, vibrating with the sense of great issues, it seemed as though the few words spoken by the Egyptian had settled the question at stake.

Then both men crossed the greensward together, the top of the Pasha's sun-helmet barely on a level with Hazel's middle arm. Hazel presented Major Essenian Pasha. The Egyptian bowed like a Frenchman, from the hips, and was profoundly honoured to meet Miss Forbis, of whom he had heard so much from Lady Donnithorpe. And Katharine, responding with her high-bred grace and composure to his frothy compliments, found herself at once repelled and attracted by something in this man.

Small, alert, dark-hued as bronze, with the long, narrow eyes, the wide brows and curving profile of the statues of the Egyptian god Horus, Essenian Pasha might have been barely past thirty, and certainly conveyed the idea of mental vigour, abounding health and restless vitality.

"I had the pleasure some years back," he said to Katharine, "of meeting in Cairo an English officer who may be your relation! Captain Mark Forbis, of a regiment belonging to the Brigade of Guards.... He was for a short period, A.D.C. to the Commander-in-Chief at Ismailia. Captain Forbis was exceedingly handsome. May I say, although he was a blond man, and blue-eyed, that I detect a remarkable resemblance to him in you...."

Katharine answered as the speaker waited, with his gleaming eyes upon her:

"My brother Mark held a Captaincy in a well-known Guards Regiment, the 'Cut Red Feathers.' He was killed at Mons in August, 1914." She added, of purpose, "My younger brother Julian is a Catholic monk of the Order of S. Gerard. He served as a Chaplain with our troops at Suvla and Gallipoli...."

The Pasha's beryl eyes suddenly lightened. He said in his most suave and dulcet tones, his slender fingers smoothing his clipped black moustache:

"Your brother has then undergone some terrible experiences. May I venture to ask if he was present at the assault on Scimitar Hill?"

"He was with his brigade when the 29th Division fought their way up through the scrub-fire." Too late she caught a warning glance from John Hazel's sombre eyes.

"He was not wounded? ..."

"I—hope not! I—I believe not...."

"It must have been a great joy to welcome him back again!"

"It would be, if—"

"If I had!" the sentence would have ended.... But she broke off, her cheeks and the rims of her delicate ears and her fair temples crimson. Yet, after all, why should she prevaricate? What matter if the man did know, thought candid Katharine? Was he not going to help Julian—at least, according to John Hazel? Why, then, had John enjoined reserve and secrecy? ...

Her quick flush faded, but it had not escaped the observation of Essenian. The Horus smile on his dark, smooth lips was subtler and more insinuating, and the gleam between the lids of his long-lashed eyes more languid than before, as he said:

"I understand. Though the Allied Forces have been withdrawn—and the Campaign of the Dardanelles is relegated to the pigeon-hole where Whitehall keeps its failures—your brother has not been lucky enough yet to obtain leave? ..."

He seemed to be probing, with his bland, persistent questions and veiled looks of sympathy, in Katharine's aching heart. She gave a little, irresistible shudder. He saw it, and continued in his smooth, caressing voice:

"Or possibly the duties of a priest detain Mr. Forbis elsewhere? We Easterns have a proverb—it may be new to you:" The insinuating tones were even more gentle and velvety:

"For a plain man to become a priest is robbery of one woman. For one handsome man who becomes a priest a hundred women are robbed!"

The tone, rather than the words, conveyed something indescribably offensive. John Hazel started, palpably, and his scowl was thunderous. Wrath surged in Katharine's blood and she tingled to the finger-tips with a momentary, almost ungovernable desire to strike this man's smooth face. Scandalised at herself, furious with him, she commanded herself sufficiently to say in cool unruffled tones, rising from her seat:

"Charmed to have met you, Major Essenian Pasha.... Mr. Hazel, ever so many thanks for showing us your beautiful house. Now I must go and say good-bye to your aunt, and collect my friend, Lady Wastwood, for we are due at the Hospital. No!—please don't come with me—though you might 'phone for the car! ..."

"Mine is at the door.... I should be honoured and charmed if Miss Forbis and her friend would use it!" came in the soft ingratiating tones of Essenian....

John Hazel, already striding towards the house, halted and wheeled, looking at Katharine. Something in the expression of his black eyes conveyed the warning: It would be wiser not to snub this man! And, with revolt and distaste thrilling in her blood, Miss Forbis forced herself to smile and be gracious, and accept the officious offer of the Pasha's automobile.

"One moment, my King of Damascus, while I instruct my chauffeur where to take the ladies, and call for me later.... 'The Palace, Montana,' is it not?" Essenian said to John Hazel, glancing at a platinum watch in a band of grey gazelle-leather, strapped on his slender dusky wrist.

If a second rapid exchange of glances between Katharine and Hazel did not escape his observation, he gave no sign. He smiled, and went back across the lawn to the house, a small, slender figure, moving with short rapid steps, almost mincingly, and—for the Pasha's presence oppressed her physically—Katharine could breathe freely again....

"Miss Forbis!" John Hazel spoke quickly and in an undertone: "It's for your own sake I presumed to dictate to you just now in the matter of accepting the Pasha's civility. You see, when you let out your brother was a priest, you put Major Essenian wise to the prisoner's identity. Can't very well snub a man when he's going to risk his life for you! And the thing's fairly settled. We leave Ismailia Air Station for Shechem at the latest," he glanced at his wrist-watch, "by three to-morrow morning!"

"To-morrow morning! ..." She caught her breath, and he could see her heart's tumultuous throbbing under the thin white silk of her dainty blouse.

"Oh dear John Hazel!" she said with passionate fervour, her wide eyes, their irises mere tawny circles round the dilated pupils,—fixed upon his swarthy, excited face.... "May God protect and keep you!—and help you to save him!—my dear old Julian—my poor boy! ... Tell me how long I have to wait before I may hope to hear from you! How and when shall I hear? ..."

"If things go wrong I can't answer for your hearing...." John grinned with the grin of Private Abrahams.... "Unless they let me come back from the Other Side to report! But if things go right,—and we get your brother out of that"—he did not finish the sentence, "I pledge you my word you shall hear from me within twenty-four hours of the snatch!"

"Thank you. And—Mr. Hazel," she was holding out two letters, one inscribed only with a name, the other addressed twice over—once in a large, ornate, feminine hand, to "Lieut. Col. Edward Yaill, Kerr's Arbour, Cauldstanes, Tweedshire, N.B." and again in old Whishaw's staggering round-hand to "Care of Miss Forbis, No. —th Unit V.A.D. Royal Red Cross Society, Care of the Commandant Convalescent Hospital, Montana, Alexandria, Egypt."

"Were these a charge for me?" he asked.

"Yes. I am going to ask you to take them with you, in case you should again meet Colonel Yaill. One is my answer to the letter you brought. There is a line in it for Julian.... You see," she turned the envelope, "I have sealed it with my onyx ring. That is Julian's really—and a day may come when I shall be able to hand it over to him! The other came yesterday with my mail from Home.... I do not know, but I imagine—it is from the lady who—is Colonel Yaill's wife...."

"Righto! I'll take 'em both along. If I can't get 'em where they ought to go, you shall have 'em back anyway."

"Thanks!" She drew a breath of sheer relief as he took the letters from her. Ah! my sweet-hearted Katharine. How womanfully you had striven with the urgent desire to tear that buff-coloured envelope, leprous with stamps of different hues and scored with many postmarks, into a thousand infinitesimal pieces; and how thoroughly, as things turned out,—you would have been punished if you had....

"Does it strike you as it does me," John glanced at the concave impression of her ring, "that just about here is where—" He stooped his tall head nearer and dropped his voice to a tone even lower, "that just here's where the signet both of us wear may be useful! Don't take any screed you get from me as Gospel truth—because it happens to be signed 'John Hazel'! Even suppose you got a line from me, saying, 'Come at once!'—don't come unless the paper bears an impression of this...." He thrust forward the big left hand that wore the onyx head of Hercules. "Stuck underneath the signature, in sealing-wax, or clay, or mud—or bread, even.... And test it by the ring you wear, before you accept it.... And seal your communications to me in the same old way. Do you tumble? I mean—do you say 'Done!'"

"Done! ..."

"And—you trust me? ..."

"I trust you absolutely! Even though you sent for me, not saying why I was needed, the signet-seal would be enough—I'd say 'Julian,' and come! ..."

"Then that's arranged! ..." He saw in the sudden change of her face that something menaced. Even before he turned his head the smooth voice of Essenian said, a long way below the level of his own great shoulder:

"I have given the necessary instructions to my chauffeur. He will take the ladies out to the Hospital, Montana, and come back to pick us up, at the 'Aviators' Club.' For, remember, you are engaged to dine with me there, my King of Damascus, and sleep at my house at Ismailia to-night.... I have obtained you the necessary leave from your C.M.O. at the General Hospital." He turned to Katharine, and the beryl eyes and the dazzling teeth gleamed together in the bronze face as he resumed: "Dear lady, do you wonder why I bestow that title on our friend? ... Because it belongs to him. He descends—although he may not know it—in an unbroken line from Hazaël, King of Damascus—the son and successor of the Scriptural Ben-Hadad—against whom Shalmaneser II. of Assyria waged war, in the year 842, before your Christian Era. In one of the cabinets in that room"—he pointed to the windows looking on the loggia—"is a clay tablet inscribed in Semitic—Assyrian-Cuneiform,—an heirloom preserved in your family," he looked at John, "for many centuries."

"How tremendously interesting!" Katharine commented, doing her best to be pleasant with this man, for whom she had conceived, what she was wont to term, one of her loathings: "My brother Julian used at one time—I suppose he has forgotten it all now!—to dabble a good deal in Semitic—tell me if I pronounce the rest of it badly!—Assyrian-Cuneiform. He was secretary and amanuensis to the Father General of his Order, Abbot Lansquier, of whom perhaps you may have heard."

"He is a great man. I have heard of him," said the Egyptian, quickly. "He would be interested in this tablet. It is," he went on addressing John, "a letter from Achab, King of Israel, in answer to some communication from Hazaël.... Your late grandfather and I were much interested in deciphering it at one time. We translated it into Hebrew, French, and English—and though I might miss out a word occasionally, I could repeat the substance of the letter by heart."

And he began to repeat in his smooth voice:

"Now let us measure our strength together against this scornful King of Assyria, fat with the conquest of Tabul, and Milid, where are the silver, salt and alabaster mines. I, the King of Israel, with two thousand chariots and ten thousand soldiers, and thou the King of Damascus with seven hundred horsemen and twenty thousand unmounted men. And thou and I will be brothers, and thy son shall take to him my daughter; and the dowry I will give him with the Princess shall be twenty talents of gold, twenty-three thousand talents of silver, five thousand talents of copper, with coloured raiment from Egypt, mantles adorned with embroidery, a jewelled diadem, an ivory couch, a parasol of ivory studded with jewels, all which shall be delivered thee in Damascus, in the chambers of thy palace there. This is the word of Achab, King of Israel, to Hazaël the King of Damascus."

As the Egyptian repeated the final words, looking at John Hazel, Katharine, whose eyes had followed Essenian's, recognised with a thrill of alarm, the now familiar transformation of the swarthy face with the great hooked nose, into a mask of stone. The light died out of the man's black eyes. He seemed to be mentally searching. She knew that he groped for the end of the spider-thread that linked for him the Present and the Past.

Essenian, in the same instant, saw the change and stopped in sheer amazement. He was about to speak, when the monotonous voice came from the mouth of the mask:

"So it was, and there was a compact, and peace between Hazaël and Achab; and Istâr the Princess of the House of Israel, was wedded to the son of King Hazaël. And Achab and Hazaël went forth together to meet the King of Assyria; and he fought with them and defeated them, and destroyed with weapons sixteen thousand soldiers, and took eleven hundred chariots, and four hundred and thirty horses, and all the treasures of their camps. And he drove King Hazaël from the Fortress of Mount Saniru, and laid waste towns and villages, and hemmed him in Damascus, even the city of his glory. Its gardens of trees he cut down. And he slew the King with a stone from a war-engine, even in the Court of his Palace; and his son reigned instead of him, and paid tribute to the King of Assyria. But the Queen said, 'Must I bear a son to the son of him who has been worsted in battle?' And she ceased not—day nor night to taunt—him, like Lilith—who—"

The voice faltered, broke, and stopped short. And Katharine, noting Essenian's rapid breathing, guessed, despite his well-maintained composure, that curiosity and interest raged in him.

"Is there no more, my King?" he almost whispered. "Think again.... There must be more to tell!"

"And the Queen, Istâr, said: 'Woe is me! For the star of this house is declining, and the days of its glory are done! I cannot go back to my father, for Achab has turned himself to idols. But if this that I bear in my womb be a son, he shall worship the God of Israel in His Temple at Jerusalem.... For there is none other than Him!'" The dragging voice stopped.

"And then ... what more? There must be more!" urged the Egyptian, avidly.

"I—I—cannot! ..."

John Hazel stared glassily at Essenian, and as Essenian looked back at him with long gleaming eyes of beryl, he lifted a hand to his forehead as though bewildered, and a dew of fine globules of perspiration broke out and glittered upon his temples, and cheeks, and jaws.... And, then, stirred to solicitude, warned by some inward voice to interpose, Katharine stretched forth her own hand and touched John Hazel lightly on the hand he lifted, saying in her clear, full, womanly tones:

"Mr. Hazel!"

"You ... you wanted me?"

He asked the question dully, but in his natural, ordinary voice. His black eyes lost their glassy stare as they encountered Katharine's.... And holding them with her own bright, steady gaze, she spoke to him again.

"It is getting late. Will you please find your aunt and the Commandant and tell Lady Wastwood that a car is waiting; and that we have only sufficient time to get back to the Hospital by seven!"

"Certainly. In half a jiff! ..."

He shook himself, and moved off with his lengthy strides in the direction of the shrubbery. And the beryl eyes of Essenian were on Katharine, scintillating evilly, and the smooth lips were stretched in that inscrutable, hateful smile....

"A very remarkable type of man—our good friend Hazel!" Essenian said, still smiling; and Katharine returned in cool, unruffled tones:

"Remarkable, and interesting."

"You find that? ..." What hinted meaning lurked behind that smooth interrogation? "Physically and psychologically, I myself find him quite uniquely interesting. His is a curiously dual personality; does it not strike you as being so? What wonderful powers of clairvoyance are his! What a link between the Seen and the Unseen, such powers might forge, for one who could employ them well! A Seeker after Wisdom, such as I am myself...." He drew out a fine white linen handkerchief exhaling some delicate essence, and passed it over his face, and dried the palms of his dark hands. The hands shook; their owner was the prey of some overmastering agitation as he went on: "But why should I speak ambiguously to one who understands? I saw him pass into the trance, from which you roused him by the exercise of your will.... You who can control—naturally you desire to keep to yourself, such a gift as Mr. Hazel's—a source of knowledge beyond all estimate...."

He went on, with increasing earnestness and persistence, as, conscious of increasing dislike and resentment, Katharine looked at him without making any reply:

"Miss Forbis, you may not know that I am rich.... Whether you are so yourself or not, ladies appreciate exquisite jewels, and I own many that are unusually fine.... Gratify me in connection with my desire to see your friend in a similar condition to—that I just now had the privilege of witnessing! Permit me to question him—and name your price! ... Do not be offended, I entreat!" the Egyptian pursued, warned by the flush on Katharine's cheek, and the frown that gathered on her forehead—"There may be something in which I can serve you.... If so, command me.... I ask no more! ..."

He changed his tone as John Hazel returned, accompanying Lady Wastwood and Mrs. Hazaël.

"I mentioned to you a little previously that—several years ago,—your late brother, Captain Forbis, honoured my poor house at Ismailia by being my guest. May I hope that you will similarly honour me? The gardens are really worth seeing.... Though the house, naturally, does not boast the interest attaching to this...."

"You are most kind, Essenian Pasha," Katharine returned, somewhat hesitatingly, conscious on the one hand of the insolence of the native who had presumed to offer her a bribe, painfully sensible, on the other, of the fact that Julian's freedom possibly depended on the co-operation of this unspeakably objectionable man. "But the time at my own disposal being so exceedingly limited, it would be impossible to give you a date."

"My profound regrets!" He bowed from the hips with his acquired French elegance. "Though I hope that a day will come yet when you will consent to honour me! Most of the beautiful English ladies who have visited our country have praised the house and garden.... Must the dwelling be darkened, and the trees about it wither, because denied the presence of the most beautiful of all! ..."

The flourishing Eastern hyperbole was delivered with Essenian's velvety softness, and accompanied by a display of glittering eyes and teeth. And Katharine, stifling her acute dislike as might best be managed, thanked the Egyptian in some formal phrase of polite regret and gratitude—cut short as John Hazel returned accompanying Trixie and Mrs. Hazaël, by the less formal utterances of leave-taking.... Mrs. Hazaël, in taking Katharine's offered hand, made the slight curtsey appropriate to Royalty. And Katharine, as she bent to kiss the little lady's cheek, was conscious that Essenian's strange eyes leapt out of their drowsy languor into glittering curiosity.

She had longed to give John Hazel another hearty hand-grip, to have whispered another parting word,—but the Egyptian intervened....

It was Essenian who conducted Miss Forbis to the car, a palatial Daimler of huge size, enamelled black and violent red; overloaded with solid silver and ivory fittings; lined with primrose satin brocade upholstery, and driven by a handsome Italian chauffeur.

"How gorgeous! And in what native taste!" cried Trixie, delightedly as the springy yellow cushions received her. "And does it belong to the Egyptian Flying Officer—the little, purring Pasha with the extraordinary eyes? I shall call him 'The Basilisk' because he reminds me of one!"

They had quitted the dust and racket of the city, and as they passed through the Rosetta Gate, and out upon the Aboukir Road, and were in the quiet suburbs on the east, near the European cemetery, Katharine rose and looked back, and gave a cry of admiration. For Alexandria,—with her domes and minarets and huge square blocks of modern buildings,—bathed in the rose and amber light of an Egyptian sunset—was beautiful with something of the beauty of the Past....

"That is something to have seen," Katharine said with a sigh, as she dropped back on the springy primrose cushions. "Thank you, dear Lady Wastwood, for a wonderful afternoon! You have been happy, haven't you?"

"Quite amused," Lady Wastwood answered. "And if I haven't been quite happy, well, then neither have you!"

She moved nearer to Katharine, and took her hand, and patted it, affection mingling with solicitude in the green eyes that questioned the face of her friend.

"I won't make pretences to you, dear Commandant," Katharine returned after an instant's hesitation. "I have cause to be happy, and cause to be anxious. And the anxiety weighs so heavily that Happiness kicks the beam."

Trixie patted her hand again, and said as the car bowled along the Aboukir Canal Road with its charming country villas shaded by palms and casuarina-groves:

"If I can help in any way, you promise—you will let me? Won't treat me like a stranger—will give me the chance I'd like.... To show you that I don't forget—what I can never speak of, but what I live through in my dreams—nearly every night! Promise! For I am a lonely woman, Kathy dear, though I keep my end up and don't go round howling for sympathy!—and I am truly fond of you."

"I promise, dear friend. And I would tell you now what the trouble is—because I trust you absolutely—where I myself am concerned! But I am not free to give away the confidence of another."

"Meaning the Jew Colossus with the great hooked nose," said Trixie mentally. And Katharine went on:

"You're looking better. You've not had that dream of late. Probably because it has done you good—sleeping in the open."

For Lady Wastwood and Miss Forbis shared one of the roomy sleeping-tents in the grounds of the Palace, distinguished from other similar groups as the "V.A.D's Annexe."

"I shall hate it when the rains come and drive us back indoors," Trixie responded. "And to-night at any rate I shan't dream of shipwreck,—I shall dream of The Basilisk! That man gives me cold shivers all down my spinal column. Why, I couldn't exactly explain. Some people have a horror of cats—the gentlest and most faithful pets to those who love and understand them. Others simply abominate dogs—I'm not keen on them myself! But my feeling for the little Pasha isn't one of those mild antipathies. Shall I tell you what those basilisk eyes of his keep saying to me? No!—it's all right—the chauffeur can't hear! They say: 'My dear lady—I'm a wealthy Gyppo Notability, esteemed an Ace of Aces in the hand of the R.F.C.... I've a chestful of decorations—all earned brilliantly. But my Mother was a Tigress—and my Father was a Snake! ...'"

"Est ce que les dames feront un petit tour en campagne, ou retourneront elles directement à l' Hôpital?"

"Will the ladies take a little tour in the country, or return directly to the Hospital?"

The question, asked in French through the speaking-tube fixed above the seat in front of them, made Katharine and the Commandant start. Briefly informed of the ladies' desire, the Italian turned the car upon the sanded road curving past the Khedivial Palace; and after half-a-dozen miles, swept round in a northward curve and presently was climbing a gradient between the orchards of peach and apricot trees, the fig-groves and pine-woods and gardens of beautiful Montana, gleaming like a fairy palace of rosy mother o' pearl in the fires of the sunset; on the square green promontory at whose shoreward base break the pearl and sapphire surges of the Western Sea.

XII

"The name of Forbes is common enough in your North Britain—the name of Forbis sufficiently unusual, to put me on the scent. And—one looks for the lady in these affairs!" purred Essenian, as he left the house in the Rue el Farad with John Hazel—profiting by the coolness of the evening to walk to the Aviators' Club. "Let me add, your taste is unimpeachable. I have never seen a handsomer Englishwoman than your friend."

Now he pursued, in his smooth, book-learned English, drawing out a platinum cigarette case—opening and offering it to John:

"Take one. The Macedonian leaf failed last year, but not so the crops of Shiraz, grown and ripened side by side with the purple-petalled afiyûn. You perhaps may not know this Club..." he added a little later, as they entered the wide, cool vestibule of a handsome granite building in Sherif Pasha Street. "No! Well, I anticipated you would not! ... Originally an association of mere amateur civilians, meeting periodically to exchange experiences—the Club has become,—since Government took over our aërodrome and hangars—you know them!—near the Water Works due east of Aboukir Road—a resort for Flying Officers of all grades and branches of the Service.... Since then, if much more social—we are a damnable lot more noisy and a good deal less exclusive.... Still, our Club remains distinguished by its European comfort, and its excellent cuisine!"

The dining-room into which a demure Levantine waiter ushered Essenian and his companion, was perfectly ventilated by electric appliances, and open along the whole of one side towards a sanded court containing a fountain, a great many long cane-chairs and several palms; and of the many small tables dotted over the spotless matting covering the floor, the majority were empty, though apparently reserved for diners. A few were already occupied. With the men who sat at them,—officers of the R.F.C. from the land-stations in the neighbourhood, and others of the R.N.A.S. from the sea-plane-stations at Ramleh, Port Said, Wara in the Delta,—and the seaplane-carrier anchored at the moment in the Port, Essenian exchanged nods and salutes of smiling courtesy. Several of the younger men stood up to greet him—though none approached the table where the Egyptian airman sat with a long-legged private of Territorials, wearing the badges of a London Regiment....

The temperature of the room approximated to that of London in July, thanks to the incessant movement of the wooden ceiling-fans. The dinner began excellently, with hors d'œuvres of giant prawns, miniature cucumbers and fresh olives, and a shell-fish of delicate flavour, served on miniature mountains of finely pounded ice. A Comet hock accompanied, and a clear soup was succeeded by a turban de turbot, perfectly cooked, and a curry of tiny whitebait-like fish from the Canal.

Roast lamb and duckling followed, both of remarkable succulence, and John Hazel, who had lived for weeks on bully-beef and onions, tough Palestine goat-mutton, and slabby rice-pudding speckled with the bodies of defunct flies,—having—in the unavoidable absence of these—cheerfully battened on iron rations, the bottom of a tin of jam and a handful of sticky dates,—yielded now to the immemorial allure of the Egyptian fleshpots; and attacking dish after dish with the ferocity of an ogre, slaked his huge thirst with repeated draughts of the well-iced champagne supplied....

The magnificent red roses massed in a crystal and silver rose-bowl in the centre of their table, and the gratification of satisfying the hunger that raged in him, prevented him from grasping a fact to which he awakened later,—when quail from Upper Egypt with egg-plant and quince salad, and snipe from the marshes of the Delta succeeded the lamb and duckling, and he paused to gather breath.... For Essenian sat smiling on the other side of the roses, before unused cutlery and silver, and an array of wine-glasses innocent of wine.

"My hat! Pasha, what must you think of me?" John began, nearly dropping the fork and spoon that were lifting a plump quail from the offered dish: "This ain't your Ramadan, is it, by any chance? No, of course, that comes in May. Has anything put you off your feed, or don't you ever eat?"

"Have no anxiety on my account, my King of Damascus," returned Essenian, narrowing his long eyes as he smiled upon his guest: "I am well, and that I continue so, I owe to precautions which may seem absurd to you. But every advantage we enjoy in this world has to be purchased—and I purchase vigour and health at the expense of my appetite.... Pray do justice to the quail, while I follow my usual rule."

He clapped his hands, and an Egyptian body-servant, who had stood immovable in the background, holding a silver tray, moved noiselessly forwards and set before Essenian a goblet of crystal and a long-necked crystal beaker;—together with some small covered dishes of delicate porcelain, revealing when the covers were lifted—nothing beyond a few fresh dates, a small, snow-white cream cheese, and a delicate napkin, enveloping a round cake of bread.

"Distilled water and freshly-gathered fruit, with bread of the purest sesame-flour.... Of these, in limited quantity, I may eat twice in the day. Preferably, at dawn, and after sunset; though by religion I am no more Moslem than I am a Christian," said Essenian, daintily filling the crystal goblet, "or a Parsi, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a Jew...." He broke bread.... "What is this? ..." He turned with feline suddenness on the dusky servant who stood behind him, and said harshly, speaking in Arabic: "There is error! The sesame has been mingled with wheaten-flour. It is impure.... I cannot eat of it! ... Take it away at once...."

"La yâ Sidi—Allâh yisallimak!" the man protested, paling under his chocolate skin.

But Essenian had sniffed the bread-cake remotely and delicately as a fox might sniff at some slily-poisoned titbit, and now replaced it on the dish, and thrust the dish away....

"Carry it to the cook and inquire into the matter!" He said to Hazel, as the servant removed the dish and vanished straightway: "Do not be disturbed on my account! To one so well schooled in abstinence as myself, it would matter little if the meal consisted only of dates. Mixed in a draught of this pure water, a few drops of an excellent tonic (to the virtues of which I am a living testimony) will more than supply the deficiency.... Meanwhile, do not neglect our chef's excellent omelette soufflée. Or the bombe glace of custard-apple on which he prides himself.... And then—since I know better than to offer cheese to a man who has been 'fed to the wide,' with that as an article of Army rations,—I will join you in a cup of Arabian coffee, black, thick and bitter as the nectar of Mocha should be."

He took from a front pocket of his Service jacket a little case of shining yellow metal, and opening it, showed three slender crystal vials, reposing in a velvet bed. He unstoppered one,—tinging the air laden with the savour of meats and viands—with a whiff of something delicately pungent—rather suggesting the fragrance of lemon-plant to John.... Then with dainty, scrupulous care, he dropped seven drops into the goblet of distilled water; re-stoppered the vial, wiped the lip with a green leaf, returned the vial to its bed, and pocketed the case,—watching through narrowed eyelids the turbid changes taking place in the clear liquid, until as it deepened from cloudy red to clearest ruby, he glanced across the rose-bowl to encounter Hazel's eyes....

"A pretty colour, is it not?" he said critically, holding up the goblet. "Now I will drink, and you must join me. I hope you do not find fault with our Club champagne? ..." He continued, signing to the attendant, who stood ready with another napkined bottle: "That you have been drinking came from von Falkenhayn's Headquarters in Transylvania,—when we bombed him out of them in the summer of 1916.... That defeat of the Vulkan Pass must have been a crushing blow to the Emperor's magnificent favourite,—coming after the tremendous failure of the Second Attack on Verdun."

To the rout of the Vulkan Pass, John knew, Essenian's prowess had contributed. When Roumania had joined the Allies in the August of 1916, and massed her Army on the Carpathian frontier for an invasion of Transylvania, Essenian had acted as Wing Commander of a squadron of Allied Aircraft, acting in concert with a Roumanian Army Corps,—and for his services had been distinguished with the Order of the Roumanian Crown. At Salonika, later on,—for the first time meeting Essenian—John had encountered the French observer who had accompanied the Egyptian's flights.

"They are greatly strong in artillery, the Austro-Germans of von Falkenhayn! ... We are not so.... The Roumanians are only strong in men. As we march on they retreat,—for two weeks it is a triumph.... Then their von Falkenhayn gives the signal, and their guns begin to play on us.... I who speak have been under fire!—was I not in the advanced trenches at Verdun with my storming-party, before I joined the Service Aëronautique! But this was super-gunnery—a torrent of steel and fire and German High Explosive, sweeping—as with the Devil's broom—the mountain-passes clear! All through October continues the fight—every day we are flying! In fog, and rain—zut! rain of shrapnel and fog of poison-gas—we never cease to fly.... When we are not observing—we are bombing! Or making more rain on the Austro-German Divisions—a rain of steel flechettes! Me, I am no coward! but whenever M. Essenian Pasha says to me: 'Prunier, this, day or night, my friend, you accompany me in my avion....' I say to myself as we used to say with my storming-party at Verdun: 'Ça va barda, mon ami! Prepare ton matricule!' For M. le Major will fly with a broken wing, or a bullet through the petrol-tank, and all the juice running! ... C'est un as! ... He puts in me the fear of God—that man who has none at all! ..."

Meanwhile Essenian ate of dates and cheese sparingly, sipped his tonic drink appreciatively, and waited for the man on the other side of the crimson roses to talk.

"Here is the port." He added as the servant filled Hazel's glass from a cobwebbed and ancient-looking bottle: "Don't drink yet. Let us follow the ancient fashion, the first glass of the bottle to a lady's health! ... I propose: 'The beautiful Miss Forbis! ...' What, do you break the glass?"—for John had nodded, and his huge brown fingers had snapped the stem of the wineglass like a match-stick as they set it, emptied, down. "Take a fresh one,—finish the bottle,—and meanwhile try those cheroots.... Or the others—excellent Havanas, though I smoke cigarettes for my own part, or else the water-pipe—our Egyptian ârgili. Ah, here is the coffee," said Essenian pleasantly, as the Egyptian servant previously dismissed, re-appeared at his elbow with another tray. "Black as the eyes and perfumed as the breath of the brides who lead the sons of Islam into the green pavilions of Paradise. Though," he smiled amiably at John over the cigarette he was lighting, as the attendant removed the empty bottle and placed a flask of Benedictine with the coffee beside the guest—"your personal predilection leans to something statelier and less seductive than the gazelle-eyed, moon-faced haura of the glorious Koran.... What says our Saadi: 'The tresses of Beautiful Ones are chains upon the Feet of Prudence, and a snare upon the wings of the Bird of Wisdom..... We Easterners hardly credit the existence of Friendship between those of opposite sexes," pursued the Egyptian, letting the sentences trickle over his smooth lips as though they had been honey, "and yet, subsisting between an intellectual man, and a mentally-superior woman, it may be productive of more lasting gratification than the merely sensual tie."

"What are you getting at, Essenian Pasha?" asked his guest, bluntly.

Essenian had paused as though inviting a reply, and this was the response forthcoming. A faint line showed between his smooth black eyebrows and his tones were less sweet and liquid as he resumed:

"But this,—that such a union between man and woman might lead to great discoveries—in those psychological regions which we are beginning to explore. Two such adventurers, mutually keen, mutually gifted with spiritual perception, bound by sympathies unblunted by the earthly passion of love, might pass back along paths long buried beneath the débris of extinct civilisations—trodden by the footsteps of generations who went before them, to the furthermost limits of the Mysterious Unknown."

He waited. This latest opening proved no whit more successful than others previously given. John Hazel continued to drink, and smoke, and answered nothing. To pry out the diamond hidden in this lump of living clay,—to wrench open the rugged valves of this human mollusc housing the pearl of priceless knowledge,—was going to be more difficult than Essenian had thought....

"Your friend, Miss Forbis," he resumed, and now the heavy eyes were on him, "strikes me as possessing an unusual degree of psychic force and energy, in combination with her remarkable physical beauty and charm. That she is less handsome than her brother, one would be disinclined to credit, were her own testimony not corroborated by the evidence of T.R.S. 43."

"And who might the gentleman you mention be, and what the—what does he know about it?" demanded John Hazel, regarding his host with a decided scowl, and speaking in an aggressive tone.

"T.R.S. is a Turkish Renegade Spy whom I recently met and interviewed at the B.S.I. Office Ismailia," returned Essenian smoothly, "on a subject of vital interest to your attractive English friend.... 'Describe,' I said, 'this British priest who lies in prison at Shechem,' and the man answered 'Mashallah!' Describe the Archangel Jibrail when he came from the Ninth Heaven to announce to Mary the Pure One the Miraculous Birth of the Messiah—between Whom and the touch of Satan, at the moment of His Nativity—the Lord of Creation interposed a veil!' He was quite serious—Turks are idolaters of physical perfection.... Incidentally, he wound up with a few details concerning the—disposition, and predilections distinguishing the Turkish Lieutenant-General of gendarmerie who is at present Commandant of the Prison Camp at Shechem,—which throw a rather lurid light upon the conditions there...."

He chafed his delicate finger-tips softly against each other as he leaned both elbows on the cloth and smiled over the roses into Hazel's gloomy eyes.

"Hamid is a—let us say a protégé of the notorious Djemal Pasha, once Turkish Minister of Marine—now Commander of the Fourth and Eighth Turkish Army Corps. Of mean birth, a Turk from Crete—he bids fair to out-Djemal Djemal.... I need not remind you that Crete is—the country of the Minotaur! ..."

The speaker's beryl eyes shone green in the light of the electric globe-lamps. His voice had a little poisonous hiss through its delicate silkiness.

"Since the prison camps of Beersheba were shifted to Shechem, their Commandant has a narrower field for the exercise of his peculiar bent.... According to my Turkish spy, he has what you would call 'a down' upon your friend's brother,—whose refusal to be removed from the Barracks to the wired camp set apart for the officer-prisoners has offended the Bey.... Perhaps the presence of the priest is a check upon his usage of the soldiers, whom Father Forbis nurses in fever and other sickness, and for whom he has obtained consular funds for the purchase of medicines, charcoal for fires, meat for broth, and so on...."

He satisfied himself by a swift glance that John was absorbed in listening, and resumed: "Turks are—Turks!" He made as though to spit, but checked himself, and went on: "You have said to me: 'We Hazaëls have an old score to settle up with Hamid....' Two years have not changed the Bey. He is still the Minotaur! ... And unless Fortune, or," he shrugged "the favour of Heaven, operate in the interests of this brother of your friend, his may yet be the fate from which self-slaughter saved your Cousin Jacob—Catholics being forbidden that last resource of the desperate.... Escape from torture or degradation by the Gate of Suicide...."

XIII

Drifting down a sluggish stream of drowsy after-dinner reflections; brooding between a bellyful of varied meats, and a brain addled with wine;—lost to the guiding, dominant idea of the Big Old Men, ranged one behind the other like a sculptured procession of Assyrian planet-gods, reaching back to the Beginning of Actualities whence looked down the Biggest Old Man of All—John Hazel had been recalled as suddenly as though a 5.9 shell had exploded in the Club courtyard, and starting to his feet, upset the chair he had sat on; its fall—with the crash of a breaking glass—making the men at other tables look round.

"In peril such as this, and you sit here drowsing!"

It rang in Hazel's singing ears—the voice of the worshipped woman. And in a moment the gorged Sybarite was gone. With a curt apology he resumed the chair the Club attendant had picked up and now replaced for him. A cool, resourceful man, instinct with force and energy, sat looking at Essenian across the rose-filled bowl.

"If things are as desperate as you've said, why not have told me? Let's thrash this out, Essenian Pasha, please!"

"With pleasure, but I must first know how Miss Forbis discovered that her brother was living. For that she knows, in spite of her very remarkable reticence,—was plain to me to-day. Was it you who broke that news to her? ..."

"No ... She told me! ..."

"When? ..."

"This afternoon! ..."

"That is curious! ..." The tone was incredulous.... "Through whom did she learn the fact?"

"Couldn't enlighten you! ..."

"How long has she known? ..."

"I'm unable to say! ..."

Scrutinising his guest between narrowed eyelids, sifting the unwilling replies with inquisitorial care, it was patent to Essenian that John knew, but would not tell. He tried again with no better result.

"Has Miss Forbis by any unlucky chance, embarked—any other person—in an effort to rescue her brother from the prison at Shechem?"

This time John flatly lied:

"No! ..."

"That is well. I should certainly withdraw from the attempt if its success were to be so handicapped."

"Handicap or none, whether you withdraw or not, I'm entered for the running!"

"I did not say that I withdrew. On the contrary!"

"Good egg you! Now—"

John poured out a brimming glass of iced mineral water, emptied it, and finished as he set down the empty glass:

"How far is Shechem from Ismailia?"

"Following the old Pilgrim's route overland—a distance of about 232 English miles. As the crow flies—or as I shall fly"—Essenian smiled—"about 195 miles...."

"Thanks. When can we start? ..."

"For Shechem? ..."

"For Shechem! ..."

"That depends!" said Essenian with his titter, as John glanced at his wrist-watch, and then at the elaborate clock,—mounted in captured German gun-metal—that occupied a bracket over the door of the dining-room: "That depends on your readiness to accept my conditions! ..."

"'Conditions'? You wait till now to talk of conditions!"

The black eyes were full on Essenian, and they had an angry stare.

"I have purposely waited until now! ..."

The cool, sinister strength that lay behind Essenian's veneer of finical affectation, came home to Hazel as it had not previously. This was the Essenian of his French observer-mechanic, the man who had flown with a broken wing-stay, and a leaking petrol-tank, through the hellish Austro-German fire in the battle of the Vulkan Pass.

"To push an advantage, consolidate a position and advance to a point beyond is the science of warfare, and the secret of social influence. Shall we discuss these conditions in my private room upstairs—or would you prefer to stay here?"

John, looking round, saw no occupied table in their near vicinity, and grunted surlily:

"Here's good enough for me! ..."

"My own experience supports your view.... Here is quite good enough.... For the arrangement of the details of a plot, for the carrying-out of a delicate and dangerous discussion, the ideal place is—under the electric lights in the middle of a drawing-room, in the stalls at a theatre—in the dining-room of a Club or restaurant, or in the Throne Room at a Royal Levée...."

"Then let us get to biz. You've sprung a surprise on me—at the last minute...." John added, fixing his heavy black stare on the gleaming green eyes of the tiger-snake ambushed behind the roses; "Still,—trot out your conditions! ... How much do you want in cash? ..."

"You are rude, Mr. Hazel.... But the young are always insolent!" Essenian gave the little bleating laugh. "I want no money of you.... Rather I am what the British merchant would call a warmer man than you are, in spite of the fact that you inherited from your grandfather more than three hundred and eighty thousand pounds...."

"Upon conditions, Pasha! upon conditions!" jeered John, grinning over the table; and roused to sudden venomous wrath, Essenian hissed at him—leaning over the crimson flower-hedge until his fierce breath beat on the other's face:

"Do I not know you have accepted those conditions? ... Are you not living—in some degree—in your grandfather's house as a Jew? ... Have you not the letter 'J' instead of 'Nil' on your identification-disc? ... Do you not wear upon a chain about your neck an enamelled Shield of David? If you die, or are killed—will they not bury you, if anything be left of you to bury—under the Mogen David as they bury a Jew?"