The Hawk of Egypt
the best thing to do.
Should he take the first train back to Luxor, or, as the duchess had
not seen fit to acquaint him as to her movements, should he stay where
he was, write her a letter, or send a telegram and wait for an answer?
Anyway, he was irritated enough to scowl at the commissionaire who was
rating a woman whom he had seen hanging about the street, doubtless
with intent of soliciting a nickel coin from one of the great white
race as he--or she--descended the steps to stroll along the street.
She made a few choice remarks upon the undoubted inclusion of a pig in
the commissionaire's parentage, in a curiously sibilant voice, then
limped away with a distressing swing of her body from the hips.
"Can't you keep those people quiet?" Kelham demanded angrily, as he
moved a chair further back, and lit a cigarette.
An hour had passed, in which he had come to no decision, when Fate, in
the shape of a page-boy, offered him the just-arrived, local morning
paper, which he took and read, with only half a mind upon the gossipy
contents.
"By Jove!" he suddenly exclaimed. "If that isn't a bit of luck!
Here's the very excuse for getting down there without kind of thrusting
myself upon them." He flattened out the paper and again read through
the paragraph which gave a most extraordinarily detailed account of the
immensely wealthy Hugh Carden Ali, his career at Harrow; his travels;
his stables in the desert; his birds and a hundred and one other
details calculated to interest those who like reading about other
people's most intimate affairs. It ended: ". . . Being a great
sportsman, the strange story of lion which is causing such uneasiness
and is likely to do harm to the Luxor season, has taken him to his
Tents of Purple and Gold, one of the wonders of modern Egypt and which
lie in the desert a little distance from the well-known Colossi."
He did not frown this time as he folded the paper and turned to watch
the commissionaire in conclave with a coal-black Ethiopian who, clad in
crimson tunic, enormous turban and with scimitar rattling at his side,
tendered an envelope.
"Yes, yes," said the hotel servant. "I will see that it is delivered
into the gentleman's own hands. And, tell me"--he lowered his voice as
he winked his eye--"has she returned from Alexandria?"
Qatim was caught in a quandary, and he cursed the vanity which had
urged him to don his most resplendent garments upon his errand to the
great hotel, to which he had come after a violent argument with
Zulannah.
With a heart full of hatred, and agony in her twisted limbs the woman
had hung about the streets in front of the hotel until she had seen the
man for whom she had felt such a sudden and fleeting love, and who was
the primary cause of her disfigurement.
Hurt him she must, if only as a balm to her own physical and mental
agony; and in what better way than by destroying his faith in the white
girl he loved?
Hence the letter, written hastily in the hovel and consigned to the
care of the Ethiopian, who, in return for his assistance, had demanded
backshisch in the shape of a pink leaf covered with strange black marks.
The woman's presence in the great city in her deplorable state was the
last thing he wanted to be known; so he lied--clumsily.
"Nay; she is in Alexandria," he blurted out.
The commissionaire slowly winked an eye.
"Perhaps," he said; "perhaps not," and chuckled as the negro turned
hastily and strode away in the direction of the bank.
And thus came it to be known in the bazaar that Zulannah the courtesan
had returned to the great city.
And a little later, Ben Kelham felt no tweak at the string with which
Fate had hobbled him to his destiny, when, on hearing his number
called, he took the letter from the page-boy, turned it over, and
looked at it on each side, as we do when curious, but not
over-interested; then he opened it idly, read it and crushed it in both
hands.
It was written in the execrable English Zulannah had picked up in her
few years of cosmopolitan intercourse with different nationalities; it
was in vile hand-writing and was as despicable a method of revenge as
an anonymous letter usually is.
It ran after this fashion:
"If you want to find your white woman go and look for her in the ruins
of Karnak, at night, in the arms of her half-caste lover, Hugh Carden
Ali."
And the woman who had limped back to the street, sniggered behind her
veil as she watched the man tear the letter into shreds, while he sat
and thought out an answer to this second problem.
"It's a damnable lie. My Damaris and good old Carden! I expect
they've met, but who------" He sniffed at his hands suddenly. "Pah!
Now, where have I smelt that scent before?--filth!" He sat with his
hands to his nose, then frowned as, under the suggestion of the
perfume, the picture of a lovely woman clad in silks and satins and
wearing rich jewels rose before him.
"My God!" he said slowly, as the full significance of it all dawned
slowly upon him. "Of course! She--she invited me to--to visit
her--and I refused. By all that's clean and decent, if I don't make
her pay for this! And it's Carden, too, who can tell me the best way
to set about it. The harlot! I wonder if I shall have to wait until
evening for a train." He clenched his hands until the knuckles showed
white, as he unseeingly watched a woman limp down the street. "I'll
make her sorry she was ever born."
He need not have worried on that point. Fate was dogging those
unsteady feet back to the hovel.
The spreading of a prairie fire is slow compared to the speed with
which news runs through the bazaar. The servants in the big house in
the big garden went sullenly about their various tasks of tidying and
clearing up the courtesan's home, whilst little knots of people,
composed principally of women, stood about in the vicinity of the gate.
It was the first time the tyrannical woman had been absent upon a long
journey, and the relatives and friends even unto a most distant
generation of her servants had taken advantage of it to visit the house
and examine its, to them, surpassing luxury.
The Ethiopian, with his mind fixed only upon the bank, had taken but
little interest in the house itself, and had visited it but rarely, and
then only for the sake of appearances; so that the visitors had become
more and more brazen, as the days passed, fingering the satins, sitting
upon the cushions, feasting on the floor.
Bes, the monstrous keeper of the lions, had become prime favourite with
the men, and the neighbourhood had resounded with the roars of the
brutes at night as they fought for their food.
Also was there something savage in the way the women visitors had
fingered and touched everything, and had visited every corner of the
building. They were fat or thin, plain or passably good-looking; they
were all hideously poor, and in their heads they had the echo of the
gibes their menfolk had cast at them, when, returning with empty
pockets, they had boasted of great conquests.
Which boasting the sillies had believed, thinking, as all women think,
that their own particular male has been specially favoured of the gods
and is therefore an Adonis in the eyes of every other woman.
There was an indefinite air of trouble in that quarter of the bazaar
which increased with the heat of the day. Household matters were
neglected, whilst the women foregathered to talk; words were few, but
gestures were quick and expressive; the servants, wondering at the
absence of the Ethiopian, grumbled as they worked; they had been paid
no wages in their mistress's absence, and were on the verge of mutiny.
Brave words! When they knew that they would fall flat upon their faces
at the first swish of her satin robes.
They waited all the day, and no definite word came of the woman's
return. They waited until the stars twinkled and they still waited
with the terrible patience of the East. Why they waited they could not
have told you. They dared not set upon her if she passed in her
litter; she wielded too great a power through her beauty and wealth for
that; but as the hours passed, they moved softly to and fro, as moves
the wretched beast in his cage at feeding-time, whilst a look of
cunning allied to cruelty shone in the soft brown eyes.
It only required a spark to start the conflagration.
CHAPTER XXVI
"_And the dogs shall eat Jezebel . . . and
there shall be none to bury her_."
II KINGS.
The station was bathed blood-red in the after-glow of the wonderful
sunset, which, being a daily occurrence, is hardly ever noticed by the
winter visitors in Cairo; a star or two twinkled in the pale grey hem
of the coat of many colours which Day was offering to Night, as the
evening breeze lifted the edges of the veils and blew refreshingly
around a woman who descended awkwardly from a native cart and limped
her way across the station yard. The porter trundling Ben Kelham's
luggage caught her by the shoulder and likening her to the cross-eyed
offspring of a clumsy she-camel, flung her to one side. Rage incarnate
glared from her eyes, bitter vituperation flowed from behind the
yashmak, until, noticing that a swashbuckling member of the native
police was making his menacing way towards her, she quieted down and
limped to where she saw, standing, the station porter of Shepheard's
Hotel.
Strange is that power which has led so many a criminal to the gallows
by dragging him irresistibly back to the scene of the crime.
It was some such force which had held Zulannah throughout the day. She
had nothing further to gain by looking upon the man who had
unconsciously been the cause of her ruin; she had done her best to
retaliate by blighting the love she had herself tried to gain; but she
had been mastered by a morbid desire to look just once more upon Ben
Kelham, hoping to be able to trace in his face some sign of his mental
hurt.
The suffering of innocent people and animals had always given her
intense pleasure. How much greater, therefore, her satisfaction if she
could bring, and gloat over, bodily or mental pain to someone who had
made her suffer?
She hung about until she saw Ben Kelham arrive, and stood quite close
to him, chuckling inwardly at the tale told by the grim set of his
mouth.
Zulannah was dirty; her hands were ill-kempt; her fine muslin veils
filthy and torn; but there still hung about her the faint odour of the
perfume she had always used in the hey-day of her success. The passing
of a barrow piled high with luggage disturbed her veils, and as the
rush of some excited natives disturbed the air Ben Kelham swung around.
He had suddenly scented the perfume of Zulannah the courtesan.
He looked to right, to left and all about him, eyed with disfavour the
dirty woman so close to him, who stood crookedly, with an evil leer to
one eye; frowned and walked away to the platform from which the train
starts for Luxor. All stations in the East are invariably and most
uncomfortably crowded with natives who either stray hopelessly after
the manner of lost sheep, or stand stock-still, as hopelessly incapable
of movement, or rush pell-mell hither-thither at the sound of clanging
bell, or shriek from locomotive; but the station was unduly crowded
this evening, owing to the return of hundreds of pilgrims from a visit
to a certain shrine in the countryside and an influx of their friends
and relations from the bazaar to greet them.
The strong electric lights were blazing, intensifying the vivid colours
and modifying the dirt upon what was intended to be the white portions
of the natives' picturesque raiment; they shone down also upon the
disfigured woman who, with a certain amount of satisfaction in her