Chapter XVII: “The wide gulf that parts us may yet be no wider.”

Molly stood by the drawing-room door of her bungalow, gazing across the veranda into the pitch-dark night, listening to the heavy thunder of the rain.

Presently her anxious eyes came back from the shrouded garden to the man sitting by the lounge she had just vacated.

“I do hope Leslie will be all right,” she said.

Getting up, Cooper came to her side, gazing at her with a curious mingling of dumb pleading and conscious possession.

“She will be all right, my dove. Lebrassa will see to that.”

“But I wish she was back. It’s after eleven.”

So saying, Molly turned away from him, and went to a table at the far end of the room. There she stood, turning over the many magazines listlessly.

Presently she picked out one and went back to the lounge. As she seated herself she tried not to see the blackness of the hands that arranged the cushions for her with clumsy tenderness. Then she stayed, not reading, but watching the man beside her.

All at once there came a sound like the rush of many naked feet along the balcony.

As Cooper started up, a crowd of wild figures loomed in the open doorway, wet and steaming, with the rain dripping from their wool, their scarred, naked bodies gleaming and writhing.

They burst into the room, trampling with great, muddy feet on the dainty carpet, knocking over half a dozen chairs by the impetuosity of their entrance.

In a rush of fear, Molly clutched her husband’s arm. One of his hands went to his hip pocket and stayed there.

The intruders stopped short, awed, not by the negro’s action, but by the strangeness of their surroundings. To savages, accustomed only to the crude appointments of a mud hut, that drawing-room with its rose-painted piano, its gilded, satin-covered furniture, soft silken draperies, flowers and cushions, was a revelation.

“Who are they? What do they want?” Molly gasped.

Cooper pushed her back on the lounge, standing between her and the savages.

From the wild rabble Mhaki came forward.

“What are you doing here?” Cooper demanded in anger and astonishment, thinking the high-priest had come, as he did occasionally, but unattended, to see Lebrassa.

“What are we doing here?”

A mocking chorus answered him in the dialect he had used.

“We have come for the woman who is your wife,” the chanters continued. “She is to be wedded to another whose name is Death. Full long has Kallu called for vengeance. And we are thirsty after long years of waiting.”

The answer infuriated Cooper.

“Get out of this, you mad, gin-drinking fools,” he bellowed. “It’s just as well for you I’m here and not the Sultan, or your lives would be the price of this piece of drunken folly.”

A roar of brutal laughter greeted him.

Its unbridled ferocity made Molly clutch his arm again. Her face was pressed against his side. In fear his blackness was forgotten; she remembered only the fact that he was her husband and her natural protector.

“Why, Bhessu, the Sultan sent us,” came with jeering laughter.

“The Sultan sent you!” Cooper repeated. “What madness are you talking?”

Over the jeers and laughter Mhaki’s voice came.

“There’s no need to mock at him. Our Sultan said he did not know. And he has been a good keeper. Come, Bhessu, let us have that woman, your wife, the daughter of He-who-slew-Irena. The Sultan has sent us for her.”

“It is false,” Cooper roared. “The woman you want is with him.”

“Hark to him! Another traitor,” the mob yelled.

By now Cooper’s anger had died down. In its place had come a strained, thoughtful look.

“I am no traitor,” he said quietly, “but a faithful servant of the Sultan. What fool’s talk is this, Mhaki, about my wife being the daughter of He-who-slew-Irena? What did the Sultan say?”

Very briefly the high-priest gave the gist of Lebrassa’s statements.

“Come now,” he finished. “Let us have the woman. The Sultan desires both of you, and there is no time to waste.”

Calm and ominous, Cooper’s answer came.

“There is still time to talk. It is false, all this the Sultan has said. I swear by all Kallu holds sacred. He has lied to you through love of the woman he held, and has put the burden of vengeance on another. Ask Yoni, to whom in my faithfulness I would not listen. Ask her, and she will tell you.”

“He speaks against the Sultan. His life for it,” the crowd howled.

Cooper’s hand came from his pocket to rest on the golden head pressed against his side. He stayed, waiting for the mob to rush.

Over the wild yells Mhaki’s voice came, calling for silence.

“Love has made you crazy, Bhessu,” he said. “Yoni gave evidence in favor of all the Sultan said. And I can see for myself this woman is the one. For she has the hair and the eyes of her accursed father.”

In a strained, dogged voice, Cooper answered.

“Let me have my say. Then if you still think this woman is the one, you may take her. Hair and eyes, what proof are they? May not a child favor one parent and not the other? Perhaps the mother of your Sultan’s bride had hair like the night and eyes of the deepest blue, and it is the mother and not the father she favors. What Nanza told you is true. And I can prove it. How many years is it since the Queen Irena was found murdered on the Altar of Night? Twenty-three. And it was proved that he who did the deed was not then married. If your Sultan speaks the truth concerning these two women, how is it that my wife is nearly twenty-eight?”

Scoffing laughter greeted this statement.

At twenty-eight a negro woman is old. To Mhaki and his following the girl Cooper was defending looked still in her teens.

With wild mockery and jeers the crowd surged up to him, to tear Molly’s hands from their clinging, terrified hold.

There was a gasping scream as her face was hidden against her husband’s coat to shut out the swarm of naked, mud-splashed, bestial figures.

His hand that had lain loosely closed on her soft hair, moved slightly. A glint of steel showed pressed on to gleaming gold. And with it came a revolver shot.

“The Sultan lies,” Cooper bellowed. “I will not give my wife to such as you.”

Molly sank back on the silken cushions, an ominous little red patch oozing through the strands of her shining hair.

Over the baulked howls of the savages came the sound of five more revolver shots fired in quick succession. Then all was silent except for a horrible, soft, hacking sound.

On the lounge Molly lay quiet and peaceful, her brocade shoes in the blood of the mangled heap at her feet, that had once been her husband.

He had given her the gift she most desired--death. A gift that had cost him his life.

The savage horde went from the room, thirsting for further slaughter, maddened by the vengeance that had been taken from them.

Yet in Mhaki’s mind a doubt lingered.