Chapter VII

"What have you seen? ..." A fierce breath beat on Katharine's cheek, and a steel-strong grip was on her arm, as Essenian's swift whisper assailed her ear: "Deny not that you saw!--the stone splits--that is enough!--it means the end for me! I am deceived--" the shrill voice cracked despairingly--"I to whom They promised Life--Life prolonged beyond the age of elephants--Youth that should keep its freshness like the flower in the block of ice. Speak, woman, say what you have seen, or by Eblis! I will make you! I am strong yet, and if Azrael's hand be at my throat, you shall feel mine at yours!"

Even as he leaped, Katharine swung out a long arm, striking him across the body, breaking the force of his leap, as she remembered to have once done when a savage cat, crossed with the wild breed, had crept up behind, unnoticed, and sprung upon her to bite.

"You native cad!" rang her clear disdainful voice. "Are you out for murder?"

"I am out to make you tell me--" Breathing unevenly, he stood back from the divan, his supple body tense for a second spring, his glittering eyes watching her: "What have you seen in the beryl? Answer!--it is my right to hear!"

"But not your right to lay hands upon an Englishwoman," Katharine retorted, tingling with insulted pride. "Do not attempt it again, because I carry a revolver, and like most women who have served in this War, I have learned to use it well!"

Brave words, yet her head was swimming as she spoke, and her heart throbbed suffocatingly, and the hand that gripped the butt of the little Colt's revolver, shook with the rigor of fear. The strange and terrible experiences of the night--horror of Essenian's vicinity and touch, the strain of long anxiety and protracted fasting--were beginning to tell upon Katharine. She despised women who fainted at dreadful sights or in perilous situations, and yet--she realised herself not far from fainting now....

Air--she was famishing for want of air! though the room was open to the stars and the night-winds--though the curtains behind that tigerish orange-red figure were bellying and parting, blown inwards under their pointed triple arches by a gale she could not feel. She could see the branches of the thronging trees--the lateral limb of a towering moss-cup oak swaying strangely under the weight of a climbing brown figure. She caught the flash of eyes and teeth in a shadowy face topped by a white sun-helmet--and ran towards the archway as a man leaped into the room....

Others followed, dropping from the great elbowed tree-limb to the wall, and jumping through the archway.... Men in the well-known khaki drill, with sun-browned or pale European faces under their sun-helmets--and the red brassard of the Military Police....

"Sorry, but I have to arrest you, Major Essenian, in the name of the King...."

A young Lieutenant of M.P. with a tooth-brush moustache of undeniable ginger was pressing a folded paper on Essenian and mopping his own dripping face....

"Warm work, shinning up trees in this muggy Egyptian climate. But I fancy we've dropped in just at the right time... Certainly for the lady. Sergeant Whitmore, look to the lady. Handcuff the prisoner, Corporal Rose. And, Major, remember that anything you say will be used against you in evidence."

"There will be--there will be a formal Court Martial?" He raised his face, the grey face, pinched and sweat-dabbled, that Katharine had seen in the vision of the Stone: "I demand it!--I demand it! Whatever the charges on this warrant which I have not read, remember!--I can disprove them--I can confute them--establish my honour in the face of the world."

"You'll be lucky if you do! No, you can't change into uniform. One of your servants can pack a kit-case, and leave it for you at the Military Clink. That's your address--while you require one. Hit that tin gong, will you, Corporal? It'll fetch some of these Gyppo fellows to show the way to the hall-door."

"I can guide you, Mr. Martyn!"

"Holy Smoke, it's Miss Forbis from Montana! How in the wide-- I beg your pardon!"

The Lieutenant--not so long ago a convalescent patient at the Hospital, broke off the end of the question, reddening, but Katharine answered with her broad, sweet smile, looking in the boyish face with candid cairngorm eyes:

"How in the wide did I come here? Well, I'll tell you strictly in confidence--in return for a lift back to Alexandria. Can do? ..."

"Can do! Off duty--as soon as I've delivered the goods at the M.P." His glance at the goods was highly expressive: "_'Hê intē! Ya rajîl!_" This to an elderly Mohammedan servant with a much-ridged forehead of anxiety--Nasr Ullah, summoned in haste to the Pavilion by an alien stroke upon the Presence's gong. "Oh, you! Show us the way downstairs!"

"I will go, I will go! Do not handle me roughly.... Remember that I am an old--a very old man! Miss Forbis, I knew your father once! Speak for me! Use your influence! Remember," the quavering voice broke in a fit of senile coughing, the manacled hands extended to Katharine in supplication, looked like those of a mummy, so discoloured and shrunken were they: "You do not answer? You triumph in my downfall?" The narrow eyes glimmered hatred out of their deep-dug caves. "Do not forget your brother, and your friend, Mr. Hazel--whose fate is practically in my hands!"

"Their fate is in the Hands of God," Katharine answered gently, moving beyond the reach of the withered, trembling clutch. "Like yours and mine, and that of every other creature. Good-bye, Major Essenian...."

He made no reply. He was muttering to himself, and looked, indeed, an old man. His head fell on his breast as the word to move was given--and the party of policemen, with the orange-robed figure tottering in their midst--tramped over the white bridge in the bluish-pale light of the small hours, and followed by Katharine and the Lieutenant, went down through the airless house....

When the tail-light of the last of the string of the four Military Police cars had winked past the turn in the avenue, and the _porte cochère_ was closed, Nasr Ullah went back to his "house" and found her waking. She hastened out of the inner apartment and ran to him in alarm.

"Oh, my eyes! Oh, my husband! _Alhamdolillah_ thou hast returned to us! Little sleep have we had this night. Strange scrapings at the back of the house, and whistles as of Afrits talking.... The children woke and wept, and I scarce had wits to lie to them--thinking the Servants of Eblis were carrying the Presence away! ..."

"The Presence hath gone, sure enough, but Inglizi soldiers took him. Always I have known," said Nasr Ullah, "that some day the soldiers would come. They followed the woman secretly, climbing the trees like monkeys, and leaped in upon the Presence when she cried out.... Perhaps she was a spy--God knows! ..."

"Praise be to Him the soldiers took thee not also! Tell me--in this matter of the pigeons.... Didst thou--"

Nasr Ullah shook his head:

"My heart was straitened when I left thee,--but Allah enlightening me--I dealt wisely. For at the compound of the Commandant--at the Headquarters of Intelligence and at Garrison Headquarters--one grain of barley threw I at each place,--and picked it up again! Then, burying the pot and the grain in a place where none will find them--I returned at the fourth hour, and said to the Presence--'Lo! I have done thy bidding, in the casting of poisoned barley.' And in this I spake the very truth, yet Nûh's birds are safe for me!"

"It is well. The Compassionate shielded thee. Think you, my husband, the Presence will return?"

"I think not, but if he does, he will not find Nasr Ullah. The Eye of Radiance is broken, so even did he look in it he could not find me. The Englishmen have opened his _maktabs_ and taken all his papers. Come, let us take the children, and thy jewels, and our money and the best of the clothing and go away from here!"

"When the fleas leave the cat, he is dead!" said Fatimeh acutely.

"No flea am I!" denied Nasr Ullah stoutly. "Forty-two years have I served The Presence, and by Allah! I have served him well and faithfully. Now, I shall serve Allah, Who is the better Master, and my sons shall grow up without knowledge of ink-pools and wizardry...."

"And the bag that is buried under the bed hath enough in it to buy thee a homestead. Verily the Beneficent hath hearkened to my prayers. Go we by day, or now?"

"Now. Make haste and dress the children--hide thy jewels about thee." He looked round for something to dig with, and picked up a big brass ladle. "Strange, how a man may feel like a thief in digging up his own hoard!"

"Will there--is there likely to be a Court Martial?" Katharine asked the Lieutenant, as some hours later, a Police Ford Car, diverted from official use for the purposes of chivalry, ran between green fields of fodder on the road by the Canal, and the Lieutenant--having fed his charge with sandwiches of cold chicken, hard eggs, ripe figs and bananas, and hot coffee out of a thermos--was pressing Turkish cigarettes on her and offering a light.

"Something in the nature of one, possibly. But precious short, and to the point. I'm not broaching official secrets!--but the evidence is solid. We've had quite a cloud of witnesses to prove that the Pasha has been playing the kind of trick with the British Government that he tried to play on you. There were two of our Secret Intelligence men, in Shechem, one of 'em a prisoner in the Barracks and the other in disguise. And he was twice seen by these chaps to shed despatches into the town-square...."

"But weren't the despatches dummies?" Katharine asked.

"That was the tale he fed 'em with at H.Q., but it won't wash!"--the owner of the ginger toothbrush shook his head: "We've got hold of the last lot and they're genuine enough. Seditious propaganda--from centres in the Far East--that's the sort of stuff he's been dropping in Palestine.... What's more--it has just come out that he murdered his observer--the S.I. man who was shut up with the other War Prisoners in the Barracks saw the thing done--in mid-air over Shechem--just as he'd focussed his binnics on Essenian's machine. 'The Two-Faced Nightingale,' the War Prisoners used to call her--because of her transferable number and colour-plates--a clever invention of the Pasha's, you see...."

"But I thought they'd approved of the invention at Headquarters? ..."

Said the Lieutenant, with a shrewdness that went curiously with his youthful face:

"Oh, right enough, the Brass Hats approved of the invention! But they didn't approve of its being approved of," he twinkled at the alliteration--"by the fellows on the other side. The man's a dud! And he's jolly well earned what's he's going"--he looked at his wrist-watch--"what he's bound to get--half-an-hour after morning gun."

"_Boom!_"

Even as the Lieutenant spoke, the radiant air vibrated, and flocks of swallows, newly arrived, scared by the detonation, rose and wheeled shrieking over the Fortress of Alexander's Town....

The Hospital was already astir as Katharine passed in. She did not go at once to the sleeping-tent she shared with Lady Wastwood, but passed the white rows of canvas dwellings, and turned into the dewy, deserted gardens, where odours of Eden breathed from the newly opened roses, and all the thrushes and blackbirds and bulbuls were singing in chorus to greet the birth of another day.

Her glance sought the table where she had left the card and the letter. They were not there. Lady Wastwood must have taken them. One could always count on Trixie for such kind, considerate acts.

She threw down her hat and the serge uniform-cape on the table and stepped out upon the terrace to drink in the sweet coolness, resting her hands on the balustrade as she looked out over the gardens, and the Khedive's boasted tennis-lawns of rafia--beyond the belt of palms, evergreen oaks, tamarisks and stone pines and rustling casuarinas, that clothe the slopes of Montana, to the changing blues and beryls of the classic Western Sea.

Among the cistus-blossoms at her feet, the early bees were humming; orioles were busy weaving their nest in the overhead vine. A light step sounded on the mosaic floor behind her. Trixie had come out to look for her. No--not Trixie! A sudden shock passed through her. Her heart leaped and seemed to stop, then went on beating furiously. She felt, without knowledge, that Edward Yaill was near....

Waves of carnation swamped her creamy fairness. Great waves of joy surged in her heart. She held her breath and looked down at the white hands folded before her on the creamy stone of the balcony....

The hand that lay uppermost wore the ancient gem of Hercules. Now a breath fanned upon her neck, the subtle scents of the Desert surrounded and enveloped her, an arm in a khaki sleeve gently stole round her, and a familiar hand covered the onyx ring.... Yaill's hand. Beautiful and strong, masculine and soldierly even in its slimness, scorched to the colour of lion-hide by savage Asian suns.

"O! Edward.... O my man of men! God gives you back to me! ...."

"Sweetheart! Dear woman! I had not hoped for this! ..."

Wonderful, unexpected boon. Heaven's manna to the starving. His Katharine's heart upon his own, her lips as freely yielded as though the hateful barrier had never risen between.... Soon he would wake, Yaill told himself--to aching desolation. But for a little he would take what Katharine granted him.

"Julian? ..." She started in his arms.

"Julian is safe, my sweetheart, but not yet fit to travel. I left him in the best of care, at G.H.Q. at Lydd. The General got me a passage down by one of their coasting sea-planes. A Sopwith from the 'Raquin'--and she did it in splendid time, too! Another kiss! ... For a fellow who has lived on memories of kisses--since that day we parted at Kerr's Arbour, Katharine! How your letter brought the whole thing back, when it came to me at the Khan at Shechem...."

"By John Hazel? ..."

"A woman brought it, certainly--but Hazel sent it me...."

"Dear Edward, where is he? You do not answer! ..." She drew away from Yaill, looking in his troubled face. "Where is John Hazel? ..."

"I would give much to tell you! ..."

"You mean that he is dead? ..."

"Frankly, we fear the worst. When we escaped from Shechem, Hazel was lame through an accident. He would not hamper us--he stayed behind to keep the road. The road to Kir Saba.... It runs through a defile among the mountains--just where a Turkish ammunition-lorry had broken down...."

"Go on! ..."

"For long after we had passed we heard bombs bursting. There seemed to be any amount of fighting going on at that point on the road. Then there was an explosion--the lorry had blown up sky-high. We learned that the day after, when a British scouting-'plane came back from reconnaissance in the neighbourhood. There were--human _débris_ upon the road--and several dead horses. If Hazel is dead--and I fear he is--he died as a man should die...."

"But if he is not dead?" Her great eyes held his: "If he were imprisoned in--a wooden hut, chained down upon a native bed--"

"What do you mean?" Yaill started. "Have you dreamed you saw him so? There was a wooden hut in the War Prisoners' Wired Enclosure at Shechem. Julian was there when we found him--chained as you describe!"

"It was not Julian whom I saw--somewhere between midnight and two o'clock this morning--but John Hazel...." She shuddered, "John Hazel, so brutally ill-used--so frightfully disfigured, that the thing chained to the _anghareb_ was like anything but a man.... Yet I knew him. You cannot mistake his eyes, once you have seen them. He is alive--and a prisoner. O Edward, it was no dream!--I tell you that I saw!--"

"Since you feel like that," Yaill caught fire at the flame of her intense conviction, "I'll go back--in another skin--and fine-comb the Front for him."

"Dear, dear Edward! That would be great of you!"

"Not it. I am the man's debtor. He brought me word of you at Sheria, and afterwards at Shechem. Shall I ever forget the thrill it gave--the sight of that envelope with your handwriting!"

"Ah, but there were two letters...." Remembrance flooded her. "Didn't you read the other? I don't believe you have!"

"Frankly, there was no time. But I have it here upon me."

He felt in a baggy side-pocket of his khaki Service jacket, pulled out a crumpled buff envelope, and held it out to her.

"Read it now, Edward! O Edward, read it! ..."

He looked at her whimsically, and opened Nurse Pidge's letter. When he began to read, Katharine was standing. When he looked round, she was seated in a chair. He crossed the floor and knelt by her, and her yearning arms went out to him, and drew him home from exile, to the shelter of her breast.