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But for that alarm McLean could have believed the whole thing a farcical attempt of Hamdi's to revenge himself upon Ryder supposing that Hamdi had discovered Ryder in his masquerade or else as the prowler by night but Jack's furious anxiety to keep the party out, and his dashing back, ostensibly to preserve his things
"But she doesn't want to be married," Ryder insisted anxiously. "Her father her alleged father has just sprung this on her. Says there are political or financial reasons. He's been caught in some dirty work by this Hamdi Bey and he's stopping Hamdi's mouth with the girl.... And we've got to stop that." "I wonder if we can," said McLean thoughtfully. "If we can? When the girl is French?
Until I saw her perched in the corner of the sofa, with her legs tucked up under her, and the light playing a game of magic amid the reds and golds and browns of her hair, while she cheerily discoursed to us of Hamdi's villainy, I never noticed the dull decorum of this room. I was struck with the decorative value of mere woman.
"P'r'aps I'll be out till morning. I wonder if Hamdi's got a goat." He went away for his gun. In a very few minutes he left the camp, gaily calling to her, "Sleep well, Ruby! You look like a sorceress standing there all lit up by the fire. The flames are flickering over you. Good night good night!" His steps died away in the sands, his voice died away in the darkness.
Hamdi Bey, and Hamdi's eunuchs, would be blandly ignorant of such a scandal. What his disappearance would indicate would be some further frolic on his part, some tempting of a later Providence before he had abandoned his disguise.... If he were discovered, for instance, in some of those native quarters, behind a woman's veil....
Then he felt the blind working of some tool that caught it and worried it free. It seemed to him that through that dark aperture a current of cold, delicious air came rushing in about him. The blows sounded against the adjoining bricks and he thought of the glorious joy of seeing out again, feeling that he would welcome even the sight of Hamdi's blond mustache and the eunuch's hideous grin.
"Is she not a rose will he not adore her, our Hamdi?" she heard that stout cousin of Hamdi's say to a companion, and the two stared on appraisingly at the young girl, in her freshness and virginal youth, as if at some toy to invite the jaded appetite of a satiated master.
"Since we met, guess how many times I've crossed the Atlantic. Four times!" Long-suffering Atlantic! "And about yourself. Still going piano, piano with books and things?" "Yes, books and things," I echud. The page came up and announced Hamdi's intention of immediate appearance. "And how is that charming young lady, your ward, Miss Carlotta?" continued my tormentor. "Yes," I answered hurriedly.
She could only suppose that her father had been overcome by that wealth of the general's on which he had made her such a speech. Or perhaps his dislike of Hamdi had been founded on nothing but resentment of Hamdi's airs of superiority, and now that the bey was condescending to ask for her hand her father's flattered appeasement was rushing into genial acceptance.
But then I stopped short. Hamdi had stepped quickly backward into the lift, and given a sign to the attendant. The door slammed and all I could do was to shake my fist at Hamdi's boots as they disappeared upwards. I remember once in Italy seeing a cat playing with a partially stunned bat which, flying low, she had brought to the ground.
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