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Updated: May 13, 2025
He tried to tell himself that she was not wholly helpless, that she had wit and spirit and courage, and that somehow she would manage to quell the storm; she might persuade Hamdi to their story, make him remember that this was the twentieth century wherein one does not go about immuring inconvenient trespassers as in the earlier years of the Mad Khedive years which had probably formed the general's impulses but in telling himself this there was no comfort for the thought of the price that Aimée would have to pay.
"I won't hurt your Hamdi, since that's your condition. But we're wasting time " "Up, then. And if you fall down do like this." Smiling mischievously, she made the gesture of swimming.
"Between Lingfield Terrace and Avenue Road she has been caught, thrust into a closed carriage, gagged and carried God knows where by the wiliest old thief in Asia. He is the Prefect of Police in Aleppo. His name is Hamdi Effendi and he is staying at the Hotel Metropole." The Inspector questioned me. Heaven knows how I answered. I saw the scene. The waiting carriage. The unfrequented bit of road.
Any man but myself would have kept her under lock and key and established a guard round the house. Any man but myself would have never let her out of his sight until he had married her, until he had tracked Hamdi and his myrmidons back to Alexandretta. "Abduction has happened," I cried wildly.
"But the soldier with the bayonet," she said aloud. "There was one on the stairs." "A servant." "Oh, if I had passed him!" "You could not he would run you through on a nod from Hamdi. They watch that stairs always day and night." Day and night and she was alone here, in this grim palace, alone and helpless and forsaken.... What were her friends thinking about her? Where did they think she was?
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....
"But he must say something what is between you what?" demanded the other impatiently. Briefly, her shamed cheeks grateful for the shadows, Arlee told of that walk in the garden, of the flowers and the letter, the scene after dinner. And the other girl's eyes grew wider and wider, and then finally she burst into a smothered little laugh. "Oh, he is mad, that Hamdi!" she whispered.
She would tell him.... And perhaps she was not averse, in her childish pride, to the pitiful glory of having him see her in the beauty of her filial sacrifice. "My father has has done something against the English laws," she faltered, "and Hamdi Bey, this general, knows of it, and will inform unless unless my father makes this marriage.
But McLean was conscious that there was something tense and nervous in his alertness, something wary and defensive in his readiness, and his own nerves began to tighten apprehensively. It did not add to his composure to see Ryder salute Hamdi Bey with an ironic and overdone politeness. "Ah, monsieur le general! We meet as we parted in the depths!"
More definitely now, a little grinding and scraping. Faster and faster, a muffled, driving thud. A jubilant reassurance sang gayly through him. He had expected this this was what he had predicted. Hamdi was no foul friend. He was a devilish uncomfortable customer with antiquated notions of revenge, but now he had shot his wad and was going to undo his tricks.
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