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Updated: June 25, 2025
The dancer said something in French to her maid who picked up the tray and departed. "Now, Mademoiselle," said Nur-el-Din, "you see this pistol. Rass here will use it if you make any attempt to escape. You understand me, hein? I come to give you a las' chance to say where you 'ave my box..." Barbara looked at the dancer defiantly. "I've told you already I know nothing about it.
I had hoped, by this, to have been able to put him on the track of Nur-el-Din, but, for the moment, it looks as if we had lost the scent. But you can tell our friend all we know about the lady's antecedents what we had from my French colleague the other day, you know? Let him have all the particulars about this Barling case you know about that, don't you?
Hers was the beauty of the East, sensuous, arresting, conjuring up pictures of warm, perfumed nights, the thrumming of guitars, a great yellow moon hanging low behind the palms. "Barbara!" called Nur-el-Din from the dressing table. Mr. Mackwayte had joined her there and was chatting to Strangwise. "You will stay and talk to me while I change n'est-ce pas?
Nur-el-Din was in the drawing-room, a long room with two high windows which gave on a neglected looking garden. A foaming, churning brook wound its way through the garden, among stunted bushes and dripping willows, obviously the mill-race from which the house took its name.
"I'll be damned if you leave me behind, Maurice," he laughed, "of course I'm coming, too! She's the most delightful creature I've ever set eyes on!" And so it ended by them going through the pass-door together. That night Nur-el-Din kept the stage waiting for five minutes. It was a climax of a long series of similar unpardonable crimes in the music-hall code. The result was that Mr.
Samuel," said the Chief, "I wanted to see you about Nur-el-Din. You remember our former conversation on the subject. Where did she say she went to when she escaped to Brussels?" "First to Ostend," replied the music-hall proprietor, "and then, when the general exodus took place from there, to her mother's country place near Lyons, a village called Sermoise-aux-Roses."
His arms encountered a frail, light body, shaking from head to foot, enveloped in a cloak of some soft, thick material. "It's a woman!" cried Matthews. "It's Nur-el-Din!" exclaimed his companion in the same breath, seizing the woman by the arm. The dancer made no attempt to escape. She stood with bowed head, trembling violently, in a cowering, almost a crouching posture.
Now that he was away from Nur-el-Din with her pleading eyes and pretty gestures, Desmond's thoughts turned again to Barbara Mackwayte. As he walked along Piccadilly, he found himself contrasting the two women as he had contrasted them that night he had met them in Nur-el-Din's dressing room at the Palaceum.
The blood flew to Desmond's face and he bent down, on pretense of examining the cushions, to hide his confusion. "They aren't bad," he said, "I got them at Harrod's!" He accompanied Mortimer to the front door and watched him disappear down the short drive and turn out of the gate into the road. Then feeling strangely ill at ease, he went back to join Nur-el-Din in the dining-room.
To confess to the Chief that he had let both Nur-el-Din and Mortimer slip through his fingers was more than he could face. He could not bear to think that the Chief might believe him capable of failure, and take independent measures to guard against possible mistakes. Also, in his heart of hearts, Desmond was angry with the Chief.
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