Terence O'Rourke/Part 2/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
THE PALACE OP DUST
Shortly after midnight a late moon rose behind the slim, white minarets of the Mehemet Ali Mosque, to sail peacefully over the quiet city, flooding Ismailieh's broad avenues and the tortuous byways of the native quarters with a silvery splendor that seemed well-nigh unearthly.
It grew more cool and yet more quiet. O'Rourke—stubbornly remaining in his chair on the terrace the while he wondered just precisely how many kinds of an ass he was making of himself—O'Rourke felt the chill of the desert breeze penetrating his thin evening clothes, and sent a servant for his inverness.
Danny brought it.
"Beggin' yer honor's pardon, sor," he said, "but yer honor will be comin' in now, will ye not?"
O'Rourke, though aware that the man was in the right, snapped at him angrily.
"Why?"
"Sure, now, sor, 'tis late, and 'tis mesilf that's bought seats on the first train for Port Said in the marnin', sor. We'll be startih' early, and 'tis yersilf that needs rest."
"Go to the divvle, Danny," said O'Rourke pleasantly, "if so be it ye do not want me to kick ye there. I may change me mind before the morning. Get out now!"
"Aw, wirra!" lamented Danny; but he wisely obeyed.
An hour dragged by with leaden feet; O'Rourke, shivering, cursed his folly, and ordered brandy to keep his heart warm. Hardly had he swallowed it ere a shadow detached itself from the dense blackness on the farther side of the street and shambled uncertainly across to and up the terrace steps.
"Sure, 'tis a giant!" muttered O'Rourke.
It was almost that; a huge Nubian, black as a patent-leather shoe, his burly form enveloped in a Bedouin cloak. He made for O'Rourke with no hesitancy, as one who acts upon instructions to "seek out the man at such-and-such a table," and, without a word, handed him a little sealed note.
O'Rourke opened it, shifting his position to bring the sheet into the brilliant moonlight.
It was of light, flimsy paper, laden with an elusive perfume which went to O'Rourke's head—the identical indefinable fragrance that had mounted to his brain when he stooped over the hand of his Egyptian goddess. With some difficulty, because of the uncertain light, he deciphered its few words:
"Come to me at once, mon colonel, if your words to me an hour gone were not mere gallantry."
It was unsigned. But O'Rourke was beyond doubting. He rose, wrapping his inverness about him and looking the Nubian over with a calculating eye.
"If ye are not trustworthy, boy," he said slowly, "I shall break your neck. Walk ahead of me—and go quickly, lest the toe of me boot assists ye."
The spherical black head seemed to split precisely in half as the man laughed silently.
"Yaas, sar," he said; and without another word turned and stalked away, O'Rourke following at his heels, his keen eyes searching every shadow that they encountered.
Their journey was long—unconscionably so, O'Rourke complained. They walked swiftly, crossing the middle of the Place Ezbekieh and making thereafter ever eastward, into the narrow, crooked streets of the Arabian quarter, where the reeking roadways, rough and ill-paved, were half white, a-shimmer with moonlight, and half inky black in the shadow of the overhanging upper stories of the native dwellings.
O'Rourke insisted they should keep on the lighted side—insisted, to tell the truth, against the protests of the Nubian, who seemed to have some strong and compelling reason for exercising the utmost caution. And, indeed, when he announced that they were near upon the end of their journey, the slave stopped stock-still and refused to budge another inch unless O'Rourke would consent to creep along cautiously and as silently as possible on the shadowed side of the way.
Reluctantly, O'Rourke agreed; it was not that he feared the man himself, nor was he suspicious of the fellow's destination; but, if it so happened that a hired assassin from Prince Viazma was dogging him, a path in the darkness would leave him utterly defenseless against an attack from behind.
However, he would not have it said of O'Rourke that a danger had ever daunted him. Too many times had he taken his life in his hands for little or nothing, to draw back now, at a time when, very likely, the most fearful of his dangers sprang from his imagination alone.
Without argument, therefore, but with his fingers close to the butt of his revolver, and a cautious glance now and then over his shoulder, he followed the Nubian; in such order they made silent progress for several minutes, eventually turning a corner.
The black stopped, lifting a warning hand, and vanished without a sound. O'Rourke tightened his hold upon his revolver, half drew it from his pocket, and waited. And while waiting the man looked about him, and knew that he was, to all intents and purposes, lost; in the illuding moonlight, at least, the street in which he stood was totally unknown to him.
For some minutes he waited, with a growing impatience. The night lay about him beautiful and very quiet; far in the distance the faint jangle of some native stringed instrument stirred upon the breeze; and, farther yet, a pariah dog lifted his nose to heaven and poured out his soul's sorrow to the sympathetic moon; whereupon all his friends, neighbors, and relations in Cairo joined their wails of anguish unto his.
O'Rourke stood wrapped in the illusions of his imagination, fancying that the moon's rays, falling upon a distant wall of white, were like the glowing pallor of his goddess of the night; that the stark, black shadow of a far doorway, with a dim glimmer of reddish light from a native lamp in its center, was as the shadowed glory of madame's eyes …
A touch upon his, arm made him wheel sharply about, alert, to find the Nubian by his side; he nerved himself against the slightest alarm and followed.
In a moment he had crossed a threshold, to stand in a room of Stygian darkness. A door was closed and bolted behind him. In another, the slave had caught him by the hand and drawn him forward—while he yielded with a strange reluctance. And in a third instant he had stumbled up a short, steep, narrow flight of stairs, passing through a second doorway; where the Nubian deserted him, stepping back and shutting the door softly.
The Irishman stood still, for a passing second somewhat confused—at a loss to imagine what would come next upon the program of this adventure that (he was thinking) might have been lifted bodily from the pages of the "Arabian Nights."
Before him there hung, swaying lightly, a curtain of thin, fine silk of a faded rose tint, faintly luminous; behind him was the door, and on either hand blank wooden walls. As he hesitated, he heard a voice, and his heart stood still—what power had a pretty woman's voice to stir the heart of this man!
"Enter, if you please, monsieur!"
He thrust the swinging drapery aside, and entered in one stride—to halt and stand, blinking, in the diffused, dim radiance of a single, shaded, hanging light.
His eyes sought the woman, but at first did not find her; and he mechanically inventoried his surroundings—obedient to the instinct that causes the adventurer to familiarize himself with the field against whatever emergency the future may bring to pass.
Apparently the apartment was one of those that had, at some former time, composed the harem in some wealthy Mohammedan prince's palace. Evidences of long neglect were crowded within its walls, however; the flimsy silken hangings that draped every inch of them were stained and frayed and torn, showing behind them glimpses of dark recesses. The mushrabeah lattice that gave upon the inner courtyard of the dwelling was fallen into decay; in one place it was quite broken away, revealing a portion of the court itself, dark, silent, patched with moonlight that fell through the trembling leaves of a giant acacia that overhung a lifeless fountain.
In the room, again, dust lay thick upon the furnishings; a tabouret that caught the Irishman's eye, because of the beauty of its inlaid design, could have been written upon with the tip of his finger; the coloring in the rug beneath his feet was half obliterated by a layer of dirt, that rose in little puffs when the man moved.
Pervading all, indeed, was that penetrating, insisted atmosphere of an abandoned dwelling, the indefinable musty, uninhabited odor that lingers within rooms them have once known, but, through the lapse of time, have well-nigh forgotten, the footsteps, the voices, the laughter and the burdens of men's lives—and women's.
And over all, too, brooded the compelling silence of dead homes—the stillness that abides in those tombs of human emotion, seeming fairly to shriek aloud its resentment of alien intrusion.
In it the sigh of the night wind through a distant window was loud and arresting; the rustle of the acacia's leaves shrilled high and clear; and to O'Rourke, upon whose optimistic, gregarious self the quietness jarred, the regular rise and fall of human respiration near to him was a distinct comfort.
He stood motionless for full a minute, from the first quite aware that the woman had secreted herself and was watching him from her retreat; he bore the scrutiny with the grace that was ever his—with an attitude of forbearing patience.
And then, as he had told himself it would befall, the draperies rustled and the woman stood before him.
Certain it is that she had never seemed so lovely to the man—even in his wildest dreams—nor so desirable; a breathing, pulsating incarnation of modern beauty in that rose-tinted boudoir of dead and forgotten loves.
She was still in her evening gown; her light cloak of black silk had slipped aside, exposing bare, gleaming arms and shoulders pf a pellucid alabaster in their dark frame.
As for the eloquent face of her, it seemed more than ever of a bewildering witchery. Her lips, half parted in her welcoming smile, flamed amazingly scarlet upon her intense pallor. And as for her eyes—even the florid Celtic imagery of O'Rourke's imagination had now no words to phrase their magnificence. He might but stand and look and rejoice in the seemingly aimless succession of events that had brought him into her presence, there to worship.
They were quite alone, he saw; his breath came hot and fast, his temples throbbed with the knowledge. He put his hand to his eyes, as if to shield them—in truth, to hide the look he knew had come into them.
"Pardon, madame," he stammered awkwardly.
She seemed puzzled. "The light, monsieur?" she asked, smiling.
"No, madame." He withdrew his hand and came a pace nearer to her; his gaze became steady, but his voice trembled. "No, madame; 'tis not the lights—not the lights, madame, that— Shall I be telling ye what it is that blinds me?"
It was impossible to misread the man's attitude. Her lashes lowered before his ardent gaze. She laughed a trifle nervously, and, "Not now, monsieur," she begged him hurriedly; "not now."
"Not now? D'ye mean that, a bit later, perhaps, ye will permit me to tell ye what is burning in me heart—"
But she checked him with an imperious gesture. "Monsieur!" she insisted, softening the rebuke with a dazzling smile. "Can you not wait?"
"Wait? Faith, not for long! Tis not in me to be waiting, when me—"
"This is not the time," she pronounced severely, "for—for folly, mon colonel. We have weightier business to pass upon."
He made a gesture expressive of his humorous resignation.
"Tell me," she continued in another tone, "were you followed?"
"To me knowledge? No, madame."
"You are not sure, then?"
"Madame, I am a soldier; a soldier is sure of nothing good until it is a proven fact. I was careful to watch, but saw not even a shadow move after us. Still—" He waved his hand with broad significance.
"Still," she amended, "one can trust for the best."
"One—or two, madame?"
She gave him a fleeting smile, then sat in silence for a space, which she terminated with a faint sigh of relief.
"Then," she remarked, as if to herself, "we dare hope that they do not know where you are."
"They—"
"Your enemies, monsieur."
"Ah, yes," said O'Rourke, scanning her face narrowly, "me enemies."
"And my friends," she added.
He opened his eyes very wide indeed. "Faith," he exclaimed, "madame, ye speak in riddles. I fail to comprehend. 'Tis meself that's the bad hand at riddles."
She did not reply directly, but contented herself with watching closely through her long and upcurled lashes the play of expression upon the Irishman's ingenuous and open features. She could have read therefrom naught in the world but bewilderment; for that was coming to be O'Rourke's sole emotion at such times as the strangeness of the affair made him forget to admire this woman.
Presently, growing restive under her long and silent critical appraisal, he took up his complaint.
"I'm fair dazed," he expostulated, with a halting laugh. "Ye sent for me to do ye a service—and, sure now, me heart's at your feet, madame. Say what ye wish of me, and—'tis done." He paused, knitting his brows over her baffling secretiveness. Then, "I'm ready, madame," he concluded.
"You promise largely, monsieur."
"Faith, 'tis me nature so to do. For how could I be an Irishman were I of the breed to balk at obstacles?"
At this she laughed outright, and so sincerely that O'Rourke was fain to join her. But, even in the height of her mirth, he fancied he detected an undercurrent of anxiety.
Madame, he thought, seemed ever to be listening, to be constantly upon her guard against the unforeseen, the unexpected. She seemed oppressed by a fear; and yet not to know how to voice her apprehension to him upon whom she had called to act as her protector.
So that her next words surprised him, though they sounded as though she brought them out with some difficulty.
"It is very simple, monsieur," she began; and paused, as one at loss for words.
"Simple?" he echoed.
"What I would have of you."
"Then, sure, 'tis me heart ye are thinking of," he protested. "'Tis the simplest, most affectionate one in the world, madame."
But she would not be turned aside from the trend of her worriment. She cast upon him a look almost appealing in its intensity; then hastily averted her face, arose, took a step or two falteringly away, and finally paused with her back to O'Rourke, her face to the lattice, looking out into the desolate court.
"It is a subject not too easy to approach," she confessed at length. "What service you may do me—it is a difficult thing to ask of you."
He marked her accent as of weariness.
"Ye have not asked it," he suggested gently. "Faith, I'm ready."
"You are a man, brave, straightforward, monsieur. I—I have a woman's love of the subtle. I—do not misunderstand my motive, I beg of you—I have coaxed you hither that you might escape a—a dreadful fate, monsieur. I— Ah! if only I knew what it were best to do!"
"Faith!" he muttered. "'Tis the O'Rourke who'd like to advise ye. But ye speak of matters quite too far removed from me knowledge."
She turned to face him abruptly, resolution large in her eyes.
"It is this, then," she said swiftly; "by chance I have learned that you are to be assassinated."
O'Rourke whistled softly.
"You will not be permitted to leave Cairo alive," she added.
O'Rourke sat down on the tabouret and eyed her with growing admiration.
"Had you remained at Shepheard's this night, monsieur, and either attempted to leave Cairo in the morning, or—or to communicate with the authorities—you would have died."
"Sure, now," O'Rourke admitted, "this is interesting. Yes."
He bent his gaze to the tip of his polished shoe, puckered his lips, whistled a little inaudible tune. The woman watched him impatiently, tapping the rug with the toe of her slipper. O'Rourke came out of his brown study with a suppressed chuckle. She started, looking her surprise.
"You laugh?" she questioned. "You do not believe me?"
"Indeed, and I do so. In fact, it but dovetails with me own suspicions. What I've been trying to figure out, madame, is how ye come to know so much. Another thing—ye did not bring me here to warn me of this; I could have taken such a warning as well at Shepheard's. … Well, madame?"
"No." She turned away again to the lattice; he divined that she did not wish him to read her face. "No, not alone to tell you that. I brought you here, monsieur—to save you."
"I—faith, I'm infinitely obliged, madame. But I confess that I fail to follow ye."
"In all Cairo"—her earnestness carried conviction—"you could nowhere be safe to-night save here."
"I'm not so sure of that as ye seem to be," he said to himself. "However"—aloud—"'tis very kind of ye; but why do ye take such trouble for a vagabond that's naught to ye, madame?"
"Have I said—that?"
Her answer was quick. But O'Rourke nodded sagaciously at her white shoulders. He was beginning to glimpse an illuminating light.
"Ye did not," he conceded. "For that matter, madame, ye have not told me how 'tis ye that are so authoritatively informed concerning the O'Rourke."
His tone apprised her of the fact that the blindfold had been lifted from his eyes. No longer the man was walking in darkness—as far as concerned herself, at least.
"I," she told him, "am acquainted with certain parties who—who—"
"Who are acquainted with me?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"For instance, if ye'll permit me, one Monsieur Nicolas Kozakevitch?" he suggested.
She nodded, almost timidly. O'Rourke caught her eye and grinned outright,
"That," he said, with a snap of his fingers, "for Monsieur le Prince. But, madame, as to yourself, ye are—"
"I am the daughter of Constantine Pasha," she declared outright.
"Yes," agreed O'Rourke musingly; "and the tall, brown, young man that dances attendance upon ye—he is Prince Aziz. I might have guessed it."
His mind worked rapidly. Madame of the wondrous eyes, then, was, in reality, a mademoiselle—daughter to Constantine Pasha, that wily Turkish diplomat who had been the power behind Arabi Pasha in the rebellion of '82.
Dimly he recalled having heard some boulevard rumor in Paris concering the wonderful, exotic beauty of this girl, daughter of the Turk by an Italian wife. He had heard, too, of her devotion to her father's memory, her outspoken declaration that she would carry on the work that his death had left unfinished. And he remembered having read in some newspaper a short paragraph announcing mademoiselle's betrothal to young Prince Aziz of the Khedival succession.
"Two and two," thought the Irishman, "make four. 'Tis four years since Arabi Pasha returned from exile in Ceylon. I've been told that he was living quietly here in Egypt; and 'tis surely so. A conspirator is always living quietly, for obvious reasons. Well, then, 'tis simple enough. Arabi is back; Viazma is here to represent Russia; mam'selle to honor her father's memory in oceans of English gore; Aziz playing Abbas Hindi's hand in the game; France wishing to see England turned out of control; Turkey, Russia,—Egypt herself,—quite willing—faith, here we have the ingredients of a first-class conspiracy, with the trimmings of battle, murder, and sudden death."
He smiled engagingly upon the woman. He had probed her secret; he now taxed her with his knowledge straightway.
"Ye are hand-in-glove, mam'selle, with the men who conspire against English occupation."
She mutely bowed assent; O'Rourke found it difficult to read what lay in her eyes—an art, too, wherein the man was somewhat skilled.
"Ye are with those," he went on, even a trifle bitterly, "who would raise again that old, deluding cry, 'Egypt for the Egyptians!'"
"I am!" she proclaimed passionately.
"I am not," he stated as quietly. "And ye brought me here, mam'selle. Faith, I begin to sense your motive. 'Twas not for me neck's sake ye did this. What is one man's life to ye more than another? Sure, if ye accomplish your purpose, the next Nile inundation will be out of all season, brought about by the oceans of English blood that'll sweep through the sands to swell the flood! Have ye thought on that, mam'selle? I see ye have—or believe ye have. What does a woman reck of war, and what stalks hand-in-hand with war? Faith, for ye 'tis all glitter and gold and glory—'Egypt for the Egyptians!' (which means for the Russians and the Turkish and the French!), 'and divvle take the English!'"
He paused. The woman's eyes had widened; for the moment she was spellbound by his rude eloquence. Her breath came quickly, and she hung upon his words; though, in point of fact, the next were to sting her like the lash of a whip.
"And ye wanted O'Rourke to be with ye, to lead the massacre, whether he would or no! Faith, mam'selle, 'tis an insult to your beauty that ye should make of it a snare for a poor adventurer!"
She started toward him, blazing with anger; O'Rourke got awestruck with the flaming beauty of her. And then she stopped; the flush that had colored her cheeks with shame evoked by his words ebbed, leaving her more pale, it seemed, than before. She stood irresolute, her lips trembling.
What was she to say to him, who saw so clearly, who had power to make her see more clearly than ever she had seen, what the explosion would mean, once the spark touched the powder?
What could she say? The phrases that she had thought to use were become vapid, meaningless, since he had spoken his mind—spoken it freely, boldly, forthright, like the man he was. Her artillery was spiked, this Irishman triumphant.
He was right. She hated him for being right. She hated him—or, did she? She had never loved; was this—the dawn? Was this—love? Or fascination? What was there about the man—the lean, bronzed face, the resolute swing of his shoulders, the devil-may-care honesty of him—that had printed his image on her mind, indelibly, it seemed, since first she had met his look of almost boyish adoration?
But—she must not think of that. There was the Cause. She was pledged to the Cause, whatever might befall. And still, there was no heart in her for the alluring of O'Rourke—the winning of him to the side of the Cause, which she had pledged to her fellow conspirators.
What had she to say for herself?
She looked up and deep into his face; read the trouble there, and the courage; divined how steadfast was his loyalty to his people—the English-speaking people—as well as how futile would be her most desperate blandishments, directed against his simple honesty.
She put out her hands with a little, hopeless gesture—like a tired child.
"I am defeated," she admitted, smiling almost wanly. "What I have told you is true, monsieur. I learned that you were to die for Prince Vladislaus' indiscretion. He spoke more freely than he had warrant to speak. Granted, monsieur, that you pledged your word to silence. And yet—"
"A Russian judges all men by himself," laughed O'Rourke.
"Yes. So you were doomed. Yet, it was considered better that you should be won to our cause, if possible, rather than slain. I—I had marked your admiration of me, monsieur; I volunteered to—to bring you to the side of safety and of our cause. … Monsieur"—unconsciously she lowered her voice. O'Rourke drew nearer; he even dared possess himself of her hands, and to hold them firmly while he stood bending his head that he might catch what she was whispering.
"Monsieur," she said again; and hesitated for a long time; so long, indeed, that the silence began to seem strained and tense, and O'Rourke's ears were filled with the creak and the rustle of the, stillness in this deserted palace.
"Monsieur," she -whispered finally, "you have won. You are … right."
She lifted her eyes boldly to his; O'Rourke's breath came sharply.
"I am glad—very glad!" she declared aloud.
"Mam'selle will never regret having won me to her service," O'Rourke said clearly.
He bent and kissed her hands, while she gasped in sheer amazement.
"I am for mam'selle's cause!" he said. "The O'Rourke cannot fight against the side where his heart is, believe me!"