The Carpet from Bagdad

"You did not…" Mrs. Chedsoye hesitated.

"Blood?" reading her thought. "No, Gioconda; my hands are guiltless, at least they were till this Bagdad affair; and I am not sure there. I was a trusted clerk; I gambled; I took money that did not belong to me. And here I am, room number 208."

"It doesn't matter. Come, Kate; don't stare at Hoddy as if he were a new species." The Major smoothed the ends of his mustache. "This confession will be good for his soul."

"Yes, Gioconda; I feel easier now. I am heart and soul in this affair. I need excitement, too. Lord, yes. When I went to Bagdad, I had no idea that I should ever lay eyes upon that rug. But I did. And there's the emeralds, too, Major."

The Major rubbed his hands pleasurably. "Yes, yes; the emeralds; I had not forgotten them. One hundred lovely green stones, worth not a penny under thirty thousand. A fine collection. But another idea has taken possession of this teeming brain of mine. Have you noticed how this fellow Jones hovers about Fortune? He's worth a million, if he's worth a cent. I am sure, in pure gratitude, she would see to it that her loved ones were well taken care of in their old age."

"I am going to marry Fortune myself," said Ryanne blandly.

"You?" The Major was nonplussed.

Wallace shuffled his feet uneasily. This blond companion of his was always showing kinks in his nature, kinks that rarely ever straightened out.

"Yes. And why not? What is she to either you or her mother? Nothing. Affection you have never given her, being unable. It surprises you; but, nevertheless, I love her, and I am going to marry her."

"Really?" said Mrs. Chedsoye.

"Even so."

"You are a fool, Horace!" with rising fury. So then, the child had not jibed her in a moment of pique?

"Men in love generally are fools. I've never spoken before, because you never absolutely needed me till now. There's my cards, pat."

Mrs. Chedsoye's fury deepened, but not visibly. "You are welcome to her, if she will have you."

"Yes," supplemented the Major; "if she will have you, my friend, take her, and our benedictions."

Ryanne's shoulders stirred suggestively.

"Of course, I expect to have the final word to say on the subject. She is my daughter," said Mrs. Chedsoye.

"A trifling accident, my dear Gioconda," smiled Ryanne; "merely that."

"Just a little oil, just a little oil," the Major pleaded anxiously. "Dash it all, this is no time for a row of this silly order. But it's always the way," irritably. "A big enterprise, demanding a single purpose, and a trifle like this to upset it all!"

"I am ready for business at any moment."

"And you, Kate?"

"We'll say no more about it till the affair is over. After that…"

"Those who live will see, eh?" Ryanne rolled a cigarette.

"To business, then. In the first place, Mr. Jones must not reach the Ludwig!"

"He will not." Ryanne spoke with quiet assurance.

"He will not even see that boat," added Wallace, glad to hear the sound of his voice again.

"Good. But, mind, no rough work."

"Leave it all to me," said Ryanne. "The United Romance and Adventure Company will give him an adventure on approval, as it were."

"To you, then. The report from New York reads encouragingly. Our friends there are busy. They are merely waiting for us. From now on Percival Algernon must receive no more mail, telegrams or cables."

"I'll take care of that also." Ryanne looked at Mrs. Chedsoye musingly.

"His real-estate agent will wire him, possibly to-morrow."

"In that event, he will receive a cable signifying that the transaction is perfectly correct."

"He may also inquire as to what to do with the valuables in the wall-safe."

"He will be instructed to touch nothing, as the people who will occupy the house are old friends." Ryanne smoked calmly.

"Wallace, you will return to New York at once."

"I thought I was wanted here?"

"No longer."

"All right; I'm off. I'll sail on the Prince Ludwig, state-room 118. I'll have my joke by the way."

"You will do nothing of the kind. You will have a state-room by yourself," said Mrs. Chedsoye crisply. "And no wine, no cards. If you fail, I'll break you…"

"As we would a churchwarden's pipe, Wallace, my lad." Ryanne gripped his companion by the shoulder, and there was enough pressure in the grip to cause the recipient to wince.

"Well, well; I'll lay a straight course." Wallace slid his shoulder from under Ryanne's hand.

"To you, then, Hoddy, the business of quarantining our friend Percival. Don't hurt him; simply detain him. You must realize the importance of this. Have you your plans?"

"I'll perfect them to-morrow. I shall find a way, never fear."

"Does the rug come in anywhere?" The Major was curious. It sometimes seemed to him that Ryanne did not always lay his cards face up upon the table.

"It will play its part. Besides, I am rather inclined to the idea of taking it back. It may be the old wishing-carpet. In that case, it will come in handy. Who knows?"

"How much is it worth?"

"Ah, Major, Percival himself could not say exactly. He gave me a thousand pounds for it."

"A thousand pounds!" murmured Wallace.

The Major struck his hands lightly together. Whether in applause or wonder he alone knew.

"And it was worth every shilling of it, too. I'll tell you the story some day. There are a dozen ways of suppressing Percival, but I must have something appealing to my artistic side."

"You have never told us your real name, Horace," Mrs. Chedsoye bent toward him.

He laughed. "I must have something to confess to you in the future, dear Gioconda."

"Well, the meeting adjourns, sine die."

"What are you going to do with Fortune?" demanded Ryanne.

"Send her back to Mentone."

"What the deuce did you bring her here for, knowing what was in the wind?"

"She expressed a desire to see Cairo again," answered Mrs. Chedsoye.

"We never deny her anything." The Major rose and yawned suggestively.

In the corridor, Ryanne whispered softly: "Why not, Gioconda?"

"She shall never marry a man of your stamp," coldly.

"Charming mother! How tenderly you have cherished her!"

"Horace," calmly enough, "is it wise to anger me?"

"It may not be wise, but I have never seen you in a rage. You would be magnificent."

"Cease this foolery," patiently. "I am in no mood for it to-night. As an associate in this equivocal business, you do very well; you are necessary. But do not presume too much upon that. For all that I may not have been what a mother should be, I still have some self-respect. So long as I have any power over her, Fortune shall never marry a man so far down in the social scale as yourself."

"Social scale? Gioconda, how you hurt me!" mockingly. "I should really like to know what your idea of that invincible barrier is. Is it because my face is in the rogues' gallery? Surely, you would not be cruel!"

"She is far above us all, my friend," continuing unruffled. "Sometimes I stand in absolute awe of her."

"A marvel! If my recollection is not at fault, many a man has entered the Villa Fanny, with a view to courtship, men beside whom I am as Roland to the lowest Saracen. You never objected to them."

"They had money and position."

"Magic talisman! And if I had money and position?"

"My objections would be no less strong."

"Your code puzzles me. You would welcome as a son-in-law a man who stole openly the widow's mite, while I, who harass none but the predatory rich, must dwell in the outland? Rank injustice!"

"You couldn't take care of her."

"Yes, I could. With but little effort I could make these two hands as honest as the day is long."

"I have my doubts," smiling a little.

"Suppose, for the sake of an argument, suppose Fortune accepted me?"

Mrs. Chedsoye's good humor returned. She knew her daughter tolerably well; the child had a horror of men. "Poor Horace! Do you build upon that?"

"Less, perhaps, than upon my own bright invention. My suit, then, to be brief, is rejected?"

"Emphatically. I have spoken."

"Oh, well; the feminine prerogative shall be mine, the last word. Good night; dormi bene!" He bowed grandly and turned toward his own room.

He possessed that kind of mockery which was the despair of those at whom it was directed. They never knew whether his mood was one of harmless fun or of deadly intent. And rather than mistake the one quality for the other, they generally pretended to ignore. Mrs. Chedsoye, who had a similar talent, was one of the few who felt along the wall as one does in the dark, instinctively. To-night she recognized that there was no harmless fun but a real desperateness behind the mask; and she had held in her temper with a firm hand. This was not the hour for a clash. She shivered a little; and for the first time in the six or seven years she had known him, she faced a fear of him. His great strength, his reckless courage, his subtle way of mastering men by appearing to be mastered by them, held her in the thrall of a peculiar fascination which, in quiet periods, she looked upon as something deeper. Marriage was not to her an ideal state, nor was there any man, living or dead, who had appealed to the physical side of her. But he was in the one sex what she was in the other; and while she herself would never have married him, she raged inwardly at the possibility of his wanting another woman.

To her the social fabric which holds humanity together was merely a convenience; the moral significance touched neither her heart nor her mind. In her the primordial craving for ease, for material comforts, pretty trinkets and gowns was strongest developed. It was as if this sense had been handed down to her, untouched by contact with progression, from the remote ages, that time between the fall of Roman civilization and where modern civilization began. In short, a beautiful barbarian, whose intellect alone had advanced.

Fortune was asleep. The mother went over to the bed and gently shook the slim, round arm which lay upon the coverlet. The child's nature lay revealed as she opened her eyes and smiled. It did not matter that the smile instantly changed to a frowning inquiry. The mother spoke truly when she said that there were times when she stood in awe of this, her flesh and blood.

"My child, I wish to ask you a question, and for your own good answer truthfully. Do you love Horace?"

Fortune sat up and rubbed her eyes. "No." Had her wits been less scattered she might have paltered.

The syllable had a finality to it that reassured the mother more than a thousand protestations would have done.

"Good night," she said.

Fortune lay down again and drew the coverlet up to her chin. With her eyes shut she waited, but in vain. Her mother disrobed and sought her own bed.

Ryanne was intensely dissatisfied with himself. For once his desperate mood had carried him too far. He had made too many confessions, had antagonized a woman who was every bit as clever and ingenious as himself. The enterprise toward which they were moving held him simply because it was an exploit that enticed wholly his twisted outlook upon life. There was a forbidding humor in the whole affair, too, which he alone saw. The possible rewards were to him of secondary consideration. It was the fun of the thing. It was the fun of the thing that had put him squarely upon the wide, short road to perdition, which had made him first a spendthrift, then a thief. The fun of the thing: sinister phrase! A thousand times had he longed to go back, for he wasn't all bad; but door after door had shut behind him; and now the single purpose was to get to the end of the road by the shortest route.

He did not deceive himself. His desperate mood was the result of an infernal rage against himself, a rage against the weakness of his heart. Fortune Chedsoye. Why had she not crossed his path at that time when he might have been saved? And yet, would she have saved him? God alone knew.

He heard Jones stirring in his room next door. Presently all became still. To sleep like that! He shrugged, threw off his coat, swept the cover from the stand, found a pack of cards, and played solitaire till the first pallor of dawn announced the new day.

Reclining snugly against the parapet, wrapped in his tattered arbiyeh, or cloak, his head pillowed upon his lean arm, motionless with that pretended sleep of the watcher, Mahomed-El-Gebel kept his vigil. Miles upon miles he had come, across three bleak, cold, blinding deserts, on camels, in trains, on camels again, night and day, day and night, across the soundless, yellow plains. Allah was good to the true believer. The night was chill, but certain fires warmed his blood. All day long he had followed the accursed, lying giaour, but never once had he wandered into the native quarters of the city. Patience! What was a day, a week, a year? Grains of sand. He could wait. Inshalla!

CHAPTER VIII

THE PURLOINED CABLE

George, having made his bargain with conscience relative to the Yhiordes rug, slept the sleep of the untroubled, of the just, of the man who had nothing in particular to get up for. In fact, after having drunk his breakfast cocoa and eaten his buttered toast, he evinced his satisfaction by turning his face away from the attracting morning light and passing off into sleep again. And thereby hangs this tale.

So much depended upon his getting his mail as it came in that morning, that Fate herself must have resisted sturdily the desire to shake him by the shoulder. Perhaps she would have done so but for the serenity of his pose and the infantile smile that lingered for a while round his lips. Fate, as with most of us, has her sentimental lapses.

The man next door, having no conscience to speak of (indeed, he had derailed her while passing his twentieth meridian!), was up betimes. He had turned in at four; at six he was strolling about the deserted lounging-room, watching the entrances. It is inconceivable how easily mail may be purloined in a large hotel. There are as many ways as points to the wind. Ryanne chose the simplest. He waited for the mail-bag to be emptied upon the head-porter's counter. Nonchalantly, but deftly, while the porter looked on, the adventurer ran through the bulk. He found three letters and a cable, the latter having been received by George's bankers the day before and mailed directly to the hotel. The porter had no suspicion that a bold theft was being committed under his very eyes. Moreover, circumstances prevented his ever learning of it. Ryanne stuffed the spoils into a pocket.

"If any one asks for me," he said, "say that I shall be at my banker's, the Anglo-Egyptian Bank, at ten o'clock."

"Yes, sir," replied the porter, as he began to sort the rest of the mail, not forgetting to peruse the postals.

Ryanne went out into the street, walking rapidly into town. Mahomed-El-Gebel shook the folds of his cloak and followed. The adventurer did not slacken his gait till he reached Shepheard's Hotel. Upon the steps he paused. Some English troops were marching past, on the way to the railway station; the usual number of natives were patrolling the sidewalks, dangling strings of imitation scarabs; a caravan of pack-camels, laden with cotton, shuffled by haughtily; a blind beggar sat on the curb in front, munching a piece of sugar-cane. Ryanne, assured that no one he knew was about, proceeded into the writing-room, wholly deserted at this early hour.

He sat down at a desk and opened the cable. It contained exactly what he expected. It was a call for advice in regard to the rental of Mr. George P. A. Jones's mansion in New York and the temporary disposing of the loose valuables. Ryanne read it over a dozen times, with puckered brow, and finally balled it fiercely in his fist. Fool! He could not, at that moment, remember the most essential point in the game, the name and office of the agent to whom he must this very morning send reply. Hurriedly he fished out the letters; one chance in a thousand. He swore, but in relief. In the corner of one of the letters he saw that for some unknown reason the gods were still with him. Reynolds and Reynolds, estates, Broad Street; he remembered. He wrote out a reply on a piece of hotel paper, intending to copy it off at the cable-office. This reply covered the ground convincingly. "Renting for two months. Old friends. Leave things as they are. P. A." The initials were a little stroke. From some source Ryanne had picked up the fact that Jones's business correspondence was conducted over those two initials. He tore up the cable into small illegible squares and dropped some into one basket and some into another. Next, he readdressed George's mail to Leipzig; another stroke, meaning a delay of two or three months; from the head office of his banker's there to Paris, Paris to Naples, Naples to New York. That Ryanne did not open these letters was in nowise due to moral suasion; whatever they contained could be of no vital importance to him.

"Now, Horace, we shall bend the crook of our elbow in the bar-room. The reaction warrants a stimulant."

An hour later the whole affair was nicely off his hands. The cable had cost him three sovereigns. But what was that? Niente, rien; nothing; a mere bagatelle. For the first time in weeks a sense of security invaded his being.

It was by now nine o'clock; and Percival Algernon still reposed upon his bed of ease. Let him sleep. Many days were to pass ere he would again know the comfort of linen sheets, the luxury of down under his ear.

What to do? mused the rogue. On the morrow Mr. Jones would leave for Port Saïd. Ryanne shook his head and with his cane beat a light tattoo against the side of his shin. Abduction was rather out of his sphere of action. And yet, the suppression of Percival was by all odds the most important move to be made. He had volunteered this service and accomplish it he must, in face of all obstacles, or poof! went the whole droll fabric. For to him it was droll, and never it rose in his mind that he did not chuckle saturninely. It was a kind of nightmare where one hung in mid-air, one's toes just beyond the flaming dragon's jaws. The rewards would be enormous, but these he would gladly surrender for the supreme satisfaction of turning the poisoned arrow in the heart of that canting hypocrite, that smug church-deacon, the sanctimonious, the sleek, the well-fed first-born. And poor Percival Algernon, for no blame of his own, must be taken by the scruff of his neck and thrust bodily into this tangled web of scheme and under-scheme. It was infinitely humorous.

He had had a vague plan regarding Mahomed, guardian of the Holy Yhiordes, but it was not possible for him to be in Cairo at this early date. That he would eventually appear Ryanne never doubted. He knew the Oriental mind. Mahomed-El-Gebel would cross every barrier less effective than death. It was a serious matter to the Moslem. If he returned to the palace at Bagdad, minus the rug, it would mean free transportation to the Arabian Gulf, bereft of the most important part of his excellent anatomy, his head. Some day, if he lived, Ryanne intended telling the exploit to some clever chap who wrote; it would look rather well in print.

To turn Mahomed against Percival as being the instigator would be an adroit bit of work; and it would rid him of both of them. Gioconda said that she wanted no rough work. How like a woman! Here was a man's game, a desperate one; and Gioconda, not forgetting that it was her inspiration, wanted it handled with gloves! It was bare-hand work, and the sooner she was made to realize this, the better. It was no time for tuning fiddles.

Mahomed out of it, there was a certain English-Bar in the Quarter Rosetti, a place of dubious repute. Many derelicts drifted there in search of employment still more dubious. Dregs, scum; the bottom and the top of the kettle; outcasts, whose hand and animus were directed against society; black and brown and white men; not soldiers of fortune, like Ryanne, but their camp-followers. In short, it was there (and Ryanne still felt a dull shame of it) that Wallace, carrying the final instructions of the enterprise, had found him, sleeping off the effects of a shabby rout of the night before. It was there also that he had heard of the history and the worth of the Yhiordes rug and the possibility of its theft. He laughed. To have gone upon an adventure like that, with nothing but the fumes of wine in his head!

For a few pieces of gold he might enroll under his shady banner three or four shining lights who would undertake the disposal of Percival. Not that he wished the young man any harm – no; but business was business, and in some way or another he must be made to vanish from the sight and presence of men for at least two months.

As for Major Callahan's unforeseen danger, the devil could look out for that.

Ryanne consulted his watch, a cheap but trustworthy article, costing a dollar, not to be considered as an available asset. He would give it away later in the day; for he had decided that while he was in funds there would be wisdom in the purchase of a fine gold Longines. A good watch, as every one knows, is always as easily converted into cash as a London bank-note, providing, of course, one is lucky enough to possess either. Many watches had he left behind, in this place or in that; and often he had exchanged the ticket for a small bottle with a green neck. Wherever fortune had gone against him heavily at cards, there he might find his latest watch. Besides getting a new time-piece, he was strongly inclined to leave the bulk of his little fortune in the hotel-safe. One never could tell.

And another good idea, he mused, as he swung the time-piece into his vest-pocket, would be to add the splendor of a small white stone to his modest scarf. There is only one well-defined precept among the sporting fraternity: when flush, buy jewelry. Not to the cause of vanity, not at all; but precious stones and gold watches constitute a kind of reserve-fund against the evil day. When one has money in the pocket the hand is quick and eager to find it. But jewelry is protected by a certain quality of caution; it is not too readily passed over bars and gaming-tables. While the pawnbroker stands between the passion and the green-baize, there's food for thought.

Having settled these questions to his satisfaction, there remained but one other, how to spend his time. It would be useless to seek the English-Bar before noon. Might as well ramble through the native town and the bazaars. He might pick up some little curio to give to Fortune. So he beckoned to an idle driver, climbed into the carriage, and was driven off as if empires hung upon minutes.

Ryanne never wearied of the bazaars in Cairo. They were to him no less enchanting than the circus-parades of his youth. In certain ways, they were not to be compared with those in Constantinople and Smyrna; but, on the other hand, there was more light, more charm, more color. Perhaps the magic nearness of the desert had something to do with it, the rainless skies, the ever-recurring suggestions of antiquity. His lively observation, his sense of the picturesque and the humorous, always close to the surface, gave him that singular impetus which makes man a prowler. This gift had made possible his success in old Bagdad. Some years before he had prowled through the narrow city streets, had noted the windings, the blind-alleys, and had never forgotten. Faces and localities were written indelibly upon his memory.

One rode to the bazaars, but walked through them or mounted donkeys. Ryanne preferred his own legs. So did Mahomed. Once, so close did he come that he could have put his two brown hands round the infidel's throat. But, patience. Did not the Koran teach patience among the higher laws? Patience. He could not, madly as he had dreamed, throttle the white liar here in the bazaars. That would not bring the Holy Yhiordes to his hands. He must wait. He must plan to lure the man out at night, then to hurry him into the desert. Out into the desert, where no man might be his master. Oh, the Holy Yhiordes should be his again; it was written.

The cries, the shouts, the tower of Babel reclaimed; the intermingling of the races of the world: the Englishman, the American, the German, the Italian, the Frenchman, the Greek, the Levantine, the purple-black Ethiopian, the bronze Nubian; the veiled women, the naked children; all the color-tones known to art, but predominating, that marvelous faded tint of blue, the Cairene blue, in the heavens, in the waters, in the dyes.