The Carpet from Bagdad

"So, you see, Mahomed, that's the way the matter stands. I'm not so much to blame as you think. Here this man Jones has me in a vise. If I do not get this bit of carpet, off I go, into the dark, into nothing, beaten. I handled you roughly, I know. But could I help it? It was my throat or yours. You're no chicken. You and that other chap made things exciting."

Mahomed accepted this compliment to his prowess in silence. Indeed, he gazed dreamily over Ryanne's head. The other fellow wouldn't trouble any one again. To Mahomed it had not been the battle, man to man; it had been the guile and trickery leading up to it. He had been bested at his own game, duplicity, and that irked him. Death, he, as his kind, looked upon with Oriental passivity. Ah, well! The game was to have a second inning, and he proposed to play it in strictly Oriental ways.

"How much did he give you for it?"

The expression upon Ryanne's face would have deceived any one but Mahomed. "Give for it!" indignantly. "Why, that's the whole trouble. All my trouble, all the hard work, and not a piaster, not a piaster! Can't you understand, I had to do it?"

"Is he going to sell it?"

"Sell it? Not he! He's a collector, and crazy over the thing."

Mahomed nodded. He knew something of the habits of collectors. "Is he still in Cairo, and where may he be found?"

Ryanne began to believe that the game was going along famously; Mahomed was sure of it.

"He is George P. A. Jones, of Mortimer & Jones, rich rug dealers of New York. Money no object."

Though his face did not show it, Mahomed was singularly depressed by this news. If this man Jones had money, of what use was his little packet of notes?

"I must have that rug, effendi. There are two reasons why: it is holy, and the loss of it means my head."

"Good riddance!" thought Ryanne, a sympathetic look upon his face.

"What have you to suggest in the way of a plan?" asked Mahomed.

Ryanne felt a tingle of jubilation. He saw nothing but plain-sailing into port. But Mahomed had arranged to guide his craft into the whirlpool. Unto himself he kept up a ceaseless reiteration of – "Patience, patience, patience!"

Said Ryanne: "You do not care how you get the rug, so long as you do get it?"

"No, effendi." Mahomed smiled.

"A little rough work wouldn't disturb you?"

"No, it would not."

"Well, then, listen to me. Suppose you arrange to take my friend Jones into the desert for a little trip. Be his dragoman for a while. In fact, kidnap him, abduct him, steal him. You can hold him in ransom for the rug and a nice little sum of money besides."

"Can they do such things these days in Cairo?"

"Why not?"

"Truly, why not?" Mahomed sat thoughtfully studying the outrageous prints on the cracked walls. Had he dared he would have laughed. And he had thought this dog cunning beyond all his kind! "I agree. But the arrangements I must leave to you. Bring him here at nine o'clock to-night," he continued, leaning across the table impressively, "and I will give you one hundred pounds English."

Ryanne quickly assumed the expression needed to meet such splendid news. "I say, Mahomed, that is pretty square, after what has passed between us."

"It is nothing," gallantly.

If Ryanne laughed in his sleeve, Mahomed certainly found ample room in his for such silent and figurative cachinnations. He knew very well that Ryanne had received a goodly sum for his adventure. No man took his life in his hand to cancel an obligation which was not based upon disinterested friendship; and already the man had disavowed any such quality. Also, he had not been a seller of rugs himself, or guardian of the Yhiordes all these years, without having had some contact with collectors. Why, if there was one person dear at this moment to Mahomed-El-Gebel's heart, it was this man sitting opposite. And he wanted him far more eagerly than the rug; only, the rug must be regained, for its loss was a passport into paradise; and he wasn't quite prepared to be received by the houris.

"Mr. Jones, then, shall be here promptly at nine," declared Ryanne, beckoning the barmaid. "What will you have?"

Mahomed shook his head. His two companions, gathering the significance of the gesture, likewise declined.

"A smoke, then?"

A smiling negative.

"Beware of the Greek bearing gifts," laughed Ryanne. "All right. You won't mind if I have a beer to the success of the venture?"

"No, effendi."

Ryanne drank the lukewarm beverage, while Mahomed toyed with his turquoise ring, that sacred badge of an honorable pilgrimage to Holy Mecca.

"The young lady, effendi; she was very pretty. Your sister?" casually inquired Mahomed.

"Oh, no. She is a young lady I met at the hotel the other day."

The liar! thought the Moslem, as he recalled the light in Ryanne's eyes and the tenderness of his smiles. Apparently, however, Mahomed lost interest directly. "At nine o'clock to-night, then, this collector will arrive to become my guest?"

"By hook or crook," was the answer. "I'll have him here. Cash upon delivery, as they say."

"Cash upon delivery," Mahomed repeated, the phrase being familiar to his tongue.

"Frankly, I want this man out of the way for a while."

"Ah!"

"Yes. I want a little revenge for the way he has treated me."

"So it is revenge?" softly. Traitorous to both sides.

"And when I get him here?"

"Leave the rest to me."

"Good. I'm off, then. Take him to Bagdad. It will be an experience for him. But when you get him there, keep an eye out for the Shah Abbas in the Pasha's work-room."

The affair had gone so smoothly that Ryanne's usual keenness fell below the mark; fatuity was the word. There had been so many twists to the morning that his abiding distrust of every one became, for the time being, edgeless. The trick of purloining the cable had keyed him high; the subsequent meeting of Fortune had depressed him. And besides, he was too anxious to be rid of Jones to consider the possibilities of Mahomed's state of mind.

He got up, paid his score, turned a jest for the amusement of the barmaid, and went out to his carriage. His deduction still fallow, he rode away. Lord! how easy it had been. Not a hitch anywhere. And here, for days, he had imagined all sorts of things, and his dreams, a jumble of dungeons, of tortures. He understood. The old rascal's own head hung in the balance. That's what saved him. To Mahomed the rug was the paramount feature; revenge (and he knew that Mahomed was longing madly, fiercely for it) must wait. And when Mahomed turned his attention to this phase, why, he, Ryanne, would be at the other side of the Atlantic. It was very hard not to drop off at Shepheard's and confide the whole droll conspiracy to a bottle with a green and gilded neck. But, no; he had had no sleep the night before; wine and want of rest would leave him witless when the time came to see that Percival was safely stowed away. A fine joke, a monstrous fine joke! By-by, Percival, old chap; pleasant journey. The United Romance and Adventure Company gives you this little romance upon approval. If you do not like it, return it … if you can!

Mahomed sat perfectly still in his chair. His two companions watched him carefully. The mask had fallen, and their master's face was not pleasant to see. Suddenly he laughed. The barmaid stopped at her work. She had somewhere heard laughter like that. It gave her a shiver. Where had she heard it? Yes, that was it. A man who had played the devil in an opera called Fawst or something like that. Would she ever see dear old foggy London again? With a vain sigh she went on rinsing the glasses and coffee-cups.

When George rolled out of bed it was eleven. He bathed and dressed, absolutely content, regretless of the morning hours he had wasted. Truth to tell, he hadn't enjoyed sleep so thoroughly in weeks. He set to work, ridding the room of its clutter of books and clothes and what-nots. Might as well get the bulk of his packing out of the way while he thought of it.

Why had he been in such a dreadful hurry to pull out? Cairo was just now the most delightful place he knew of. To leave behind the blue skies and warm sunshine, and to face instead the biting winds and northern snows, rather dispirited him. He paused, a pair of trousers dangling from his hand. Pshaw! Why not admit it frankly and honestly? Wherever Fortune Chedsoye was or might be, there was the delectable country. He hadn't thought to ask her when she was to leave, nor whither she was to go. The abruptness with which she had left him the night before puzzled rather than disturbed him. Oh, well; this old planet was neither so deep nor so round as it had once been. What with steamships and railroads, the so-called four ends were drawn closely together. He would ask her casually, as if it did not particularly matter. In Naples it would be an easy matter to change his booking to New York. From Naples to Mentone was only a question of a few hours.

"It doesn't seem possible, George, old boy, does it? But it's true; and there's no use trying to fool yourself that it isn't. Fortune Chedsoye; it will be a shame to add Jones to it; but I'm going to try."

He pressed down the last book, the last collar, the last pair of shoes, and sat upon the lid of the trunk. He growled a little. The lock was always bothering him. It was wonderful how many things a chap could take out of a trunk and how plagued few he could put back. It did not seem to relieve the pressure if he added a steamer-trunk here or a suit-case there; there was always just so much there wasn't any room for. Truly, it needed a woman's hand to pack a trunk. However his mother in the old school-days had got all his belongings into one trunk was still an unsolved mystery.

Stubborn as the lock was, perseverance overcame it. George then, as a slight diversion, spread the ancient Yhiordes over the trunk and stared at it in pleasurable contemplation. What a beauty it was! What exquisite blue, what soft reds, what minute patterns! And this treasure was his. He leaned down upon it with his two hands. A color stole into his cheeks. It had its source in an old confusion: school-boys jeering a mate seen walking home from school with a girl. It was all rot, he perfectly knew, this wishing business; and yet he flung into the sun-warmed, sun-gilded space an ardent wish, sent it speeding round the world from east to west. Fast as heat, fast as light it traveled, for no sooner had it sprung from his mind than it entered the window of a room across the corridor. Whether the window was open or shut was of no importance whatever. Such wishes penetrated and went through all obstacles. And this one touched Fortune's eyes, her hair, her lips; it caressed her in a thousand happy ways. But, alas! such wishes are without temporal power.

Fortune never knew. She sat in a chair, her fingers locked tensely, her eyes large and set in gaze, her lips compressed, her whole attitude one of impotent despair.

George did not see her at lunch, and consequently did not enjoy the hour. Was she ill? Had she gone away? Would she return before he started? He greeted the Major as one greets a long-lost friend; and by gradations George considered clever indeed, brought the conversation down to Fortune. No, the Major did not know where she was. She had gone early to the bazaars. Doubtless she was lunching alone somewhere. She had the trick of losing herself at times. Mrs. Chedsoye was visiting friends at Shepheard's. When did Mr. Jones leave for America? What! on the morrow? The Major shook his head regretfully. There was no place like Cairo for Christmas.

George called a carriage, drove about the principal streets and shopping districts, and used his eyes diligently; but it was love's labor lost. Not even when he returned at tea-time did he see her. Why hadn't he known and got up? He could have shown her the bazaars; and there wasn't a dragoman in Cairo more familiar with them than he. A wasted day, totally wasted. He hung about the lounging-room till it was time to go up and dress for dinner. To-night (as if the gods had turned George's future affairs over to the care of Momus) he dressed as if he were going to the opera: swallow-tail, white vest, high collar and white-lawn cravat, opera-Fedora, and thin-soled pumps; all those habiliments and demi-habiliments supposed to make the man. When he reached what he thought to be the glass of fashion and the mold of form, he turned for the first time toward his trunk. He did not rub his eyes; it wasn't at all necessary; one thing he saw, or rather did not see, was established beyond a doubt, as plainly definite as two and two are four. The ancient Yhiordes had taken upon itself one of the potentialities of its fabulous prototype, that of invisibility: it was gone.

CHAPTER XI

EPISODIC

Fortune had immediately returned from the bazaars. And a kind of torpor blanketed her mind, usually so fertile and active. For a time the process of the evolution of thought was denied her; she tried to think, but there was an appalling lack of continuity, of broken threads. It was like one of those circumferential railways: she traveled, but did not get anywhere. Ryanne had told her too much for his own sake, but too little for hers. She sat back in the carriage, inert and listless, and indeterminedly likened her condition to driftwood in the ebb and flow of beach-waves. The color and commotion of the streets were no longer absorbed; it was as if she were riding through emptiness, through the unreality of a dream. She was oppressed and stifled, too; harbinger of storms.

Mechanically she dismissed the carriage at the hotel, mechanically she went to her room, and in this semiconscious mood sat down in a chair, and there George's wish found her, futilely. Oh, there was one thing clear, clear as the sky outside. All was not right; something was wrong; and this wrong upon one side concerned her mother, her uncle and Ryanne, and upon the other side, Mr. Jones. Think and think as she might, her endeavors gave her no single illumination. Four blind walls surrounded her. The United Romance and Adventure Company – there could not possibly be such a thing in existence; it was a jest of Ryanne's to cover up something far more serious.

She pressed her eyes with a hand. They ached dully, the dull pain of bewilderment, which these days recurred with frequency. A sense of time was lacking; for luncheon hour came and passed without her being definitely aware of it. This in itself was a puzzle. A jaunt, such as she had taken that morning, always keened the edge of her appetite; and yet, there was no craving whatever.

Where was her mother? If she would only come now, the cumulative doubts of all these months should be put into speech. They had treated her as one would treat a child; it was neither just nor reasonable. If not as a child, but as one they dared not trust, then they were afraid of her. But why? She pressed her hands together, impotently. Ryanne, clever as he was, had made a slip or two which he had sought to cover up with a jest. Why should he confess himself to be a rogue unless his tongue had got the better of his discretion? If he was a rogue, why should her mother and her uncle make use of him, if not for roguery's sake? They were fools, fools! If they had but seen and understood her as she was, she would have gone to the bitter end with them, loyally, with sealed lips. But no; they had chosen not to see; and in this had morally betrayed her. Ah, it rankled, and the injustice of it grew from pain to fury. At that moment, had she known anything, she certainly would have denounced them. Of what use was loyalty, since none of them sought it in her?

The Major was wiser than he knew when he spoke of the hundredth danger, the danger unforeseen, the danger against which they could make no preparation. And he would have been first to sense the irony of it could he have seen where this danger lay.

Why should they wish the pleasant young man out of the way? Why should Ryanne wish to inveigle him into the hands of this man Mahomed? Was it merely self-preservation, or something deeper, more sinister? Think! Why couldn't she think of something? It was only a little pleasure trip to Cairo, they had told her, and when she had asked to go along, they seemed willing enough. But they had come to this hotel, when formerly they had always put up at Shepheard's. And here again the question, why? Was it because Mr. Jones was staying here? She liked him, what little she had seen of him. He was out of an altogether different world than that to which she was accustomed. He was neither insanely mad over cards nor a social idler. He was a young man with a real interest in life, a worker, notwithstanding that he was reputed to be independently rich. And her mother had once borrowed money of him, never intending to pay it back. The shame of it! And why should she approach him the very first day and recall the incident, if not with the ulterior purpose of using him further? As a ball strikes a wall only to rebound to the thrower, so it was with all these questions. There was never any answer.

Tired out, mentally and physically, she laid her head upon the cool top of the stand. And in this position her mother, who had returned to dress for tea, found her. Believing Fortune to be asleep, Mrs. Chedsoye dropped a hand upon her shoulder.

Fortune raised her head.

"Why, child, what is the matter?" the mother asked. The face she saw was not tear-stained; it was as cold and passionless as that by which sculptors represent their interpretations of Justice.

"Matter?" Fortune spoke, in a tone that did not reassure the other. "In the first place I have only one real question to ask. It depends upon how you answer it. Am I really your daughter?"

"Really my daughter?" Mrs. Chedsoye stepped back, genuinely astonished. "Really my daughter? The child is mad!" as if addressing an imaginary third person. "What makes you ask such a silly question?" She was in a hurry to change her dress, but the new attitude of this child of hers warranted some patience.

"That is no answer," said Fortune, with the unmoved deliberation of a prosecuting attorney.

"Certainly you are my daughter."

"Good. If you had denied it, I should have held my peace; but since you admit that I am of your flesh and blood, I am going to force you to recognize that in such a capacity I have some rights. I did not ask to come into this world; but insomuch as I am here, I propose to become an individual, not a thing to be given bread and butter upon sufferance. I have been talking with Horace. I met him in the bazaars this morning. He said some things which you must answer."

"Horace? And what has he said, pray tell?" Her expression was flippant, but a certain inquietude penetrated her heart and accelerated its beating. What had the love-lorn fool said to the child?

"He said that he was not a good man, and that you tolerated him because he ran errands for you. What kind of errands?"

Mrs. Chedsoye did not know whether to laugh or take the child by the shoulders and shake her soundly. "He was laughing when he said that. Errands? One would scarcely call it that."

"Why did you renew the acquaintance with Mr. Jones, when you knew that you never intended paying back that loan?"

Here was a question, Mrs. Chedsoye realized, from the look of the child, that would not bear evasion.

"What makes you think I never intended to repay him?"

Fortune laughed. It did not sound grateful in the mother's ears.

"Mother, this is a crisis; it can not be met by counter-questions nor by flippancy. You know that you did not intend to pay him. What I demand to know is, why you spoke to him again, so affably, why you seemed so eager to enter into his good graces once more. Answer that."

Her mother pondered. For once she was really at a loss. The unexpectedness of this phase caught her off her balance. She saw one thing vividly, regretfully: she had missed a valuable point in the game by not adjusting her play to the growth of the child, who had, with that phenomenal suddenness which still baffles the psychologists, stepped out of girlhood into womanhood, all in a day. What a fool she had been not to have left the child at Mentone!

"I am waiting," said Fortune. "There are more questions; but I want this one answered first."

"This is pure insolence!"

"Insolence of a kind, yes."

"And I refuse to answer. I have some authority still."

"Not so much, mother, as you had yesterday. You refuse to explain?"

"Absolutely!"

"Then I shall judge you without mercy." Fortune rose, her eyes blazing passionately. She caught her mother by the wrist, and she was the stronger of the two. "Can't you understand? I am no longer a child, I am a woman. I do not ask, I demand!" She drew the older woman toward her, eye to eye. "You palter, you always palter; palter and evade. You do not know what frankness and truth are. Is this continual evasion calculated to still my distrust? Yes, I distrust you, you, my mother. You have made the mistake of leaving me alone too much. I have always distrusted you, but I never knew why."

Mrs. Chedsoye tugged, but ineffectually. "Let go!"

"Not till I have done. Out of the patchwork, squares have been formed. What of the men who used to come to the villa and play cards with Uncle George, the men who went away and never came back? What of your long disappearances of which I knew nothing except that one day you vanished and upon another you came back? Did you think that I was a fool, that I had no time to wonder over these things? You have never tried to make a friend of me; you have always done your best to antagonize me. Did you hate my father so much that, when his death put him out of range, you had to concentrate it upon me? My father!" Fortune roughly flung aside the arm. "Who knows about him, who he was, what he was, what he looked like? As a child, I used to ask you, but never would you speak. All I know about him nurse told me. This much has always burned in my mind: you married him for wealth that he did not have. What do you mean by this simple young man across the corridor?"

Mrs. Chedsoye was pale, and the artistic touch of rouge upon her cheeks did not disguise the pallor. The true evidence lay in the whiteness of her nose. Never in her varied life had she felt more helpless, more impotent. To be wild with rage, and yet to be powerless! That alertness of mind, that mental buoyancy, which had always given her the power to return a volley in kind, had deserted her. Moreover, she was distinctly alarmed. This little fool, with a turn of her hand, might send tottering into ruins the skilful planning of months.

"Are you in love with him?" aiming to gain time to regather her scattered thoughts.

"Love?" bitterly. "I am in a fine mood to love any one. My question, my question," vehemently; "my question!"

"I refuse absolutely to answer you!" Anger was first to reorganize its forces; and Mrs. Chedsoye felt the heat of it run through her veins. But, oddly enough, it was anger directed less toward the child than toward her own palpable folly and oversight.

"Then I shall leave you. I will go out into the world and earn my own bread and butter. Ah," a little brokenly, "if you had but given me a little kindness, you do not know how loyal I should have been to you! But no; I am and always have been the child that wasn't wanted."

The despair in the gesture that followed these words stirred the mother's calloused heart, moved it strangely, mysteriously. "My child!" she said impulsively, holding out her hands.

"No." Fortune drew back. "It is too late."

"Have it so. But you speak of going out into the world to earn your bread and butter. What do you know about the world? What could you do? You have never done anything but read romantic novels and moon about in the flower-garden. Foolish chit! Harm Mr. Jones? Why? For what purpose? I have no more interest in him than if he were one of those mummies over in the museum. And I certainly meant to repay him. I should have done so if you hadn't taken the task upon your own broad shoulders. I am in a hurry. I am going out to Mena House to tea. I've let Celeste off for the day; so please unhook my waist and do not bother your head about Mr. Jones." She turned her back upon her daughter, quite confident that she had for the time suppressed the incipient rebellion. She heard Fortune crossing the room. "What are you doing?" petulantly.