Part 48

"Of your friend? ..." He stood imperturbably facing her, his dark hands hidden in the sleeves of his orange-crimson _kaftan_, and the delicate mingling of golden lamplight and silvery starlight threw his shadow over the rich, pale carpets, and the exquisite Arabesque mosaics, of green and blue, and amber, that covered with their tracery the exposed spaces of the floor. "How can I say what has or will become of him! ... If you choose, it is for you to tell me...."

An almost insupportable sense of the speaker's insincerity went through Katharine's being like flame, and the agony of suspense long drawn-out, spurred her--as Essenian had calculated it would--to reckless utterance....

"How can I tell you? You play with me, Major Essenian, knowing as you must, that if I could find out what has happened to my--to my friend and my brother I would do so at any sacrifice! ..."

"Then," said the Egyptian, gently and mellifluously, "place yourself before the case that is on that tripod, open the case and look in the spherical beryl it contains. I will not touch it lest you should suspect me of some trickery. Indeed, I will remain at a distance while you look.... All I ask is--that you will tell me truthfully what you see--if Sight be vouchsafed to you! Judging by what I have witnessed I believe you will be favoured. No sacrifice is needed.... You have only to look! ..."

He lowered his voice almost to a whisper, yet every word came to Katharine's hearing with a distinctness that oppressed.

"After our meeting in Mr. Hazel's house at Alexandria, where I had witnessed such a striking manifestation of his clairvoyant powers, he dined with me at my Club, and after dinner--in my eagerness to pursue further the investigations that absorb me--I persuaded Hazel to look in the beryl that case contains. He passed with ease into the condition inseparable from Vision--but to my questions I received no satisfactory replies. Now that you are here," the voice was hurried, "the hour and the conditions alike being favourable, stretch out your hand, open the case and--look in the crystal ball!"

"Do you really think that I should see--things? Find out what is happening to--friends at Shechem?"

Essenian's orange-red draperies rustled as he moved nearer, saying:

"I do not 'think.' ... I know that you would! ..."

Holding his breath, he saw her white figure shift its position on the divan. Now her white hands hovered like wistful doves about the velvet case on the tripod--now the moony brightness of the great spherical beryl shone forth as though some lesser star of the innumerable hosts of heaven had fallen upon the tripod in the Arabian room.... Now he heard her say--speaking to herself rather than to him--with a fluttered laugh of nervousness:

"You know, I won't have anything to do with this if it's dabbling in magic. But--just to look in the beryl can't be much harm...."

"No, no! What harm could there be? But wonderful things are seen--sometimes--by gifted people. And you--I would stake half that I own on the certainty that you have the gift! ..."

He moved softly here and there in the background as Katharine, absorbed, bent over the beryl. Now he loosened a silken cord, and shades descended, covering the silver lamps. He moved his dark, supple hands among little brazen vases of Benares-work ranged upon a stand resembling a Hindu altar, and a slender column of incense, heavy and fragrant, rose up and climbed, spiralling and twisting, towards the great stars that looked down from Heaven's violet dome. Presently he heard Katharine whisper to herself as a woman speaks in dreaming:

"The Church forbids dabbling in spiritism and magic. But just--once to look--can't be so very wrong! ..."

And now Essenian spoke, seizing the appropriate moment, almost as he had spoken to Hazel at the Club:

"Wrong.... How should it be wrong? Do not touch the beryl--that is imperative. Neither bend so close above it that your breathing dims its light. Sit comfortably, rest your hands lightly on either side of the tripod. You are not afraid? Why should you be? There is absolutely no reason.... Only look steadily in the beryl, do not remove your eyes...."

If Katharine had seen Essenian's, as they narrowly observed her, she might have recalled a speech of Lady Wastwood's, made a few days previously. For they indubitably resembled the eyes of a cobra, and his soft noiseless movements were horribly tigerish. But she knew nothing but the cold, gleaming sphere upon its little cup-shaped metal pedestal--and the smooth twists and coiling folds, suggesting veil upon veil of mystery--that were beginning to reveal themselves beneath the pale-green, shining surface that at first had seemed opaque. There was a singing in her ears, and she heard her heart throbbing, but as though it were the heart of some one else beating a long way off. Edward's? ... Julian's? ... Neither of these, she thought.... The heart that called so far away was John Hazel's.... What was he doing? Where was he? What had happened to him? Summoning all her strength, she willed herself to see....

"Oh, oh! Take it away! ... Hide it from me! ..."

Katharine was moaning, and begging not to see. And the Egyptian, ashen of hue, dabbled with sweat, vibrating like a wind-blown reed--was bending towards her, greedily drinking in the disconnected utterances that broke from her--when she sighed deeply, lifted her head, and fixed her eyes on him.

"Go on! Go on! Look back to the beryl!" He lifted his slender clenched hand as though he would have struck her. "Do you want to ruin all? Why do you stop? ..."

"Because it makes my eyes and my head ache so...." She opened and shut her eyes once or twice, and rubbed her forehead with her handkerchief. "And because what I saw was horrible--that was why I stopped!"

"What did you see? ..."

"The inside of a wooden hut. Dirty and sordid--with no furniture in it except a native bed. All seen as by daylight, through high-powered binoculars. And--on the bed--chained to it--" She shuddered--"Something shapeless--something bloody--something terrible--that once may have been a man--"

"Was it your brother?"

"No, thank--"

"Hush! ..." He stopped her with an imperative gesture. "How do you know that it was not Father Forbis? ..."

"Because Julian is very fair, with reddish hair and beard. The monks of his Order wear the beard like the Franciscans."

"Was it John Hazel? Answer! ..."

"I dare not say! ..."

"You know it was!" He almost spat the words at her.

"Perhaps. Oh! what have they done to him? ..." Katharine's nerves were thrilling--little intermittent shudders passed over her, cold damps stood upon her skin, and her heart shook her as she sat. She fought for composure, steadying her lips, drying her dewy temples with her handkerchief, "I have seen things in War," she panted, "but nothing worse than that! Pray order the car!--I must go back to Alexandria." She repeated, thinking he did not hear her. "Have the kindness to order the car! ..."

He had moved round in front of her, and stood regarding her with his arms crossed upon his breast. Now he said in his velvet tones: "Not until you have looked again in the beryl, Miss Forbis. And for me--for me, this time!"

"You threaten to detain me here against my will? I should not advise your trying it!" She rose up, dwarfing him by her superb stature, adding as she lifted her mantle from the divan: "You do not suppose that my friends at Montana are ignorant of my whereabouts? Besides, your car was challenged at all the guarded barriers, and more than once stopped upon the road here by patrols of Military Police. The chauffeur supplied your number and name, and I naturally took care to give my own, 'Sergeant-Motor-driver, K. Forbis, Number 61, --th Unit, V.A. Department, Red Cross....' This is the Twentieth Century, Major Essenian...."

"I threaten nothing. I suggest nothing," the supple hands were extended towards her, palms uppermost, "I have no designs against your honour. I am of those who see the grinning skull behind the Face of Loveliness and the asp that conceals itself beneath the blossom of the rose." He spoke rapidly, illustrating his sentences with swift, expressive gestures: "I merely entreat of you, at this juncture in my fortunes--a man beset with dangers from sources all unknown!--look in the beryl! Ask of me what you choose--I am wealthy enough to give it you!--but first look in the beryl, and will to see my Fate."

"Very well." The womanliness inherent in Katharine stirred her, in spite of her dislike, to pity the desperate anxiety patent in the Egyptian's twitching face, and nervous, appealing hands. "But your attempt at coercion was as misplaced as your suggestion of bribery. You will not repeat either, if you are wise. Since you entreat it, I consent to look once more in the beryl. But first--order the car...."

"I am your slave, and all I possess is at your service!" He took a silver rod from a stand, and struck a small gong. It had a wonderful resonance, and the sonorous note evoked, spread in waves increasing in volume, until, the limit of its power reached, the sound ebbed away.

"That was to summon the car. Now, look--" Essenian threw fresh incense on the burning embers in the censer on the altar, muttering an invocation in his own tongue: "O ye Influences, be propitious! O Tarshun, O Taryushun! Come down! Come down! Remove the veil from the woman's sight. Show her my Fate in the Eye of Radiance. Hear, O Arhmân! Great Prince--thy servant calls! ..."

Bending over the beryl, resting her hands on the tripod, turning a deaf ear to the inward voice that warned her not to look, Katharine saw in the body of the stone, framed in silky, shining skeins of semi-opaque lustre, a little oval vignette of her own face, crowned by the slouched felt uniform hat, with its badge and ribbon banding, backed by the purple splendour of the jewelled Eastern sky. She put up a hand and removed her hat, and tossed it aside carelessly, without removing her gaze from the sinister, gleaming sphere.... Then the pale face with the intent eyes faded from vision, a wider space began to clear between the silky folds....

"Essenian Pasha--I will to see the Fate of Essenian!" she repeated mentally, concentrating her powers. The will to see became intense. She forgot her loathing of the man, muttering incoherent things, shivering with suspense behind her: "I will to see! ... I will to see!" she told herself over and over. And Seeing came as Katharine framed the words, with dazzling, illuminating clearness. As previously, she might have been looking through high-powered binoculars.

She saw a whitewashed brick courtyard, clean and bare and sanded, in early daylight, with blank brick walls on three sides, and plain brick buildings on the fourth side, where two sentries with fixed bayonets guarded a door. Drawn up in the courtyard in two lines, a company of R.F.C. officers, N.C.O.'s and men, stood at attention. The door opened, the sentries presented arms, and a Sergeant-Major and party of Military Police, with fixed bayonets, led by an officer wearing a Staff brassard, and followed by four other Police, carrying a plain, wooden coffin--marched into the courtyard, escorting a prisoner.

The prisoner was Essenian--in khaki as she had first seen him--save that his multi-coloured rows of ribbons, and the badges on his uniform, had been ruthlessly slashed away. The man himself was altered, shrunken, aged beyond believing. His grey face with its glittering eyes staring from caves that had been dug about them, lifted as the Sergeant-Major touched his shoulder--took off his cork helmet--bandaged his eyes carefully--opened his khaki tunic and hung a white-painted metal disc immediately above his heart....

Now they were putting down the coffin before a blank wall. Now the little shrunken figure stood against the wall in tragic solitude--the Sergeant-Major was placing seven men in line confronting it, taking their rifles from them, and showing them, one at a time to the officer with the Staff brassard....

"_Ready...! Present....!_"

The rifles had been given back, and seven muzzles steadily pointed at the white disc hanging on the doomed man's breast. In another second--sharp stabs of greenish flame leaped beyond the shining bayonets, light puffs of brownish smoke rose against the dazzling blue sky seen above the wall....

The shrunken body lay huddled up, in an odd unnatural attitude, in a dark red puddle that soaked away in the sand. The officer with the Staff brassard approached it, drawing his revolver.... He stooped down, straightened himself, glanced back at the Sergeant, and slipping the revolver back into its holster, gave an order, wheeled sharply and walked away. And as he did this the whole scene blurred and vanished. With a slight, sharp sound like the snapping of a crystal rod, a jagged fracture showed down the middle of the Eye of Radiance. The Beryl had become opaque as a lump of volcanic glass.

VII

"What have you seen? ..." A fierce breath beat on Katharine's cheek, and a steel-strong grip was on her arm, as Essenian's swift whisper assailed her ear: "Deny not that you saw!--the stone splits--that is enough!--it means the end for me! I am deceived--" the shrill voice cracked despairingly--"I to whom They promised Life--Life prolonged beyond the age of elephants--Youth that should keep its freshness like the flower in the block of ice. Speak, woman, say what you have seen, or by Eblis! I will make you! I am strong yet, and if Azrael's hand be at my throat, you shall feel mine at yours!"

Even as he leaped, Katharine swung out a long arm, striking him across the body, breaking the force of his leap, as she remembered to have once done when a savage cat, crossed with the wild breed, had crept up behind, unnoticed, and sprung upon her to bite.

"You native cad!" rang her clear disdainful voice. "Are you out for murder?"

"I am out to make you tell me--" Breathing unevenly, he stood back from the divan, his supple body tense for a second spring, his glittering eyes watching her: "What have you seen in the beryl? Answer!--it is my right to hear!"

"But not your right to lay hands upon an Englishwoman," Katharine retorted, tingling with insulted pride. "Do not attempt it again, because I carry a revolver, and like most women who have served in this War, I have learned to use it well!"

Brave words, yet her head was swimming as she spoke, and her heart throbbed suffocatingly, and the hand that gripped the butt of the little Colt's revolver, shook with the rigor of fear. The strange and terrible experiences of the night--horror of Essenian's vicinity and touch, the strain of long anxiety and protracted fasting--were beginning to tell upon Katharine. She despised women who fainted at dreadful sights or in perilous situations, and yet--she realised herself not far from fainting now....

Air--she was famishing for want of air! though the room was open to the stars and the night-winds--though the curtains behind that tigerish orange-red figure were bellying and parting, blown inwards under their pointed triple arches by a gale she could not feel. She could see the branches of the thronging trees--the lateral limb of a towering moss-cup oak swaying strangely under the weight of a climbing brown figure. She caught the flash of eyes and teeth in a shadowy face topped by a white sun-helmet--and ran towards the archway as a man leaped into the room....

Others followed, dropping from the great elbowed tree-limb to the wall, and jumping through the archway.... Men in the well-known khaki drill, with sun-browned or pale European faces under their sun-helmets--and the red brassard of the Military Police....

"Sorry, but I have to arrest you, Major Essenian, in the name of the King...."

A young Lieutenant of M.P. with a tooth-brush moustache of undeniable ginger was pressing a folded paper on Essenian and mopping his own dripping face....

"Warm work, shinning up trees in this muggy Egyptian climate. But I fancy we've dropped in just at the right time... Certainly for the lady. Sergeant Whitmore, look to the lady. Handcuff the prisoner, Corporal Rose. And, Major, remember that anything you say will be used against you in evidence."

"There will be--there will be a formal Court Martial?" He raised his face, the grey face, pinched and sweat-dabbled, that Katharine had seen in the vision of the Stone: "I demand it!--I demand it! Whatever the charges on this warrant which I have not read, remember!--I can disprove them--I can confute them--establish my honour in the face of the world."

"You'll be lucky if you do! No, you can't change into uniform. One of your servants can pack a kit-case, and leave it for you at the Military Clink. That's your address--while you require one. Hit that tin gong, will you, Corporal? It'll fetch some of these Gyppo fellows to show the way to the hall-door."

"I can guide you, Mr. Martyn!"

"Holy Smoke, it's Miss Forbis from Montana! How in the wide-- I beg your pardon!"

The Lieutenant--not so long ago a convalescent patient at the Hospital, broke off the end of the question, reddening, but Katharine answered with her broad, sweet smile, looking in the boyish face with candid cairngorm eyes:

"How in the wide did I come here? Well, I'll tell you strictly in confidence--in return for a lift back to Alexandria. Can do? ..."

"Can do! Off duty--as soon as I've delivered the goods at the M.P." His glance at the goods was highly expressive: "_'Hê intē! Ya rajîl!_" This to an elderly Mohammedan servant with a much-ridged forehead of anxiety--Nasr Ullah, summoned in haste to the Pavilion by an alien stroke upon the Presence's gong. "Oh, you! Show us the way downstairs!"

"I will go, I will go! Do not handle me roughly.... Remember that I am an old--a very old man! Miss Forbis, I knew your father once! Speak for me! Use your influence! Remember," the quavering voice broke in a fit of senile coughing, the manacled hands extended to Katharine in supplication, looked like those of a mummy, so discoloured and shrunken were they: "You do not answer? You triumph in my downfall?" The narrow eyes glimmered hatred out of their deep-dug caves. "Do not forget your brother, and your friend, Mr. Hazel--whose fate is practically in my hands!"

"Their fate is in the Hands of God," Katharine answered gently, moving beyond the reach of the withered, trembling clutch. "Like yours and mine, and that of every other creature. Good-bye, Major Essenian...."

He made no reply. He was muttering to himself, and looked, indeed, an old man. His head fell on his breast as the word to move was given--and the party of policemen, with the orange-robed figure tottering in their midst--tramped over the white bridge in the bluish-pale light of the small hours, and followed by Katharine and the Lieutenant, went down through the airless house....

When the tail-light of the last of the string of the four Military Police cars had winked past the turn in the avenue, and the _porte cochère_ was closed, Nasr Ullah went back to his "house" and found her waking. She hastened out of the inner apartment and ran to him in alarm.

"Oh, my eyes! Oh, my husband! _Alhamdolillah_ thou hast returned to us! Little sleep have we had this night. Strange scrapings at the back of the house, and whistles as of Afrits talking.... The children woke and wept, and I scarce had wits to lie to them--thinking the Servants of Eblis were carrying the Presence away! ..."

"The Presence hath gone, sure enough, but Inglizi soldiers took him. Always I have known," said Nasr Ullah, "that some day the soldiers would come. They followed the woman secretly, climbing the trees like monkeys, and leaped in upon the Presence when she cried out.... Perhaps she was a spy--God knows! ..."

"Praise be to Him the soldiers took thee not also! Tell me--in this matter of the pigeons.... Didst thou--"

Nasr Ullah shook his head:

"My heart was straitened when I left thee,--but Allah enlightening me--I dealt wisely. For at the compound of the Commandant--at the Headquarters of Intelligence and at Garrison Headquarters--one grain of barley threw I at each place,--and picked it up again! Then, burying the pot and the grain in a place where none will find them--I returned at the fourth hour, and said to the Presence--'Lo! I have done thy bidding, in the casting of poisoned barley.' And in this I spake the very truth, yet Nûh's birds are safe for me!"

"It is well. The Compassionate shielded thee. Think you, my husband, the Presence will return?"

"I think not, but if he does, he will not find Nasr Ullah. The Eye of Radiance is broken, so even did he look in it he could not find me. The Englishmen have opened his _maktabs_ and taken all his papers. Come, let us take the children, and thy jewels, and our money and the best of the clothing and go away from here!"

"When the fleas leave the cat, he is dead!" said Fatimeh acutely.

"No flea am I!" denied Nasr Ullah stoutly. "Forty-two years have I served The Presence, and by Allah! I have served him well and faithfully. Now, I shall serve Allah, Who is the better Master, and my sons shall grow up without knowledge of ink-pools and wizardry...."

"And the bag that is buried under the bed hath enough in it to buy thee a homestead. Verily the Beneficent hath hearkened to my prayers. Go we by day, or now?"

"Now. Make haste and dress the children--hide thy jewels about thee." He looked round for something to dig with, and picked up a big brass ladle. "Strange, how a man may feel like a thief in digging up his own hoard!"

"Will there--is there likely to be a Court Martial?" Katharine asked the Lieutenant, as some hours later, a Police Ford Car, diverted from official use for the purposes of chivalry, ran between green fields of fodder on the road by the Canal, and the Lieutenant--having fed his charge with sandwiches of cold chicken, hard eggs, ripe figs and bananas, and hot coffee out of a thermos--was pressing Turkish cigarettes on her and offering a light.

"Something in the nature of one, possibly. But precious short, and to the point. I'm not broaching official secrets!--but the evidence is solid. We've had quite a cloud of witnesses to prove that the Pasha has been playing the kind of trick with the British Government that he tried to play on you. There were two of our Secret Intelligence men, in Shechem, one of 'em a prisoner in the Barracks and the other in disguise. And he was twice seen by these chaps to shed despatches into the town-square...."

"But weren't the despatches dummies?" Katharine asked.

"That was the tale he fed 'em with at H.Q., but it won't wash!"--the owner of the ginger toothbrush shook his head: "We've got hold of the last lot and they're genuine enough. Seditious propaganda--from centres in the Far East--that's the sort of stuff he's been dropping in Palestine.... What's more--it has just come out that he murdered his observer--the S.I. man who was shut up with the other War Prisoners in the Barracks saw the thing done--in mid-air over Shechem--just as he'd focussed his binnics on Essenian's machine. 'The Two-Faced Nightingale,' the War Prisoners used to call her--because of her transferable number and colour-plates--a clever invention of the Pasha's, you see...."

"But I thought they'd approved of the invention at Headquarters? ..."