OCR Text |
Show i - rTTTTTT '..'.,.,, , J,, ,.,., .,,,,..,,- J AuiW of HEARTS AND TASKS aw AAN ON THE BOX etc,. IlUisi'raliois AV.O.KnxKii, . COPYRIGHT Hill Iy - ASi'n liiiyoJiCOMPASY I 1 -Ml i ' 1 liia lights, tlie Arab wiib only paying coin for coin. Hut for Hie girl, rty-iinne rty-iinne would hnvo accepted tho sltua-(Ion sltua-(Ion wllh n shrug, to await tlmt mo-ment mo-ment when Mahomed, eased by Iho sense of security, would nalurnlly re-Inx re-Inx vigilance. The prcBcnco of Fortune For-tune changed the wliolo face of the affair. Mahomed could luivo his eyea and henrt If ho would but spare her. lie intiBt bo patient; lio iniint accept Insults, even pbyBlcal vluloncc, hut Komo day ho and Mahomed would play the filial round. Ills past, IiIh foolish, futile pant: all Iho follies, all the petty crimes, nil the low dissipations In which ho. had Indulged, seemed trooping about his camel, mocking and gibbering at him. Why hadn't he lived clean lllto Jones thero? Why hadn't tin fought temptation temp-tation as he had fought men? Knvl-, Knvl-, ronnient was no excuse; bringing up offered no palliation; lie had gone wrong simply because his .inclinations had been wrong. On the other hand, no one had ever tried to help him back to a decent living. Ills mother had died during his childhood, and her Influence had left no Impression. His father had been a money-maker, consumed by the pleasure of building up pyramids of gold. Ho hnd never reasoned with his youngest-born; he had paid his bills without protest or reproach; it was so much a month to be written down In the oxix nse account. ac-count. And the first-born had been his natural enemy since the days of the nursery. Still, ho could not acquit himself; his own arraignment was as keen as any Judge could have made. Strong as ho was physically, brilliant as he was mentally, there was a mortal mor-tal weakness In his blood; and search as he might the history of his ancestors, ances-tors, their lives shed no light upon his own. In stating that his face had been granted that dubious honor and concern con-cern of the perpetrators of the rogues' gallery, he had merely given rein to a seizure of soul-bitterness. But there was truth enough In the statement portrait for any cnllery given over to rogues. And he hadn't worried much over Iho moral problem confronting him, Hint the way of the Ininsgref-Hor Is hard. It wiib on'y when lovo rent tho veil of IiIh fatuity Hint he saw himself iih ho really was. Love! lie gazed ahead at Fortune under tho rmihmal. That a guileless young girl as she was should enchain him! That the sight of her should always send a longing Into his soul to go back and begin over! Ilia Jaws hardened. Why not? Why not try to recover some of tho crumbs of the fine things he had thrown nway? At least nough to permit him to go again among his fellows without constantly con-stantly looking behind to note If he were followed? My tho Lord Harry! once he was out of this web of his own weaving, ho would livo straight; I he swore that every dollar hereafter put in his pocket fihould be an honest one. Fortune could never be his wife, lie came to this fact without any roundabout or devious byways. In the first place, lie knew he had not touched her heart; hhe hnd been friendly; friend-ly; and now even her friendship hung by a thread. All right. Tho love he bore her was going to be his salvation Just the same; and at this moment he was deadly In earnest. It was after nlno when they were ferried acroi-a the two canals, the fresh water and tho salt, several miles below Serapeum. The three weary captives saw a great liner slip past slowly and majestically upon Its way to the Far Last. She radiated with light and cheer and comfort; and all could hear faintly the pulsations of her engines. So near and yet so far; a enp of water to Tantalus! At midnight mid-night they made camp. There were no palms this time; simply a well in the center of a jumble of huge boulders. boul-ders. The tentB were pitched to the southwest, for now the wind blew, biting bit-ing from the land of northern snows; and a fire wan a welcome thing. This was Arabia; Africa had been left behind. be-hind. Here they awaited the return from within. Had the courier returned re-turned with tho Holy Yhlordes, it l not Impossible that he would have liberated lib-erated them all. Hut now he. dared not; he vas not far enough away. To Bagdad, then, and as swiftly as the exigencies of desert travel would permit. per-mit. One beacon of hope burned la his breast. The l'asha might be deposed, de-posed, and In that case he could Immediately Im-mediately diEposo of his own good and chattels and seek new pastures. It would come hard, doubly hard, slnc he never could regain the position h was to lose. Nine hundred pounds English, and a comfortable fraction over; the yellow-haired dog would have nothing In the end for hla palna. It would b what tho Feringhl called a good Joke. A week passed. Christmas. And not one of them recalled the day. Perhaps It was because years had passed since that time when It meant anything to them. The old year went out a-lagglng! neither did they taka note of this. Having left behind civilization, civi-lization, customs and habits were forgotten. for-gotten. Sometimes they rode all day and all night, sometimes but half a day, and again, when the water was sweet, they rested the day and night. Never a human being they saw, never a caravan cara-van met or crossed them. In this week, the secret marvels of the desert became theirs. They saw It gleam and waver and glitter under skies of brass, when the north wind let down and a breeze came over from the Persian Per-sian Gulf. They saw It covered with the most amazing blues and greys and greens. They saw It under the rarest azure and a stately fleet of billowy clouds; under the dawn, under the set of sun, under the moon and stars; and unfailingly the interminable 'reaches of sand and rock and scrubby bush, chameleon-like, readjusted it countenance to each change In th sky. George, who was a poet without the gift of expression, never ceased to find new charms; and nothing pleased his fancy more than to see the cloud-shadows Bcud away across the sands. Once, toward the latter end of day, Fortune cried out and pointed. Far away, palely yet distinctly, they saw an ocean liner. She stood out against the yellowing sky as a magic-lantern magic-lantern picture stands out upon tha screen, and faded similarly. It wa the one and only mirage they saw, or at least noticed. Once another caravan, composed wholly of Arabs, passed. What hope the prisoners had was instantly snuffed out. Before the strangers came within hailing, Mahomed hustled his captives into his tent and swore he would kill either George or Ryanne if they spoke. He forgot Fortune, however. As the caravan passed she screamed. Instantly Mahomed clapped his hand roughly over her mouth. The sheik of the passing caravan looked keenly at the tent, smiled grimly and passed on. What was it to him that a white woman lay In yonder tent? Hi one emotion was of envy. After thia the prisoners became apathetic. Upon the seventh day, they witnessed wit-nessed the desert's terrifying anger. The air that had been cool, suddenly grew still and hot; the blue above began to fade, to assume a dusty, cop-perish cop-perish color. The camels grew restless. rest-less. Quickly there rose out of the horizon saffron clouds, approaching with Incredible swiftness. Little whirlwinds of sand appeared here and there, rose and died as if for want of air. Mahomed veered the car-avan car-avan toward a kind of bluff composed of sand and precipitous boulders. All the camels were made to kneel. The boys muffled up their mouths and noses, and Mahomed gave instructions instruc-tions to his captives. Fortune bnried her head In her coat and nestled down beside her camel, while George ani Ryanne used their handkerchiefs. George left his camel and sought For--tune's side, found her hand and held it tightly. He scarcely gave thought to-what to-what he did. He vaguely meant to. encourage her; and possibly he did. The storm broke. The sun became obscured. Pebbles and splinters of rock sang through the pall of whirling sand. A golden tone enveloped the little gathering. Had there been no natural protection, protec-tion, they must have ridden on, blindly blind-ly and desperately, for to have remained re-mained still in the open would have been to await their tombs. It spent its fury In half a hour; and the clearing air became cold again. The caravan proceeded. The hair of er-ery er-ery one was dimly yellow, their face and their garments. (TO BE CONTINUED.) and disappeared within. She looked neither at Ryanne nor at George. She knew that George, hla soul filled with unlucky quixotic sense of cnlvalry which had made hlrn so easy a victim to her mother, would not accept hla llborly at the price of Ryanne's, Ryanne, Ry-anne, to whom he owed nothing, not even mercy. And if she had had to auk one of the two, George would have been the natural selection, for she trusted him Implicitly. Perhaps there Htlll lingered In her mind a recoiled rec-oiled iou of how charmingly he had i-'poken of his mother. filio could have set out for Cairo alone: even as she could have grown a pair of wings and sailed through the air! The fate that walked behind her was malevolent, cruel, unjust. She had wronged no one, In thought or deed. She had put out her hand confidently confi-dently to the world, to be laughed at, distrusted, or Ignored. Was It possible pos-sible that a little more than a month ago she wandered, If not happy, In the sense the desired, at least in a peaceful slate of mind, among her ca-mollaa ca-mollaa and roses at Mentone? Her world had been, In thla short time, remolded, reconstructed; where once had bloomed a garden, now yawned a chasm: and the psychological earthquake earth-quake had left her dizzy. That Mahomed, Ma-homed, now wrought Jo a kind of Berserk Ber-serk rage, might begin reprisals at once, did not alarm her; indeed, her feeling was rather of dull, aching Indifference. In-difference. Nothing mattered now. But Ryanne and George were keenly alive to the danger, and both agreed that Fortune must go no farther. Ryanne, under his bitter raillery and seeming scorn for sacred things, pos-sessed pos-sessed a latent magnanimity, and it now pushed up through the false layers. lay-ers. "Jones, It's my funeral. Go tell her. You two can find the way back to the canal, and once there you will have no trouble. Don't bother your head about me." "But what will you do?" "Take my medicine," grimly. "Ryanne, you are offering the cowardly cow-ardly part to me!" "You fool, It's the girl. What do I care about the rest of it? You're as brave as a lion. When you put up your fists the other night, you solved that puzzle for yourself. For God's j pake, do It while I have the courage to let you! Don't you understand? I love that girl better than my heart's blocd, and Mahomed can have it drop by drop. Go and go quickly! He will give you food and water." "You go. She knows you better than me." "But will she trust me as she will you? Percival, old top, Mahomed will never let me go till he's taken his pound of flesh. Fortune!" Ryanne called. "Fortune, we want you!" She appeared at the flap of Jthe tent. I "Jones here will go back with you. Go, both of you, before Mahomed changes his mind." "Miss Chedsoye, he is wrong. He's the one to go. He was hurt worse than I was. Pride doesn't matter at a time like this. You two go," desperately. des-perately. Fortune shook her head. "All or none of us; all or none of us," she repeated. re-peated. And Mahomed, having witnessed and overheard the scene, laughed, a laughter identical to that which had struck the barmaid's ears sinisterly. He had not studied his white man without gathering some insight into his character. Neither of these men was a poltroon. And when he had made the offer, he knew that the conditions con-ditions would erect a barrier over which none of them would pass voluntarily. vol-untarily. So much for pride as the Christian dogs knew it. Pride is a fine buckler; none knew that better than Mahomed himself; but a wise man does not wear it at all times. "What is it to be?" he demanded of Fortune. "What shall I say to him?" "Whatever you will." Ryanne was tired. He saw that argument would be of no use. "All or none of us." And Fortune looked at Mahomed with all the pride of her race. "It is not because you wish me to be free; it Is because you wish to see one of my companions made base in my eyes. I will not have It!" "The will of Allah!" He could not repress the fire of admiration in his own eyes as they took in her beauty, the erect, slender figure, the scorn upon her face, and the fearlessness In her great, dark eyes. Such a woman might have graced the palace of the Great Caliph. He had had In mind many little cruelties to practice upon her, that he might see the men writhe. 14 SYNOPSIS. Oeorn roretvul AUovnon Jom'n, vUv r resident ,i( the Mot ropolltnn OiIimUm vuk oompiiny of New York, tlilrsltnn: (r renmmv. t In Onlro on a buatnt'ss trip ttoruL-o Kyrtnno arrives at the holol tn ChIto wltli h I'HtvtiiUy RtnmW InimlK-Ry.uuie InimlK-Ry.uuie sells Jones the ftunous holy Yhlordes Yhl-ordes rut; whieh lie admits having stolor from a push t HjiKdnd. Jono meet Major Culluhon rtnd Inter Is Introdiued to Fortune rhodsoye by a woman to whom he hud loaned loO pouuda at Monto Ourln some months previously, and who turn:" out to ho Fortune's mother. Jones takes Mrs. Chedsoye and Fortune to A polr. Ifnme. Fortune returns to Jones the money borrowed by her mother, Mrs. Chedsoye appears to ens'aed In some mysterious enterprise unknown to the dsiiKhter. Uyanno 'nteresis Jones tn the United Uomanee and Adventure oom-pany, oom-pany, a concern whieh for fi prlee W'.!l ftrrrtnsre any kind of an adventure to order. or-der. Mrs. Chedsoye. her brother. Major Callahan. YYullaee and Uyanno. as the United Romance rtnd Adventure rompany. plan a risky enterprise Involving Jones. Ryanne makes known lo Mrs. Chedsoye hla Intention to marry Fortune. Mrs. Chedsoye declares she will not permit tt. Plans are laid to prevent Jones sailing for home. Ryanne steals Jones' letters nd cable dtspateties. He wires anent in New York, in Jo'.es' name, that tie Is renting house In New York to some friends. Mahomed, keeper of the holy carpet, is Ort Ryanne's trail. Ryanne Sromlses Fortune that ho will see that ones comes to no harm as a result of his purchase of the rur. Mahomed accosts Ryanne and demands the Yhlordes ruR. Ryanne tells htm Jones has the run and usrsests the abduction of the New York merchant as a means of securing Its return. re-turn. The rusr disappears from Jones' room. Fortune quarrels with her mother when the latter refuses to explain her mysterious actions. Fortune sets a message mes-sage purporting to be from Ryanne asking ask-ing her to meet him In a secluded place that evening. Jones receives a message askin.e him to meet Ryanne at the English-Bar English-Bar the same evening. Jones is carried off into the desert by Mahomed and his accomplices after a desperate fisht. He discovers that Ryanne and Fortune also are captives, the former Is badly battered and unconscious. Ryanne recovers consciousness con-sciousness and the sicht of Fortune In captivity reveals to him the fact that Mahomed intends to get vengeance on him through the girl. Fortune acknowledges acknowl-edges that sh stole the rug from Jones' room. l" CHAPTER XIV. (Continued.) "Why not tell Mahomed at once, ind have him send a courier back for the rug?" suggested Fortune. 1 "By Jove, that clears up everything Well do It immediately." George felt better than he had at any stage of the adventure. Here was a simple way out of the difficulty. "Softly," Bald Ryanne. "Let us come down to the lean facts. If that rug is In your room, Fortune, your mother has discovered it long before now. She will turn it over to your stimable uncle. None of us will ever see It again, I'm thinking. The Major knows that Jones gave me a thousand pounds for It." Struck by a sense of Impending disaster, Ryanne began to fumble in his pockets. Gone! Every shilling of it gone! "He's got that, too; Mahomed; the cash you gave me, Jones. Wait a moment; don't speak; things are whirling about some. Over nine hundred pounds; every shilling of it. We mustn't let him know that I've missed It. I've got to play weak In order to grow strong. . . . But they will at least start up a row as to your whereabouts, Fortune." "No," thoughtfully; "ne, I do not ' think they will." The undercurrent was too deep for George. He couldn't see very clearly Just then. The United Romance and Adventure Company; was that all? Was there not something sinister behind that name, concerning him? He looked patiently from the girl to the . adventurer. Ryanne stared at the yellow desert beyond. His brain was clearing rap-Idly rap-Idly under the stimulus of thought. He. himself did not believe that they would send out search-parties either for him or for Fortune. He could not fathom what had given Fortune her belief; but he realized that his own was based upon the recollection of that savage mood when he had thrown down the gauntlet. Now they would accept it. He had run away with Fortune For-tune as he had boldly threatened to do. The mother and her precious brother would proceed at once to New York without him. He had made a fine muddle of it all. But for a glass of wine and a grain too much of confidence, con-fidence, he had not been here this day. Mahomed, himself astir by this time, came over to the group, leisurely. leisure-ly. The thrae looked like conspirators conspira-tors to his suspicious aye, but unlike conspirators they made no effort to separate because he approached. He understood: as yet they were not afraid of him. That was one of the reaions he hated white men; they could seldom be forced to show fear, even w hen they possessed it. Well these three should know what fear was before they saw the last of him. He carried a kurbash, a cowhide whip, which he twirled idly, even suggestively. sugges-tively. Fii"rt. he came to George. .. "If you l-k4 Yhlordes, there is still a chance ivr you. Cairo Is but fifty miles awaj'. Bagdad la several hundred." hun-dred." He flw the whip caressingly through his fingers. "I do not lie," replied George, a truculent tru-culent sparkle In his eyes. "I told yoti that I had It not. It was the truth." A ripple of anxiety passed over Ma-homed's Ma-homed's face. "And you?" turning upon Ryanne, with suppressed savage-ness. savage-ness. How he longed to lay the lash upon the dog I "Don't look at me," answered Ryanne Ry-anne waspishly. "It I tid it I should ot bo here." Ah, for a bit of his oU : rotigth! Ho would have strangled Inhumed then and thew. Ho", tho nig and tho beating hud weakened ilm terribly. "If I glvo you tho rug,' Interposcc' 'ortuno, "will you premise, freedom o us nil?" .Mahomed stopped back, nonplussed, 'le hadn't e.xpwciod any Information1 i'oin this (uiarter. "1 have tho rug," declined Fortune ,'almly, 'Sough sho could scarcely hour her own voice, her heart beat so furiously. "Vou have tt?" Muhomod was con-,'iisod. con-,'iisod. Hero was a turn In the road upon which ho had set uo calculation. All three of them! "Yes. And upon condition that you liberate us all, I will put It Into your hands. Hut It must be my writing this time." A white man would have blushed under the roproach of hor look. Mahomed Ma-homed smiled amiably, pleased over his cleverness. "Where Is the kls-weh kls-weh ?" "The klsweh?" "The Holy Yhlordes. Where Is It?" "That I refuse to tell you. Your word of honor first, to bind the bargain." bar-gain." Ryanne laughed. It acted upon Mahomed Ma-homed like a goad. He raised the whip, and had Ryanne's gaze swerved the part of an Inch, the blow would have fallen. "You laugh?" snarled Mahomed. "Why, yes. A bargain with your honor makes me laucth." "And your honor?" returned Mahomed Ma-homed fiercely. He wondered why he held his hand. "I have matched trickery trick-ery against trickery. My houor has not been called. I fed you, I gave you drink; In return you lied to me, dishonored me In the eyes ot my friends, and one of them you killed." "It was my life or his," exclaimed Ryanne, not relishing the recital of this phase. "It was my life or his; and he was upon my back." Fortune shuddered. Presently she laid her hand upon Mahomed's arm. "Would you take my word of honor?" Mahomed sought her eyes. "Yes. I read truth In your eyes. Bring me the rug, and my word of houor to you, you shall go free." "But my friends?" "One of them." Mahomed laughed unpleasantly. It was an excellent Idea. "One of them shall go free with you. It will be for you to choose which. Now, you deg, laugh, laugh!" and the tongue of the kurbash bit the dust within an inch of Ryanne's feet. "What Bball I do?" asked Fortune miserably. "Accept," urged Ryanne. "If you are afraid to choose one or the other of us, Jones and I will spin a coin." "I agree," said George, very unhappy- "Have you any paper, Jones?" George searched. He found the dance-card ti the ball at the hotel. In another pocket he discovered the little pencil that went with it. "You write," said Mahomed to Fortune. For-tune. "I intend to." Fortune took the card and pencil and wrote as follows: "Mother: Horace, Mr. Jones and I are prisoners of the man who owned the rug which you will find in the large steamer-roll. Give it to the courier who brings this card. And under no circumstances set spies upon his track." In French she added: "We are bound for Bagdad. In case Mo-hamed Mo-hamed receives the rug and we are not liberated, wire the embassy at Constantinople and the consulate at Bagdad. FORTUNE." She gave it to Mahomed. "Read it out loud," he commanded. While he spoke English fluently, he could neither read nor write it in any serviceable degree. The note he had given to Fortune had been written by a friend of his In the bazaars who had upon a time lived In New York. Fortune For-tune read slowly, slightly flushing as she evaded the French script. "That will do," Mahomed agreed. He shouted for one of the boys, bade him saddle the hagln or racing-camel, racing-camel, which of all those twelve, alone was his, and be off to Cairo. The boy dipped his bowl Into the kettle, ate greedily, Baddled the camel, and five minutes later was speeding back toward Cairo at a gait that would bring him there late that night. Fortune and George and Ryanne watched him till he disappeared below a dip and was gone from view. In the minds of the three watchers the same question rose: would he be too late? George was cheerful enough thereafter, but his cheerfulness was not of the infectious kind. At noon the caravan was once more upon its way. Ryanne was able to ride. ' The fumes of whatever drug had been administered to him had finally evaporated, and he felt only bruised, old, disheartened. . An evil day for him when he had set forth for Bagdad In quest of the rug. He was confident that there would be no rug awaiting the courier,: and what would be Mahomed's procedure when the boy returned empty-handed was not difficult to Imagine. Mahomed was right; so far honor had not entered en-tered Into the contest. According to "I Have You Three, "lr.en; and You Shall Pay." that he had been short In his accounts many thousands at his father's bank; gambling debts; and in making no effort ef-fort to replace the loss, he was soon found out by his brother, who seemed only too glad to dishonor him. He was given his choice: to sign over his million, due him a year later (for at this time the father was dead), or go to prison. The scandal of the affair had no weight with his brother; he wanted the younger out of the way. Like the hot-headed fool he was, he had signed away his Inheritance, taken tak-en a paltry thousand and left America, Amer-ica, facing imprisonment if he returned. re-turned. That was the kind of a brother broth-er he had. Once he had burned his bridges, there came to him a dozen ways by which he could have extricated extri-cated himself. But once a fool, always a fool! Disinherited, outcast, living by his wits, ingenious enough; the finer senses callousing under the contact with his inferiors; a gambler, a hard drinker periodically; all In all, a fine of the courier, who arrived two days later, dead tired. The persons to whom the card had been Eent had sailed for Naples with the steamer Ludwig. Mahomed Ma-homed turned upon the three miser-ables. miser-ables. "I have you three, then; and by the beard of the Prophet, you shall pay, you shall pay! You have robbed and beaten and dishonored me; and you shall pay!" "Am I guilty of any wrong toward you?" faltered the girl. Her mother had gone. She had hoped against hope. "No," cried Mahomed, He laughed "You are l'ree to return to Cairo. . . . alone! Free to take your choice of these two men to accompany you. Free, free as the air. . . . Well, why do you hesitate?" CHAPTER XV. Fortune's Riddle Solved. Fortune, without deigning to reply, walked slowly and proudly to her tent, impotent and helpless to aid her. But in this tense and dramatic scene, a sense of shame took possession of him; his pagan heart softened; not from pity, but from the respect which one brave person gives free-handed to another. Mahomed was not a bad man, neither nei-ther was he a cruel one. He had been terribly wronged, and his eastern way had but one angle of vision: to avenge himself, believing that revenge alone could soothe his outraged pride and re-establish his honor as he viewed It |