Part 5 (1/2)

He was smiling with tranquil amus.e.m.e.nt, a smile which seemed to rouse her to anger.

”Let us go now, at once!” she said, and wheeled her horse.

Despard nodded, but did not dismiss the smile.

”Might I inform you that Aylmer has been my friend since our Sandhurst days, and that I have shared his intimacy with Commandant Rattier for the last five years? I can vouch for them; I really can.”

She reined in her horse again and sat looking at all three with doubt still lurking in her eyes. Aylmer met her expression with unrestrained amazement. He found her mistrust of him a conundrum to which there was no answer. The Frenchman's shoulders rose and fell almost imperceptibly.

His head was slanted with deferential acquiescence. He laid his hand upon Aylmer's arm.

”Your horse?” he interposed.

He pointed to it and to Absalaam, who had now arrived and was touching the wounds in its flank with delicate, probing fingers. The commandant's gesture seemed to imply that the situation in which they found themselves demanded a tactful retreat, and that here he indicated a dignified one.

Aylmer still hesitated. He saw no reason why he should concur in his own dismissal; the idea grated on him. What had he done?

It was Despard who took the edge of restraint off the situation. He swung himself back into the saddle, and pointed up the hill.

”After all, the thing was a squeak,” he allowed. ”You are shaken.” He turned and nodded slightly to the other two. ”I will return and help with the horses; we shall have no other beat to-day.”

They smiled, bowed to his companion, and gave him answering nod. They understood. He was going to use the opportunity to sponsor them. Then he would return, and they would have their explanation. They watched him bend towards his companion as they rode away.

”It is almost as if we diffused a contagion, you and I,” speculated Rattier as they turned to Absalaam and the horses, but Aylmer made no effort to elaborate the issue. An inexplicable instinct to make the incident a personal rather than a general one had overtaken him. As he watched Despard ride away with his companion, he felt almost as if he were being defrauded. The relations between his cousin and her sister made a tie between Miss Van Arlen and himself; surely, in spite of everything, they were sufficient foundation upon which to found something more than a mere acquaintances.h.i.+p. In the name of all the other decent-minded, clean-living Aylmers, he might have been allowed to make his and their protest against being held responsible for the knaveries of the head of their house.

So it was with something of dissatisfaction in his aspect that he turned to Absalaam and the wounded horse. The Moor saw it but misunderstood its purport.

”Merely a flesh wound, Sidi,” he hastened to a.s.sure Aylmer. ”A week, perhaps ten days, of rest and he is himself again. A small price to pay for so precious a thing as that child's life.”

Aylmer looked at him with tolerant amus.e.m.e.nt. Absalaam ibn Said had neither harem nor wife; his career had been notoriously one of unrest and adventure. These pious opinions issued oddly from his bachelor lips.

”A small price indeed,” he agreed pleasantly, ”but a hundred youngsters run risks little less in the Sok of Tangier every day.”

The Moor made a sweeping motion of the hand, as if he suddenly dropped the subject of conversation from a higher plane to a lower.

”The children of the Sok!” he cried contemptuously.

”Khabyles--Arabs--Susi--Riffs! What are they? Little more than vermin; their ranks are replenished all too quickly as it is! But this one! Here we tell a different story, do we not?”

Aylmer halted in his examination of the wounded pastern and looked up.

There was something arresting in the Moor's vehemence.

Absalaam caught the look and shrugged his shoulders.

”The Sidi has not visited Tangier for five or six weeks?” he said.

Aylmer nodded. And waited. He had had a good deal of experience of the Moor and his conversational methods. He was aware that the deferring of a climax till it could be launched on a tide of tantalization was the chiefest of them.

”Therefore, Sid' Aylmer,” continued the Moor, ”you have not heard all the tales which center round this small one's fortunes?”