Part 26 (2/2)

”See here,” he said, ”I'm not a thief, though perhaps you think I pulled out that jewelry purse on purpose. It was an accident, Rad, so I'll forgive your hastiness. But your Wors.h.i.+p mustn't pull out cutlery on me.

I'll not stand that from any man living. That's right, put it up. Back goes the pistol into its pocket, and now we're friends again. Pick up the pearls yourself, and then you'll be certain I haven't grabbed any, and then send one of your men to fetch my mate and do as I want. You're wasting a great deal of my time, Rad el Moussa, over a very simple job.”

The Arab gathered the pearls again into the pouch and put it back to its place among his clothes. His face had grown savage and lowering, but it was clear that this little spitfire of a sailor, with his handy pistol, daunted him. Kettle, who read these signs, was not insensible to the compliment they implied, but at the same time he grew, if anything, additionally cautious. He watched his man with a cat-like caution, and when Rad called a slave and gave him orders in fluent Arabic, he made him translate his commands forthwith.

Rad el Moussa protested that he had ordered nothing more than the carrying out of his visitor's wishes. But it seemed to Kettle that he protested just a trifle too vehemently, and his suspicions deepened.

He tapped his pistol in its resting-place, and nodded his head meaningly. ”You've friends in this town,” he said, ”and I dare say you'll have a goodish bit of power in your small way. I've neither, and I don't deny that if you bring up all your local army to interfere, I may have a toughish fight of it; but whatever happens to me in the long run, you may take it as straight from yours truly that you'll go to your own funeral if trouble starts. So put that in your hookah and smoke it, tintacks, and give me the other tube.”

Captain Kettle was used to the dilatory ways of the East, and he was prepared to wait, though never doubting that Murray would be surrendered to him in due time, and he would get his own way in the end. So he picked up one of the snaky tubes of the great pipe, and put the amber mouthpiece between his lips; and there for an hour the pair of them squatted on the divan, with the hookah gurgling and reeking between them. From time to time a slave-girl came and replenished the pipe with tobacco or fire as was required. But these were the only interruptions, and between whiles they smoked on in ma.s.sive silence.

At the end of that hour, the man-slave who had been sent out with the message re-entered the room and delivered his tidings. Rad el Moussa in his turn pa.s.sed it on. Murray was even then waiting in the justice chamber, so he said, at the further side of the house, and could be taken away at once. Kettle rose to his feet, and the Arab stood before him with bowed head and folded arms.

Captain Kettle began to feel shame for having pressed this man too hardly. It seemed that he had intended to act honestly all along, and the suspiciousness of his behavior doubtless arose from some difficulty of custom or language. So the sailor took the Rad's limp hand in his own and shook it cordially, and at the same time made a handsome apology for his own share of the misunderstanding.

”Your Wors.h.i.+p must excuse me,” he said, ”but I'm always apt to be a bit suspicious about lawyers. What dealings I've had with them have nearly always turned out for me unfortunately. And now, if you don't mind, we'll go into your court-house, and you can hand me over my mate, and I'll take him back to the s.h.i.+p. Enough time's been wasted already by both of us.”

The Arab, still bowed and submissive, signed toward the doorway, and Kettle marched briskly out along the narrow dark pa.s.sage beyond, with Rad's sandals shuffling in escort close at his rear. The house seemed a large one, and rambling. Three times Rad's respectful fingers on his visitor's sleeve signed to him a change of route. The corridors, too, as is the custom in Arabia, where coolness is the first consideration, were dimly lit; and with the caution which had grown to be his second nature, Kettle instinctively kept all his senses on the alert for inconvenient surprises. He had no desire that Rad el Moussa should forget his submissiveness and stab him suddenly from behind, neither did he especially wish to be noosed or knifed from round any of the dusky sudden corners.

In fact he was as much on the _qui vive_ as he ever had been in all his long, wild, adventurous life, and yet Rad el Moussa, who meant treachery all along, took him captive by the most vulgar of timeworn stratagems.

Of a sudden the boarding of the floor sank beneath Kettle's feet. He turned, and with a desperate effort tried to throw himself backward whence he had come. But the boarding behind reared up and hit him a violent blow on the hands and head, and he fell into a pit below.

For an instant he saw through the gloom the face of Rad el Moussa turned suddenly virulent, spitting at him in hate, and then the swing-floor slammed up into place again, and all view of anything but inky blackness was completely shut away.

Now the fall, besides being disconcerting, was tolerably deep; and but for the fact that the final blow from the flooring had shot him against the opposite side of the pit, and so broken his descent at the expense of his elbows and heels, he might very well have landed awkwardly, and broken a limb or his back in the process. But Captain Owen Kettle was not the man to waste time over useless lamentation or rubbing of bruises. He was on fire with fury at the way he had been tricked, and thirsting to get loose and be revenged. He had his pistol still in its proper pocket, and undamaged, and if the wily Rad had shown himself anywhere within range just then, it is a certain thing that he would have been shot dead to square the account.

But Kettle was, as I have said, wedged in with darkness, and for the present, revenge must wait until he could see the man he wanted to shoot at. He scrambled to his feet, and fumbled in his pocket for a match. He found one, struck it on the sole of his trim white shoe, and reconnoitred quickly.

The place he was in was round and bottle shaped, measuring some ten feet across its floor, and tapering to a small square, where the trap gave it entrance above. It was a prison clearly, and there was evidence that it had been recently used. It was clear also that the only official way of releasing a prisoner was to get him up by a ladder or rope through the small opening to which the sides converged overhead. Moreover, to all common seeming, the place was simply unbreakable, at least to any creature who had not either wings or the power of crawling up the under-side of a slant like a fly.

But all these things flashed through Kettle's brain in far less time than it takes to read them here. He had only two matches in his possession, and he wished to make all possible use of the first, so as to keep the second for emergencies; and so he made his survey with the best of his intelligence and speed.

The walls of this bottle-shaped prison were of bricks built without visible mortar, and held together (it seemed probable) by the weight of earth pressing outside them; but just before the match burned his fingers and dropped to the floor, where it promptly expired, his eye fell upon an opening in the masonry. It was a mere slit, barely three inches wide, running vertically up and down for some six courses of the brick, and it was about chin-high above the ground.

He marked this when the light went out, and promptly went to it and explored it with his arm. The slit widened at the other side, and there was evidently a chamber beyond. He clapped his hands against the lip of the slit, and set his feet against the wall, and pulled with the utmost of his strength. If once he could widen the opening sufficiently to clamber through, possibilities lay beyond. But from the weight of wall pressing down above, he could not budge a single brick by so much as a hairs-breadth, and so he had to give up this idea, and, stewing with rage, set about further reconnoitring.

The darkness put his eyes out of action, but he had still left his hands and feet, and he went round with these, exploring carefully.

Presently his search was rewarded. Opposite the opening he had discovered before, was another slit in the overhanging wall of this bottle-shaped prison, and this also he attacked in the hope of wrenching free some of the bricks. He strained and panted, till it seemed as though the tendons of his body must break, but the wall remained whole and the slit unpa.s.sable; and then he gave way, almost childishly, to his pa.s.sion of rage, and shouted insults and threats at Rad el Moussa in the vain hope that some one would hear and carry them. And some one did hear, though not the persons he expected.

A voice, m.u.f.fled and foggy, as though it came from a long distance, said in surprise: ”Why, Captain, have they got you here, too?”

Under cover of the darkness, Kettle blushed for shame at his outcry.

”That you, Murray? I didn't know you were here. How did you guess it was me?”

The distant voice chuckled foggily. ”I've heard you giving your blessing to the hands on board, sir, once or twice, and I recognized some of the words. What have they collared you for? You don't photograph. Have you been messing round with some girl?”

”Curse your impudence; just you remember your position and mine. I'll have respect from my officers, even if I am in a bit of a fix.”

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