Part 3 (2/2)
So glancing up at the red star, and once more picking up her bag, she too crossed the street and disappeared up a narrower one, halting for a moment at the sight of a man standing with bent head in the att.i.tude of prayer and the beads of Allah hanging from the hands crossed upon the breast.
Jilt's intuition was intense, and never once in all her life had it failed her, and though to her all Eastern men seemed exactly alike in the moonlight, yet her inner consciousness began to tap ont a message of warning, and the bristles of her self-protection to rise at the threatenings of danger.
”Bother!” however, was her only comment as, keeping the star ahead, she walked steadily onward.
But she made a silent, strenuous, but unavailing struggle when something white and soft was slipped over her head and a hand placed firmly upon her mouth, as she felt herself lifted in a pair of strong arms and carried some considerable distance until she heard the click of a key, the opening and shutting of a door, and her captor's soft footfall through what seemed to be a deserted house.
She stood perfectly still when planted on her feet, and looked around her when the cloth had been removed from about her head.
White was her face indeed, but a little smile twisted the corner of her mouth as she noted the oriental luxury of the room in which she stood.
Ornate could hardly describe it so offensive was it in its mult.i.tudinous hangings, mirrors, lamps, and clutter of stools, tables, divans, and couches, inlaid or plastered with glittering sequins, bits of gla.s.s, and coloured imitation jewels.
But scorn simply blazed in the great blue eyes as she looked into those of a man standing in front of the one and only door to the whole apartment.
”You brute!” she said undiplomatically and in French as he moved a few steps nearer and salaamed deeply. ”Why, you're the man who followed me from the restaurant to-day! What do you want? Backsheesh? I haven't any so you had better let me go at once unless you want the police after you! You can't treat English women in this off-hand way with impunity, I can a.s.sure you. Open the door immediately if you please!”
Poor little Jill, who by involuntarily harking back to the insular belief that the veriest heathen will quake in unison with the British culprit at the mere threat of British law, showed the absolute yarborough she held in this game, the stakes of which she guessed were something more precious than life itself, and in which she held not a single winning card.
”Let not Madame cause herself worry,” answered the oriental also in French, as he approached nearer still, his eyes ablaze with pa.s.sion of sorts as be looked the girl up and down from head to foot. ”The police--the law--you are in Egypt, Madame, or I should say Mademoiselle I think. Money! when a man holds heaven itself within his grasp, does he open his hand to grasp a pa.s.sing cloud?”
”I should advise you to let me go _at_ once,” repeated Jill, ”if you don't want my friends to raise trouble!”
But her bluff was of no avail as she was soon aware when once more the man salaamed with a world of mockery in the action.
”But Mademoiselle has but now run away from her friends! No?--she has but little--oh! _very_ little money!--yes?--and nowhere to go--it is for that that I have thrown my protection around her!”
Jill thought hard for a moment, wondering how much the man knew of her escapade.
”How do you know? _Who_ told you I had no money? I _have_ a friend as it happens------!”
”Mademoiselle has no friend but me,” interrupted the man; ”she left them at the hotel when she went to take a walk.”
And Jill retreated step by step before him as he came closer still, his voice sinking to a whisper, his hand within an inch of her wrist.
”I will not harm you because you are oh, _very_ beautiful! You are a feast of loveliness and I--I am hungry!”
But still the little smile twisted the corner of Jill's red mouth as she looked unflinchingly into the brown eyes in the depths of which smouldered a something which was not good to look upon.
”I suppose you have stolen my dressing-case too,” was her next, somewhat irrelevant remark. ”Men of _your_ type I dare say can find a use for everything from women to hair-pins. You black _dog_, who _are_ you?”
Red murder flared in the room for one moment and then died down, leaving a little smoke cloud of uncertainty in the man's mind.
He was used--oh, _very_ used to the breaking in of women, for was not his name notorious in Northern Egypt and were there not whispers of many young and beautiful who had mysteriously disappeared.
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