A Son of the Sahara Part 50

That gaunt chestnut browsing there could only be "The Sultan"!

Amazed at her discovery, she called the horse by name.

At once the brown head was up, and the beast came galloping in her direction.

Even in the days of her illness and during her imprisonment in the palace, Pansy had spared a thought for her protege. She imagined he had become the property of one of the Arab raiders, and she hoped his new master would be kind to him and understand him as she did.

Through the iron bars Pansy caressed her pet.

"I never expected to see you again, Sultan, old boy," she said. "Raoul must have bought you, too."

She was standing there talking to and petting the animal when Le Breton's step roused her.

"Are you pleased to see him again?" he asked, after greeting her.

"Pleased isn't the word for it. But how did you manage to get hold of him?"

"He was really the cause of my getting hold of you," he replied without hesitation. "I saw him in the possession of one of the soldiers who had come back from that foray. That made me doubly certain who the white girl was whom the Sultan was going to put up for sale."

"Raoul, you must let me give you back all you had to pay for me," she said.

"Why should you?" he asked, a slight smile hovering about his lips.

"You saved my life. Now we're 'quits.' Isn't that what you called it?"

Pansy did not argue the point. Nevertheless, she determined to repay him once she and her father were back in civilisation.

"How long will it take to get my father free?" she asked.

"It all depends on the sort of mood I catch the Sultan in. With the best of luck, it'll be some weeks."

"Has he got my note yet, do you think?" she asked anxiously. "He'll go grey with worrying over me. I can't bear to think of the look on his face when he saw me in that ... that awful slave market."

Le Breton had destroyed her message the moment he had reached his own rooms. Now he could not meet the beautiful eyes that looked at him with such perfect trust.

"I expect the message will get through before the day is out," he answered. "It's merely a matter of 'baksheesh.'"

At his words the world became quite a nice place again for Pansy, the only shadow in it now the dark blood in her lover.

CHAPTER XVI

Night filled the harem with shadows and scent. The silver lamps cast a soft glow through the huge hall, glinting on wide ottomans and piles of cus.h.i.+ons, on little tables set with coffee and sherbet, sweets and fruit and cigarettes.

There were perhaps thirty women in the great room, but the majority of them were the attendants of the half-dozen girls lolling on couches and cus.h.i.+ons around the splas.h.i.+ng fountain.

Full length on a wide ottoman Leonora was stretched, her dark eyes fixed spitefully on an adjacent lounge where the Arab girl lay, her face hidden in the cus.h.i.+ons, her golden form almost buried in her wealth of black hair.

"See, Rayma, it's night again," Leonora said, malice in her soft, drawling voice. "Night! And still our lord Casim has not come to visit you."

There was a sob from the other girl, but no reply.

"How you jeered at me, Rayma, when you stole his heart from me,"

Leonora went on. "But now it seems another has stolen his heart from you, since he no longer comes to see you. Another whom I shall welcome as a sister."

At the taunt Rayma sat up suddenly, with a wild gesture pus.h.i.+ng the ma.s.s of black hair back from her face.

"For weeks and weeks he has not been here," she wailed. "Oh, my heart it breaks for love of him."

Leonora laughed, but an elderly woman sitting near laid a soothing hand on the distraught girl.

"Hush, Rayma, my pearl," she said. "Haven't I often told you our Sultan has had thoughts for nothing but vengeance of late?"

"Would vengeance keep him away from me all these weeks? It's more than vengeance. It's love. Love for some other girl."

Rayma clutched at the woman with slim, jewelled hands.

"Tell me, Sara, you come and go at will through the palace. Is there one?"

"My pearl, if there was one, wouldn't she be here in the harem?" Sara answered diplomatically.

"Yes, and so she would," Rayma replied more quietly. "And I could measure my beauty against hers."

Then she started rocking herself to and fro, in an agony of grief.

"Did he but come, my love, my Lord Casim, his heart would be mine again," she sobbed.

Then she stopped wailing suddenly, and faced the old woman anxiously.

"Sara, tell me quickly, have these weeks of weeping made me less beautiful?"

However, she did not wait for any reply.

Her gaze went to the arches, where night looked in at her mockingly.

"Look. It is night," she cried. "And my heart is hungry for love.

For the love of my Lord Casim. For his arms. His kisses. Again it is night. And he has not come."

Then through the vaulted room piercing shriek after piercing shriek rang--the shrieks of a lovesick girl in the throes of hysteria.

As Sara sat patting Rayma's hands and trying to soothe her, she thought of the milk-white maid with the wide blue eyes and the golden curls, whom the Sultan himself had brought unconscious to his palace, and who was lodged--as no other slave girl had ever been--in his own private suite. And who treated her master--as no other slave had ever treated him--as if she were his equal, even his superior, making him wait on her. A task the Sultan seemed to find pleasure in!

CHAPTER XVII

On the terrace of her quarters, Pansy sat at dinner with her host.