A Son of the Sahara Part 8

She blinked back a couple of tears. Then her thoughts went to the fortune she had inherited.

Presently she crossed to the mirror and looked at herself.

"No, old girl," she said to her reflection, "your head isn't turned."

Then she slipped the letter into her pocket and made straight for her great friend and confidante.

To the average eye there was nothing about Miss Grainger to attract a vivid, beautiful girl like Pansy Barclay--Pansy Langham as she would be now. Miss Grainger was middle-aged, grey-haired, thin and depressed-looking: the down-trodden English mistress, with no qualifications except good breeding.

She was poor and friendless, and life had gone hard with her, but these facts were sufficient to fill Pansy's heart with a warmth of generous affection and sympathy.

The girl's princ.i.p.al thought as she went along was not so much of the millions she had just inherited, but that she had always wanted to do something for Miss Grainger, and now she saw a way of doing it.

She entered the room that served the English mistress as bedroom, study and sitting-room, disturbing the latter in the midst of correcting an acc.u.mulated pile of exercise books.

"What is it, Pansy?" she asked, smiling at her favourite.

"Miss Grainger, you'll be pleased to hear I'm a millionaire."

The English mistress put down her pen carefully, and then sat staring at the child.

"Really, my dear," she said in a bewildered tone, "you have a way of saying the most surprising things in the most matter-of-fact manner.

But, since you're saying it, it must be true."

"That's a character in itself," Pansy remarked, smiling, a smile that brought to view several bewitching dimples.

She produced the letter and handed it to her friend.

The English mistress read it through.

"Sixty thousand pounds a year!" she exclaimed. "It makes my head reel."

"Then yours can't be so firmly screwed on as mine. Mine isn't turned one little bit. I looked at myself in a gla.s.s to see."

"But what are you going to do with it all?" the governess asked helplessly.

"Spend it, of course. I take after my father and never s.h.i.+rk an unpleasant duty," she went on, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "To begin with, you, Miss Grainger, are going to be my companion, and we'll have a yacht and go all round the world together, and see and do everything that can be seen and done."

"You'll get married, Pansy," the governess said, looking lovingly at the beautiful flower-like, little face.

"Not much! You dear old antiquated thing. I'm not going to be tied by the leg in that fas.h.i.+on."

"As the English mistress, I must remind you that 'tied by the leg' is slang."

"When you're my companion you'll be talking slang yourself. I'm not so sure I won't make that one of the stipulations," the child went on teasingly. "It'll be such a change for you after thirty years of correcting stupid exercises."

"It will be rather," Miss Grainger said wistfully.

"And I shall come out at seventeen," Pansy went on. "I must start as early as possible if I'm to spend all that money. I shall write and ask my father if I may come out at seventeen. Do you think he'll refuse?"

"No man will ever refuse you anything, Pansy. You're too sweet and good and beautiful."

"And rich. Don't forget the rich. That'll be a tremendous draw."

Miss Grainger smiled at her favourite.

"I hope the man who marries you will pick you for your good heart and generous nature, not your looks and money," she remarked.

"Still harping on that old string, Mrs. Noah. Women don't get married nowadays if they can afford to stay single."

Then the school dinner-bell ringing sent Pansy from the room, but not before she had given an impetuous hug and kiss to her friend.

CHAPTER IX

Paris always has a welcome for millionaires. And it always had a specially warm welcome for Raoul Le Breton, the African merchant-prince. Not only was he fabulously rich, but he was young and remarkably good-looking. It was whispered that he had Arab blood in his veins, but he was wealthy enough for the majority to overlook this drawback.

Like many modern Frenchmen, he dabbled in "le sport." He was a brilliant tennis player, a worthy opponent at billiards, and he kept a stud of race-horses. There was hardly an actress of any repute and with any pretence to youth and beauty who had not had his patronage at one time or the other. Match-making mothers with marriageable daughters laid snares about his feet. With surprising agility he avoided their traps. None of the daughters proved sufficiently tempting to turn him from the broad, smooth way of gay Parisian bachelorhood to the steep and jagged path of matrimony.

Raoul Le Breton was about twenty-five when he paid his sixth visit to Paris. He came now for about three months every year. And he always came in style, with a whole retinue of Arab servants--silent, discreet men who never gossiped about their master. It was whispered also that out in Africa he had a whole harem of his own; moreover, that he was some big chief or the other. In fact, many things were whispered about him, for, on the whole, Paris knew very little except that he was wealthy and wild.

His French acquaintances tried to learn more of his doings through the medium of his own private doctor, a stout Frenchman who accompanied the young millionaire to and fro. But Dr. Edouard refused to gossip about his friend and patron.

In spite of his success, the young Sultan of El-Ammeh had not forgotten George Barclay.

On getting more in touch with civilisation and its ways he had tried to find out the name of the man who was responsible for the death of his supposed father. It was not an easy task. George Barclay had left Gambia five years before Raoul Le Breton set about his investigations.

There had been a succession of men since Barclay's time, and the shooting of a native malefactor was not a matter of great note in the annals of a Government.

However, eventually Le Breton managed to establish the ident.i.ty of the man he looked upon as his father's murderer.

But to trace George Barclay in England proved an even more difficult task than tracing him in Africa.

The Englishman had not stopped long in his country. In search of forgetfulness, he had gone from one place to another, holding posts in various parts of the Empire.

The Sultan Casim Ammeh was twenty-five when he heard that Barclay was in the Malay Straits.

The news came to him in Paris just when he was setting out for an evening's amus.e.m.e.nt in company with Dr. Edouard. The letter was brought to him as he stood in dress-suit, opera hat in hand, in his own private sitting-room at the palatial hotel he always patronised when in Paris.

On perusing it he turned to his companion, and said, with an air of savage triumph:

"Well, Edouard, I've managed to trace my man at last."

The doctor knew who the man in question was, for he, Edouard, was the Sultan Casim's one confidant. Rather uneasily he glanced at his patron. He wished the young man would be content with money and the many joys and pleasures it could buy--for Casim Ammeh was no longer a strict Mohammedan--and would not be always hankering after vengeance, a vengeance that might embroil him with England and bring his wild and brilliant career to an abrupt close.

"Where is George Barclay?" Edouard asked uneasily.