Mediterranean Nights (23 page)

Schultz smiled and shook his head. ‘I can have no idea.'

‘He leant forward, leered at me and said: “Ten shillings, please. And this is the one thing in your dream that was not in the First World War” '

‘He was wrong, though!' declared the prisoner with a laugh. ‘The British did not bring the Snipe into service until 1919.'

For a moment the two men stared at one another in silence. Slowly the blood drained from the German's face. Then Alan Quert quietly administered the
coup de grâce
.

‘Of course, we've known for a long time that you are really Herr Jauptman Kurt von Breukner.'

STORY XVII

H
ERE
again is a story from the era when I was still wrapping wet towels round my head in an effort to produce life-like dialect—in this case an Irish brogue.

Perhaps this is the place where I should pay tribute to my masters, for, like every author, I owe much to those who have preceded me.

Alexander Dumas, the elder, was my first love as a boy, and my zest for his great historical romances has never waned; his influence upon my story-telling has certainly been more profound than any other.

John Buchan I count as the master of us all. His
Green-mantle
and
Mr. Standfast
are perfect examples of the adventure story at its best. But owing to some intangible essence in his writing and its high quality, strive as I may, I should never succeed in reached his standard if I lived to be a hundred.

Many reviewers have done me the honour to compare my work to that of Edgar Wallace, but even in my very early days I was not flattered.
On the Spot
and certain of his other stage productions prove him to have been a most gifted playwright, but his books, despite their brilliant intricacy of plot, leave me completely indifferent.

On the other hand, E. Phillips Oppenheim has given me many hours of tense enjoyment. Perhaps, since I compare the two, if Mr. Oppenheim will forgive me, that is because I have always been thrilled by tales of diplomatic intrigue where princes, ambassadors, and millionaires play their parts against a background of luxury surroundings; whereas plain murder and crime investigation carried out mainly in the East End of London fail to accelerate my pulse by a single beat.

I should also mention that wonderful woman, Baroness Orzcy, and the late Sir Anthony Hope, since each produced a tale that I would have given my right hand to have written—the
one the
Scarlet Pimpernel
and the other the
Prisoner of Zenda
. Re-read after a period of years these books are found to be very short, and may appear light in content. Yet each contains a central idea which was new when it first appeared. What thousands of others must have appeared since based on those remarkable originals! Both the words ‘Pimpernel' and ‘Ruritania' have passed into the English language, and to achieve that crowns both authors with genuine immortality.

Henty and Guy Boothby I read when I was very young, but they were never more than prep, school reading. Scott bored me to tears, and in my personal view was a pathetic figure as an historical novelist compared with Harrison Ainsworth or Stanley Weyman. Conan Doyle and Rider Haggard were both good story-tellers, although I doubt if I derived much from either. William Le Queux did nothing that Oppenheim could not have done better.

The works of a hundred other authors doubtless contributed something to my writing, but there is one more that deserves special mention. I have always thought that the American, Louis Joseph Vance, wrote magnificent adventure stories. Sad to relate, he died in circumstances which rivalled any mystery that he ever penned. He was found one morning with his arms bound behind his back and face downwards in the then cold fire of his own sitting-room with his face charred away. So far as I know the mystery of his terrible death still remains unsolved.

Perhaps the greatest of his characters was an Irish adventurer called Terrence O'Rorke, and I recommend to anyone who can get them two books in which Terrence was the central character, called
The Pool of Flame
and
The Emperor of the Sahara
.

In any case, I must have still been very much under Louis Joseph Vance's influence when I wrote the present tale, since its hero is a pale imitation of Terrence O'Rorke.

THESE WOMEN

‘I'
M TELLIN
' ye, Mr. Macgregor, niver thrust a woman—ye'll rue it if ye do.' The lean, long-limbed Irishman thumped the proprietor's desk in the little hotel in Oran.

‘Ah nevair do,' said Mr. Macgregor.

‘But returnin' now to more profitable subjects,' the Irishman went on, ‘ 'tis the last dozen cases av this foine whiskey that I'm offerin' yer, an' a bargain it is at the proice. I couldn't do it at all if it weren't the last av the consoignment I took fer the thrip.'

Mr. Macgregor knew Ruin O'Flaherty far too well to be taken in by his ready tongue. Hadn't the Irishman been trading in Northern Africa these fifteen years, making his way from port to port, and often far into the interior—a freelance of commerce hawking safety razor-blades, tin kettles, bead necklaces, and top-hats, not to mention a thousand other likely and unlikely wares? Now it was a new brand of whiskey he was peddling—at least so the gaudy label on the bottle declared in flamboyant characters to a trusting world.

The Scotsman was not of the trusting kind, his wrinkled face showed only doubt and disbelief.

‘Faith now, take just tin cases and I'll increase the discount to sevin per cent,' O'Flaherty went on persuasively. ‘There's not another man east of Gib. to whom I'd be making this same advantageous offer!'

Macgregor shook his sandy head; the price was getting attractive, but he hoped, by seeming uninterested, to lower it still further.

‘ 'Tis a great concession now that I'm offerin' yer, an' 'tis only out av consideration that bein' a Scotsman ye'll dhrink most av it yerself.'

‘That I'll not,' said Macgregor, stung into speech. ‘It's whiskey
I
drink—and a wee bairn could see that it's poison ye're selling by the label.'

The Irishman closed one bright blue eye. ‘An' phwat'll be stoppin' ye pourin' the same into the empty bottles o' Buchanan and J. Walker, now—ye ould divil?'

A smile lit the face of the dry old Scot. There was silence—broken only by the buzzing of the weary flies dancing a
perpetual jig in the little office. The sultry heat of the late afternoon pervaded the place, and both men were tired of haggling. ‘If ye give me the seven per cent on sax cases, I'll take 'em,' he said at last.

The Irishman laughed and drew a notebook from his pocket. ‘I'll book 'em,' he said, ‘though 'tis meself that's the loser, and I'll stay the night in this miserable dwelling av yers that ye have the impertinence to call an hotel—free of charge—to be evin with ye!'

Macgregor solemnly poured two tots of whiskey from the sample to seal the bargain; he pushed the water bottle towards O'Flaherty. ‘What sort of a trip did ye have this time?' he inquired.

‘Foine—'twas down the Waddy Soura to Tamtert and Ksabi that I wint. Three months av it I had, and back yisterday to Sidi-bel-Abbes with three hundred and fifty good English pounds in me pocket—all out av those black heathin' divils.'

‘What can I do for you, Mrs. Wayland?' asked Macgregor, looking over the Irishman's shoulder.

O'Flaherty turned to see a girl standing hesitant on the other side of the wire fly-door that led to the small lounge.

The door swung open noiselessly as she gave it a slight push. ‘I'm looking for my husband, Mr. Macgregor,' she said. ‘Have you seen him?'

‘No, Mrs. Wayland, I have not,' replied the hotel proprietor promptly. ‘Ye'll verra likely find him in the bar, I'm thinking.'

‘He's not there,' she answered quickly, ‘I've looked. He went out at eleven this morning, and it's nearly four now—I can't think where he is; he said he'd be back for lunch.'

She could not have been much more than twenty, but there were already little tell-tale lines about the corners of her mouth, and under her large eyes there were violet shadows. She was obviously unhappy and ill at ease, but very pretty in her muslin frock and big hat as she stood framed in the doorway.

The Irishman had been studying her closely. ‘Faith, ‘tis in distress she is, the poor child,' he was saying to himself. ‘Ruin, me bhoy, ‘tis up to you entoirely,' and suiting the action to the thought he bowed to her.

‘Madam, if ye'll be pardoning the impertinence, can I be av any assistance to ye now—'tis Ruin O'Flaherty that I'm called, afther my ould grandfather.'

She looked at him gravely for a moment. ‘No,' she said, ‘I don't think so, Mr. O'Flaherty, thank you all the same. I expect he will turn up.' With a faint smile she went back into the lounge.

O'Flaherty shook his head. ‘Sure, ‘tis a sweet soul she is, and a brute is that husband av hers to leave her so lonesome the livelong day.'

He finished his drink, and with a nod to Macgregor went out into the street. He made a few more calls and disposed of a further fifteen cases of his whiskey before dinner, which he took in a modest semi-European restaurant.

When he had finished he strolled about the streets enjoying the cool of the evening after a day of scorching heat. Turbaned merchants and white-robed Bedouins, Spahis, and Turcos mingled in the crowd. They were no new sight to Ruin O'Flaherty; he had lived among them for many years, and spoke their languages fluently.

After a while he left the boulevards for the Arab quarter, where few Europeans were to be seen. It always amused him to watch these slow-moving, dignified people, who sat solemnly drinking in groups in front of the cafés or cross-legged in the roadway listening intently to a story-teller. For a little time he stood near one himself. The orator was telling of the days when the Arabs had been a great people, ruling by the favour of Allah from Constantinople to Khartoum, and from Eastern Persia to the North of Spain.

Then he seated himself at a marble-topped table outside an Arab restaurant and ordered coffee—the thick, black, highly sugared beverage that he had grown to love.

Mysterious veiled women flitted past him and burly negroes wearing the fez set jauntily on the back of their crisp curls. Lean pariah dogs prowled by, nosing amongst the heaps of refuse in the gutters, searching for offal. Somewhere not far away a woman was strumming on a guitar, and the sound of her mournful, plaintive song floated down from the roof of the flat-topped house where she sat. In the dark slit above the narrow alley which was the street the heavens were a pall of velvet blackness lit by innumerable stars.

The face of the girl came back to O'Flaherty. He wondered if she had found her truant husband yet. She called up old memories to his mind; perhaps the resemblance was only fancied—time had dulled the image of that other girl for whose sake he had left Ireland to make his fortune. He had loved her to distraction, but fortune had been long in coming. Three years later he had learnt that she was married to a wealthy horse-dealer in Dublin.

‘ 'Tis a fool ye are, Ruin, me bhoy,' he admonished himself, ‘gettin' all sintimental like a young gossoon.' He paid his reckoning and made his way slowly back to the hotel.

On the verandah near the door he found her sitting—a pathetic little figure muffled in a cloak. It was growing chilly—the nights in Algeria are cold; he hesitated on the step and then turned to her.

‘I'm trustin' ye're husband's come back. Mrs. Wayland?' he said quietly.

‘Oh, it's you, Mr. O'Flaherty,' she spoke rather gladly. ‘No, I'm still waiting for him.'

‘Ah, 'tis a shame now,' he exclaimed, sitting down beside her, ‘an' phwat'll he be doin' all this toime away.'

‘I can't think,' she replied a little tearfully. ‘I'm afraid he must have met with an accident.'

‘Have ye inquired at the hospital?' he asked.

‘Yes, Mr. Macgregor sent down for me, but Jim was not there.'

The crowd in the street had thinned—it was growing late, and one by one they were seeking their dwellings.

‘I'd be makin' some inquiries for ye meself,' he volunteered, ‘but shure at this hour the bazaars'll all be empty, and the people I know sleeping in their beds—there's little we can do but wait, I'm afeerd.'

Her fleeting smile of thanks was only vaguely discernible in the shadows, and for a little while they sat in silence. The musical cry of a muezzin from the minaret of a nearby mosque calling the true believers to prayer and meditation broke the stillness. It announced the hour of midnight.

A black Biskari boy clad in worn but once gorgeous garments approached them in the darkness; he was the hall porter of the hotel.

‘You come in now, yes? Me going close up hotel.'

They rose in silence and went inside.

‘Ye'll be goin' to bed now, Mrs. Wayland, and not worryin' over that husband o' yours?' The big Irishman bent over the girl.

‘I'm afraid I couldn't sleep,' she replied. ‘I'd rather sit up for a little while.'

‘Faith now,' he insisted, ‘it's yer bright eyes ye'll be after spoiling' by losin' yer sleep; ‘twill do ye a power o' good to be restin‘.'

She shook her head as she sat down in the lounge. ‘Please dont worry about me—I'd rather wait up.'

He was so sorry for her that he did not like to leave her there alone, and sitting down beside her endeavoured to make the time pass more quickly by his chatter.

At first she said little as he talked of his nomad existence, but presently she began to talk about herself. She said that she had been on the stage; her parents were dead, she had little money, and no influence; she had soon discovered that she had little talent as well. No other opening offered, however, so she had had to stick to it. After a couple of dreary years in the provinces she had accepted an offer to come out to Cairo for a season because the pay was high. There she had met Jim Wayland. That had been a little over three months ago.