“Because, you know, my bath this morning simply stank,” said Medford, plunging fork and spoon into the dish.

  “Your bath, sir?” Gosling stressed the word. Astonishment, to the exclusion of all other emotion, again filled his eyes as he rested them on Medford. “Now, I wouldn’t ’ave ’ad that ’appen for the world,” he said self-reproachfully.

  “There’s only the one well here, eh? The one in the court?”

  Gosling aroused himself from absorbed consideration of the visitor’s complaint. “Yes, sir; only the one.”

  “What sort of a well is it? Where does the water come from?”

  “Oh, it’s just a cistern, sir. Rain-water. There’s never been any other here. Not that I ever knew it to fail; but at this season sometimes it does turn queer. Ask any o’ them Arabs, sir; they’ll tell you. Liars as they are, they won’t trouble to lie about that.”

  Medford was cautiously tasting the water in his glass. “This seems all right,” he pronounced.

  Sincere satisfaction was depicted on Gosling’s countenance. “I seen to its being boiled myself, sir. I always do. I ’ope that Perrier’ll turn up tomorrow, sir.”

  “Oh, tomorrow”—Medford shrugged, taking a second helping. “Tomorrow I may not be here to drink it.”

  “What—going away, sir?” cried Gosling.

  Medford, wheeling round abruptly, caught a new and incomprehensible look in Gosling’s eyes. The man had seemed to feel a sort of dog-like affection for him; had wanted, Medford could have sworn, to keep him on, persuade him to patience and delay; yet now, Medford could equally have sworn, there was relief in his look, satisfaction, almost, in his voice.

  “So soon, sir?”

  “Well, this is the fifth day since my arrival. And as there’s no news yet of Mr. Almodham, and you say he may very well have forgotten all about my coming—”

  “Oh, I don’t say that, sir; not forgotten! Only, when one of those old piles of stones takes ’old of him, he does forget about the time, sir. That’s what I meant. The days drift by—’e’s in a dream. Very likely he thinks you’re just due now, sir.” A small thin smile sharpened the lustreless gravity of Gosling’s features. It was the first time that Medford had seen him smile.

  “Oh, I understand. But still—” Medford paused. Through the spell of inertia laid on him by the drowsy place and its easeful comforts his instinct of alertness was struggling back. “It’s odd—”

  “What’s odd?” Gosling echoed unexpectedly, setting the dried dates and figs on the table.

  “Everything,” said Medford.

  He leaned back in his chair and glanced up through the arch at the lofty sky from which noon was pouring down in cataracts of blue and gold. Almodham was out there somewhere under that canopy of fire, perhaps, as the servant said, absorbed in his dream. The land was full of spells.

  “Coffee, sir?” Gosling reminded him. Medford took it.

  “It’s odd that you say you don’t trust any of these fellows—these Arabs—and yet that you don’t seem to feel worried at Mr. Almodham’s being off God knows where, all alone with them.”

  Gosling received this attentively, impartially; he saw the point. “Well, sir, no—you wouldn’t understand. It’s the very thing that can’t be taught, when to trust ’em and when not. It’s ’ow their interests lie, of course, sir; and their religion, as they call it.” His contempt was unlimited. “But even to begin to understand why I’m not worried about Mr. Almodham, you’d ’ave to ’ave lived among them, sir, and you’d ’ave to speak their language.”

  “But I—” Medford began. He pulled himself up short and bent above his coffee.

  “Yes, sir?”

  “But I’ve travelled among them more or less.”

  “Oh, travelled!” Even Gosling’s intonation could hardly conciliate respect with derision in his reception of this boast.

  “This makes the fifth day, though,” Medford continued argumentatively. The midday heat lay heavy even on the shaded side of the court, and the sinews of his will were weakening.

  “I can understand, sir, a gentleman like you ’aving other engagements—being pressed for time, as it were,” Gosling reasonably conceded.

  He cleared the table, committed its freight to a pair of Arab arms that just showed and vanished, and finally took himself off while Medford sank into the divan. A land of dreams . . .

  •

  The afternoon hung over the place like a great velarium of cloth-of-gold stretched across the battlements and drooping down in ever slacker folds upon the heavy-headed palms. When at length the gold turned to violet, and the west to a bow of crystal clasping the dark sands, Medford shook off his sleep and wandered out. But this time, instead of mounting to the roof, he took another direction.

  He was surprised to find how little he knew of the place after five days of loitering and waiting. Perhaps this was to be his last evening alone in it. He passed out of the court by a vaulted stone passage which led to another walled enclosure. At his approach two or three Arabs who had been squatting there rose and melted out of sight. It was as if the solid masonry had received them.

  Beyond, Medford heard a stamping of hoofs, the stir of a stable at night-fall. He went under another archway and found himself among horses and mules. In the fading light an Arab was rubbing down one of the horses, a powerful young chestnut. He too seemed about to vanish; but Medford caught him by the sleeve.

  “Go on with your work,” he said in Arabic.

  The man, who was young and muscular, with a lean Bedouin face, stopped and looked at him.

  “I didn’t know your Excellency spoke our language.”

  “Oh, yes,” said Medford.

  The man was silent, one hand on the horse’s restless neck, the other thrust into his woollen girdle. He and Medford examined each other in the faint light.

  “Is that the horse that’s lame?” Medford asked.

  “Lame?” The Arab’s eyes ran down the animal’s legs. “Oh, yes; lame,” he answered vaguely.

  Medford stooped and felt the horse’s knees and fetlocks. “He seems pretty fit. Couldn’t he carry me for a canter this evening if I felt like it?”

  The Arab considered; he was evidently perplexed by the weight of responsibility which the question placed on him.

  “Your Excellency would like to go for a ride this evening?”

  “Oh, just a fancy. I might or I might not.” Medford lit a cigarette and offered one to the groom, whose white teeth flashed his gratification. Over the shared match they drew nearer and the Arab’s diffidence seemed to lessen.

  “Is this one of Mr. Almodham’s own mounts?” Medford asked.

  “Yes, sir; it’s his favourite,” said the groom, his hand passing proudly down the horse’s bright shoulder.

  “His favourite? Yet he didn’t take him on this long expedition?”

  The Arab fell silent and stared at the ground.

  “Weren’t you surprised at that?” Medford queried.

  The man’s gesture declared that it was not his business to be surprised.

  The two remained without speaking while the quick blue night descended.

  At length Medford said carelessly: “Where do you suppose your master is at this moment?”

  The moon, unperceived in the radiant fall of day, had now suddenly possessed the world, and a broad white beam lay full on the Arab’s white smock, his brown face and the turban of camel’s hair knotted above it. His agitated eyeballs glistened like jewels.

  “If Allah would vouchsafe to let us know!”

  “But you suppose he’s safe enough, don’t you? You don’t think it’s necessary yet for a party to go out in search of him?”

  The Arab appeared to ponder this deeply. The question must have taken him by surprise. He flung a brown arm about the horse’s neck and continued to scrutinize the stones of the court.

  “When the master is away Mr. Gosling is our master.”

  “And he doesn’t think it necessary?”

  The Arab signed: “Not yet.”

  “But if Mr. Almodham were away much longer—”

  The man was again silent, and Medford continued: “You’re the head groom, I suppose?”

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  There was another pause. Medford half turned away; then, over his shoulder: “I suppose you know the direction Mr. Almodham took? The place he’s gone to?”

  “Oh, assuredly, Excellency.”

  “Then you and I are going to ride after him. Be ready an hour before daylight. Say nothing to anyone—Mr. Gosling or anybody else. We two ought to be able to find him without other help.”

  The Arab’s face was all a responsive flash of eyes and teeth. “Oh, sir, I undertake that you and my master shall meet before tomorrow night. And none shall know of it.”

  “He’s as anxious about Almodham as I am,” Medford thought; and a faint shiver ran down his back. “All right. Be ready,” he repeated.

  He strolled back and found the court empty of life, but fantastically peopled by palms of beaten silver and a white marble fig tree.

  “After all,” he thought irrelevantly, “I’m glad I didn’t tell Gosling that I speak Arabic.”

  He sat down and waited till Gosling, approaching from the living-room, ceremoniously announced for the fifth time that dinner was served.

  V

  Medford sat up in bed with the jerk which resembles no other. Someone was in his room. The fact reached him not by sight or sound—for the moon had set, and the silence of the night was complete—but by a peculiar faint disturbance of the invisible currents that enclose us.

  He was awake in an instant, caught up his electric hand-lamp and flashed it into two astonished eyes. Gosling stood above the bed.

  “Mr. Almodham—he’s back?” Medford exclaimed.

  “No, sir; he’s not back.” Gosling spoke in low controlled tones. His extreme self-possession gave Medford a sense of danger—he couldn’t say why, or of what nature. He sat upright, looking hard at the man.

  “Then what’s the matter?”

  “Well, sir, you might have told me you talk Arabic”—Gosling’s tone was now wistfully reproachful—“before you got ’obnobbing with that Selim. Making randy-voos with ’im by night in the desert.”

  Medford reached for his matches and lit the candle by the bed. He did not know whether to kick Gosling out of the room or to listen to what the man had to say; but a quick movement of curiosity made him determine on the latter course.

  “Such folly! First I thought I’d lock you in. I might ’ave.” Gosling drew a key from his pocket and held it up. “Or again I might ’ave let you go. Easier than not. But there was Wembley.”

  “Wembley?” Medford echoed. He began to think the man was going mad. One might, so conceivably, in that place of postponements and enchantments! He wondered whether Almodham himself were not a little mad—if, indeed, Almodham were still in a world where such a fate is possible.

  “Wembley. You promised to get Mr. Almodham to give me an ’oliday—to let me go back to England in time for a look at Wembley. Every man ’as ’is fancies, ’asn’t ’e, sir? And that’s mine. I’ve told Mr. Almodham so, agine and agine. He’d never listen, or only make believe to; say: ‘We’ll see, now, Gosling, we’ll see’; and no more ’eard of it. But you was different, sir. You said it, and I knew you meant it—about my ’oliday. So I’m going to lock you in.”

  Gosling spoke composedly, but with an under-thrill of emotion in his queer Mediterranean-Cockney voice.

  “Lock me in?”

  “Prevent you somehow from going off with that murderer. You don’t suppose you’d ever ’ave come back alive from that ride, do you?”

  A shiver ran over Medford, as it had the evening before when he had said to himself that the Arab was as anxious as he was about Almodham. He gave a slight laugh.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. But you’re not going to lock me in.”

  The effect of this was unexpected. Gosling’s face was drawn up into a convulsive grimace and two tears rose to his pale eyelashes and ran down his cheeks.

  “You don’t trust me, after all,” he said plaintively.

  Medford leaned on his pillow and considered. Nothing as queer had ever before happened to him. The fellow looked almost ridiculous enough to laugh at; yet his tears were certainly not simulated. Was he weeping for Almodham, already dead, or for Medford, about to be committed to the same grave?

  “I should trust you at once,” said Medford, “if you’d tell me where your master is.”

  Gosling’s face resumed its usual guarded expression, though the trace of the tears still glittered on it.

  “I can’t do that, sir.”

  “Ah, I thought so!”

  “Because—’ow do I know?”

  Medford thrust a leg out of bed. One hand, under the blanket, lay on his revolver.

  “Well, you may go now. Put that key down on the table first. And don’t try to do anything to interfere with my plans. If you do I’ll shoot you,” he added concisely.

  “Oh, no, you wouldn’t shoot a British subject; it makes such a fuss. Not that I’d care—I’ve often thought of doing it myself. Sometimes in the sirocco season. That don’t scare me. And you shan’t go.”

  Medford was on his feet now, the revolver visible. Gosling eyed it with indifference.

  “Then you do know where Mr. Almodham is? And you’re determined that I shan’t find out?” Medford challenged him.

  “Selim’s determined,” said Gosling, “and all the others are. They all want you out of the way. That’s why I’ve kept ’em to their quarters—done all the waiting on you myself. Now will you stay here? For God’s sake, sir! The return caravan is going through to the coast the day after tomorrow. Join it, sir—it’s the only safe way! I darsn’t let you go with one of our men, not even if you was to swear you’d ride straight for the coast and let this business be.”

  “This business? What business?”

  “This worrying about where Mr. Almodham is, sir. Not that there’s anything to worry about. The men all know that. But the plain fact is they’ve stolen some money from his box, since he’s been gone, and if I hadn’t winked at it they’d ’ave killed me; and all they want is to get you to ride out after ’im, and put you safe away under a ’eap of sand somewhere off the caravan trails. Easy job. There; that’s all, sir. My word it is.”

  There was a long silence. In the weak candle-light the two men stood considering each other.

  Medford’s wits began to clear as the sense of peril closed in on him. His mind reached out on all sides into the enfolding mystery, but it was everywhere impenetrable. The odd thing was that, though he did not believe half of what Gosling had told him, the man yet inspired him with a queer sense of confidence as far as their mutual relation was concerned. “He may be lying about Almodham, to hide God knows what; but I don’t believe he’s lying about Selim.”

  Medford laid his revolver on the table. “Very well,” he said. “I won’t ride out to look for Mr. Almodham, since you advise me not to. But I won’t leave by the caravan; I’ll wait here till he comes back.”

  He saw Gosling whiten under his sallowness. “Oh, don’t do that, sir; I couldn’t answer for them if you was to wait. The caravan’ll take you to the coast the day after tomorrow as easy as if you was riding in Rotten Row.”

  “Ah, then you know that Mr. Almodham won’t be back by the day after tomorrow?” Medford caught him up.

  “I don’t know anything, sir.”

  “Not even where he is now?”

  Gosling reflected. “He’s been gone too long, sir, for me to know that,” he said from the threshold.

  The door closed on him.

  Medford found sleep unrecoverable. He leaned in his window and watched the stars fade and the dawn break in all its holiness. As the stir of life rose among the ancient walls he marvelled at the contrast between that fountain of purity welling up into the heavens and the evil secrets clinging bat-like to the nest of masonry below.

  He no longer knew what to believe or whom. Had some enemy of Almodham’s lured him into the desert and bought the connivance of his people? Or had the servants had some reason of their own for spiriting him away, and was Gosling possibly telling the truth when he said that the same fate would befall Medford if he refused to leave?

  Medford, as the light brightened, felt his energy return. The very impenetrableness of the mystery stimulated him. He would stay, and he would find out the truth.

  VI

  It was always Gosling himself who brought up the water for Medford’s bath; but this morning he failed to appear with it, and when he came it was to bring the breakfast tray. Medford noticed that his face was of a pasty pallor, and that his lids were reddened as if with weeping. The contrast was unpleasant, and a dislike for Gosling began to shape itself in the young man’s breast.

  “My bath?” he queried.

  “Well, sir, you complained yesterday of the water—”

  “Can’t you boil it?”

  “I ’ave, sir.”

  “Well, then—”

  Gosling went out sullenly and presently returned with a brass jug. “It’s the time of year—we’re dying for rain,” he grumbled, pouring a scant measure of water into the tub.

  Yes, the well must be pretty low, Medford thought. Even boiled, the water had the disagreeable smell that he had noticed the day before, though of course in a slighter degree. But a bath was a necessity in that climate. He splashed the few cupfuls over himself as best he could.