The Eighth Green Man and Other Stories

2: Passport to the Desert-1

2: Passport to the Desert

The Magic Carpet Magazine Jan 1934

1. The Turquoise Ring

JACK DEANE adjusted his field-glasses and looked down the gloomy gorge of El Fumm. It was a desolate, haunted place. Towering granite walls shut out the sky.

"Good Lord!" He stared into the depths below at a red-brown burnoose caught among the rocks. "It's a man—dead, or badly stunned."

With the eye of an expert climber, he examined the narrow ledge winding across the cliff-face, then cautiously lowered himself into the chasm, creeping by slow zigzag degrees to the fallen man.

"Ugly-looking customer! Desert thief! I'll bet he lost that eye putting up a good fight." A trickle of blood oozed from beneath the Arab's chechia; he hung limply across the rock, his face gray, his mouth open. Jack pulled out his flask and lifted the wounded man's head.

The Arab opened his fierce, bright eye.

"It was a sharp stone, billah, that caught my head," he explained. "To thee, effendi, I owe my life. By this Gorge of Death, never shall One-Eye forget thy deed."

To divert the stream of gratitude, Jack held out the brandy flask. "Better keep this. You may need it."

The long, difficult climb to the ledge above safely accomplished, One-Eye took elaborate farewell.

"May Allah have thee in his keeping!" The Arab drew a ring from his finger and held it out to Jack. "Take this in proof of gratitude, effendi! It is my wasm—the tribal mark of the Zendas. Now hast thou a passport to the desert better than a two-edged sword."

In token of love and fealty, he touched Jack's hand to breast, lips, and forehead and, turning, walked slowly away through the gloomy gorge.

Left alone, Jack looked curiously at his gift. The ring was of wrought silver in which a turquoise was set with strange effect. Like a clear blue eye, the stone seemed to return Jack's gaze. "One Eye's wasm, eh! And very fitting, too—nearly as remarkable as the man himself!"

2: A Secret Enemy

DRIVING SLOWLY through the crowded streets of Zilfi one afternoon, Jack had an uneasy premonition that something evil was close at hand. Frequent narrow escapes had bred in him a sort of sixth sense of late. Someone was deliberately trying to kill him. He had made an enemy—a secret, persistent, unrelenting enemy. The whole thing was inexplicable to him, for his friendly encounter with One-Eye five years ago had proved a good omen. Ever since, he had lived on the best of terms with the Arabs, and the recent attacks on his life seemed unaccountable.

That little warning bell in his consciousness saved him. He twisted like an eel as the bearded marabout sprang. The gleaming blade only ripped his coat sleeve in its downward thrust.

The old man was off through the crowd like a minnow in a pool. Across the crowded souk Jack followed, but was delayed by an Arab with an enormous bunch of bananas, and lost sight of the marabout. He returned to his car and drove off hot and angry, for these affairs were becoming a serious nuisance. He recalled one after another as he drove on in the golden sunshine and purple shadows of the afternoon.

There was the spider—the deadly Galeodes arachnida. He had waked one night to see a dark figure jump off his balcony, and brilliant moonlight had revealed the spider running over his sheet. The affair of the boulder had been a nasty one, too. Placed so ingeniously at the corner of the sea-road, it had almost sent his car crashing a thousand feet to the rocks below.

This last attempt in the open street showed that his secret enemy was losing patience. He could think of but one man who might conceivably be planning his death so deliberately—Omar Ben Saif.

Leaving the car at a garage, he made his way down to the sea-road and found Linda, his fiancée, already at their trysting-place. Sitting together on the rocks by the dazzling sea, Jack explained what had delayed him.

"I can't figure it out at all," he went on. "The only one I know who might have a reason for getting me out of the way is Ben Saif. I shall be twenty-six next week, and am entitled then to be made a full partner with my brother, Fenton, in the firm of Deane & Son. He seems anxious enough to take me in with him, but I'm doubtful if that rascally Ben Saif will like it—and he sends the bulk of our cargoes. It's my belief that he's using our ships for private enterprises of his own."

"Yet your brother trusts him."

"In some ways, I understand the Arabs better than Fenton does. He was a thorough-going American boy when dad first settled in Zilfi and built up the shipping business. But I was born out here. True, I went home for my education, but I've lived in Algeria all the rest of the time. I flatter myself that I know the people."

"Mother thinks you are much too friendly with them. She was complaining about it to Fenton after we'd been sightseeing with you. Said she disliked going about Zilfi with you, because the Arabs came up and talked as if they were boys of your own class at Harvard. Poor mother, she's terrified of them."

"Mrs. Webb prefers Fenton to me as a future son-in-law. He is her ideal of a steady, industrious, wealthy man."

"She's got another grudge against you now."

"What's that?"

"The ring One-Eye gave you! It's a pity she heard that story about it. She's all upset over your having such a notorious bandit for a friend."

"Hardly a friend!" Jack laughed. "He wouldn't know me from Adam if we met now. I had a mustache five years ago, and I was wearing sun-goggles, not to speak of a bad heat-rash. Anyhow, you may be sure I'll not be the one to claim friendship. He's the biggest rogue in the Barbary States."

"I wish we could have the luck to meet One-Eye when we go to El Fumm tomorrow. It would be thrilling to say I'd met such a famous character."

"Not a chance! The French are hot on his trail after that last hold-up of his in the desert. He won't come within a hundred miles of Zilfi now. Much more likely to meet some of Ben Saif's ruffians at El Fumm; that's the reason I objected to having a picnic there. I don't see why Fenton insisted on it."

"He wanted to please me. I'm terribly anxious to see the gorge. Aren't you exaggerating the danger? El Fumm's only a few hours' ride from Zilfi. Why don't you want us to go?"

"Don't want you to go," he corrected. "You wouldn't guess the intrigue and plotting out here in Algeria beneath the surface of apparent order. Slavery's always existed in this country, and the Arabs can't see any moral reason for its suppression. It goes on under the noses of the French. Quietly and secretly—just like bootlegging at home. It never stops."

"But where does El Fumm come in? Is it being used as a slave route? Oh,"—Linda drew a deep breath of enlightenment—"you mean Ben Saif uses it—that he's a slave-dealer?"

"There's no proof yet, but he's under suspicion. The government can't afford to make mistakes."

"It's strange your brother is so indifferent to Ben Saif's reputation."

"Fenton finds it convenient to shut his eyes and ears. He won't listen to me. Pretends to think what I hear in the souks is just rumor and gossip. He and Ben Saif are hand in glove. Fenton makes no attempt to hide their intimacy. So far the government hasn't interfered. But Ben Saif is being watched, I don't believe Fenton realizes how closely."

Linda pondered. "I see. And, of course, as soon as you're a partner in the firm, you'll be able to do something about it."

"Yes, if they don't wreck the firm's reputation entirely before I get into it."

"Even if Ben Saif is all you suspect, he wouldn't dare to interfere with us at El Fumm, though."

"You might be in serious danger. It wouldn't be the first time a girl's been carried off in these mountains. El Fumm's a desolate spot. You'd disappear before we knew what hit us."

"Jack! They wouldn't steal a white girl like that! Ben Saif could never get away with such a ghastly outrage!"

"Dear, you don't begin to understand the subtle game that slave-dealers play out here. It's the hardest thing in the world to pin anything on to them. Ben Saif's cutthroats would rather die than breathe a word against him. In Algeria, a traitor's fate is—horrible!"

"You don't think—" Linda hesitated, her eyes troubled. "Fenton's acting very strangely. I wonder if he—" She broke off abruptly and got to her feet. "Its nothing—just a foolish idea! I'm so anxious about you, that's all. But we really can't back out of the expedition now. Everything's arranged. Mother's all set for El Fumm. Nothing will put her off now."

"I suppose not," agreed Jack unhappily as they left the sea and turned to walk back to Zilfi.

3: The Affair of the Orange

THROUGH the Bab-el-Ghrabi, Gate of the West, they passed into the white-walled town, and, by winding streets, reached the marketplace.

Ochered, crumbling walls of ancient buildings enclosing the square were brilliant with sun and opalescent shadows—blue, dusky purple, and gold-flecked green, they quivered beneath balconies and outthrust tilings, under arched doorways, and among the baskets and pyramids of fruit before the gaudy booths.

"What gorgeous color!" Linda was enchanted.

Across the souk, in the shadow of an archway, a little fruit-seller in black gandourah and dingy turban smiled ingratiatingly beside a red-gold pyramid of mandarin oranges. Linda stopped and took one from him. He showed all his teeth in a yet broader grin, pressed another orange into Jack's hand, and spoke a few words in Arabic.

Jack peeled his fruit carelessly, absorbed in watching Linda. His mind was full of plans. Next week he would be a partner in the firm of Deane & Son. He and Linda would be married....

The black-clad fruit-seller got to his feet in one swift movement, observing Jack narrowly; the whites of his eyes gleamed as he furtively withdrew and melted into the darkness of the narrow lane beyond the archway.

Preoccupied, Jack broke off a quarter of the orange he was absent-mindedly peeling. His eyes were fixed on the fruit, but for a moment what they saw did not registered in his brain. Then his absent gaze focused sharply.

The flies!

For a paralyzed second he watched them drop off, or fall dead within the hollow cut of the partly broken skin, standing up like tulip petals about the fruit.

"Linda!" He snatched at the remaining quarter of her orange.

Watching with eyes full of horror and apprehension, he saw flies hover and sip. His breath almost stopped, then came in a gasp of relief. Thank God, it was all right! Only from his orange the flies fell dead—poisoned! On Linda's orange they sipped, and crawled, and sipped again, unharmed.

"I thought they'd got you, too!"

"What was it, Jack? Darling, don't look at me like that! I don't understand."

"Poison! My orange was poisoned—something deadly. That fruit-seller—" He glanced round and discovered that the vender had vanished. "Where'd the little rat go? No matter, I'd never have caught him. Let's get home out of this."

She clung to him, thoroughly unnerved, the bright glory of the day suddenly darkened by creeping fear. "Jack, this is all too horrible! You can't go on from day to day, never knowing when or how they'll strike!" She shuddered, recalling the black flies speckling the dust as they fell from the poisoned orange. "I ought to tell you that—you may have guessed it, anyhow!"

He looked at her in silence, waiting.

"I'm afraid you'll be angry that I suspect him." She hesitated "It's Fenton! He wants to marry me. He wouldn't accept my refusal. I'm afraid of him."

"You—afraid?"

"Yes, yes! But that's not all. Jack, he's jealous of you. Oh, I know. I've seen his face—his eyes!"