Adventure stories; Mystery fiction; Short stories, English; Supernatural -- Fiction
"You don't feel unwell, darling?" he whispered.
She smiled at him radiantly, and gave his hand a quick little squeeze.
"Of course not," she said.
But she remained silent to the end of the short drive. This was not due
to that which her husband feared, however, but to the fact that she had
caught a glimpse, amongst the throng at the corner of the bazaar, of the
handsome, sinister face of El-Suleym, the Bedouin.
III
The moon poured radiance on the desert. At the entrance to a camel-hair
tent stood a tall, handsome man, arrayed in the picturesque costume of
the Bedouin. The tent behind him was upheld by six poles. The ends and
one side were pegged to the ground, and the whole of that side before
which he stood was quite open, with the exception of a portion before
which hung a goat-hair curtain.
This was the "house of hair" of the Sheikh El-Suleym, of the
Masr-Bishareen--El-Suleym, "the Regicide" outcast of the great tribe of
the Bishareen. At some distance from the Sheikh's tent were some half a
dozen other and smaller tents, housing the rascally following of this
desert outcast.
Little did those who had engaged the picturesque El-Suleym, to display
his marvellous horsemanship in London, know that he and those that came
with him were a scorn among true sons of the desert, pariahs of that
brotherhood which extends from Zered to the Nile, from Tanta to the Red
Sea; little did those who had opened their doors in hospitality to the
dashing horseman dream that they entertained a petty brigand, sought
for by the Egyptian authorities, driven out into ostracism by his own
people.
And now before his tent he stood statuesque in the Egyptian moonlight,
and looked towards Gizeh, less than thirty miles to the north-east.
As El-Suleym looked towards Gizeh, Graham and his wife were seated
before Mena House looking out across the desert. The adventure of the
morning had left its impression upon both of them, and Eileen wore the
gold chain with its turquoise pendant. Graham was smoking in silence,
and thinking, not of the old porter and his odd Eastern gratitude, but
of another figure, and one which often came between his mental eye and
the beauties of that old, beautiful land. Eileen, too, was thinking of
El-Suleym; for the Bedouin now was associated in her mind with the old
pedlar, since she had last seen the handsome, sinister face amid the
throng at the entrance to the bazaar.
Telepathy is a curious fact. Were Graham's reflections _en rapport_ with
his wife's, or were they both influenced by the passionate thoughts of
that other mind, that subtle, cunning mind of the man who at that moment
was standing before his house of hair and seeking with his eagle glance
to defy distance and the night?
"Have you seen--him, again?" asked Graham abruptly. "Since the other day
at the bridge?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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