"By the same Allah," returned the Sheik with a show of spirit, "unless your business is of prime importance I would not disturb her now. She is at her daily exercise within and cares never then to be interrupted." "Why doesn't she exercise with a horse?" "Idiot, forbear lest she overhear. Besides, it's not that sort of exercise at all. For three hours each morning she now spends her time making faces in the looking glass. For what purpose when I ask her of it, she orders me back into the open as being none of my Oriental damned business. What's in the bags?" "Letters--letters--thousands--all for her." "Yet, by Allah, it is not Valentine's day." "True." "No, but by Allah, it's near the first month. I wonder what bills she's been running up!" faltered the Sheik. Now the letters--there is no use keeping a person's readers waiting--were in reality, in response to an advertisement she had secretly placed in several theatrical newspapers. It had read: "Famous Lost Lady on Sahara Open for Moving Picture Engagement. No triflers. Address P. Oasis Box No. 17 via Orange." The messenger was now bearing to Mrs. The Sheik Amut Ben Butler thirty thousand and forty-six communications from all the choicest open-air murder colonies in the country. But true enterprise, real enterprise, enterprise in the magnificent, was incarnated in the person of the celebrated Mr. Cyril Gristmille for on that very instant he descended grandly in person in an aeroplane. Slightly on his ear but soon readjusted himself. He had faced this small accident without turning a hair. He hadn't any. "See here," cried the Sheik Amut, "what the hellah do you mean by swooping down this way on these grounds? Don't you see what you've done? You've scared the horses and camels and scattered them all over the desert! And, may Allah's curses crack your skull, you've knocked down the week's wash and if you knew my wife----" Mr. Gristmille gracefully drew a slender cigarette case from a lower waistcoat pocket--yep, he had the habit too--and said: "Well, then, don't stand there like a fathead looking at them run away, my man. You and your other ragbags get busy and catch 'em again. I may need 'em shortly." "Need 'em? What do you want?" "My business is not with you. But unless I am improperly informed this tent harbors the famous lost English desert girl, Miss Verbeena Mayonnaise?" "That was," said Sheik Amut sticking up his nose at this haughty stranger. "She's my wife now." [Illustration: CYRIL GRISTMILLE, THE GREAT WOMAN TAMER.] "Go in the tent then and tell her to come out to me--Mr. Cyril Gristmille--immediately. I would do business with her." "You would?" "Hasten. Go right in and tell her to come out promptly." "Go in and tell her yourself," said Amut. "I'm tired trying to tell her to do anything." "Very well," said Mr. Gristmille and stalked toward the main tent.