But she cuddled in bed with one knee up to her neck in cute boyish fashion, laughing softly at the remembrance of another time when she had popped a cigarette stump into the eye of a London bobby from the top of a 'bus. And such a merry fight as she had put up when he had yanked her down! She was wearing her usual boy's clothes and when she had given her real name at the station, the policeman wouldn't believe it of her and the matron had resigned rather than carry the investigation further. Verbeena gave her boyish head a twist or two on the pillow and then she slept. Two weird sounds were in her ears as she dropped off. One was a queer, wild, melancholy song. The other was the snores of Lord Tawdry, equally weird, equally melancholy, equally wild. Yet she slept. But an hour later awoke. Verbeena untied her long, knotted eyelashes and peered about. Had--she seen something? The moon was all there, the famous, well-known Biscuit moon, lighting the room riotously. Yet she saw nothing. She took a sharp peek around. As her state of consciousness emerged from the nebulous condition of soft pitch and congealed to the concrete of a highway, Verbeena said softly to herself: "I could kick myself for a goal if I didn't see somp'n. Mystic it was, white, thrilling, strange----" "Meow!" Verbeena rushed for the balcony but the cat took the rail in a streak. "Bally thing!" Again on the still white night she heard that weird song with its slurred but insistent staccato _expressione_, ancient as the days of the Pharaohs, the melancholy, passionate Katsbemerri. But there would be no cats in the desert. Only nice, gentle, cute little, wriggly sandworms. No big boob brother, Tawdry. No Knitting Needle Hussars. Out there, beyond, swallowed up in that dear black smudge she had seen from the balcony her soul would wave its Stars and Stripes of freedom and move grandly in the palpitant sunlight upon the yellow linoleum of the mighty desert! And she would have for company kickin', bitin' horses and daredevil men, magnificent, virile, strenuous nomads of the wild silences and the silver moons! Only under no circumstances were they--any one of them--to be allowed to go too far! Camaraderie--yes, in her boyish way she would offer them that. But beyond that---- "Remember, Verbie," she told herself. "As regards such bally things you are an icicle--an icicle." She shivered. "An icicle!" She drew the covers swiftly up to her chin--up to the loose, red curls that brother Tawdry so loved to club about her ears. CHAPTER II The promised send-off of Verbeena from the Biscuit Hotel had been enthusiastic. "Very much so," had said Lady Speedway, the mean thing. At dawn Musty Ale sent ahead the procession of baggage bearers, the lumbering camels, all of them Verbeena thought showing great facial resemblance to Lady Speedway and hoped some day to tell her so. But otherwise she just adored them.