Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/104

 friendship of Louisville. Momentarily she had expected to awaken to see her servants about her—but only the brown faces of the caravaneers met her eyes, and she shrank from the camel and the rough food.

In this coma of fatigue the girl's innate vitality had come to her aid. Her cheeks became firmer, her eyes brighter. The mocking illusions receded—thanks to the constant care of Iskander.

One day she observed a box strapped on the side of the camel in front of her. She knew that box. It was the one containing the kit of Donovan Khan.

"Iskander," she smiled, "are you a thief as well as a—thug?"

The seller of rugs looked up warningly. He saw a rosy face, brown-tinted by sun and wind, turned toward him under shadow of the burnoose hood—a face rare as the wine-inspired art of a Persian painter. So he looked away. The woman was unveiled and she was not for him.

"That box," challenged his prisoner. "You took it from the house of Major Fraser-Carnie."

"Yess, khannum—madame."

"Why?"

No answer. Long ago Edith had discovered the uselessness of asking direct questions. Dissimulation is second nature to the Orient So she probed for information as a skilled fisherman casts a light trout fly.

"And you stole the medicines of the mem-sahib, my aunt. So, you are no soldier, but a thief!"

Inwardly she was wondering what the seller of rugs could want with two such articles as the box of John Donovan and the medicines of Catherine Rand.