Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/205

 me up. I knew if that beggar couldn't find you something must be wrong. Then we learned from an Usbek peasant that he had seen a Sayak woman come from the house"

Abruptly he thrust her back.

"Iskander and two others have come in," he whispered sharply. "Edith, go back to the wall. Hide."

The girl, her heart beating tumultuously, lost no time in slipping back into the shadow of the wall. A slight projection of the granite blocks offered a shallow nook for her slender body.

John Donovan waited, while Iskander, Mahmoud, and another—the Sayak chief—approached. They had seen him and advanced to where he stood. Iskander fronted him with folded arms. To the white man's greeting he returned no answer.

"Where is Mees Rand?" he asked slowly.

Donovan eyed him steadily, trying to guess how the Arab had come to look for the girl and how much he knew of her actions. The presence of Mahmoud and the chieftain was ominous. Still, he was reasonably sure that Edith's disguise had not been penetrated. For a space the two measured each other silently.

Behind them the folds of the great curtain parted.

"Where is the white woman?" said Iskander again.

Donovan shrugged. "Does not Aravang know?"

"He knows nothing." The Arab tugged at his beard, as was his habit when aroused. "Speak, Dono-van Khan. I know that she is here. The guards at the door brought me a pair of woman's slippers, left behind when all had gone. I have seen the slippers before. They belong to Mees Rand."

Listening in her nook a dozen feet away, Edith thought of the pair she had discarded at the gate.