Page:Harold Lamb--The House of the Falcon.djvu/59

 creased and pinched as if from exposure to hot winds. His heavy eyes were bloodshot; a red fez rested on straggling, curly black hair.

"As you please," he muttered. "What was your fate?"

Leaning back on the quilts, he eyed the gurgling water pipe. His dress had once been immaculate white duck, girded by a brilliant shawl belt. The open collar disclosed a round, muscular throat rising from a stout chest.

"An evil one, Abbas." Monsey sank upon the quilts and tossed away the burned stub of his cigarette savagely. The woman stirred, opened tired eyes, and hunched away from the men, to fall into her disturbed sleep. "I played my cards and they lost. I tell you, they lost."

"I hear. It is fate. Did you think the beautiful Americain khanum would want you for a husband?"

"Why not?" Monsey scowled. "Other women have loved me—and they were better than this"

He looked at the drowsy woman sardonically. The Turkoman—he was actually an Alaman, a Russianized Mohammedan of the Turki race—shrugged powerful shoulders.

"I saw her passing in the boat, my friend. Nay, I believed not she would be a wife to you. Who was the native soldier?"

"Orderly to the British major—the son of a dog. He will not leave the woman."

"Therein he shows his wisdom." Abbas bared stained teeth. "So they do not trust you, despite your French manners and your patrician Russian birth? Eh?"

Monsey—perhaps the name had once been spelled