Page:Oriental Stories v01 n01 (1930-10).djvu/94

 Bue the outcry never came. Her throat choked over the attempted sound. Her eyes showed white, and she crumpled to the floor.

She had hardly fallen before Weiss was up from the piano stool and racing for the door. In his mind was no plan, no course of action—only blind haste to get away before she should regain her senses and repeat his story to the others. And as he went he raged against a woman who should lure a man on and then turn against him when he had given her the highest proof of his love—never admitting to himself that she had lured him on only in his own opinion.

In the effort to get away from the hotel, go anywhere before the woman could recover and accuse him, he promptly lost himself in the Arab section of town. It is not good to wander alone at night in the native quarters of such towns as Kairouan. And, rushing hopelessly down one street and another, he was numb with fear of his surroundings.

For the first time the enormous stupidity of the thing he had done came crashing home to him. An alien in a wild and hostile land, unable to speak the language, unable to ask for help or shelter, hunted by every European—or soon to be hunted—with death waiting for him if he were caught! Tears of self-pity welled in his eyes and fell salt to his lips.

The darkness was appalling. Never a light in a house, narrow alleys ending in blank walls into which he often bumped blindly. Now and then a puny street lamp planted determinedly by the French government, but placed usually in such a way that the crooked outjutting of building walls cut off the light within a few feet. Darkness and quiet—the dark and quiet of a great storm about to burst, and in the center of its threatening, the little man, Weiss!

A shadowy, white-robed figure appeared suddenly before him, seeming to have risen from the stones of the street. It may have been the glint of starlight on a knife blade, or merely the reflction on one of the crescent silver pins worn in that land; but, not stopping to find out, Weiss jumped back and ran down the nearest open way.

One of the white, savage desert dogs leaped snarling from the tunneled darkness. Weiss heard the fabric of his trouser leg rip, and felt teeth in his ankle. He kicked out and was rid of the brute.

Finally—lights ahead! The low doorway of an Arab café gleamed like a dim moon in the blackness of house walls, and he went toward it cautiously. A few yards away, however, he observed that the men in the café were gathered about one of their number, and all seemed to be talking excitedly. The central figure was the snake-charmer! He appeared to be describing some incident—the sale of one of his cobras, perhaps?

Another shadowy figure rose in front of him as he turned to skulk away from possible discovery. This time there was no retreat, and he mouthed a prayer to the God he had never before acknowledged, feeling already the slash of a knife in his belly. The figure, however, bowed servilely and spoke in broken English:

"M'sieur wish to see the night things of the ville, perhaps?"

Weiss could have cried on the man's shoulder with the relief of it. He tried to speak without losing his last shred of self-control and babbling incoherently.

"I am not looking for sights. I want an automobile. A motor-car. Automobile. I want to go away from here quick. God—there's probably no such thing as a car here!"

There was, it developed. A friend of a friend had a very gorgeous and beautiful automobile. Very fast. Very fine.