Page:Talbot Mundy - Eye of Zeitoon.djvu/186

168 absence Miss Vanderman had not been idle. Excepting the two men who had admitted me, every one was seated—she on the floor among the women, with her back to the wall, and the rest in a semicircle facing them. Two of the women had their arms about her, affectionately, but not without a hint of who controlled the situation.

"What have you been doing?" Fred demanded, and he laughed at Gloria Vanderman with an air of triumph.

"Making preparations," I said, "to take Miss Vanderman to Tarsus."

I wish I could set down here a chart of the mixed emotions then expressed on that young lady's face. She did not look at Will, knowing perhaps that she already had him captive of her bow and spear. Neither did Will look at us, but sat tracing figures with a forefinger in the dust between his knees, wondering perhaps how to excuse or explain, and getting no comfort.

If my guess was correct, Gloria Vanderman was about equally distracted between the alternative ignominy of submitting her free will to Armenians or else to us. Compassion for the women in their predicament weighed one way—knowledge that our friend Monty was in durance vile contingent on her actions pulled heavily another. Fred was frankly enjoying himself, which influenced her strongly toward the Armenian side, she being young and, doubtless the idol of a hundred heart-sick Americans, contemptuous of forty-year-old bachelors.

"Of course we shall not let you go!" one of the Armenians assured her in quite good English, and I began fumbling at the pistol in my inner pocket, for if Arabaiji was to run to Zeitoon, then the sooner the better. But it needed only that imputation of helplessness to tip the beam of Miss Gloria's judgment.