Page:Talbot Mundy - Eye of Zeitoon.djvu/305

285 "Give me that," I said, "for luck," and she jumped at the idea.

"Yes, yes—that is to bring you luck—ver' much luck!" She snatched it off and hung it around my neck, pushing the turtle-shell down under my collar out of sight.

"That is love-token!" she whispered. "Now she love you immediate'! Now you 'ave ver' much luck!"

The last part of her prophecy was true. The luck seemed to change. That instant the key was given me to escape without making her my relentless enemy, a voice that I would know among a million began shouting for me petulantly from somewhere half a dozen roofs away.

"What in hell's keeping you, man? Here's Monty getting up a tourist party to his damned ancestral nest and you're delaying the whole shebang! Good lord alive! Have you fallen in love with a woman, or taken the belly-ache, or fallen down a well, or gone to sleep again, or all of them, or what?"

"Coming, Fred!" I shouted. "Coming!"

"You'd better!"

He began playing cat-calls on his concertina—imitation bugle-calls, and fragments of serenades. For a second Maga looked reckless—then suspicious—then, as it began to dawn on her from studying my face that I, too, was afraid of Fred, relieved.

"Does he know anything?" I asked her. "He? That Frrred? No! No, no, no! An' you no tell 'im. You 'ear me? You no tell 'im! You go now—go to 'im, or else 'e is get suspicious—understan'? My men—they go an' get that woman. When they finish getting that woman, then I send for you an' you come quick—understan'?"

I nodded.