Page:Vance--Terence O'Rourke.djvu/283

 have been lifted bodily from the pages of the "Arabian Nights."

Before him there hung, swaying lightly, a curtain of thin, fine silk of a faded rose tint, faintly luminous; behind him was the door, and on either hand blank wooden walls. As he hesitated, he heard a voice, and his heart stood still—what power had a pretty woman's voice to stir the heart of this man!

"Enter, if you please, monsieur!"

He thrust the swinging drapery aside, and entered in one stride—to halt and stand, blinking, in the diffused, dim radiance of a single, shaded, hanging light. His eyes sought the woman, but at first did not find her; and he mechanically inventoried his surroundings—obedient to the instinct that causes the adventurer to familiarize himself with the field against whatever emergency the future may bring to pass.

Apparently the apartment was one of those that had, at some former time, composed the harem in some wealthy Mohammedan prince's palace. Evidences of long neglect were crowded within its walls, however; the flimsy silken hangings that draped every inch of them were stained and frayed and torn, showing behind them glimpses of dark recesses. The mushrabeah lattice that gave upon the inner courtyard of the dwelling was fallen into decay; in one place it was quite broken away, revealing a portion of the court itself, dark, silent, patched with moonlight that fell through the trembling leaves of a giant acacia that overhung a lifeless fountain.

In the room, again, dust lay thick upon the furnishings; a tabouret that caught the Irishman's eye, because of the beauty of its inlaid design, could have been written upon with the