ixed races; an
olive pallor of skin, an oiliness of black hair, and a jetty brightness
of eye under heavy lids.
This time it was Stephen who asked for Miss Ray; but he was given the
same answer. She had gone out.
"You are sure?"
"Mais, oui, monsieur."
"Has she been gone long?" Stephen persisted, feeling perplexed and
irritated, as if something underhand were going on.
"Of that I cannot tell," returned the hotel proprietor, still in
guttural French. "She left word she would not be at the dinner."
"Did she say when she would be back?"
"No, monsieur. She did not say."
"Perhaps the American Consul's family took pity on her, and invited her
to dine with them," suggested Nevill.
"Yes," Stephen said, relieved. "That's the most likely thing, and would
explain her engagement this afternoon."
"We might explore the Kasbah for an hour, and call again, to inquire."
"Let us," returned Stephen. "I should like to know that she's got in all
right."
Five minutes later they had left the noisy Twentieth Century behind
them, and plunged into the shadowy silence of a thousand years ago.
The change could not have been more sudden and complete if, from a gaily
lighted modern street, full of hum and bustle, they had fallen down an
oubliette into a dark, deserted fairyland. Just outside was the imported
life of Paris, but this old town was Turkish, Arab, Moorish, Jewish and
Spanish; and in Algeria old things do not change.
After all, the alley was not deserted, though it was soundless as a tomb
save for a dull drumming somewhere behind thick walls. They were in a
narrow tunnel, rather than a street, between houses that bent towards
each other, their upper stories supported by beams. There was no
electric light, scarcely any light at all save a strip of moonshine,
fine as a line of silver inlaid in ebony, along the cobbled way which
ascended in steps, and a faint glimmer of a lamp here and there in the
distance, a lamp small and greenish as the pale spark of a glow-worm. As
they went up, treading carefully, forms white as spirits came down the
street in heelless babouches that made no more noise than the wings of a
bat. These forms loomed vague in the shadow, then took shape as Arab
men, whose eyes gleamed under turbans or out from hoods.
Moving aside to let a cloaked figure go by, Stephen brushed against the
blank wall of a house, which was cold, sweating dampness like an
underground vault. No sun, except a stre
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