Sweet Enchantress Read online

  He slipped past Edie in the doorway without touching him and there was the sound of his footsteps hurrying up the companionway onto the deck.

  “Quick, after him!” Edie cried. “He’ll get away.”

  The Gendarme shook his head.

  “We have a car and two of our men on the quay, monsieur,” he answered. “They are waiting at the gangway. I anticipated that something like this might happen.”

  He spoke in French, but Edie seemed to understand what he was saying.

  And then there was the sound of a splash.

  With one accord everyone turned and ran along the passage and up onto the deck.

  Zaria, being faster on her feet, was there first. She was just in time to see two other Gendarmes come running aboard up the gangway and then turned to see Chuck’s dark head bobbing amongst the small waves of the water in the harbour.

  He was already some way from the yacht, swimming strongly and making, she could see, for the shore on the other side of the Port.

  “Goddam these fatheaded cops! Why didn’t they stop him?” Edie snarled.

  He stood helpless, staring at Chuck’s swift passage through the water. It was a second or two later before he was joined by the Gendarmes from below.

  “Mon Dieu,” one gasped as he realised what had happened.

  “Stop him, can’t you?” Edie yelled.

  There was a moment’s hesitation while the other Gendarmes from the car made exclamatory noises as if they felt it imperative that they must express their surprise.

  “Stop him!” shouted Edie again. “You don’t want him to escape, do you?”

  The Officer drew a revolver from his belt. It took but a few seconds to unfasten it from the smart leather case in which it was encased, but even as he touched it Zaria gasped,

  “No, no! You cannot shoot! It’s ridiculous, it’s absurd! You cannot do such a thing!”

  “You have to stop him,” Edie insisted as the Gendarme raised his arm.

  As he did so, Zaria forgot everything but her fear for Chuck and her anxiety for his safety. She flung herself upon the Gendarme, holding on to his arm and as she did so speaking rapidly in French,

  “Non, non, monsieur! Don’t do such a thing. There is some mistake, I promise you. You cannot shoot an unarmed man. Consider, I beg of you.”

  She was sobbing by this time and she could not resist or fight back as someone pulled her away, leaving the Gendarme free to raise his revolver once more.

  But it was too late. Chuck was out of sight, hidden from view by the many ships anchored on the blue water – yachts, sailing vessels, two or three liners and several tankers. He might have been behind any of them.

  “You should not behave in such a way, mademoiselle, the Officer said severely. “What is this man to you?”

  “He is – my fiancé,” Zaria sobbed, her breath coming in uneven gasps as she struggled against her tears and her captors.

  “Votre fiancé!”

  The French Policeman’s eyes met hers and instantly she was free. This was something they understood. Obstruction, passion and feminine emotion of all sorts could be forgiven if it was pour l’amour.

  “Well, don’t just stand there,” Edie snapped. “Can’t you go after him? He has to get out of the damned sea somewhere hasn’t he?”

  The senior Officer gave orders and the two Gendarmes who had been sitting in the car until Chuck had dived overboard saluted smartly. One of them ran off, obviously in the direction of a telephone. The other got back at the wheel of the car.

  “We shall arrest him as he steps ashore,” the senior Officer said soothingly to Edie, who was stamping his foot with anger.

  He saluted Zaria and said,

  “My sympathies, mademoiselle, but in another time you must not obstruct the French Police in the pursuance of their duties.”

  Then he saluted Edie and walked off the yacht.

  It was a very dignified performance and Edie clasped his clenched hands above his head in an appeal to Heaven.

  “Idiots! Fools!” he stormed. “Do they imagine they can catch a man by such methods? But they will get him, you can be sure of that. They will get him!”

  “And if they do – what then?” Zaria asked, her voice cracking a little on the words.

  “Then he will get a pretty stiff sentence,” Edie answered. “Dope smuggling is frowned on pretty severely, I can tell you that.”

  “I don’t believe that he was smuggling those cigarettes,” Zaria said. “I have never seen them before.”

  “I’m afraid your evidence will be too prejudiced,” Edie replied with a sly twist of his lips.

  He turned on his heel and walked away from her.

  Zaria stood on deck, hesitating for one moment. She thought of running ashore after the Gendarmes.

  Then she saw that the sailor was still standing on guard and was sure that he had his instructions.

  She would not get far and Edie and his gang would catch up with her.

  Then she looked across the harbour. Had Chuck got ashore safely she wondered? She felt the agony of frustration, the agony of not knowing. Was he safe? What would happen to him?

  She stood looking out over the blue water until she could see it no longer because her eyes were blinded with tears.

  “Oh, my love,” she whispered. “God go with you!”

  CHAPTER SIX

  The taxi deposited them at the end of the narrow alleyway. The only light apart from the moonlight was a blue lamp burning outside a door some way down it.

  “Is this the place?” Edie asked.

  “Salem’s House,” the taxi driver said, pointing with a dirty finger towards the blue lamp.

  “It looks a pretty ghastly place to me,” Victor ejaculated.

  Zaria felt too unhappy to say anything. She was concerned only with one thing – her anxiety for Chuck.

  All the afternoon she had sat in her cabin wondering what she could do or how she could find out if he was safe. Yet she was also afraid – afraid that perhaps, after all, he had done something wrong and that even were she to escape from Victor’s and Edie’s vigilance, she would not be helping him by going to the Police.

  The first difficulty was, of course, that she was a prisoner.

  It was obvious that Edie and Co. had no intention of letting her out of their sight. And, because she felt both afraid and helpless, she had finally gone to her own cabin just to sit there staring into space.

  ‘What am I to believe? What am I to think?’ she had asked herself aloud. Then she knew that whatever he did or whatever he had done she still loved him – loved him so much that even if the Gendarme’s bullet had wounded her instead of Chuck, she would have been glad to have been of service to him.

  “I love him!” she said to give herself courage as, having been told that she was expected to be ready to go ashore at nine o’clock, she came up half-an-hour earlier for dinner.

  Madame Bertin was not there. After her row with Edie she had retired to bed with a migraine, which necessitated her taking a sleeping draught. Kate was there, but in a very bad temper and sulking.

  At nine o’clock Edie rose from the table.

  “Are you ready?” he asked Zaria.

  “Yes,” she answered.

  It was difficult for her to think of anything or anybody except Chuck. She knew now, as she followed Edie to where the taxi was waiting at the gangway, that deep in her heart she believed that somehow, in some manner of his own, Chuck would contact her during the evening.

  When she was ready for dinner, she had slipped from her own cabin into Chuck’s. It was not only for the comfort of touching things that were his, she felt too that it was wise to have a look around in case there was anything else there that might be incriminating.

  But everything had been put back in its place. Chuck’s suits were hanging up in the wardrobe. His pyjamas were lying on the bed ready for him to put them on. His dressing gown was over the chair. Everything seemed normal and impersonal.
r />   She opened a drawer. There were a few handkerchiefs, unmarked, two ties and a packet of ordinary cigarettes – American Chesterfields.

  She stared at them for a moment, thinking of those long thin boxes the Police had found and being absolutely certain in her mind that Edie had put them there just so that he could inform against Chuck and get him arrested.

  Then, as she went to shut the drawer, she saw that there was something at the back of it. She did not know why, but she put her hand in and drew it out.

  To her astonishment it was a small bottle of hair dye.

  For a moment she stared at it and then she put it back where she had found it and went from the cabin.

  But all the while through dinner she could think of little else. Hair dye! Dark hair dye!

  That was why Chuck’s hair seemed somehow an almost startling contrast to his grey eyes.

  She had always thought that he did not seem the dark type. His chin was never blue like Edie’s and there was something a little unnatural about the dark waves that he brushed back so severely from his square forehead.

  She felt the problem nag at her mind. Why was he disguised? Why should he want to change the colour of his hair unless he was hiding from someone? Was that one of the reasons why he wore dark glasses? Was his story about the weakness of his eyes totally untrue?

  She made no attempt during the ride in the taxi either to speak or to notice in which direction they were going. It was only the length of the journey that told her they were travelling away from the town into the rambling suburbs.

  Some of the streets were well lit and busy with traffic. But the alleyway they now walked up was empty save for the lamp at the end.

  It was therefore a surprise when they passed through a heavy metal-studded door to go down steps into a big rectangular shaped room and find it packed with people.

  The walls were draped with coloured rugs and round the room there were low tapestry-covered seats. There were also little tables on which there were a multitude of different coloured drinks.

  It was obvious that they were expected, for an Arab led them immediately on their arrival to a small alcove at the side of the room, put a bottle of whisky on the low table, added four glasses and then went away.

  Zaria stared around her.

  The Arabs, in their voluminous burnous and white headdresses, were picturesque and yet at the same time she felt that there was something slightly menacing about them.

  These were Arabs from the desert. They had in their eyes a look of an eagle and about their lips an expression of toughness.

  Zaria wondered for a moment what attracted them here, but as soon as she noticed the Arab musicians seated at the far end of the room, she knew the answer. They were all blind and she remembered that it was traditional for the Ouled Nail dancing girls to be accompanied by blind musicians.

  The tambourinists in the orchestra began to beat out a pulsating rhythm. A flute and a rhaytor, the Arabic clarinet, joined in.

  The music suddenly burst into an evocatory melodic storm and a girl swept onto the dancing floor. She had the high cheekbones, the blue-black hair and the huge eyes of the Ouled Nail.

  She wore glittering earrings and gold coin necklace that showed how successful she was in her profession.

  Her bare feet began to move slowly in the strange individualistic dance that made her hips sway gently at first and then move faster and faster until, almost without realising it, the onlookers’ breath came quicker and quicker as if in time to the rhythm.

  The dance was weird and violent, not beautiful, but it seemed to awaken the senses with its primitive directness and physical vehemence. Zaria found herself forgetting everything, even Chuck, as she watched.

  Her heart seemed to beat almost in time with the girl’s strange provocative movements.

  And then suddenly, when all eyes were on the dancers, a voice behind Zaria said,

  “She is good, is she not?”

  The words were spoken in Arabic. She turned her head to see black eyes glittering in a dark brown face, a white headdress framing a handsome cruel face and a brown burnous pulled a little to one side to show the inevitable long-handled knife.

  “Who are you?” she asked, knowing the answer.

  She glanced towards Edie and Mr. Virdon who had just realised that they had been joined by someone else.

  “You are Sheik Ibrahim ben Kaddour?” Edie asked directly, but was interrupted as a brown finger was laid against his lips.

  “No names,” the Sheik said in Arabic, “and speak low.”

  Zaria translated the words.

  “Ask him if he has the money,” Edie commanded.

  Zaria asked the question simply.

  The Sheik nodded.

  “It is in my saddlebag,” he said. “How many have they brought?”

  Zaria translated his question and in answer Edie held up three fingers and then opened both hands wide.

  The Sheik nodded again.

  “Tell the Americans,” he said to Zaria, “to meet me at dawn at El Kettar – the cemetery outside the town. Inshallah.”

  “If God wills it!”

  The whole fatalistic creed of the Moslem lay in that word. Zaria translated what the Sheik had said.

  Edie looked reflective.

  “Dawn is too early,” he said in English. “Anyone about would think it strange if we started moving off the yacht at that hour.

  “Not if you are going to dig,” Zaria replied.

  “No, I suppose not,” Edie answered. “Tell him we’ll be there, but say that nothing will be handed over until he’s forked out the dough. And I want half of it now.”

  Zaria repeated what she had been told.

  The Sheik’s eyes narrowed.

  “Half?” he questioned. “Why should I trust them if they will not trust me?”

  Edie knew by the expression on his face what he was saying.

  “Tell him those are my terms,” he said. “We’ve not brought the stuff all this way to have it pinched off us by a lot of black-faced gangsters.”

  “I cannot say that,” Zaria protested.

  “Then tell him either he pays or gets nothing.”

  Zaria repeated the words a little uncomfortably.

  The Sheik did not seem surprised.

  “Wait!” he said.

  He moved swiftly through some curtains at the back of the alcove. It was obviously another entrance and a very convenient one for those who did not wish to be seen.

  No one in the room had noticed the Sheik’s arrival. They were all too intent on watching the dancer, who was coming now to the climax of her dance.

  There was great applause when she finished, but, before it died away, two other girls, not more than fourteen years old, were beginning ‘the Dance of the Daggers’.

  The slim slivers of steel in their hands gleamed and glittered as they slashed the air. Their small brown feet moved swiftly to a kind of almost monotonous rhythm.

  The music rose and fell, crashing sometimes as if it portrayed the tempest strumming through the palm leaves or rushing like a desert wind through the clouds of sand.

  Zaria had little time to watch them before the Sheik was back again. He squatted down on his heels beside Edie and without wasting time in words began to pass something into his hands from beneath the shadow of his cloak.

  Zaria could not see the notes, but she knew that Edie was counting them and both Victor and Mr. Virdon seemed almost hypnotised as they watched. So engrossed were they that she felt they had forgotten her presence.

  She wondered whether it would be possible to slip away through the curtains and leave without their realising that she had gone.

  She was half inclined to take the risk and then she remembered how far she was from the town. There must be a better opportunity to escape perhaps on their return to the yacht.

  The last note must have passed and the Sheik rose.

  His burnous brushed against Zaria’s cheek as he turned silently on h
is heels and disappeared as swiftly as he had come.

  ‘The Dance of the Daggers’ had finished and now another girl slid onto the dance floor. Slim and naked, her body was a most beautiful colour.

  The music was now a crash of tambourines and under cover of their noise Edie rose to his feet. He flung a mille note down on the table and then led the way through the curtains through which the Sheik had departed.

  The others followed him. They were in a narrow arched passage, which at one end led back into the dance hall. At the other there was a metal-studded door.

  Edie wrenched it open. It led into the alleyway just a little further up from the door with the blue light.

  There was no one in sight. The Sheik had vanished.

  There was not a sound of horses’ hoofs. The place seemed deserted and out here they could not even hear the music played by the blind musicians.

  Edie wiped his forehead.

  “How the hell are we going to get a taxi?” he asked.

  A small Arab boy appeared from nowhere.

  “Taxi, Mister?” he asked in quite intelligible English.

  “That’s right, a taxi, and quick!” Edie answered.

  The urchin ran down to the end of the alley, put his fingers in his mouth and let out a shrill whistle. Almost immediately an old rather dilapidated taxi came slowly up the road.

  “Where to?” the urchin asked.

  Zaria gave the name of the quay where the yacht was berthed. The small boy shouted it at the taxi driver, who was old and seemed to be deaf, but he nodded as if he understood.

  Edie handed the child a few cents tip.

  “Thank you, Mister,” he beamed. “Merci beaucoup!”

  He held the door for them as they climbed into the taxi. As Zaria passed him he said something in Arabic.

  For a moment she thought that she could not have heard aright and then she knew that this was what she had been expecting.

  It was a short sentence, but it told her all she wanted to know.

  Translated roughly it said,

  “Be ready to run when you get to the quay.”

  That was all. Only a few words and yet she felt her heart turn over because of them.

  Chuck was free!

  Chuck was thinking of her!