He laughed sardonically and waved his hands a little wildly. "Oh, I know English--all the Europeans. I have seen their women. I have seen them selling their wares--stripping themselves half bare in the evenings, the shameless--For me, never! My wife is a hidden treasure. You know what the poet says:
"'An' there be one who shares with me her love I'd strangle Love tho' Life by Love were slain, Saying, O Soul, Death were the nobler choice, For ill is Love when shared twixt partners twain.'"
"You are fond of your poets," said Aimée with stiff lips.
"You--you kindle poetic fires, my little one. You--I--" He stammered a moment, then forgot his fierce speech against foreign ways. "You have the raven hair--"
His hand went out to it. He smoothed it back out of her eyes, then tried to draw her to him.
Desperately she resisted. "Monsieur, one does not expect a gentleman--"
"Expect! Ho--what should one expect when a man has such a little sweetmeat, such a little syrup drop, such a rose petal--Come, come, you would not struggle--"
But it was not the struggling hand of the frightened girl that sent the general back.
It was a brown, sinewy hand on his shoulder, a hand protruding from a well tailored gray sleeve and lilac striped cuff, that caught Hamdi Bey by the epauleted shoulder and sent him spinning about.
Another hand was holding a revolver very directly at him.
"Silence!" said Jack Ryder in his best Turkish and repeated it, with amplification, in English. "Not a sound--or I'll blow your head off."
He had not gone, then! He had hidden there, in some nook of that boudoir behind those shadowy curtains, waiting to protect her, to rescue....
Over one arm he had the black mantle and veil, "Better put these on," he suggested, without taking his eyes from the rigid bey, "and then run for it."
"I'll take care of myself. After you are out of the way. Dare you try that? Or what do you suggest?"
"So--so--" said Hamdi Bey inarticulately, his head nodded, he staggered, his knees gave way and he crumpled very completely upon the floor, and lay like a felled log.
After a quick look down at him Ryder turned to Aimée. "Quick, then. We'll make a run for it--"
He did not finish. Hamdi Bey, upon the floor, fallen half under the folds of the white cloth, made a swift and very expert roll and darted to his feet beside Aimée, whirling her about, with pinioned elbows, for his shield.