The Fortieth Door | Page 4

very lack of all invitation in the black phantom, made him linger. He repeated his request in French.
From behind the veil came a liquidly soft voice with a note of mirth. "I understand the English, monsieur," it informed him.
"Enough, then, to say yes in it?"
The black phantom shook its head. "My education, alas! has only proceeded to the N." Her speech was quaint, unhesitating, but oddly inflected. "I regret--but I am not acquainted with the yes."
A gay character for a masked ball! Indifference and pique swung Ryder towards a geisha girl, but a trace of irritation lingered and he found her, "You likee plink gleisha?" singularly witless.
He'd tell McLean just how darned captivating his outfit was, he promised himself.
And then he caught sight of a familiar pair of gray eyes smiling over the white veil of an odalisque. Jinny Jeffries was wearing one of the many costumes there that passed for Oriental, a glittering assemblage of Turkish trousers and Circassian veils, silver shawls and necklaces and wide bracelets banding bare arms.
As an effect it was distinctly successful.
"Ten thousand dinars could not pay for the chicken she has eaten," uttered Ryder appreciatively in the language of the old slave market, and stepped promptly ahead of a stout Pantalon.
"Jack! You did come!" There was a note in the girl's voice as if she had disbelieved in her good fortune. "Oh, and beautiful as Roderick Dhu! Didn't I tell you that you could find something in that shop?" she declared in triumph.
"Do you imagine that this came out of a costumer's?" Ryder swung her swiftly out in the fox trot before the crowd invaded the floor. "If Andy McLean could hear you! Why this, this is the real thing, the Scots-wha-hae-wi'-Wallace-bled stuff."
"Who is Andy McLean?"
"Andrew is Scotch, Single, and Skeptical. He is a great pal of mine and also an official of the Agricultural Bank which is by way of being a Government institution. These are the togs of his Hieland Grandsire--"
"Why didn't you bring him?"
"Too dead, unfortunately--grandsires often are--"
"I mean Andrew McLean."
"It would take you, my dear Jinny, to do that. You brought me--and I can believe in anything after the surprise of finding myself here."
Jinny Jeffries laughed. "If I could only believe what you say!"
"Oh, you can believe anything I say," Jack obligingly assured her. "I'm very careful what I say--"
"I wish I were."
"You'd have to be careful how you look, Jinny--and you can't help that. The Lord who gave you red hair must provide the way to elude its consequences.... I suppose the Orient isn't exactly a manless Sahara for you?"
She countered, her bright eyes intent, "Is it a girl-less Sahara for you, Jack?"
"The only woman I have laid a hand on, in kindness or unkindness, died before Ptolemy rebuilt Denderah."
"That's not right--"
"No? And I thought it such a virtuous record!"
"I mean," Jinny laughed, "that you really ought to be seeing more of life--like to-night--"
"To-night? Do you imagine this is a place for seeing life?"
"Why not?" she retorted to the irony in his voice. "It's real people--not just dead and gone things in cases with their lives all lived. I don't care if you are going to be a very famous person, Jack, you ought to see more of the world. You have just been buried out here for two years, ever since you left college--"
Beneath his mask the young man was smiling. A quaint feminine notion, that life was to be encountered at a masquerade! This motley of hot, over-dressed, wrought up idiots a human contact!
Life? Living?... Thank you, he preferred the sane young English officials ... the comradeship of his chief ... the glamor of his desert tombs.
Of course there was a loneliness in the desert. That was part of the big feeling of it, the still, stealing sense of immensity reaching out its shadowy hands for you.... Loneliness and restlessness.... These tropic nights, when the stars burned low and bright, and the hot sands seemed breathing.... Loneliness and restlessness--but they gave a man dreams.... And were those dreams to be realized here?
The music stopped and the ever-watchful Pantalon bore down upon them. Abandoning Jinny to her fate, Ryder sought refuge and a cigarette.
The hall was crowded now; the ball was a flash of color, a whirl of satins and spangles and tulle and gauze, gold and green and rose and sapphire, gyrating madly in vivid projection against the black and white stripes of the Moorish walls. The color and the music had sent their quickening reactions among the throng. Masks were lending audacity to mischief and high spirits.
Three little Pierrettes scampered through the crowd, pelting right and left with confetti and balloons, and two stalwart monks and a thin Hamlet pursued them, keeping up the bombardment amid a great combustion of balloons. A spangled Harlequin snatched his