Melina was becoming frightened.
It was hours since Bing had left her. He had told her that he might be some time as he wanted to move around the town and see if he could hear anything that would give him a clue to where the child was being kept prisoner.
“Try not to worry,” he had said. “You will be safe here and I promise you I will be back as soon as I possibly can.”
It did, in fact, seem to be a safe hiding place although it was so near the marketplace. The only visitors had been a few small children and when they had seen Bing and Melina sitting on the steps of the tomb they had run away as if they knew they were doing wrong in encroaching on sacred ground.
The sun was still high when Bing left and Melina lay in the shadow of the trees and listened to the birds chirping above her as she wondered if any other girl had ever found herself in a more extraordinary predicament or taken part in a more fantastic adventure.
How little she had guessed when she took the job with Mrs. Schuster that this would be the outcome. How little she had thought then that the adventure would not only bring her the thrill of excitement but love.
She knew now that she was falling more deeply in love with Bing every moment.
It was hard not to show him how much she loved him, not only by the expression in her eyes when she looked at him but in her longing to touch him, to cling to him when he left her, to run towards him with a joy that was beyond an indication of relief when he returned.
Twilight came swiftly, then the darkness, and, as the moon began to climb the skies, Melina decided that she would do something that she had been longing to do ever since they first came to the garden. She would have a proper wash.
She slipped off her clothes and stepped into the little broken fountain where she had washed before, and felt the pleasure of the cool water on her hot body and the joy of being clean after the dust and the sticky heat of the djellabah.
She did not dare linger over her bathing, knowing that Bing might be back at any moment and apart from the fact of her not wishing him to see her naked she had the idea that he would be annoyed at her taking such a risk.
She just had time to rub herself clean and then to run to the shadow of a tree where she had left her clothes before she thought she heard someone coming.
It was a false alarm. It must have been a cat or a stray dog rummaging its way through the bushes but it was enough to make Melina scurry into her clothes and pull the djellabah quickly over her head.
Then, as she waited apprehensively, the movement was gone and there was only the silence.
She took her time, therefore, to stroll across the garden and back to the comfortable mound of grass that they had used as a mattress.
There was a little stack of food on one side of it that Bing had brought earlier in the day. There was also fruit and several bottles of mineral water, rather unpleasant and gassy, but which he had told her was the only drink he could buy except an Arab version of Coca-Cola.
Melina was not hungry. She was only waiting and hoping with every nerve of her body for Bing’s return.
“I love him!”
She whispered the words and felt that they were an expression of love such as no one had ever given before.
“I love him!”
How simple it was to say that and how difficult in reality to face the fact that, although she loved him, he did not love her.
Did he really still want Lileth Schuster?
She was beautiful, Melina thought with a stab of jealousy, beautiful and charming enough where any man was concerned. It was only that she had been in a position to see beneath the surface and know how hard and tyrannical those lovely eyes could be and how sharp the tongue that would only utter honeyed words when there was anyone of importance about.
“Oh, Bing! Bing! She will hurt you! She will break your heart!” she whispered to the trees and thought that her love was great enough for her to give him up if she believed it meant his happiness – but not to someone like Lileth Schuster.
The hours went by and still Bing did not come. Now Melina began to feel really afraid. Suppose something had happened to him? Suppose he made some wild crazy attempt to rescue the child by himself, and had failed? Supposing he was Moulay Ibrahim’s prisoner or, worse still, killed or injured by one of the guards?
How would she ever learn what had happened to him and what should she do herself?
She saw herself waiting and waiting all through the night and perhaps all through tomorrow before she would be forced to find some British person, perhaps a Consul or someone in authority, who she could tell her incredible story to.
Was it likely they would believe her? Bing was working on his own, he had said that often enough.
Would anyone credit it that an English girl, sacked from one job, would entertain the possibility of another in which she pretended to be a stranger’s wife and found herself abandoned in a ruined garden dressed in a djellabah and a very dilapidated evening dress? It would be funny, Melina thought, if it was not so frightening.
She stood up and tried to peer through the bushes that bordered the broken wall. She dared not push her way through them for that might draw attention to herself and would be, indeed, madness, but she could see nothing and hear nothing except for the very distant sounds from Djemaa El Fna.
Miserably she went back to the improvised bed and sat there playing a game she had played as a child.
“I will count to fifty and then he will come.”
She had counted slowly and deliberately, lingering over each number so as to spin it out.
“I will count one hundred – ”
“I will count five hundred – ”
Actually he came when she had reached four hundred and thirty-two and, just for a moment, because she was afraid she thought that it was not Bing but a stranger. A man came through the bushes and stood in the moonlight and Melina drew a deep breath.
And then she saw it was Bing and ran towards him.
“Bing! Bing! I thought you were never coming!”
The djellabah fell back from her head as she ran and, as she reached him, she put out her arms in sheer gladness as she flung herself against him, her head with its halo of red-gold curls vivid in the moonlight, her face turned up to his, her lips parted in excitement.
“I have been so frightened that something had happened to you. But you are here! Thank God you are here!”
Without thinking what she did she pulled him close to her and then his arms went round her and he held her suddenly with a strength and a passion that checked the words as they flowed from her mouth.
For a moment her eyes were wide with surprise and then his lips were on hers, kissing her hungrily, greedily, and with a fierceness she had never known and never dreamt he would show.
It seemed to her that his kisses were desperate and yet she could not analyse them.
She could, after her first astonishment at his violence, be aware only of the leaping flame within her body as without her conscious volition she responded to his kisses with a wildness that equalled his own.
It was as if the world spun around them. She knew nothing save that Bing was kissing her and that she loved him.
She was beyond thought, only aware of the glorious breathless feeling within her throat, the throbbing of her heart, the sudden heaviness of desire that seemed to close her eyes.
She wanted him to go on kissing her forever and she felt as if time stood still because he was doing so.
And then abruptly, almost as fiercely as he had taken her in his arms, Bing set her aside. He pushed her from him so that she stumbled and almost fell.
He walked away from her and stood with his back to her without speaking.
Then he took a handkerchief from inside his native robe and wiped his forehead.
“You go to a man’s head, Melina,” he said in a queer strangled voice that she did not understand.
“Bing! Oh, Bing!”
She hardly breathed his name and, in a tone that was suddenly harsh, he said,
“There’s no time to talk of anything now but our plans. I have a lot to tell you. Come over here.”
He walked away without waiting for her towards the grass mound.
Melina watched him go. There was a singing in her ears and she felt as if her whole body tingled at the miracle of his kiss.
It was with an effort that she remembered the child, the reason they were here, Bing’s mission, the danger they were in. Did any of it matter, she longed to ask, beside the fact that she loved him and, because he had kissed her in such a glorious way, he must love her?
“Melina!”
He called to her across the garden and his voice was sharp.
“I’m coming!”
She forced herself to speak ordinarily, to come down from the clouds to the firm earth below. Bing had work to do. Their personal lives could not intrude upon it until it was completed. She understood that.
She must force herself to help him, to do nothing that might in any way seem an obstacle in the path of duty.
Feeling as if her legs had turned to cotton wool and conscious that her lips were burning, Melina walked across the moonlit space to the shadows of the trees where they had made their little home.
Bing was already seated on the grass, his arms clasping his knees. He did not look up as she arrived, but stared ahead of him as if he was concentrating fiercely, so that she dropped on her knees beside him and said nothing for a minute or so, not daring to interrupt.
“I know where the child is!” he said at length, and it seemed to her that there was some strange undercurrent of feeling in his voice, but ostensibly his tone was hard, brusque and businesslike.
“You have found him!” Melina breathed. “How wonderful! Where is he?”
“In the House of the Doves,” Bing answered. “It’s a large, rambling, native house that was once the Palace of an important family who have gradually died out. There’s only one old man living there and he is ill. It is a clever place to choose because no one in Marrakesh would connect the house in any way with Moulay Ibrahim.”
“He is staying there too?” Melina asked him breathlessly.
Bing shook his head.
“No, he is too clever for that. He is staying at The Mamounia Hotel. He has a large suite there and will doubtless be entertaining a number of friends and politicians. It’s a perfect cover for his own activities.”
“Is the child guarded?” Melina asked.
“Naturally,” Bing answered sharply, as if impatient at her question. “Moulay Ibrahim has seen to that.”
“Then what are we going to do?”
“I have thought of a plan and I have already discussed it with Ahmed and his family. There is one chance in a million that we can pull it off, so it is desperately dangerous.”
He was silent again and after a second or two Melina ventured to say timidly,
“Aren’t you going to tell me about the plan?”
“I am going to tell you,” Bing said, “and then ask you whether you will help me or whether you won’t.”
“I can answer that now,” she said eagerly.
He held up his hand to stop her.
“Wait!” he said. “You haven’t heard yet what it is.”
Because she recognised by the serious tone of his voice that this was not a moment for her to make protestations of fidelity, Melina was silent.
“The house is in the native quarter of the town,” Bing began. “It’s a large building, but the only entrance is through an opening off a narrow street. The gateway leads into a courtyard on the right hand side of which are kitchens.”
“Yes,” Melina sighed, wondering why he was troubling to explain all this to her.
“I went with Ahmed to have a look at the gateway,” Bing continued. “There are two guards standing at the door and at night the place is barred and bolted and it would be impossible for anyone to get in. The only chance is in the daytime when the doors are open to allow the servants and those who deliver food to enter.”
“But the guards?” Melina questioned.
“They are there and they carry weapons beneath their cloaks,” Bing said dryly.
It appeared to Melina an almost impossible task to pass them, but she knew that Bing had some plan and therefore she was silent until he continued,
“Ahmed knows the baker who brings the freshly baked bread each morning. He calls there and his wife accompanies him, carrying live chickens for the cook who wants five or six every day.”
Bing’s voice died away and Melina began to see what he was trying to tell her.
“You mean that we should go instead of the baker and his wife?” she said.
“The baker has agreed,” Bing answered, “because he is hard-up and his elder daughter wishes to get married. It’s a great risk on his part, but the money tempted him.”
“And once – we get in – ” Melina stammered.
“We haven’t got as far as that yet,” Bing answered. “I could go alone – which I should prefer to do – but the baker tells me that he is always accompanied by his wife and the guards, who are local men and who always watch the door, not merely because there is an extra visitor in the house, might ask questions if she did not appear.”
“But why should a man who is ill want guards?” Melina asked out of curiosity.
“Because he is very rich and it gives him a sense of self-importance,” Bing replied. “These minor Sheiks and local Princes like to think that they have their own private army. Moulay Ibrahim has been wise enough to turn that to his own advantage.”
“Yes, of course, I see,” Melina murmured.
“I would much prefer not to take you, but I want everything to appear commonplace and ordinary,” Bing went on. “This is no joking matter, Melina. It’s going to be an extremely dangerous and difficult operation to get inside the house and to rescue the boy. I may fail utterly, in which case it will be very unlikely that I shall come out alive. They might spare your life, as a woman, but it isn’t a scenario one would care to insure against.”
“I am coming with you,” Melina said firmly. “There’s no question for me to answer, Bing, I am coming with you. I will see this adventure through and if we die, we die.”
She saw in the moonlight the expression on Bing’s face as he turned towards her and took her hand in his.
“Thank you, darling,” he said softly. “I somehow knew you would say that.”
She felt herself tremble at the touch of his hand and the note in his voice as he called her ‘darling’ for the first time.
Then her hand was free and Bing had resumed the hard brusque tone in which he had started to speak of his plans.
“I hate to think I have brought you into this,” he said. “But if we are going to do it, we will do everything in our power to try and succeed. Ahmed is coming in the morning at five o’clock. There are not many hours ahead of us. We must sleep. We shall need all our intelligence if we are to come out of this alive, so sleep and relax, so that our minds will be active and we don’t lose all we have gained by being slow-brained.”
He might have been giving a lecture to a number of students, Melina thought, but she was too happy to criticise him. He had kissed her and that was enough.
He loved her a little, she was sure of that now and her whole heart was overflowing with gratitude.
“Sleep!” he commanded and flung himself down on the grass and pulled his native robe around him.
Meekly Melina settled herself beside him. He was not asleep, she knew that – he was not even relaxed. She could feel it by the tenseness of his body.
But because he wished to pretend that he was already unconscious she pretended too, shutting her eyes, trying to breathe quietly and feeling the thrill of happiness run through her because he was so near and she had only to put out her hand to touch him.
She must have dozed a little during the hours of darkness but she was too happy to sleep and she was well aware that Bing was not asleep either. She wished she could believe that he was thinking of her, but she knew that he was thinking of only one thing – the rescue of the child.
Finally she fell into a fitful slumber, only to feel Bing’s hand touch her shoulder and his voice say quietly in little above a whisper,
“Ahmed has come!”
She sat up quickly to see Ahmed walking across the garden as the first golden fingers of the sun shot across the sky. He was followed by another man, older and rather bowed, whom Melina guessed at once was his father.
The older man salaamed with the exquisite courtesy of his generation and Bing returned his greeting. Then they settled themselves cross-legged on the grass and produced a small bundle of items that Bing needed for his disguise as the baker.
Fortunately the man wore glasses and had, as Bing explained to Melina, a rather nondescript face without any distinctive features. He had, also, Ahmed told them, suffered from boils during the winter and so they put a dressing on Bing’s jaw as if it concealed a sudden skin eruption.
The clothes of the baker, traditional to all the Moslem world, were soon assumed and with a little make-up round his eyes, which Ahmed applied with a skilful hand, Bing looked very unlike himself and Ahmed stood back with a cry of delight.
“It is Seddig!” he exclaimed. “Not even the mother who bore him would know it was not her son. You must walk as he does, sir, with a slight limp, for Seddig was kicked by his mule last year and always he tells the story of the animal’s ingratitude and how never again will he own a creature on four legs.”
“I noticed his limp yesterday,” Bing said. “Is this how he walks?”
He walked away from them across the garden and Ahmed and his father clapped their hands together.
“It is excellent, sir, but the head on one side a little more,” said the old man. “Remember the boil on your chin is hurting.”
“And now Seddig’s wife! What does she look like?” Bing asked.
The eyes of all three men were on Melina.
“I have not looked at her,” the old man said with dignity, “but the guards are often impudent creatures of the young generation.”
He gave a sidelong glance at his son as he spoke.
“There is no reason why they should look closely at this hour of the morning,” Ahmed suggested.
“You have brought the thicker yashmak?” Bing enquired.
“I have done so, sir.”
He brought out a yashmak of thick black gauze such as the more strict women of the Moslem faith assume. He handed it to Melina who took it, wondering as she did so how any woman could tolerate such coarse material in the heat.
“Kohl!” Bing exclaimed abruptly. “You have brought some more kohl?”
A small bottle was produced and he made Melina sit on the ground while he knelt beside her.
“Shut your eyes,” he commanded, and she felt the soft camelhair brush drawing the long black lines over her closed eyelids.
“Now open your eyes and look up,” Bing said and she obeyed him feeling her heart quicken because his face was so near to hers.
The brush tickled. Bing’s hand was steady and she forced herself not to blink as he drew the dark line along the bottom lid and pointed it at the corners.
“Has the baker’s wife blue eyes?” he enquired.
Ahmed and his father both shook their heads.
“We have no idea.”
“You must keep your eyes lowered,” Bing said to Melina. “And I think it would be best,” he added, “to darken the top of your nose a little and what can be seen of your cheeks. The dark powder will do.”
Ahmed had brought that too and, when Melina had adjusted her yashmak, Bing stood back at a distance.
“You’ll pass,” he said. “Let’s hope the guards of the older generation are on today and not ‘Peeping Toms’.”
“I believe in emancipation and that women should discard their veils,” Ahmed said defiantly.
“Such wickedness!” his father muttered. “Do not listen to him, sir. Bad devils are inside him.”
“My father thinks all modern progress is the work of the devil,” Ahmed scoffed.
As if he was not interested in their personal disputes, Bing turned to the older man, thanked him courteously in Arabic for all he had done and asked that Ahmed should now lead them to the baker’s shop.
“I will take you a roundabout way where we will see few people,” Ahmed promised. “You just follow me, sir, but we will not talk. I will walk a few paces in front and no one need know that we are even acquainted.”
Melina could not help feeling that Ahmed was taking good care not to be involved more than necessary.
Bing turned to the older man.
“The car will be where we arranged?” he asked.
“It will be attended to,” Ahmed’s father replied. “Allah go with you!”
There was a sudden throb of sincerity in the words, which told Melina that he, at least, was wholeheartedly on their side. And then there was no time to think of anything but that they must follow Ahmed from the safety of the garden into the dangers of the streets outside.
*
It was still very early but in Djemaa El Fna there was already activity. The sweepers were cleaning the streets and brushing down the wide paved square and the water carriers from the Atlas mountains, with their brilliantly coloured hats, were moving amongst the stallholders offering water from bottles made from the skins of goats.
The stalls were opening up. There was the smell of cooking fat, of mint tea and also of the heat to come later in the day. Herds of goats were being driven through the streets to where, outside the City, they would find a meagre meal amongst the weeds that grew on the sandy ground despite the strength of the sun. There was the clatter of horses’ hoofs and the shrill hooting of cars driven by natives who keep their fingers permanently on the horn.
It was difficult for Melina to have more than a fleeting glance at everything before she lowered her eyes and, pulling her djellabah well forward over her face, followed meekly behind Bing.
He was moving quickly along but limping as he did so and she knew that he had already slipped into the character of the baker and assumed his personality completely.
Melina remembered that many years ago her father had said,
“The perfect disguise is to think that you are the person you pretend to be. It’s thoughts that count far more than any trappings one can assume.”
Melina knew that now Bing was thinking himself into being the baker and she tried to think herself into the part of the baker’s wife.
How happy she would be, she thought, if Bing was the baker and she could be, in fact, his wife. She imagined them living in the native town and baking bread and carrying it round to their customers, as they were pretending to do today.
Would life really be sufficient for her under those circumstances, she wondered, and knew with a little stab of her heart that even if she was content Bing would not be. He belonged not only to the world of excitement and adventure, but to the world of intelligence, the world where men were prepared to fight for what they believed to be right and true.
She saw little of the narrow street and passages that Ahmed led them through, twisting this way and then that until finally they came to a standstill and from the smell of warm bread Melina knew that they had arrived.
They passed through the doorway of the shop. The room they found themselves in was little more than a cave and on the table was a board stacked high with a great pile of flat thick loaves of unrisen bread that the natives ate and which was half-covered with a white cloth. Beside it, on the table, was a large roughly constructed reed crate. Inside chirping and scratching against the sides were half-a-dozen small live chickens.
Bing shut the door behind them and now the light came into the small room only from another open door, which led into a courtyard beyond.
“Seddig is hiding, sir, as you commanded,” Ahmed said. “It would not be good for anyone to see two bakers this morning.”
“That is what I asked,” Bing approved.
“And this is all you require?” Ahmed asked, looking down at the board of bread and the basket with the chickens.
Bing lifted up the board.
“It’s heavy,” he exclaimed, and turned to Melina. “I was going to ask you to carry this on your head,” he said, “but I see that I shall have to do that. Can you manage the chickens, do you think?”
He stopped and a look of utter consternation came over his face.
“Fool that I am!” he cried. “Can you balance anything on your head?”
“As a matter of fact I can,” Melina answered. “I went to a school where they made us walk with books on our heads for good deportment.”
“You can, of course, hold the basket with one hand,” Bing said. “In fact you will want to do that. But I had not thought that your arm will show and a married woman of your standing would be wearing a gold bangle.”
Ahmed held out his hand.
“Ten shillings, sir, and I find you a gold bangle such as a Princess might envy.”
“No!” Bing said sharply. “Don’t go into the marketplace. Go and find the baker’s wife and buy one of hers.”
He brought out a little collection of Moroccan notes and gave them to Ahmed who disappeared through the open door into the courtyard.
“I thought I had remembered everything,” Bing said. “It just shows how stupid one can be. You are certain you can balance this on your head, Melina?”
“Quite certain and, if I can hold it with one hand, it will be quite easy. I really have learned to walk and carry things on my head, not only at school, but I used to practise with the water bottles my father had in his collection. It amused him to see if I could go upstairs without touching what I carried and only once did I break anything.”
“How lucky I am to have found you,” Bing murmured.
Just for a moment Melina thought that his tone changed from swift urgency to something else and his eyes, behind the ugly steel-rimmed spectacles, softened.
Then Ahmed came hurrying into the room.
“Here you are, sir. She was delighted. Tomorrow she will buy a new one, perhaps two, for what you have given her.”
“That is good,” Bing replied and, taking the gold bracelet from Ahmed’s hand, he slipped it on o Melina’s wrist.
“It’s fortunate that you are tiny,” he said as he did so. “Few European women could squeeze their hands through a native bracelet.”
He opened the chicken crate and said to Melina,
“Now, listen to me carefully. When we get through the kitchens, you follow me up the stairs and the moment I am engaged with the guard, who I expect will be outside the boy’s room, you enter, tell the child, in French, that you are to take him to his mother and persuade him to lie down in this basket. If he curls himself up with his knees beneath his chin he can manage it. It has been chosen for that very purpose. I will then take the crate from you, carry it downstairs and put it on my head. You will pick up the board that I have left on the kitchen table and follow me.”
“But the servants?” Melina asked.
“Everything depends on what they do, of course,” Bing answered. “But I think they will do nothing.”
Melina gave a little sigh. She felt somehow that Bing should have told her all this before. She thought that perhaps he had his reasons for doing everything at the last minute.
She glanced at him quickly and wondered if it was because he thought that she might be too afraid to undertake the task if she had time to think it over.
“Now, do you understand?” Bing asked impatiently. “You know what to do? I may, of course, have to alter everything at the last moment. We don’t know. We can only improvise as we go along. Now, put this on your head.”
He lifted the crate with the chickens as he spoke and balanced it carefully. It was not heavy and, putting up her hand to steady the crate, Melina realised that it would be no effort to carry it quite a long distance.
Then Bing picked up the heavily laden board, tossed the cloth over it and placed it on his own head.
Ahmed opened the door and they both had to steady their burdens as they passed under the lintel and then they straightened themselves in the street.
“First to the left, sir,” Ahmed murmured, “and then right.”
Bing did not answer him, but Melina, without looking, knew that Ahmed had now disappeared and was hurrying from the scene as quickly as he could go.
‘What a coward he is,’ she thought scornfully and then realised that men like Ahmed and Rasmin had everything to lose by getting involved in the wrong political faction.
It was better to remain neutral, as far as the ordinary man was concerned, until one side or another came out on top.
The narrow street was not long. Bing turned the corner and Melina followed him.
She was proud to find how well she could walk carrying the crate. It was not half as difficult as the water bottles she had practised with or the books they were made to carry at school.
The only difficulty was when the chickens moved nervously, but after a few frightened squawks because of the movement, they had now settled down and were crouching almost in the centre of the crate as if they realised it was the most secure place to be.
Left, now right. The street was much broader and there were more people moving along. Melina kept her eyes lowered. She could see Bing’s white robes ahead of her, she could see his feet, although he was limping, moving at quite a good pace over the cobbled road.
Then, almost without looking, she realised that they were there.
It was a wide, arched doorway and two men were lounging, one on either side of it. One of them was smoking. The other was cleaning his knife, a long, evil-looking weapon.
They neither of them spoke and Bing and Melina passed them. They went on with what they were doing. Melina wondered why they did not hear the sudden thumping terror of her heart.
Bing crossed the courtyard.
There was a bleat from a goat that was tethered to a post at the far end, but otherwise the place seemed deserted save for an ancient dog sleeping in the sun.
Bing veered to the right.
There was an open door through which Melina could hear the sound of voices.
Now came the real test, she thought.
A sudden scream and the guards would be there, one already had a dagger in his hand.
She wondered what Bing was going to do, what he was going to say. She saw him bow his head and move the tray of bread in dexterously through the doorway. She steadied her crate of chickens with her gold-bangled arm and then she, too, was inside.
There were half-a-dozen servants in the low-ceilinged kitchen, working at a chopping board or over the fire or washing up in a rough wooden sink.
Bing put the board down on the table and an elderly man whom Melina suspected was the chief cook wished him good morning in Arabic.
Bing replied in a low voice and, taking the reed crate from Melina, put it on the table and opening it brought out the chickens by their legs. The cook took them, one by one, pinching their bodies as he did so and grumbling that they were not fat enough and wondering how he was going to make a meal of them.
Melina did not understand in actual words what he said but his meaning was obvious from the gestures of his hands and his tone was the tone of every cook the world over who is confronted with food that he does not really consider up to his standard of cooking.
It was then that Bing closed the crate and gave it to Melina.
Then he drew something from his pocket, held it in his hand and spoke five words,
“By the Hand of Fatima!”
There was a sudden gasp and everyone in the kitchen turned to look. He held out the jewelled Hand that Rasmin had given him. It hung sparkling in the light from the window so that they could all see it.
“By the Hand of Fatima,” Bing repeated. “I ask your silence. Say nothing, do nothing, see nothing.”
They stared at him, but none of the servants screamed.
Then he opened the door at the far end of the kitchen and followed by Melina started to move swiftly down a long passage. Melina felt as if she must force her legs to follow him, expecting to hear a yell and to find the guards pounding after them. But there was only silence!
Bing seemed to know his way without hesitation and she guessed that Ahmed or his father had given him a shrewd idea of the layout of the house.
There was a narrow staircase and they climbed it to the first floor. Just for a moment Bing paused and as he did so they heard a child’s voice cry out in French,
“Don’t touch me! Leave me alone! Don’t – hit me again I – pray you!”
Bing was at the door where the cry came from in two strides. He pulled it open and Melina saw over his shoulder a man with his back to them, his arm raised, a thin narrow whip in his hand.
Bing sprang before the man could turn round.
His hand was over his mouth, his other arm across his neck and he was bending him backwards – backwards, until his neck must break. She had a quick impression of Bing’s face as she had seen it once before – the face of the devil!
But she did not look, she ran to the child who was standing against the wall, the tears running down his face. She put her arms round him and held him close.
“Don’t cry,” she said in French. “It’s all right. I am taking you to your Mama.”
“To Mama, now?”
She felt the excitement run through his thin little body.
“Yes, yes, but you must be very quiet. You must not breathe. We have to escape from this place. Will you hide in this basket?”
Only a child who had known danger and understood it, Melina thought, could have reacted so quickly.
The little boy did not murmur. He got at once into the basket that Melina opened on the floor beside him.
“Lie down,” she prompted and, even as she said the words, she heard a dull thump behind her and knew that Bing had killed the guard.
She tried not to think of it, to remember only the child and the tears on his face.
“Quickly! Quickly!” she urged.
He obeyed her, lying down, and now Bing was at their side speaking in French, soothing, commanding words that the little boy seemed only too ready to obey.
He picked up the crate, carrying it sideways so that the child was on his back.
And then he was moving down the stairs and Melina was following him, having first shut the door, leaving the dead guard inside.
They hurried down the passage into the kitchen. Melina was terrified that they would find the outside guards waiting for them, but instead the kitchen was empty.
There was no one there. The servants had all gone.
Bing pointed to the board on the table.
“Put it on your head,” he said.
He lifted the child in the crate carefully onto his own head.
“Don’t hurry,” he whispered. “Take it easily.”
Melina drew a deep breath. They were out in the sunshine. The dog was still lying in the courtyard only raising a lazy leg to scratch himself. The goat was still bleating in the distance.
She hardly dared to glance towards the guards, but when she did so they were still there. The sunlight was glinting on the knife and the other man was lighting a cigarette. The man with the knife glanced up. He said something that sounded rude, although perhaps it was intended as a joke.
Bing bade him ‘good day’ in Arabic and then they were through the arched doorway, moving down the broad street.
They turned to the left and then, still walking without undue effort, they reached another and wider street.
There an open car was waiting.
Bing laid the crate with the child on the back seat.
He opened the door for Melina and then stepped into the driver’s seat.
If there was anyone in attendance they did not see them, but for the moment Melina was concerned only in their not being followed.
A man rounded the corner in the direction from which they had come and her heart gave a sudden leap of fear, but it was only a native moving about his own business.
Bing started up the engine. Now they were moving slowly down the street, passing water carriers and men bringing in piles of merchandise to the market stalls.
They had reached the Djemaa El Fna.
Bing started to hoot his horn and to drive more quickly.
They passed the gardens where they had sheltered for what seemed to Melina an aeon of time.
Now they had left the marketplace and the native houses behind and were in the broader and less populated streets with better class houses.
“We’ve done it!” Melina cried. “We’ve done it! Oh, Bing! We’ve done it!”
“Not quite yet,” he answered. “Get the child out of the crate and let him sit beside us. You’ll have to do it while we’re moving. I cannot stop.”
As he spoke, he put his foot on the accelerator and the car leapt forward.