The little boy nestled close to Melina when she put her arm round him.
“You are all right now,” she told him in French. “We are taking you to your mother and father.”
“Those men were bad, very bad,” he answered in a high childish voice. “They beat me and said that tomorrow they were going to kill me.”
Melina glanced over his head towards Bing who was concentrating on getting every ounce of speed out of the car.
“Do you hear that?” she asked in English. “Tomorrow! We were only just in time.”
“I knew that,” he answered briefly and she wondered why he had kept the knowledge to himself and not let her share the anxiety as to how quickly the sands of time were running out.
“I was brave,” the small boy went on. “I cried a lot, I-I couldn’t help it, but I knew that Papa – would send soldiers to rescue me.”
He looked up at Melina and then at Bing.
“You’re not soldiers, are you?” he asked and his voice was disappointed.
“It’s more exciting being rescued this way,” Melina said consolingly. “And you were a very brave boy to jump into the chicken crate so quickly without arguing. If you had not done that, we might never have taken you away.”
“I was frightened – at being on top of his head,” the child answered, pointing at Bing.
“What is your name?” Melina asked, thinking it a mistake to go on talking about the danger that was past.
“My name is Mohammed,” he answered. “Papa says that all eldest sons are called Mohammed. But Mama calls me Suki.”
“I shall call you Suki then,” Melina smiled, “because it’s much easier to say than Mohammed. Now, Suki, why don’t you go to sleep? We have a long journey ahead of us and you will want to feel well and not tired when you reach your Mama.”
“I’ll try,” the little boy said obediently, snuggling himself closer against Melina and closing his eyes.
She looked down at his small dark head and thought how gentle and confiding he was. Children were so vulnerable and she could hardly bear to think of what he had suffered and what he must have gone through in the hands of those brutes.
She was glad now that Bing had killed the guard who was whipping him. She had thought when Bing killed the man who had jumped at him from the tree in Tangier that she could never bear to look in his face again and see that expression of revenge and triumph that resulted in what she termed to herself as ‘the expression of the devil’.
But now she knew that she was no longer afraid. What Bing had done was right in the circumstances, however much one might condemn it on ethical grounds.
If they had not rescued the boy today, he would have died tomorrow and nothing could be more horrible, more bestial, than the sacrifice of a small innocent child for political interests.
She looked at Bing’s profile and thought with a sudden melting of her heart how magnificent he had been over all this. No one else would have attempted such an operation without official support and only someone like Bing, she thought, would have been successful.
The car was moving at what seemed to be a very fast pace down the long straight road, which stretched interminably into the distance. But she realised that other cars, particularly Moulay Ibrahim’s, could go quicker and she wondered how long it would be before the dead guard was found and Moulay Ibrahim informed of what had happened.
She wanted to question Bing, but she knew that not only would he be impatient at having to answer her, but also that it was very difficult to talk at the speed they were travelling.
There was a certain amount of traffic on the road but not much. However, there were, moving along on the caravan tracks that ran parallel with the modem tarmac road, numbers of families travelling in their traditional fashion with camels and goats, mules and donkeys with the men sitting high on the backs of their animals, the women and children walking beside them.
They must have gone about sixty miles when the road began to descend into a valley. When they were halfway down it they saw a man in a white robe standing in the middle of the road waving his arm wildly.
“Get the child on the floor,” Bing said tersely, “and cover him up.”
Hastily and without argument Melina did as she was told, covering him with her djellabah, for she had nothing else and whispering to him to keep quiet.
“What’s – happening?” Suki asked sleepily.
“You have to hide for a moment or two,” Melina replied. “Don’t speak, don’t move. I am going to cover you up so that no one will see you.”
The child was acquiescent and obedient and she raised her head to see that they were approaching the gesticulating man and in a few seconds would be past him.
Bing slowed down a little and with a little start, Melina realised that he was driving with his left hand while in his right he held a small revolver.
“If anything happens keep your head down and then crouch down on the floor,” Bing said quickly.
A moment later, because they were still travelling at a fast speed, the man in white was stepping out of the way to let them pass.
“By the Hand of Fatima!” he shouted and Bing jammed on the brakes.
Only by putting both her hands quickly onto the dashboard did Melina save herself from being thrown against the windscreen. Bing turned his head, the revolver still in his hand, as the man came running up.
“By the Hand of Fatima, sir,” he repeated. “I was waiting for you.”
“How do you know who we are?” Bing asked sharply.
“My cousin, Ahmed, telephoned me,” the man replied. “But a quarter-of-an-hour ago my brother also received a telephone message. We are a house divided, sir. He is one of Moulay Ibrahim’s men.”
Bing slowly put his revolver back into his pocket.
“They are waiting for us?” he asked.
The man pointed ahead.
“Down there, sir, in the village. There are about ten of them.”
“What is the name of this village?” Bing asked.
“El-Guelb,” the man replied. “But not all, like my brother, follow Moulay Ibrahim. Many are loyal, as I am, to the King.”
“Is there any other road?” Bing asked.
“There is a track, sir. It is rough and meant for camels but if you will allow me to direct you – ”
“Jump in behind,” Bing commanded him, “and show me where I turn off.”
The man scrambled into the back of the car.
Bing looked at his watch.
“We have been about an hour on the journey,” he said to Melina in English. “If Moulay Ibrahim telephoned about a quarter-of-an-hour ago, that means we have nearly forty-five minutes start.”
“Will it be long enough?” Melina asked.
“That remains to be seen,” Bing answered enigmatically.
The track was rough and it was impossible to travel at any speed. They were forced to drive inland for two or three miles before they swung round in a circle so as to return to the main road.
Several other men joined them who swore, either in Arabic or in a mixture of French and English, that they were loyal to the King and ready to help in any way possible.
Nearly twenty minutes must have passed before they finally came back onto the main road and a signpost told them that they were one hundred and twenty miles from Casablanca.
Bing thanked the first man who had said that he was Ahmed’s cousin.
“Delay Moulay Ibrahim if you can,” he said. “A puncture, if possible, anything so long as we have time to reach Casablanca before he catches up with us.”
“I understand, sir,” Ahmed’s cousin said, grinning as if it was all a huge joke.
Amid cries of good wishes and a great waving of hands Bing manoeuvred the car onto the road and they were off again.
Now he seemed to crouch over the wheel, coaxing the engine into a performance that it had never dreamed of giving when it had been made.
Suki climbed up beside Melina again and seemed content to half-doze in her arms, occasionally asking plaintively how long it would be before he saw his Papa and Mama.
On and on, they went! Melina kept turning her head expecting to see a great Mercedes roaring down upon them, but there appeared to be nothing behind save the cars they passed.
She felt somehow as if they would go on driving like this for all eternity – the desert on either side of them, the sudden glimpses of farms, the occasional modern house, small villages through which they rushed with a complete disregard for traffic regulations. And then they were on and on again along the straight modern road leading to the coast.
*
When finally they reached the outskirts of Casablanca, Melina could hardly believe that their destination was really in sight.
She wanted to cry out once again that they had done it, but something in the set of Bing’s grim mouth and steady concentration of his eyes told her that he did not wish to talk.
There was still a chance that they might be stopped, still a chance that victory might be snatched from them at the eleventh hour.
They swung away from the town and now Melina saw a notice as they flashed past and knew where they were going – the airport!
Even as she realised their intention there was a sudden sound of racing engines and she saw that two motor-bicyclists wearing Army uniform had come up alongside them.
For a moment she questioned whether they were friend or foe and then she saw the salute they gave Bing and realised that they were indeed friends.
She felt some of the tension leave her as she saw the motor-bicyclists forge ahead. A gate of the airport marked No Admittance was swung open and they were on the landing ground and travelling, still at great speed, down a runway.
Suddenly Melina saw ahead the great silver wings of an airliner and the magic letters, ‘B. E. A.’
In a few seconds the car drew to a standstill.
A distinguished man wearing European clothes broke away from a number of attendants, soldiers and aides-de-camp and ran forward. The tears were running down his face as he took Bing’s hand in his and then held out his arms to Suki.
“Papa! Papa!” the small boy screamed, scrambling over Melina’s lap to kiss his father.
He picked up the child in his arms and, apparently incapable of words, carried him, almost running, towards the aeroplane. A woman, obviously a Moroccan, but dressed in the latest Parisian fashion, was standing at the top of the gangway.
She, too, was weeping as the small boy scrambled up the steps and rushed into her arms. They turned and waved to the men waiting below, then the steps were wheeled away, the door of the liner was slammed to and the aeroplane started to taxi down the runway.
Only as it moved off, Melina, with tears in her eyes, turned from looking at this moving human drama towards Bing.
He was lying back against the driving seat and for a moment he looked utterly and completely exhausted. His hands were limp at his sides and they, perhaps more than anything else, told her of the nervous tension he had been through in the last twenty-four hours.
But, as Suki’s father came hurrying towards the car, Bing jumped out and went to meet him.
“Two minutes more and the plane would have gone,” he said, the words coming almost incoherently between his lips. “They held it for twenty minutes, they would not have been able to do so any longer.”
The tears were still running down his cheeks and he pulled himself together with a tremendous effort.
“We must not stay here talking,” he said. “Come with me. Leave your car. It will be seen to.”
He snapped his fingers and one of the soldiers hovering in the background made a gesture towards another big limousine that was parked at the side of the airport buildings. It drove up and they all climbed into it. They all three sat in the back seat. A soldier sat in the front beside the driver and the two motor-bicyclists roared up to ride on either side of the car.
“Bing! What can I say to you?” the Moroccan asked in broken tones as they moved away.
“Don’t say anything,” Bing answered. “We had a bit of luck, that was all. I want to introduce you to Melina Lindsay who has been more wonderful than I can ever say. Her father was Sir Frederick Lindsay, you have heard me speak of him, Mohammed?”
“But, of course,” the Minister answered. “Sir Frederick Lindsay was a very great man.”
He bent forward to take Melina’s hand.
“How can I ever thank you for what you have done for me in saving my son?”
“It was Bing who did everything,” Melina answered shyly.
The Minister unashamedly wiped the tears from his eyes.
“My wife and I had begun to believe it was hopeless,” he said. “But she had more faith than I had, Bing. She made them hold the aeroplane even when the officials said it was impossible and that they must move off according to schedule. She was so sure that you would come.”
“We should have been here twenty minutes earlier if it had not been for Moulay Ibrahim’s men at El-Guelb,” Bing said. “They had a sort of ambush rigged up, but fortunately our friends in Marrakesh had telephoned to those who were loyal and they took us round the village over a camel track.”
“They shall be rewarded,” the Minister said. “If you will give me a list of everyone who has helped you, Bing, you can rely on my gratitude not only now but for ever.”
“Thank you, Mohammed,” Bing said. “I was certain you would say that.”
“My boy! My little boy!” the Minister murmured. “If I had to give everything in the world I possess, it would not be enough.”
“He is safe now, anyway,” Bing said in a matter of fact voice as if such emotionalism was slightly embarrassing.
“He is safe enough for the moment,” the Minister agreed “but who knows when Moulay Ibrahim will strike next?”
“Where are you taking us, by the way?” Bing enquired still in the cool conversational tone that seemed to bring everything down to the ordinary and commonplace.
“To my house, of course,” the Minister replied. “I thought you would stay with me tonight. Tomorrow you must both leave the country. You will be a marked man, Bing, as you well know, and Miss Lindsay’s life will also be in danger.”
As he spoke, the car drove into a big courtyard and they stepped out to walk through a beautifully carved doorway into the cool scented beauty of a house that was half Moorish and half French.
“What would you like to do first?” their host enquired.
“Personally,” Bing replied, “I want a bath and some decent clothes and I expect Melina would like the same.”
The Minister snapped his fingers.
A maid appeared. She was a Frenchwoman and she led Melina upstairs to a magnificent bedroom with windows overlooking a flower-filled garden beyond which was a view of the sea.
“I think Madame’s dresses will fit you, ma’mselle,” she said, looking at Melina appraisingly. “And His Excellency says that you are to choose anything that you desire.”
“Thank you,” Melina answered, beginning to pull the djellabah off and realising, as she did so, what a freak she looked with the kohl smudged round her eyes and the bridge of her nose red from where the yashmak had cut it.
It was unbelievable pleasure to sink into the hot scented bath and, when she had soaked her tired limbs, she washed her hair and saw again the dancing lights of gold and red as the thick dust was washed away.
She must have stayed in her bath for nearly an hour until she found her head nodding and she knew that she was almost falling asleep. Self-preservation made her climb slowly out.
‘I should look silly if I drowned myself now,’ she thought with a little smile as she rubbed herself dry in the big pale pink bath towel that matched the bathroom.
She walked back into the bedroom to find that the bed was turned down invitingly and a light meal of eggs, fruit and milk was waiting beside it on a tray.
“His Excellency has suggested that you should rest, ma’mselle,” the maid explained. “He asked me to say that he and Monsieur Ward had matters to discuss and it would be better for you to sleep a little and relieve your fatigue.”
“I am tired,” Melina admitted, thinking how little she had slept the night before and how early they had risen.
“Dinner is not until nine-thirty,” the maid said, “but in case ma’mselle is hungry now the chef has made her a special omelette.”
Melina ate a little of the omelette, drank the milk and then almost as her head touched the pillow she was asleep.
*
She was awakened, it seemed to her to be hours later, by the sound of curtains being drawn and she felt a kind of radiant happiness because everything was all right.
It was so different from the feeling of fear and apprehension that she had experienced at every other awakening recently. Now there was only happiness and the knowledge that in a very short time she would see Bing again.
She let the maid arrange her hair in a new and, Melina secretly thought, exceedingly becoming fashion. She allowed herself to be dressed in one of the gowns that hung in profusion in the wardrobe.
It was a dress of pale blue chiffon embroidered with tiny diamanté stars and it clung to her figure making her look very young and ethereal.
Melina could not help feeling glad that Bing would see her like this. She had never possessed a dress that had cost so much and she knew that there was a special radiance about her as she ran downstairs to where she had been told Bing was waiting for her in the salon.
He was not in the big room filled with flowers and exquisite gilt furniture and she stood for a moment, irresolute by the door, until she saw him sitting outside the big French windows that opened onto the garden.
The Minister was with him and as Melina appeared they both rose to their feet.
“I hope my poor house has been able to provide you with everything that you needed,” the Minister said ceremoniously, as he raised her hand to his lips.
“Everything, thank you,” Melina answered, but her eyes were on Bing, noting the sudden admiration in his face, feeling happier than she had ever done in her life before.
She settled down at the glass-covered table and accepted a glass of champagne brought to her by a servant in elaborate livery. From the same tray the Minister took a small glass of apricot juice, for his religion forbade him alcohol.
He rose to his feet and raised the glass in his right hand.
“To your health and to your happiness!” he proposed. “God bless you both!”
He drank and smiled at them benevolently.
“You must forgive me, Miss Lindsay, if I leave you,” he said. “I have an appointment this evening and it is very important that I should turn up apparently unconcerned by the events of this afternoon.”
He glanced at them both for a moment and added with a twinkle in his eyes,
“I daresay you will not miss me so tremendously!”
Almost as soon as he was gone, dinner was served in a room also overlooking the garden, with the windows wide open and the tinkle of the fountain, which was like music in their ears.
Afterwards Melina could never remember what she ate – she was too happy.
She only knew that it was not the champagne, but the excitement of being with Bing, which made her feel as if everything they said was witty and enchanted.
She could see his eyes looking at her, she could see the expression on his face and that was headier than any wine that she could have drunk.
When the meal was finished, they walked into the garden and sat amongst the roses and the honeysuckle with the fountain as the only sound to break the silence that came between them.
Melina felt as if her voice was constricted in her throat before, at length, she managed to say,
“What time do we leave tomorrow?”
“You leave at eight-thirty,” Bing answered. “The plane goes to Paris. You change there for London.”
Melina felt as if a bomb had shattered something between them.
“But you – ! Aren’t you – coming with me?”
She managed to stammer the words.
Bing shook his head.
“But, Bing!” she expostulated. “You – you must! You heard what the Minister said. It is not safe for you to remain here.”
“I know that,” Bing answered, “but I have to go back.”
“But, why? Why?” she asked plaintively.
He turned round in the seat to face her. The sun was sinking somewhere out of sight and there was in the sky the glorious glowing colour that was intrinsically part of the East.
But she saw the pain in his eyes.
“I love you, Melina!” he said quietly. “You know that, don’t you?”
“I didn’t think you – you cared for me?” she murmured.
“Oh, my sweet darling!”
He reached out and took her hands, crushing them between his until she could have cried out at the pain of it.
“I love you so completely, so absolutely,” he said, “that I would never have believed I was capable of such emotion.”
He paused for a moment and looked down at her hands and the marks he had made on them.
“Someone once said that love is dangerous,” he said. “I believed that and I was determined never to fall in love again. I have been hurt once, damnably hurt. I wanted nothing to do with women – any of them.”
He bent his head and kissed her fingers and she felt herself thrill to the touch of his lips.
“Then I met you,” he went on. “I could hardly believe at first that you were as sweet as you are. I didn’t know that there was a woman in the world who would be so quick and intelligent, who could face danger without complaining and who would do what I asked of her without argument.”
He put his hand down as if he could not bear to touch her.
His eyes were glowing as he gazed into her face.
“I have been a brute to you in many ways,” he continued. “I have told you nothing and made you obey me without question and without explanation. It was because I could not credit you with being so absolutely marvellous, so utterly and completely all that a man could demand of a woman when they were in a desperate situation together.”
“Oh, Bing – you make me so proud!” Melina whispered.
“That is what your father must be wherever he is at this moment,” Bing replied. “Somehow I feel that he knows and is glad that he brought you up the way he did.”
“He would have loved you too,” Melina said.
Bing started at the sentence.
“Do you mean that you love me?” he quizzed a little hesitantly, almost shyly.
“I have loved you for days – although it seems like years,” Melina told him, the colour rising in her face. “I have loved you – since that moment you kissed me when the searchlight was seeking us out on the hillside.”
“I don’t know what made me do it,” he said, “except that already I was beginning to understand what you meant to me. I knew that I ought to send you away, that I should not let you go on taking the risks that I was taking, gambling your life to help someone you had never met, someone you had never even heard of.”
“If you had tried to send me away I would not have gone,” Melina retorted and knew even as she said it that she would have had no choice in the matter.
“I ought to have left you with Rasmin in Fez,” Bing sighed. “But I didn’t for one reason, and one reason only – I wanted you to come with me.”
“I am glad – so very glad,” Melina whispered.
“I suppose love comes to everybody. They don’t expect it, they fight against it and suddenly it’s there. You cannot escape it. Melina, I love you! With all my heart and with all my soul.”
Impulsively she put out her hands towards him, wanting him to take her in his arms, longing with every nerve of her body for the feel of his mouth against hers.
To her astonishment he ignored her gesture, turning his head sideways as if he could not bear to look at her.
“What is it, Bing?” she asked.
“I don’t know how to tell you,” he answered.
“What has – happened? What has gone – wrong?”
She heard the desperate tone in her own voice as she asked the question.
“I planned, as we were traveling to Marrakesh, during that exhausting journey in the bus, that if we came safely out of this, that if we survived in the pursuit of our enemies and brought the child back to his parents, I would ask you to marry me.”
“And are you not – going to do that?” Melina enquired hesitantly
“I somehow knew that you would look as you look tonight,” Bing went on as if he had not heard her question.
“I imagined us together in a garden such as this. I told myself I would put my arms round you and say, ‘You haven’t known me very long, Melina, but I swear to you that I will make you a good husband and that if it lies within my power I will make you the happiest woman in the world’.”
Bing’s voice had died away and then suddenly he had pulled her into his arms and was holding her so tightly to him that she felt as if he crushed the very breath out of her body.
“I wanted to say that,” he muttered in a kind of agony. “I wanted to say that. And now I can’t.”
“But, why – why not?”
Melina looked up at him and realised that his mouth was very close to hers. Acting instinctively she put her arm round his neck and drew his head down to hers.
She felt Bing’s self-control give as their lips met, felt the fiery passion of his kisses – on her mouth, her cheeks, her eyes and, finally, on the little pulse beating in her throat.
It was wild, delirious and crazy and she surrendered herself utterly to the desire and emotion that seemed to have utterly swept him off his feet.
Then with a groan that seemed to come from the very depths of his being, Bing released her and, leaving her breathless and shaken on the seat, walked away across the garden to stand with his back to her, staring down into the fountain.
After a second she rose and walked after him.
“Please explain – what is the matter, Bing,” she said quietly.
“I’ll try,” he answered. “But for God’s sake don’t tempt me, don’t drive me mad. Come out of this damned garden. I can’t stand it.”
He walked ahead of her into the salon.
The lights from the silken-shaded lamps glittered on the diamanté on Melina’s dress as she seated herself, white-faced, on one of the needlework-covered sofas by the fireplace.
Bing leant against the mantelpiece.
“If I touch you, I cannot tell you what has happened,” he said grimly. “So keep your distance.”
Melina had held out her hand to him to draw him down beside her. Now it fell into her lap.
She raised her puzzled, bewildered face towards his and waited.
“You know that we had no idea where the child was hidden in Marrakesh?” Bing said and his voice was harsh.
“Yes, of course, I knew that,” Melina answered.
“We might never have found him,” Bing said, “for Moulay Ibrahim had been extremely clever in his choice of a prison which no one would suspect as being one. Fortunately, one person, and one person only, could give me the information that I needed.”
“Who – was that?” Melina asked, and somehow she knew the answer even before Bing said it.
“Lileth!”
“Mrs. Schuster! But how should she know?”
“She motored down to Marrakesh with Moulay Ibrahim. I saw them arrive when I was standing outside The Mamounia Hotel. Moulay Ibrahim had a good reason for inviting her to accompany him. He had seen her dancing with me or one of his menials had reported that she had done so. He questioned Lileth closely about me, especially about my appearance. Only she could identify me for him. He knew that she was indispensable to him.”
“But, surely she must have guessed that he had a reason for questioning her?”
“She told me that she thought it was just idle curiosity,” Bing said with a little twist of his lips.
“And in return he told her where the child was hidden?” Melina asked incredulously.
“No, of course not,” Bing answered. “But Lileth always had a retentive memory for detail, perhaps it was part of her training as a stenographer. Anyway, when I went to see her in the hotel she told me of everything that had transpired on their trip in the car.”
“You didn’t tell me you were going to see her,” Melina said with a flash of jealousy that she could not prevent.
“I didn’t know myself,” Bing replied wearily. “I just saw her arrive in Moulay Ibrahim’s car and I climbed up from the garden onto her balcony.”
He paused for a moment as if remembering what had happened, before, with an obvious effort, he continued,
“Moulay Ibrahim had not suspected that Lileth would be interested in anything that he did or said. He knew that she had danced with me, but I don’t think she told him that we had once meant a great deal in each other’s lives. Anyway, I don’t think for one moment that he ever suspected we would get together again, as he knew that I was on the run, hiding from him.”
“But why did he tell her where the child was hidden?” Melina persisted.
“He didn’t,” Bing replied. “But outside the ramparts of Marrakesh the car was stopped by an Arab apparently begging for alms. Moulay Ibrahim searched in his pocket for a small coin to give him and as he handed it to him the Arab said in a voice that was meant to be a whisper, ‘Dar Al-Hamama!’ As he spoke in Arabic, Moulay Ibrahim had never anticipated that Lileth, sitting beside him in the car, would understand Arabic.”
“And does she?” Melina enquired. “She always told me she didn’t speak any language except her own.”
“That’s true,” Bing agreed. “But she knew one word of Arabic, the word hamama, because it means dove and it was an endearment I sometimes used to her.”
His face flushed a little as he spoke and again Melina felt that stabbing dagger of jealousy turn over in her heart.
“It was just one of those long arms of coincidence that are always far more true in real life than in fiction,” Bing said. “I was learning Arabic long ago in New York when we first knew each other and I told her that one day I would build a house for her and call it Dar Al-Hamama – The House of the Dove.”
He made a little gesture as he spoke, as if he thrust aside those memories of the past.
“And, when Lileth told me what the Arab had said, I knew that Moulay Ibraham, when he had hurried the child away from Fez, had not known exactly where the two men who escorted him would take their tiny prisoner. He must have had the choice of several houses in Marrakesh, but they had decided on Dar Al-Hamama and that was where he was.”
Bing drew a deep breath before he continued,
“Once I knew exactly where I could find Suki, it was imperative to extricate him before tomorrow, when his life was to be forfeit as an act of vengeance for the two traitors who will die at dawn.”
There was silence and then Melina said,
“That isn’t the end of the story, is it?”
“No,” Bing answered. “Lileth asked her price for the information she was prepared to give me.”
“Which – was?” Melina’s voice was hardly audible.
“That I should go back to her,” Bing said.
“But you can’t!” Melina cried, jumping to her feet. “You cannot do that, Bing! It’s wrong! It’s wicked! It’s immoral! You don’t love her, you love me. She cannot make you go back to her in those circumstances.”
She moved to him, her little hands reaching up to catch hold of the lapels of his coat, her head flung back, her eyes looking up into his.
He firmly loosened her fingers.
“I gave my word,” he said and his voice was dead and empty as if he had received the sentence of death.
“Let me go to her,” Melina protested. “Let me plead with her – she cannot understand that we love each other – that I belong to you – ”
She stopped suddenly, her voice dying away on her lips.
She knew how empty her words were. She knew that none of the things she was saying would count in the least with Lileth Schuster.
She wanted Bing and she meant to have him.
“It’s cruel!” Melina stormed. “It’s cruel and wicked! Isn’t there – anything we can do?”
“Nothing, my darling,” Bing answered. “I love you and I know I will love you until my dying day. But I promised and so I shall go back. If Moulay Ibrahim kills me, it won’t matter very much, because without you I have no particular desire to go on living.”
“Oh, Bing, perhaps something – will happen. Perhaps she will grow tired of you. Perhaps – she will see that you no longer love her and get bored – ”
As she spoke, Melina knew that it was no use. None of these things would happen. Lileth Schuster would hold on to Bing because she wanted him and nothing anyone could say or do would persuade her to let him go.
She closed her eyes, forcing herself to be silent, knowing that hysterical protests would only make it worse for Bing and could do no good anyway.
“We are going to say goodbye now,” she heard Bing say. “When you wake in the morning, I will not be here because I am going back to Marrakesh tonight.”
‘Please – don’t! Please stay here with me,’ Melina wanted to say, but the words were choked in her throat. She wanted to offer herself to him – to tell him that she was his whether they were married or not.
She belonged to him and that, even if he must live with another woman, she would be his, both now and for eternity.
But her lips could not move and, as if in some frightful terrifying dream, she felt his arms go round her and knew that it was for the last time.
He did not kiss her passionately as he had done before, but laid his cheek against hers and said, so softly that she could hardly hear it,
“Goodbye, my little love – my only love.”
Just for a moment they clung to each other like children frightened in the dark, then Bing set Melina free and said in a voice deep and raw with agony,
“Go now! Go quickly while I can let you.”
She turned obediently to obey him, too numb, too utterly devastated to say anything more, knowing only that in a few seconds the tempest of her tears rising within her would choke her voice and blind her from finding her way to the door.
Then, as she moved away from him, someone came into the room.
“Monsieur Ward,” a voice said, “I have important news for you!”
They both looked at the newcomer. He was a young man whom Melina remembered seeing at the airport and whom she guessed was an aide-de-camp to the Minister.
“What is it?” Bing asked.
“Moulay Ibrahim is dead.”
“Dead!”
Bing ejaculated the word and for a moment Melina forgot her own sufferings in surprise at the announcement.
“How did he die?” Bing asked before the aide-de-camp could speak.
“As far as we can ascertain his car, which was travelling at well over a hundred miles an hour, had a burst tyre. It was caused, we believe, by a bullet.”
“Where was this?” Bing asked quickly.
“Near the village of El-Guelb.”
Melina looked across the room at Bing. So Ahmed’s cousin had helped them as he had promised.
“The car turned over several times and crashed down an embankment at the side of the road,” the aide-de-camp went on. “The driver was flung clear. He is in hospital. Moulay Ibrahim, I understand, was killed instantly.”
There was something like elation in his voice as he said the last words.
He turned towards the door.
“I must go and find His Excellency and tell him the good news,” he said with a smile on his face.
Then he paused.
“Oh, by the way, there was someone travelling with Moulay Ibrahim – an American lady. The Police tell me from her passport that her name was Schuster – Mrs. Lileth Schuster. She was killed too.”
The aide-de-camp went out of the room closing the door behind him.
For a moment Melina and Bing stood staring at each other, then suddenly the space between them was no more and she was in his arms.
He kissed her desperately as if they had both come back from the dead and the tears came running down her cheeks as she whispered over and over again,
“I love you! I love you! I love you!”