Having called Bing’s name, Melina held her breath. Would he come or would he ignore her?
It seemed almost an eternity before he replied,
“Hello, Melina! Where are you?”
“I am here, behind this hedge of roses,” she answered.
“Stay where you are,” he replied, “and I’ll come round.”
She despised herself for eavesdropping, but she could not help drawing nearer the dividing hedge to hear Lileth Schuster say in a low but urgent whisper,
“You can’t, Bing. I want to talk to you! I have to talk to you! There’s so much we have to discuss.”
“Some other time.”
Bing’s voice seemed to Melina to be indifferent as if his thoughts were concentrated somewhere else.
“No, no, now, tonight,” Lileth insisted. “I haven’t seen you for so long. There’s so much we have to tell each other. Besides, there’s the future to plan.”
“Lileth, don’t kid yourself,” Melina heard Bing say almost sternly. “And now I must go.”
“No, Bing! No!”
It was the cry of a spoilt and thwarted woman, but obviously Bing ignored it because there was silence and Melina, knowing Mrs. Schuster, could imagine her sitting there and tapping her long lacquered nails angrily against the stone seat. It was a habit she had when she was annoyed and, even through the roses and the honeysuckle, Melina could sense the rising tempest of her frustration at Bing’s departure.
She moved a little away from the seat she had been sitting on and stood watching the crowds milling around until, at last, she saw Bing coming towards her.
He was walking very slowly and she guessed that it was a deliberate effort in order not to call attention to himself.
She could not help a little leap of her heart because he looked so cool, unruffled and so entirely at ease. No one looking at him, she thought, could guess how much was at stake.
He came up to her, linked his arm in hers and drew her towards another part of the garden to where there was less light and not so many people.
“Where are we going?” Melina asked after they had walked in silence for a little while and there was, as far as she could see, no one within earshot.
She longed to ask him about Lileth Schuster, but she felt it might provoke an outburst from him. Besides, she told herself severely, it was, indeed, none of her business.
“We have to make a plan,” Bing answered.
He stopped in the shadow of a banyan tree in which the fairy lights had been arranged like flowers amongst the shimmering green leaves.
“We are at the back of the house now,” he said casually and not as if he was really interested. “Do you see that wing sticking out to the left? That is where I am sure the boy will be hidden.”
“He will be guarded?” Melina asked.
Bing nodded.
“Of course he will.”
“Surely it was an extraordinary idea to bring him here and then have a party of this sort?”
“I think the party was planned some time ago,” Bing replied. “But apart from that, can’t you see that everyone would say exactly what you have done? The boy could not be hidden in the house under such circumstances. What is more, that party is a perfect cover to explain the presence of a number of gentlemen of unpleasant antecedents, especially the man with the scar.”
Melina nodded.
“Now, what I suggest is this,” Bing went on. “We will move about amongst the guests, dancing, eating, seeming to be enjoying ourselves enormously, just in case there is anyone watching us. Then in about an hour’s time you will put your hand to your forehead and tell me you think that the heat is rather overpowering. I shall take you into the house and hope that by some lucky chance we can get upstairs. While you are fainting I will go and look for something or somebody to help you.”
“It sounds too simple to be possible,” Melina commented.
“When you have been in this game as long as I have,” Bing answered, “it is always the simple things that pay off. People expect complications. They are very seldom prepared for a direct attack or something so obviously fundamental as walking through the main gate.”
“Bing, supposing – supposing they catch you,” Melina said in a quick whisper. “Wouldn’t it be very dangerous?”
Instinctively she put out her hand and laid it on his arm. He looked down at the small anxious face raised to his.
“Of course not,” he answered soothingly. “Don’t you know that American citizens are sacred everywhere? I have my passport in my pocket.”
He was trying to laugh her out of her fears. And, because she felt there was nothing she could say, she laughed a little shakily and followed him back over the lawns towards the dance floor.
They danced together and, as she had noticed when he was partnering Mrs. Schuster, he was an excellent dancer, light on his feet and with a perfect sense of rhythm. They talked very little for, indeed, there was nothing to say and it was far too dangerous with so many people round them to voice anything but the commonplace.
“Come and have something to eat,” Bing suggested as the dance ended and he led her across the garden towards the buffet.
Melina had a few sips of champagne, but she felt as if food must choke her.
She was tense and apprehensive of what lay ahead. She envied Bing and the calm with which he devoured several portions of caviar and a large plateful of langoustines, which he told Melina must have been brought from the coast that very morning.
While they were standing there, Melina heard in the distance the sounds of a different sort of music – a strange oriental rhythm that seemed to evoke long-forgotten memories and awaken hidden desires.
“What is that?” she asked.
“Let’s go and find out,” Bing suggested.
In another part of the garden they discovered an oriental orchestra playing against a specially prepared background of exotic tropical plants and trees in which great snakes and reptiles were half concealed. Melina gave a little cry at the sight of them.
“They are only pretence,” Bing said quickly, “Don’t be nervous. Moulay Ibrahim will take very good care that none of his guests are harmed tonight, as he would lose face if they were.”
“But they look almost as if they are moving,” Melina said.
“It’s a trick of the lighting. Tinsel paper in front of the bulbs makes the snakes’ skins shimmer as if they are breathing.”
Melina gave a little shiver.
“It’s rather creepy,” she said, “and somehow the music frightens me. I have longed all my life to hear oriental music, but now it makes me feel strange. I cannot exactly explain myself.”
“I know what you mean,” Bing said. “That is what it is meant to do. See the result.”
He made a little gesture with his hand and she saw that all round in the shadows couples were embracing each other passionately while others were wending their way into the darker unlit parts of the garden.
“Let’s go away,” Melina suggested.
She did not know why, but she felt that Moulay Ibrahim had some particular reason for creating this sort of atmosphere. There was something wrong about it, something vaguely unpleasant. She wished to have no part in it.
“Come back and dance,” Bing offered with a smile and they were on the floor again, foxtrotting to a tune that had been the rage of London the year before.
“Is this more simple and uncomplicated?” he asked.
“We might even be at a Hunt Ball,” Melina observed.
They danced for a long time, so long in fact that Melina did really begin to feel a little weary and hot. There was no wind and the crowds seemed to press in on her so that it was with a quite genuine note in her voice that she said,
“I feel – a little overcome with the – heat. Could we sit down somewhere?”
She saw Bing’s eyes flicker towards his watch and she knew that he was wondering if it was too soon to do what they had decided earlier.
In a voice of concern he said quickly,
“I’m so sorry, honey, you’ve had a long day one way or another. Let’s go and find somewhere comfortable to sit down. I can fetch you a drink or perhaps you would rather have an aspirin?”
“An aspirin would be wonderful,” Melina said. “My head is aching rather a lot.”
“Let’s go indoors,” Bing suggested. “If the air conditioning is on, it will be cooler there.”
He put his hand under her elbow and escorted her across the lawn and up the wide white steps that led to the side door of the villa. There were quite a lot of people going in and out of the house and, as soon as they reached the flower-filled veranda off which most of the rooms appeared to open, it was obvious that Moulay Ibrahim’s guests were taking every opportunity of inspecting his villa.
It was more of a Palace than anything else, Melina thought. It had been built on European design, but there were traces of Moorish influence in the coloured tiles, the exquisite hangings and the manner in which quite unexpectedly there was a courtyard with a fountain in the centre of the house.
They moved slowly through the reception rooms, inspected the courtyard, which was filled with exotic plants, and looked up to where several storeys of the house with tiny shuttered and unlit windows stretched towards the sky.
Melina was well aware that all the time Bing was veering a little to the left, edging towards the wing that he wished to visit.
Then, as they came from the courtyard, they saw a small, twisting stone staircase leading upwards from one of the side corridors. It was very unlike the grand staircase that they had passed earlier, and swiftly, without speaking and on tiptoe so as to make as little noise as possible, they climbed up it.
They reached a passage that was lit by only one small electric light. It was obvious that this part of the villa was not intended to attract visitors.
“Up again,” Bing whispered, and now they were on the second floor and again it was practically in darkness save at the very end where there were lights and, as Melina guessed, a link with the grander and more formal parts of the villa.
Bing moved towards the lighted part of the corridor and opened the first door he came to. He switched on the light and Melina saw that it was a bedroom, well-furnished but not extravagantly so.
It was quiet, for the window obviously opened onto the back of the house and, after a quick glance round, Bing said,
“Stay here and wait for me. If anyone comes, say you felt faint and I have gone to try and find some aspirin for you,”
“But, Bing – ” Melina protested, only to see his back disappearing through the door so swiftly that it seemed almost as if he had wings on his heels.
The room seemed airless because the window was closed. Melina opened it, feeling that if anyone did discover her they would think it strange that she had not tried to get some air into the room.
It was impossible to see much from the window, but she thought that against the skyline she could discern a part of the hill they had surveyed the villa from earlier in the day.
Then she moved hastily away from the window in case anyone should come in and think it odd that she should be looking out.
She considered lying down on one of the beds and then changed her mind. There was something undignified about being found lying flat. Instead she sat down in an armchair, put a cushion comfortably behind her back and closed her eyes.
She might be looking relaxed, but she knew that every muscle and every nerve in her body was strained to listen for Bing’s return.
She felt curiously like tears with the sheer frustration of having to wait and do nothing while he went alone to face whatever danger there was.
And then she began to think of the small boy and to pray for his safety.
“Let Bing find him! Oh, God! Please let Bing find him.”
How long she prayed and waited she did not know.
Suddenly she heard someone coming and was ready to jump for joy at the fact that Bing was returning.
And then, just as she was about to move, something in the heaviness of the tread and the firmness and steadiness of the footsteps told her that it could not be Bing.
She closed her eyes and braced herself.
The footsteps came nearer, paused for a moment and then passed on. She looked up and with a sense of dismay realised that the draught from the window must have opened the door wider than Bing had intended. He had left it nearly closed, but now it stood wide open and anyone who had passed must have seen her.
It was not that it mattered particularly because she had been lying looking exhausted, as they had planned. At the same time if it was a servant why had he not asked her what was the matter or if he could help?
Vaguely she felt something was wrong, but she did not know what to do about it.
She crossed the room and pushed the door back, leaving it just ajar as Bing had done. Then she went back to her chair to sit listening.
She had not been there long before she heard footsteps returning. This time there were more of them, two people, perhaps three, were coming and there was still no sign of Bing.
The footsteps came nearer and nearer and now the door was burst open. Someone stood there looking at her.
Slowly with a tremendous effort to appear unhurried, she opened her eyes.
Moulay Ibrahim was looking down at her.
She recognised him immediately, but she had not expected him to be so tall. He seemed to tower over her and she felt in her heart a sudden fear that was physical.
“Why are you here?” he asked in French.
She realised as he spoke that he must be perturbed otherwise the courtesy of the East would have prevented him from speaking so peremptorily.
With what she hoped looked a natural movement, Melina put her hands across her eyes.
“I’m so – sorry,” she said, “but I – I felt – faint. In fact I – think I – must have fainted – for a moment. My – my husband has gone to – to get assistance.”
“Why are you on this floor?”
The words were sharp and now Melina managed to force a smile to her lips as she sat upright and then rose slowly to her feet.
“You are Moulay Ibrahim, aren’t you?” she asked. “Thank you for – a lovely party. I am ashamed at – at behaving so stupidly.”
“How did you get up here?” Moulay Ibrahim asked in a quieter less aggressive tone.
“We were – exploring your beautiful house,” Melina said still with a smile on her lips. “It is so very lovely – you have such wonderful treasures. I wanted to – to see every part of it.”
“It is yours to command.”
It was the facile easy reply spoken not only in French, but also with the gallantry of a Frenchman. And now Moulay Ibrahim looked over his shoulder.
“Where is your husband?”
“I have no idea,” Melina answered. “I asked him to see if he could find someone who could provide me with an aspirin.”
Moulay Ibrahim said something in Arabic to the two servants who were standing behind him. They looked frightened, Melina thought, and she guessed that one of them should have been on duty on the small spiral staircase that she and Bing had come up without opposition.
They sprang to obey his command and now, as Moulay Ibrahim turned back to her, she looked up into his face and thought that it was one of the most handsome and yet most sinister faces she had ever seen.
There was something in his eyes that reminded her of a hooded snake and yet his features, thickened a little with middle-age, were still as perfect as those of a Greek statue and he might, when he was younger, have been sculptured as a dark-skinned Apollo.
But there was an aura of evil around him. It was not visible, but Melina could feel it as surely as if she was clairvoyant.
“What is your name?”
His voice was low and she had the feeling that if he wished he could use it hypnotically.
“Melina Cutter.”
“I seem to have seen you before!”
“But, of course, we have been here all the evening,” Melina answered.
“No, no, not this evening,” he said with a frown between his eyes at the effort of memory. “Now I remember! You were looking out of a window in the town – the House of Rasmin.”
She saw the suspicion leap into his eyes and tried to dispel it.
“I saw you on your black horse,” she said. “I had no idea who you were, of course, but you looked like something out of The Arabian Nights.”
“You were in the House of Rasmin,” Moulay Ibrahim said slowly and almost reflectively, as if he talked to himself.
“Was that the name of the shop?” Melina asked innocently. “We had visited almost every one in the whole City, but that man – whatever he was called – had the best slippers of the lot. I bought three pairs – one pair for myself and two for my friends when I return home.”
“And where is home?” Moulay Ibrahim asked.
Melina just prevented herself from saying, ‘London’ and substituted,
“New York. We are not often there,” she added confidingly. “My husband loves – travelling.”
“Indeed!”
As if the mention of her husband evoked Moulay Ibrahim’s suspicions as to what Bing was doing, he suddenly turned towards the door.
“I will bring you some aspirin,” he said. “Wait here.”
He went out and closed the door firmly behind him. Melina heard him give an order to someone in the corridor and, although she could not understand what was said, she had the unmistakable feeling that he had given instructions that she was not to leave the room.
Now Moulay Ibrahim was gone, she put her fingers up to her cheeks and found that her hands were trembling. There was something overwhelming and overpowering about his personality.
There was also that impression of evil, which told her that this man would baulk at nothing, not even murder, to get what he wanted.
Bing was in danger and she could do nothing to help him. If only she could warn him that Moulay Ibrahim was on his track.
She moved across the room on tiptoe and put her ear against the door.
Yes, she was certain that she could hear someone breathing outside. Moulay Ibrahim was making sure that she did not escape while he searched the place for Bing.
Melina had to calculate how long Bing had been gone – ten minutes? A quarter-of-an- hour? It was difficult to know and now she could make no pretence of sitting and waiting, but moved restlessly about the room.
Where could he be? What could he be doing? Supposing Moulay Ibrahim caught him? What would happen? Would they kill him quickly and drop his body down a well? Or would they take him prisoner?
Anyway, she was certain of one thing – that a prisoner of Moulay Ibrahim would never escape.
It seemed to her now that the whole project had been ridiculous and absurd. Why should Bing, an unarmed solitary Englishman, think he could possibly rescue a child on whom so much rested that he was guarded day and night with the utmost vigilance.
And if he was in the villa, what would Bing gain by the knowledge? He was not likely to be able to rescue him single-handed.
It was mad! Mad from the start to the finish! Melina felt exasperated and furious that she had not protested sooner at what she felt was just a bit of masculine obstinacy and conceit on Bing’s part. Bring in the Military, bring in the Police or anyone, but don’t try to achieve alone what was utterly and completely impossible.
She heard someone coming down the corridor and hastily re-seated herself in the chair. The handle of the door turned. Moulay Ibrahim came into the room.
“There is apparently no sign of your husband in the house,” he said and his voice was sharp. “Can you describe to us what he looks like?”
“He is about medium height,” Melina said slowly. “Brown hair, clean shaven. He has a very nice face! He was wearing a white dinner jacket.”
“So are several hundreds of my other guests,” Moulay Ibrahim growled.
“Well, I suppose he looks rather American,” Melina said.
“American?”
It was a question and Melina nodded her head.
“Yes, I am English, but my husband is American. We haven’t been married very long. Where can he have got to, do you imagine?”
It seemed as if the fact that Bing was American had lightened the tension.
Moulay Ibrahim’s voice was certainly more affable now and Melina pressed home her advantage.
“I expect he is lost looking at your pictures or something,” she said. “It would be just like Bing to forget all about me.”
“Well, we must certainly see if we can find him for you,” Moulay Ibrahim said.
“I suppose he would not have gone back to the town to buy me some aspirin?” Melina suggested.
“It seems a long way to go for anything so simple,” Moulay Ibrahim replied. “He had only to ask one of my servants. Several of them speak English and I am sure that they could have procured exactly what he wanted with very little difficulty.”
“Perhaps he felt embarrassed to trespass on your hospitality,” Melina said. “It would be just like him to go miles to fetch me something I wanted. He is so considerate and kind although he is a little absent-minded. I think Americans make the best husbands in the world.”
She stopped speaking to look up into Moulay Ibrahim’s face and she saw, partly in relief and partly with apprehension, that the suspicion had gone from his eyes and that a very different expression had taken its place.
There was something in the way he looked at her, something in the faint smile at the corners of his mouth, which told her that here was danger of another sort.
“You are very pretty,” Moulay Ibrahim said softly. “Your husband is a lucky man.”
His eyes flickered over her red hair and the soft curves of her figure so that she felt as if he mentally undressed her.
She turned quickly away from him to look out of the window into the darkness.
“I cannot think where my husband can be,” she sighed.
“Tomorrow will you let me show you a little of the East as it should be seen?” Moulay Ibrahim asked.
She knew it was an invitation with a double meaning and that it insinuated far more than the simplicity of the words. She tried to answer lightly, moving a little further away from him.
“I don’t know if we shall be here tomorrow. We have stayed longer than we intended so that we could come to your party.”
“If you are here, may I send a car to fetch you?”
“I shall have to ask my husband.”
“Your husband is not included in the invitation!”
There was no disguising now the sudden light in his eyes nor the expression on his lips.
Melina drew herself up.
“I don’t think I understand you,” she said.
“I think you do,” he replied. “No woman can really be stupid when it concerns her own charms and you are so very lovely.”
“I am flattered that you should think so,” Melina answered, her voice cold.
He put out his hand suddenly and took hers. Her fingers were very small and ineffective as they struggled against his.
“Don’t fight me,” he said. “I think it was karma that we should meet. I saw your face at the window and it was imprinted in my mind. The face of an angel or rather of a woman so entrancing that the dark streets of Fez were for one moment transformed. I never thought to see you again and yet here you are in my house. And we are alone.”
“I don’t suppose we shall be alone for more than a moment or two,” Melina said. “Even if my husband has gone into the town, he should be back by now.”
“Perhaps he has lost his way. Don’t worry about him. Let this moment work its own magic. Cannot you feel how my heart is beating, how my whole being yearns for the smile from your lips? Look at me!”
Without consciously meaning to do so, Melina looked up. He was trying to hypnotise her, she thought, seeing his dark eyes, large and strangely penetrating, gazing down into hers compellingly, while his hand seemed to be drawing her closer and ever closer.
“Look at me,” he was saying again in a low insisting tone, but with a superhuman effort she shook herself free, pulling her hand violently from his and running to the window to draw in deep breaths of the night air.
“Go away!” she cried. “Go away from me at once. I know what you are doing!”
“Why are you afraid?”
Now his voice was caressing and he was coming nearer to her slowly and purposefully.
She wanted to scream, but she felt as if her voice died in her throat.
Moulay Ibrahim was standing just behind her and she felt that at any second his arms would be round her.
With a lithe movement she evaded him,
“I can hear my husband,” she exclaimed. “He is coming!”
Running across the room, she dragged open the door.
There were two men on either side of it, but she did not stop to look at them. Instead she ran with all the speed she could command down the corridor towards the brightly lit landing at the far end. She only paused and looked back when she reached the top of the grand staircase and could see the crowds milling around the hall below and climbing the red carpet to the first floor.
Moulay Ibrahim was standing outside the door of the bedroom she had just left, speaking to his servants. He was making no attempt to follow her, he was not even looking in her direction and yet she had the uneasy feeling that he had by no means forgotten her.
Bing. Where could Bing be? If she left now, how could she ever find him again?
She had a sudden idea and, descending the stairs to the first floor, she ran along the corridor that was directly below the one she had just left, until she found the entrance to the twisting stone staircase they had originally climbed up.
She listened for a moment in case she should hear Moulay Ibrahim or one of his servants descending that way and when there was no sound she slipped off her shoes and ran down the stairs in her stockinged feet until she reached the ground floor.
In a few seconds she found herself not in the courtyard, as she had expected, but outside the back of the house. She put on her shoes and then stood for the moment confused.
She had thought somehow that she would find Bing or signal to him from the courtyard, but this was a different part of the villa.
There were lights in some of the lower windows, but the top ones were in darkness.
It was then, just as she was about to turn and go back, that she saw something silhouetted against the skyline.
There was a man on the parapet of the roof – a man with his shoulders hunched moving swiftly towards the corner of the house. It might be one of Moulay Ibrahim’s servants and yet she had a feeling that it was not.
She stood for a moment striving to see if it was Bing and wondering how she could signal to him.
And then a trick that her father had taught her many years ago, of whistling with two fingers in her mouth, came to her mind. It was an errand-boy’s whistle, a whistle that one could expect to find only in the back streets of London.
She put her fingers between her lips and blew. Just for a moment the figure against the roof seemed to keep absolutely still and then a face looked over the parapet and something in the shape of the head told her unmistakably that it was Bing.
He whistled back and pointed to where the parapet ended and she thought that she understood what he meant.
She started to walk quietly past the lighted windows. The ground was flagged with tiles, there was a sudden stench from a dustbin and she knew that some of the rooms she was passing must be the kitchens.
A cat started out of the shadows and startled her.
Now she was nearing the corner of the house and she looked up searching for Bing against the skyline.
There was no sign of him and she was ready to scream with fear until she saw him swarming down a drainpipe – coming down hand over hand with an agility which made her think of a sailor descending the mast of an old sailing ship.
She held her breath as she watched him. Supposing he slipped? Or supposing he landed beside her with a broken leg?
Instead he jumped the last few feet to the ground and came hurrying to her side.
“Why did you leave the room?” he asked.
“I can’t tell you that now,” she said, “but we must get away.”
“Is anything the matter?” he asked, surprised at the agitation in her voice.
“How can you ask that?” she questioned, her tone almost hysterical. “Did you – did you find the child?”
“We must not stay here talking,” he said. “Let’s go back to the lawns.”
“No!” she answered. “No, we must not do that. Don’t you understand? They are looking for you.”
“Who is?”
She had not heard Bing speak in quite that manner before.
“Moulay Ibrahim and his servants.”
“Why didn’t you say so?” he said. “Did he suspect who you were?”
“He was very suspicious at first,” Melina said, “And then – then he had other – ideas that distracted him.”
“What ideas?”
“He – he tried to hypnotise me. Oh, Bing! Let’s get away.”
“The devil he did!”
Bing was surprised. This was something, she thought, that he had not anticipated.
“All the same,” he said after a moment, “I don’t want to leave now.”
“Why not?” Melina asked. “The child is here?”
“I know which room he is in. Later on in the evening there might be a chance.”
“I doubt it,” Melina said. “They are on their guard now. I told him that you might have gone to the town to fetch me some aspirin. It was the only excuse I could dream up of why you were away so long.”
“That was clever of you.”
There was warm approval in his voice.
“I don’t want to see Moulay Ibrahim again,” Melina said. “I am afraid of him. Bing, he is a horrible man.”
“That is the understatement of the week,” Bing agreed with a hint of laughter in his voice.
He was drawing her away from the house as they spoke down into a part of the garden that had not been lit. They could hear the sound of the music, they could see the lights in the distance, but they were apart from it all like spectators watching a scene set on a distant stage.
“Bing, what are you going to do?” Melina asked him.
“The boy is in the third room from the end on the top corridor. The windows look out to the side and not either to the front or the back of the house. He has guards outside his door and there is, too, someone with him. I could hear the child talking.”
“With so many people to guard him, what can you do?” Melina asked.
“That is what I am trying to figure out. It’s not going to be easy.”
“It’s impossible!” Melina cried. “Did anyone see you?”
“I’m not certain,” Bing replied. “I had to pass one servant on my way and I told him in Arabic that he was wanted below. He obeyed me, but if he has reported what I said it might cause trouble.”
“Then we have to get away,” Melina said. “Can’t you see that nothing you can do now will be of the slightest help?”
She stopped. Bing was feeling in all his pockets.
“Damn!” he exclaimed suddenly. “Damn! I thought I heard something fall.”
“What is it?” Melina asked.
“My glasses,” he said. “The dark glasses I wear in the daytime. They were in my pocket. I never knew when I might not want to be disguised and, when I was shinning up on that roof, I had to go through a trapdoor in the ceiling – it was the only way I could get up. I caught my coat and I thought I heard something fall behind me.”
“Where did you drop them?” she asked.
“Not far from the boy’s room,” he answered grimly and they both knew what this admission meant.
“They will know that somebody’s been there,” Bing went on with a sigh in his voice, “and it will not take Moulay Ibrahim long to put two and two together and realise that it was a certain Mr. Cutter whose wife chose a second floor bedroom to feel faint in.”
As he spoke, they both looked back at the house.
A door at the back by the kitchens suddenly opened and a golden light came streaming out. Against it they saw two or three servants.
“They are looking for you,” Melina said quickly. “I know it. I am absolutely certain of it. Come on, we have to get away.”
“How could I have been such a damned fool?” Bing asked bitterly.
“You couldn’t help it,” Melina soothed him. “It’s the sort of thing that might have happened to anyone.”
“It’s the kind of stupidity that costs lives,” Bing said grimly. “And I think you are right, they are looking for us. Come on! In amongst the guests is much the safest place.”
He took her hand and they ran through the unlit part of the garden until, panting a little, they joined the guests wandering among the flowers. Now in the brilliance of the floodlit house and the brightly lit gardens, they both instinctively looked up at the villa.
Moulay Ibrahim had come onto the terrace. They could see him standing talking to a rather more elaborately dressed servant who Melina had guessed was a kind of Major Domo.
He was giving instructions. His arm went out in a wide gesture embracing, it seemed to her, even the car park on the farther side of the house.
“They are going to search everywhere,” she said breathlessly. “We have to get away.”
Bing did not pause to argue. He started to lead her at quite a swift pace through the perambulating guests.
“Bing, where are you going?”
It was Lileth Schuster who cried out to him and now she stepped forward to stand in front of them both.
“I forgot to ask you,” she said, “where are you staying? There’s such a crowd here we may easily lose each other and I must see you tomorrow.”
“We are at The Jasmin Hotel,” Bing answered.
“Oh, so are we,” Lileth cried. “How wonderful! I’ll telephone you tomorrow morning. We must make plans, lots of plans.”
These, Melina thought, obviously would not include her because she looked and spoke only to Bing.
“Yes, telephone tomorrow morning,” Bing said abruptly and turned to pass on.
“You’re not going surely?” Lileth asked. “I want to dance with you again and I know that Ambrose has only been waiting to find Melina.”
“We will meet you both in a quarter-of-an-hour at the fountain,” Bing said. “There is someone we have to see at this moment.”
Lileth turned away satisfied and Melina gave an hysterical little laugh as, free of her, they hurried on towards their car.
They climbed into it and Bing started up the engine.
“Suppose they stop us at the gate?” Melina asked fearfully.
“They’re not going to,” Bing answered. “Hold tight!”
He drove the car towards the main gate. As they reached it, a servant, who had obviously been talking on the telephone to the house, stepped out as if to stop them. Bing shot past him. The car almost took his arm off and the man stepped back just in time.
“Look back,” Bing commanded. “What’s he doing?”
“He is staring after us,” Melina reported. “No, I think he’s gone to the telephone.”
“We’ve just done it,” Bing sighed.
He started to drive quickly down the hill towards the town and then suddenly he went slower, stopped and began to back into a sandy side-track that led off the tarmac road.
“What are you doing?” Melina asked apprehensively.
“I want to wait here a moment,” Bing said. “Do you mind?”
“No, of course not,” Melina said. “But why?”
“You’ll see,” Bing answered. “At least, I think so.”
He switched off the engine and lights and they sat in silence.
Melina wanted to ask questions, but something in Bing’s attitude prevented her.
Then suddenly there was the sound of a car coming down the road and she saw him bend forward. It was travelling fast – a big limousine with its lights full on despite the moonlight, which made everything very clear.
It flashed past them and Melina saw a chauffeur in the front and what appeared to her to be two men in the back. She heard Bing utter an exclamation beneath his breath and realised that this was what he had been waiting for.
“I thought there were two men in the back of that car,” she hazarded, hoping that he would appease her curiosity.
“Yes, there were two men,” he answered. “Two men with a small boy sitting between them.”