perhaps from that single word! For so cleverly had the trap
been swiftly prepared that if anything had gone wrong, if anyone had
become aware of her intentions, it could have passed off as a visit
and she would have returned to her hotel prattling joyously of her
wonderful glimpse into the seclusion of Turkish aristocracy!

"But the soldier with the bayonet," she said aloud. "There was one
on the stairs."

"A servant."

"Oh, if I had passed him!"

"You could not--he would run you through on a nod from Hamdi. They
watch that stairs always--day and night."

Day and night--and she was alone here, in this grim palace, alone
and helpless and forsaken.... What were her friends thinking about
her? Where did they think she was? Her thoughts beat desperately
upon that problem, trying to find there some ray of hope, some
promise that there were clues which would lead them to her, but she
found nothing there but deeper mystery and fearful surmise. He was
clever enough to cover his traces. No one had known of his
connection with her departure.... Perhaps he had sent them some
false and misleading message like the one he had sent her.... What
were they thinking? What did they believe? This was Friday night,
and she had been gone since Thursday afternoon.

In that moment she saw with merciless clarity the bitter straits
that she was in.

"Oh, he is a devil!" her companion was reaffirming with an angry
little half-whisper sibilant with fury. "Look how he treat me--me,
Fritzi Baroff! You do not know me? You do not know that name? In
Vienna it is not so unknown--Oh, God, I was so happy in Vienna!" She
stopped, her breast heaving, with the flare of emotion, then went on
quickly, with suppressed vehemence, "I was a singer--in the light
opera. I dance, too, and I was arriving. Only this year I was to
have a fine role--and it all went, zut, it all went for that man! I
was one fool about him, and his dark eyes and his strange ways.... I
thought I had a prince. And he worship me then, too--he follow me,
he give me big diamonds.... So he take me here--it was to be the
vacation!"

She gave a strangling little laugh. Arlee was listening with a
painful intensity. She was living, she thought, in an Arabian
nights.

"I stay at the hotel first till he make this like a private
apartment for me," went on the little dancer, "and when I come here
he do everything for me. I have luxury, yes, jewels and dresses and
a fine new car. Then, by