uliar flavor of his helplessness was not so much fear
before the fanatic fury of this man he had outraged, although he had
a clear notion that his position was not enviably secure, but a
bitter, black chagrin.

To have had the game in his hands and have bungled it! To have been
surprised by that simple strategy, taken off his guard by a feigned
collapse! The wily old Turk for all his champagne had the clearer,
quicker brain....

To have let him get to Aimee and call in his black! To have been
thrown, disarmed.... It was crass stupidity. It was outrageous
mismanagement, abominable, maddening....

And Aimee must pay for it. He tried to think very quickly what could
best clear her.

He fixed his eyes on those glittering eyes, staring down upon him.

"I realize I owe you an explanation," he said grimly. "If you will
let me tell you--"

The bey turned to Aimee with a smile that was the lifting of a lip
and the distention of his nostrils.

"This fool thinks he has the time to talk--his English."

Desperately Ryder grasped for his vernacular. "I want to tell
you--why I came. This--this young lady doesn't know me."

Past the general he shot a look of warning at the girl.

"I was trying to get hold of her for her family in France--She is
really a French girl. Tewfick Pasha is not her father but her--"
he could not find the word and dropped into English. "Her
step-father--do you understand? And he had no business to marry her
off, so I tried to steal her for the French family. It was a mad
attempt which has failed--but for which the young lady should not be
blamed. She had never seen me before. She had no idea I was here."

After a pause, "A remarkable story," said the general distinctly. He
turned about to the table and drank off the last of a glass of
champagne, then wiped his mouth with the back of a hand that
trembled.

He turned back to stand over his prostrate invader. "Now, you--you
dog of Satan," he snarled in a sudden snapping of restraint, "how
did you get here? Who admitted you?"

And at that, for all his trussed and helpless plight, Jack Ryder
grinned. He moved his head slightly. "That blackbird of yours here."

"Yussuf--never!"

"The very one. But he didn't know it--I was in that black
mantle--and veil."

"Oh, the mantle, I had forgot. So you stole in, disguised, to
violate my hospitality, to outrage my harem, to gaze upon the
forbidden faces of women and to steal the bride--"

"I tell you I w