Cartaret was thinking that this fantastic affair belonged to the days of the Caliphs, not to the prosaic twentieth century. But all he said was:
"They'll have a surprise."
Sirena, impulsively, threw her arms about him.
"You must get me away! You have a car. It was this I wanted you to do. But now — it is even more urgent. I must be out of here before midnight… "
As Cartaret drove his Buick from the garage he was wondering to which particular variety of fool he belonged. The role of knight errant he had never fancied. In this particular case, the captive princess was far from a paragon of injured innocence, and her Prince Charming ranked pretty low.
But the atrocious behaviour of Aswami Pasha had fired his blood. Rod Fennick might be no model of an English gentleman, but he was, or had been, a gallant officer, and there are more civilised methods of dealing with fickle girl friends and their admirers than those once practised by the sultans of Turkey…
"Mrs.Parradine," grey haired, bespectacled, and wrapped in a mink coat, joined Cartaret as arranged at the comer of Sharia El-Maghrabi, below the Continental. With one swift backward glance, she jumped in beside him. The night air was chilly.
She carried no baggage other than her large satchel purse. She nestled up to Cartaret.
"I don't think I was followed. But drive quickly. I will tell you the way to go."
Cairo's streets were curiously deserted, except in one district through which their route lay, where discordant music and harsh female voices disturbed the night. They left the city by an unfamiliar gate and drove right out on to the fringe of the desert. Cartaret tried to imagine where they could be going.
He slowed down and glanced aside at his passenger.
She had discarded the grey wig and was combing her hair. Its blueblack waves gleamed in the moonlight.
"Which way?"
"Follow this road."
"Road? It's hardly even a track!"
"It is an old caravan road. But you will have to drive slowly."
In this, at least, Cartaret agreed with her. The path was more like a dry ditch than anything else, beaten out by generations of camels stepping in one another's foot-prints.
Cartaret had groped his way along several miles of this when Sirena directed him to turn east. He could see nothing vaguely resembling a surface, but all the same, as he obeyed, he found himself driving on a sandy but practicable road again.
He recalled, at this moment, that such a road had been made in those dark days when Rommel's Afrika Korps lay like hungry jackals watching the flesh-pots of Egypt. It led to an emergency landing strip long since abandoned.
Evidently, this was it.
Cartaret saw a few tumble-down buildings, desolate under the moon. Sirena had the key of one, at some time used as an office. She opened the door and they went in. Some papers were littered on a desk before which was placed an old cane-bottomed chair. An almanac and a map were pinned to the wall.
The night was diamond clear. Sirena had left the door open, and silver light poured right in, touching a dilapidated divan upon which she had thrown her mink coat and the leather satchel purse.
She sat there with the moon mirrored in her amber eyes and smiled at Cartaret.
"Safe at last," she said, "free! We have some time to wait."
Sirena opened a little cigarette case and offered him a cigarette.
He crossed, lighted one for her. She looked into his eyes all the time. Then he lighted his own. He went back and sat down in the broken cane chair.
There was a silent interval unticlass="underline" "I'm sorry you won't make love to me," Sirena said softly. "It would make it so much easier."
"Make what easier?"
"To tell you the truth."
"Then all you told me was a lie?"
Sirena shook her head.
"Not all of it. You know I didn't lie about how I was treated. You have seen. And it's true what Abdul told you about Rod, and what I told you, too. I slipped away from Aswami's house while he was taking a siesta, and when Selim came into Shepheard's tonight I knew he was looking fof me."
"Then I'm afraid I don't know what you mean."
"I mean that Selim didn't recognise me. But I knew, when I saw him, that I must get away at once."
"If he didn't recognize you—" Cartaret began.
"Then who tied me up, you mean? Well, that's what I think it only right to tell you. I tied myself — with some cord I got from the porters' officel You were so quick that you didn't notice my right hand was really free already."
Cartaret watched her in a new way. Either he had formed an entirely wrong impression of Sirena's character before, or she had changed. There was something ingenuous about this confession. She wanted to play fair. And there was an undercurrent of sadness.
"Whatever did you do it for?"
"I wanted to make you excited! I thought (because, you see, I know the Service mind) that if I didn't, you would try to call up consuls and police — and that would have spoiled everything. I had seen Selim looking for me. I knew he would have been to the police already—"
"Aswami has no legal claim. He can't detain you."
Sirena sighed like a tired child.
"Truly, you don't understand. Please believe it was the best way — and forgive me."
"I don't believe it was the best way, but say no more about it. What would have happened if I hadn't walked along to your window?"
"I should have. half untied myself and called out to you. You see—" a new expression came into the amber eyes — "you are still thinking about me as I used to be, before I knew Rod. I love him. I have never loved anyone else, and I never shall — even if… he stays as he is."
Sirena dropped her cigarette on the floor and crushed it out under her foot.
"Suppose I hadn't been staying at Shepheard's? What should you have done?"
Sirena shook her head.
"I don't know. Thank God you were. I wouldn't have dared to hire a car. Selim will have called up every garage."
"I always thought Rod had gone back home long ago."
"No." Sirena shook her head sadly. "Rod and a partner bought an old transport plane. They carry goods, and sometimes passengers, between Egypt and Persia."
Cartaret checked a question just before it could be spoken. He was listening intently, listening to the drone of an approaching engine.
Sirena stood up and threw the mink coat over her shoulders; she picked up her satchel purse.
"I must go," she said. "Do one more thing for me. Stay here until we have left. Just close the door. No one ever comes to this place."
Cartaret nodded.
"As you say."
Sirena moved close to him. She slipped her arm around his neck. "I am glad, now, you didn't try to make love to me. For what you have done I thank you with all my heart."
She kissed him. It was a kiss of pure affection… When she went out and closed the door, Cartaret found that through a cracked window he had a partial view of the landing ground. He saw a plane touch down and a mechanic scramble out. Sirena was helped on board and the plane was away again in record time.
Cartaret stood there for several minutes, thinking it all over. The shouted instructions of the pilot had been clearly audible " — and the voice was the voice of Rod Fennick.
He was awakened, early the following morning, by a disturbance in the next room. Then, followed a banging on his door.
An English assistant manager came in. He was accompanied by an Egyptian police officer in a field marshal's uniform.
"Sorry to bother you, Captain Cartaret," the manager said. "But this officer wants to know if you heard anything unusual taking place last night."