Movatterモバイル変換

“Are you comin’ to the dawncin’, Lady Speedway?” asked the American inhis best transatlantic liner accent.

At the Hotel Biscuit she had the authority of a traffic policeman asto whom were who as well as what was what regarding the foreign colonytirelessly wasting its time on the verge of the tawny Sahara.

She was the Field Marshal of the Front Porch Knitting Needle Hussars,nicknamed “Hussies.”

“Of course,” she added, “while recognizing[Pg 2] that expatiation does notinclude brevity, one may not stand as I do now—in the soft light ofthe balcony and well off the main scene, I hope you observe—withoutdeclaring one’s self aggressively out of sympathy with the maddeninglyawful expedition of which this dance is the insolubly idioticinauguration.

“To give my opinion concisely, plainly, briefly, withoutratiocinations, fulminations, obscurations, diversions, digressions ornuances, I go on record as saying that this flapper, VerbeenaMayonnaise,—the absurd chit—is impossible!”

“Yes, I am. And that’s more than Verbeena Mayonnaise will find herselfif she insists on carrying on in this matter.

“A lone girl, crossing the desert with only native camel drivers andservants in attendance! Chaperoned only by her hand luggage! The ideais rhapsodically rancid!

“The rash creature is simply throwing her good name to the AmericanSunday supplements and Margot Asquith at ’ome.”

“Not,” said Lady Speedway letting out a few buckles in her necklace,“that I’ll need to take any sleeping powders over that feature of the[Pg 4]affair. But its effect on the Continent! The puncture it is bound togive British prestige!

“We English cannot be too careful of our ‘h’s’ and this mad girl picksthe Sahara!

“I think only of whatLa Vie Parisienne will have to say about itand I blush all over. In this gown you will, I think, be able to seemost of it.”

“I mean it’s not quite as bad as all that! In planning this lonedesert trip Verbeena may be doing something on the brink of thevery-very, but,” said the American stoutly, “one has to consider thejolly queer childhood circumstances of the ripping little rotter.”

“My dear man, unless I’ve had a crack of amnesia don’t you suppose Iknow positively that the entire Mayonnaise outfit was designed asdressing for a nut salad?”

“Rather! But mark my words, if she persists in this scandalous ventureshe’d best make her explanations in Arabic when she gets back. Herstory will sound a bit garish in English I[Pg 5] fancy! A single gel—aflapper—amid a flock of males Orientally disposed! Why——”

Drawing her wrap around her as far as it would go, Lady Speedway shookher dependent chins vigorously and departed.

“Good heavens!” cried his phlegmatic British companion, “isn’t it truehow one misses one’s opportunities? Here I’ve known VerbeenaMayonnaise all her life and never a breath of scandal has touched her!

“In the first place, you know, Verbeena isn’t a mere human girl. Shehad an uncle who was an old pig, her father was a balmy bloater andher brother is an ass!”

“O, I say, really?” asked the American, fingering the English tailor’slabel on his clothing and looking sharply into the ballroom. “Whereasshe herself was clearly meant for a boy and was changed at the lastmoment. She looks like a boy in skirts, a damned pretty boy—and adamned haughty one.”

“I falter,” said the Englishman courteously, “at an attempt to thinkof a boy no matter how[Pg 6] damned pretty he might be, looking haughty inskirts. But have it your own way, old dear. However, please rememberthe handicap that Lady Speedway has taken on me and don’t interrupt inthe matter of these Mayonnaises. Why, I was brought up right next to’em, as it were, and——”

“Her father, Sir John Mayonnaise and his wife were so passionatelydevoted that they had two children born nineteen years apart.

“Ten seconds later Sir John grasped a big pistol and blew his brainssomewhere or other. Nobody criticized the act of Sir John save as tothe size of the pistol. Least of all he who is now Lord Tawdry.”

“What a sharp devil you are! Exactly. And one doesn’t blame Tawdreally for what followed regarding Verbeena. That is to say, he turneddown about fifty female advisers and decided to bring Verbeena up as aJohnny instead of a Mildred. Can you conceive?”

“It was less trouble—it wouldn’t, you know, take up so much of histime. He needed all that for training up on bridge and American pokerin order to conserve the old patrimony thing.”

“Like a bally nipper! Quite. Ridin’, wrestlin’, boxin’, boatin’,fightin’—wherever she might be duly confident of victory—jumpin’,runnin’, skatin’, skeein’, golfin’, gamblin’—er——”

“Frapjous! And yet you see, she goes alone! What in the world her ideais I’m sure I—look—there’s young Butternut after her now! A goodlad but not, I think, quite clear above. Really you know he can’t be.For surely must he know that all Verbeena inherited from her fatherwas the pistol Sir John shot himself with. Although, of course, sheshares with her brother, Tawdry, the same damned haughty luck atbridge. These two things and a sterling uppercut is all she owns andyet he would marry her!”

“You’d think he’d have a Butternut,” said the American shamelessly,although, after due explanation, the Englishman broke into hilariouslaughter.

They stood with looks of mild intelligence on their cosmopolitanlycaustic countenances at[Pg 9] Lord Tawdry and his sister, Verbeena, as theysat predominantly on the platform of the ballroom acting as host andhostess with tremendoushaute monde de flair.

Lord Tawdry was six feet two in height, though seated, and half a footwide and he wore an eight-pound black mustache to show that regardlessof Verbeena’s curiously trained character, there was nothingambisextrous about himself.

His courtesy was so inbred that he kept looking the company over as ifhe wished they’d all go home and let him go to bed. His sleek headwould drop forward sleepily from time to time but always bob up likethe balloon it possibly perhaps was maybe.

The distinguished nobleman was, moreover, an awful tramp at wearing amonocle. It was dropping out of his eye every few minutes keeping sixservants busy catching it and putting it back. Frequently they took amean advantage and slapped it back.

Verbeena, you betcher, was different from her brother despite all thathad otherwise been done[Pg 10]
[Pg 11]for and to her. Anybody could see she wasviolently alive, that she had verve to the crescendo of thefluorescent.

Strangely enough, she was smaller than her brother. But she had a pairof shoulders did Verbeena and her ball gown revealed the ripple of thesteel muscles on her young arms.

Straddling her chair on the platform she kicked up her heels in herboyish, athletic manner and snapped a smoking cigarette into the airevery once in a while, catching it by the lighted end in her firm,proud, scornful, obstinate, determined, appealing, impulsive,unsatisfied sweet mouth.

Twice she missed and set fire to her skirt, but what did this boyish,lovely creature care about a skirt?

Her eyes were marvelous. They were crossed between a sea green and apond blue but her black eyebrows were obviously alike and offeredstrange contrast to the loose, red, bobbed curls she wore, clubbedabout her ears.

In the course of training her Lord Tawdry had always attended to thestyle in which she wore her hair.

In the company at the Hotel Biscuit dance all the men dropped theirpartners, even if they weren’t their wives, and trooped towardVerbeena, an international galaxy of adorers comprising Scotch, Irish,Spanish, Scandinavians, Malays, Canadians, Moabites and—well, thatwill be about enough—but toward all of them who pleaded, some withtwanging guitars, others with ukeleles and one with a harmonica for achance to clasp her boyish beauty in the ardor of a kicky dance, MissMayonnaise had but one insouciant, petulant reply:

Young Butternut stood nearby with his heart in his eyes. He wasnodding joyfully and murmuring softly for her ear alone:

“I say, chappie, what are you cooing about?” finally demanded MissMayonnaise.

“Please, old thing, a word alone out on the balcony,” Butternutabjectly amplified.

“You’ve a jolly cheek,” retorted Verbeena lighting another cigarette.“And yet?” she suddenly arose and knocked the pleasing young man for afew feet with a merry clap on the ear.[Pg 13] “I’ll take you on. I like you,Butternut. You remind me so much of your sister.”

She pulled out a guinea and started matching him as they passed fromthe ballroom and out upon the balcony under the ambient, silver lightof the romantic moon which was, indeed, shining.

Two minutes later and from the direction of this same window out ofwhich they had passed—you remember, harmlessly matchingguineas—sounded a wild, prolonged and subtly syncopated ladylikescreech.

A hush came over the crowded room. Regular ladies huddled fearsomelyagainst shaky-kneed, cosmopolitan daredevils while craven waiters wentout to see what the trouble was. Somebody tore the hotel doctor awayfrom his absinthe drip and rushed him out too.

Frightened faces drew apart to let it pass. Frightened eyes gazed upona white stretcher borne in the center of it. On it was the pronefigure of a person whose face was also white.

But it was not that of Verbeena Mayonnaise.[Pg 14] The white face showed thedelicate, feminine profile of Bertie Butternut!

In the frame of the balcony window stood another boyish figure. Sureenough this was Verbeena in all her laddie-like grace and poised witha seeming boyish indifference.

But it could be seen by those who knew her at all that Miss Mayonnaisewas perturbed. For at one grab she had emptied the contents of herslim gold case and was moodily smoking six cigarettes at once.

At this connecting point or juncture, there came a knock on the doorand Verbeena called in her fresh, young baritone:

“Zingo! But this will put Tawdry in a bait! He will be furious at me!As if I should worry! He forgets I’m twenty-one and my punch isgetting better every day.”

“Brother Tawd has clubbed my curls about my ears for the last time.And I had no heart for this scheme of his! But the other stunt—thedesert, freedom, kicking along the old Sahara man enough for anyemergency and my own little notion of what may come of it—thosethings for Verbeena!”

She ran to the balcony, leaned far over and kicked up her heels andburst into wild and rippling laughter at certain thoughts of Tawdryand of Butternut which flooded beneath her carmine cap of hair, untilLord Tawdry looking through the adjoining lattice said sternly:

“O, cut your throat, you big mooch,” she replied haughtily. “I’m anicicle myself but I know a grand moon when I see one!”

But she wasn’t looking at the moon at all. She was leaning out as faras she could and peering on the balcony below where she thought shehad seen a sign of white drapery. But when she looked again it wasgone.

If she had she’d have known it was Lady Speedway stretching her ear totry and find out why a messenger was going at so late an hour to theroom of a single girl like Miss Mayonnaise.

But as it was, Verbeena squatted on the balcony rail lightingcigarette after cigarette as she looked out into the market placewhere the moon and her nostrils told her was the caravan she hadengaged from Musty Ale for her wild, mad adventure.

She had his note to prove it conclusively to[Pg 17] Lord Tawdry. To-morrowwould see her plunging forth into the yellow wilderness, the vastplaces, the majestic silences, the——

Verbeena felt a sudden, mad boyish temptation to shoot her cigarettestump into the eye of a native sleeping at the foot of the verandah.But, very unusual with her in such cases, she refrained. It mightstart some trouble and she didn’t want that to happen now.

From her window she looked out toward it, so wonderful, so superb, soexquisite, weird and beautiful. Exactly, she told herself, like a big,black smudge.

But she cuddled in bed with one knee up to her neck in cute boyishfashion, laughing softly at the remembrance of another time when shehad popped a cigarette stump into the eye of a London bobby from thetop of a ’bus.

She was wearing her usual boy’s clothes and when she had given herreal name at the station,[Pg 18] the policeman wouldn’t believe it of herand the matron had resigned rather than carry the investigationfurther.

Verbeena gave her boyish head a twist or two on the pillow and thenshe slept. Two weird sounds were in her ears as she dropped off. Onewas a queer, wild, melancholy song. The other was the snores of LordTawdry, equally weird, equally melancholy, equally wild.

The moon was all there, the famous, well-known Biscuit moon, lightingthe room riotously.

Yet she saw nothing. She took a sharp peek around. As her state ofconsciousness emerged from the nebulous condition of soft pitch andcongealed to the concrete of a highway, Verbeena said softly toherself:

“I could kick myself for a goal if I didn’t see somp’n. Mystic it was,white, thrilling, strange——”

Again on the still white night she heard that weird song with itsslurred but insistent staccatoexpressione, ancient as the days ofthe Pharaohs, the melancholy, passionate Katsbemerri.

But there would be no cats in the desert. Only nice, gentle, cutelittle, wriggly sandworms. No big boob brother, Tawdry. No KnittingNeedle Hussars.

Out there, beyond, swallowed up in that dear black smudge she had seenfrom the balcony her soul would wave its Stars and Stripes of freedomand move grandly in the palpitant sunlight upon the yellow linoleum ofthe mighty desert!

And she would have for company kickin’, bitin’ horses and daredevilmen, magnificent, virile, strenuous nomads of the wild silences andthe silver moons!

Only under no circumstances were they—any one of them—to be allowedto go too far!

Camaraderie—yes, in her boyish way she would offer them that. Butbeyond that—[Pg 20]—

“Remember, Verbie,” she told herself. “As regards such bally thingsyou are an icicle—an icicle.”

She drew the covers swiftly up to her chin—up to the loose, red curlsthat brother Tawdry so loved to club about her ears.

CHAPTER II

At dawn Musty Ale sent ahead the procession of baggage bearers, thelumbering camels, all of them Verbeena thought showing great facialresemblance to Lady Speedway and hoped some day to tell her so.

“See,” said she to Lord Tawdry who had surprised her by getting up,“the darling camels how they chew and chew and chew and are neversatisfied!”

At dawn also on many of the private balconies of the Biscuit Hotelwere seen veiled faces. They were veiled by lattices and lacecurtains—each with one eye out.

“There she goes, the bold minx,” murmured Mrs. the Honorable Generalthe Earl Dumpydale.

“She means to do it—to cross the desert alone! O, shameless!” openlycried the Duchess Pyllboxe-Beauchamp.

“Ah,” murmured in the next balcony the Hon. Maude Tetherington, a cutespinster of sixty who would remember you in her will if you told hershe didn’t look it, “Ah!” and it was as if she were murmuring toherself.

“Once I dreamed of riding in the desert and of a great, handsome Arabpursuing me and——” it was, as stated, as if she were speaking toherself but you bet Lady Speedway got it.

“There was no offense to the proprieties,” said the Hon. Maude withtrembling accents. “I assure you I woke up in time.”

But a little later as she stood at her mirror tacking on her frontcurls she paused, hammer in hand, to stare back in the direction shehad last seen Lady Speedway.

“But there have been times when I have greatly wished I hadn’t—sothere!”

Thus amid a magnificent display of good-wishes, Verbeena Mayonnaiseset out to satisfy her soul longings upon the somewhat dusty Sahara,under the capable guidance of Musty Ale and his equally musty camelsand his mustard colored men.

Lord Tawdry had stood in his balcony shaking his finger at Verbeenaand declaring if she dared set out he would be down directly and caneher severely, but she answered pertly:

As Verbeena rode ahead with Musty Ale, Lord Tawdry started in pursuiton a camel which, however, refused to hump itself worthily, andalthough Lord Tawdry kept crying out to Verbeena: “O, I say now—itwon’t do![Pg 24] Do you hear me? Really this sort of thing simply isn’tdone!” it was not until Musty Ale’s caravan arrived at Oasis No. 1that Lord Tawdry was able to catch up.

But as soon as he had fallen off his camel and readjusted his monocle,he picked up a riding whip and chased Verbeena up a palm tree.

“You sickening ass!” our laddiebuck—I mean heroine called to him,“you just drop that whip and I’ll come down and show you who’s who inSahara!”

Action wasn’t Lord Tawdry’s strong point anyway except with a gooddeck of cards.

“Verbeena,” he said, “come down peacefully and we’ll have it out intalk.”

“O, you Hergesheimer!” smiled she, leaping to the ground, lighting acigarette in her descent.

“Now look here, Tawdry, what’s the idea of your trailing me this way?My mind’s made up. You’ll have simply missed a whole day at bridge andyou know you can’t afford it. I’m going to put in a month—a fullmonth on the Sahara. I’ve the sand so why shouldn’t I?”

Verbeena drew herself up and shot a cigarette[Pg 25] snag squarely into alizard’s eye. Pardon—I forgot to mention the lizard was twisting inthe brilliant sunshine on a nearby opalescent rock.

“Kid,” said Lord Tawdry, not unkindly, “cut the proud boyish beautystuff for half a shake, if you please. One must get down to brasstacks once in a while and just now the situation is such that I feelas if I were sitting on the points of a million.”

“Talk reasonably,” said Miss Mayonnaise almost effeminately, “and Iwill do what little I can to understand you.”

“Well then, why this sudden interruption in our plans? The idea wasthat I was to chuck myself to America and go to Newport or some othernearby spot like Los Angeles and pluck for myself a wife somewherebetween twenty to forty in age and forty to sixty in millions ofAmerican—er—buckoes—I think the bounders call ’em.”

“And I,” nodded Verbeena, “was to go along and subtly instruct thevictim that it wasn’t necessary in good society to perform so manyfancy tricks as Americans do with their forks and that in acquiring anEnglish accent one[Pg 26] didn’t say fawncy for fancy. And I was to tell herhow sensitive you were about money—about ever being left withoutany.”

“Bright chap, you are, Verbeena! It was a jolly plan. But whenButternut and his five thousand pun’ a year came along I was willingto sacrifice myself, was I not?

“I was willing,” said Lord Tawdry, “to postpone America and stick tobridge until you’d a chance to snap the bally, wedding manacles on thepretty youth. And everything seemed moving perfectly until late lastnight. His eyes were then shining like a pair of motor car lamps withlove for you.

“Butternut is carried in on a stretcher and you stroll back lookinglike an incense burner.

“If only you hadn’t begun with that usual stuff of clubbing my curls,Tawdry!—I just made up my mind to let you remain in suspense a while.But now I’ll tell all!

“I tried to play fair, Tawdry, tried to play[Pg 27] fair,” said Verbeenaearnestly, “like the square little fellow I am.”

“Tawdry, old chap, I overplayed my hand. I threw myself into his armscooing ‘Bertie, dearest Bertie’ in as ladylike a manner as my bringingup allows. And then he hugged me. And to show him I really loved him,don’t you know, I hugged him back. I just let myself go, old dear!”

“At three-thirty one and a half by my wrist watch—the only piece ofjewelry, by the way, you’ve left me—I received, Lord Tawdry, thiscommunication from the hospital cot of the Honorable BertramButternut!”

Out of the hip pocket of her smart riding breeches, Verbeena flashed apaper on her brother.

“Not if he saw me coming. The boy is the best sprinter at Oxford.Anyway——”

Verbeena regarded her brother through the sweeping black lashes of herimpenetrably palpable orbs, considering carefully that thefulminations between them had reached a clangorous climax of theneurotically nepotic.

He tried to stare back at her with the intolerability of the inhumanlyinoculated. But he found it fundamentally difficult and dropped hiseye-glass fifty-four times in the course of the construction of thiscryptic attitude.

Verbeena laughed. She would put the skids under him. It was time—hightime. Had he[Pg 30] not already set his face, such as it was, against theaspirations of her innermost urge? Hadn’t he, because of ignorance ofthe illuminative interior expansiveness of her reason for desiring tohit forth into the Sahara sided with Old Hen Speedway and that wholecrew of clacking character assassins and killjoys?

Pretending concern in her, had he not really joined the camp of herenemies and detractors, thevolte face thing!

Of course, if the Ole Walrus knew! If she were to confide the ultimatepurpose of her crystal soul and stalactitic heart to him, spill thebeans of what was on her mind—it would be different. He’d cling toher very stirrup and hop along clamoring for his piece of thepickings.

The perfumed gold mines of Newport and Palm Beach were his bestberry-picking grounds.

To take him with her—impossible! It would not only confuse the issuebut crab the act. Absolutely. She knew that in the romantic but inconclusion pre-eminently profitable rumble she had in mind, LordTawdry could only prove a hang-nail, that is to say a detriment to thescheme.

She saw him readjust his monocle twelve times and yawn six and knew hewas going to say something. Not much—he never did. But——

“Blast it, Verbeena, you little rotter, what the deuce I say, youknow, is all this bally, bloomin’, sand-eatin’ desert journey aboutanyway? I say, my dear chappie, whatis the idea?”

“But all the Mollie Jawags back at the Biscuit will jazz me awf’lyabout permitting you to tack off alone this way with——” Lord Tawdrywaved his hand toward Musty Ale and his turbaned crew.

“As if it would really worry you,” said Miss Mayonnaise with a veryunboyish giggle.

“It doesn’t, I confess, since Bertie Butternut’s[Pg 32] mother is financingyou. And yet—no, I can’t allow it. I couldn’t face it. I couldn’tlift me head if anything—er—anything, let us say, Orientalhappened.”

“Well, you are seldom able to lift your head after ten in the morninganyway,” said Verbeena. “Let us waste no more time, my belovedbrother. Get into mental condition with yourself quickly and know thatfor the next month a kid of the desert am I. Ain’t I twenty-one now?Got a vote that’s just as good as yours at ’ome, and a punch that Ithink is better.

“Nothing stops me—Tawd, nothing, old top. So take a spin for yourselfback to the Biscuit. And whatever thinking you do you can start allover again from there.”

She got one going immediately and as she puffed voraciously at her fagwatched with keen pleasure the furrows gather on her brother’s smallpatch of sun-kissed brow.

“Not to—to hint nothin’, Verbie,” he said[Pg 33] “but you are to come backto the hotel with me directly. Directly, do you hear?”

“I say you know!” he said and stared at his weapon stupidly. “Inever——”

Verbeena smiled and started another cigarette. She went over to thecamel, rubbed its clever nose, brought out her gold-lined case and fedthe camel a ciggy too.

Then she turned toward her brother—turned with boyish abandon andhauteur, of course—and spoke. Speaking she said:

Montrose, her brother’s valet, an unexpectedly, entirely unusualperfect servant, came along the Sahara bearing two plates of soup. Itwas the appointed dining hour for Lord Tawdry. Regardless of what hemight do as to debts, he insisted on prompt feeding.

“Drop that soup,” said Verbeena sternly. “Your master isn’t staying todinner and the soup will not stain the sand.

“Instead, Montrose,” continued Verbeena, “get out the fine comb, forthis day finds your master with more sand than soup in his hanginggardens.

“Afterwards tie his shoes and put on his sunbonnet for Lord Tawdry isgoing day-day.”

“Aw-blooey,” said Verbeena. “As long as you aim it at men I don’t inthe least mind. To horse, Lord Tawdry! This is my camp and you justkeep out of it, do you hear?”

As her brother rode dejectedly away, his long, black mustaches ofSpanish moss effect mingling with the turf on his charger’sginger-colored hump, Verbeena lit a bunch of cigarettes in his honorand let go a devilish wink at Musty Ale.

“O, Allah, witness,” he chanted, his chin also pointing at the azureAfrican sky, “be she, he or it—SOME kid!”

CHAPTER III

When the last floating ends of Lord Tawdry’s face-banners haddisappeared over the horizon, Musty Ale made bold to appear beforeVerbeena, who with eyes crossed was dipping deeply into a highball ofScotch which tended to denature the Sahara.

“It isn’t by my watch,” she replied, frowning. “Also, Musty, I am nolonger to be called mademoiselle. After this mention me as Queen.”

“I don’t like that fruit-cracker word either, my good man.Queen!And don’t forget it. And don’t look cross at me in your mysteriousOriental way. You might as well get used to it. Perhaps I’m not aqueen yet but,” as she filled her three slim gold cigarette cases, “Isoon will be.Queen. Understand?”

“%—&&&&&*% *(*)#**’’*# —— —-!!!!.” muttered Musty in his nativetongue. (A darned barefaced queen in britches! May the Prophet part mefrom my whiskers!)”

Her words came in a tone of authority which added to the fact that sheaccurately snapped a live fag end at his right eye, caused Musty tosink through his jelab or Sahara overcoat.

But after he had dug himself a shell hole in the desert, he said fromdeeply beneath his head wrappings:

“O, Queen, if we don’t start soon we are sure to miss perhaps some ofthe most select outgoing caravans. By the fringe of the Prophet—butwe surely will!”

She arose and clicked her fingers over her left shoulder, a trick shehad learned from a French officer from Alabama while trilling thecubes. “Let’s go!”

At last she was out on the desert on her very own! Out on the desertwith her wild heart, her strangely stirring impulses, her unchartedpassions, the mad caprices of her swift reactions from pants toskirts, from skirts to pants, though nothing like vice-versa had eventouched her.

Of everything but Musty Ale, sixty-two mounted Sahara Siwashes at 9centimes a day, eight exquisitely fragrant camels, the bright,tangible odor of garlic from the broiling meats of the camp fire andher faithful aura of mauve fag smoke wreathing her pruned, red locks,an aura that was kept going by the plumes which ever shot from thewide flanges of her flaming nostrils in symbolism of the fire seethingbeneath the icicles draping her ruby heart.

She remembered Bertie Butternut without a qualm. When his arms hadbeen about her it[Pg 38] had stirred no instinct in her but that to fightback. She perfectly understood that as to love and its languors, itshigh spots, its dumps, she was a mere unbaked bun.

She realized that she knew nothing of the other sex beyond the men’sunderclothing advertisements.

She remembered the sums she had received from time to time to pose forposters of young gentlemen wearing new style collars.

But these Arabs! Ah, there was something to them! She felt that theyhad something more than bridge-whist, golf and billiards under theirturbans, something more than mere hop-Scotches of the heart.

They glowered like devils and jammed their[Pg 39] horses around and kickedthe camels about with a refreshing brutality.

And they sang—always. And always the same tune to thesimp-simp-simp of their two string ukeleles with the palm twigpicks. It was beautiful to Verbeena that same, same tune, grateful toher ear that liquid, languoroussimp-simp-simp, an ear asexquisitely tone deaf as that of any good, up-to-date composer.

As it finally came right up close the vim of Verbeena’s interest grewsomewhat vitiated. There were twenty camels and a big bunch ofhorsemen, and proximity proved that they were bathed in sunlightalone. Several of the camels halted and knelt and a dozen figuresjounced down from the palanquins whose curtains hadn’t[Pg 40] been changedthat Spring. The figures she knew to be those of Sahara ladies.

“That’s what I get for paying you a flat rate for this job!” criedVerbeena fiercely, truculently. “You want to have it over as quicklyas possible. Why, that caravan is going straight back to Biscuit! Youknow very well that it’s a month for me in the desert or nothing. Iwent all over it with you about six thousand times. Nothing under amonth will do and it will not be until we have traveled six days deepon this old sandcarpet, Musty, you brass-faced blurb, before I’llbegin looking about for more permanent arrangements. What a ninny Iwas to have paid you two dollars in advance!”

O’er the swart features of the under Shereef shot a spasm of anger.But he dodged a cigarette butt with fine skill and masked his feelingsunder glinting eyes.

“Give my compliments to that grimy-looking[Pg 41]
[Pg 42]outfit,” said Verbeenatartly, “and let’s step along.”

“#$%&) )$’’’’&&&%***’!!!!” (Chesty Redhead!) murmured Musty Ale when hewas well out of range.

Suddenly a white figure, big as a circus tent and looking the same,detached itself from the other roughriders, whirled up to Musty andthe black whiskers of this new demon parted widely showing a verysuperior set of sharply pointed white fangs.

“Eighty-six beans!” said the big feller. And before the other’s eyeshe bobbed a large goatskin purse which jingled.

“O, my well-known Allah! Better’n ’nat! American pennies! How’s thathippolohit yer?”

Musty Ale shoved the coin of treachery next to a half loaf of breadunder his sandy jelab.

As the other wheeled his magnificent charger to spur it to a violentgallop, Musty suddenly called:

“And who is she that I—but thanks for the tip. Allah keep the fleasoff you, me lad.”

CHAPTER IV

Verbeena had thought when Musty Ale held back to have a talk with thelarge gentleman in the white wrappings her sulky retainer wasdoubtless obeying her order to tell the person who seemed to be theAdmiral Beattie of the desert ships, that in the matter of her joininghis particular caravan there would be nothing the whatsoever doing.

She was very much annoyed therefore to discover that this man in theprominently large turban had evidently refused to take Musty’s wordfor it and meant to talk the matter over with her in person. It wouldseem so. His black horse—Verbie could see it was no dog—was doingabout 1,59-1/2 in her direction.

But she was fully cognizant what Arabic bargaining meant. Starting todicker at one in[Pg 45] the afternoon of a perfect day in June one continuedto the following Shrove Tuesday.

They always had as much to say about a shilling purchase as JosephConrad did about Lord Jim.

We who have witnessed the scene of tragic treachery against her on thepart of Musty Ale in conspiracy with the hard rider now abaft theoasis in the rapidly diminishing offing, must tremble now for VerbeenaMayonnaise. Although even we cannot as yet suspect the half of what iscoming to her.

So unprepared, untrained and sure to be boyishly baffled at findingherself the object and victim of a large consignment of fiery, wild,untamed, hectic and rrrrrrred-hot desert passion now being swiftlyshipped to her on horseback.

The sun was beating relentlessly on the roof of Verbeena’s whitehelmet and she did not propose to wait and let this big goof attemptto sell her any fake rugs, bangles, beads or poor caravanaccommodations.

She gave the spurs, therefore, right heartily[Pg 46] to her beloved steedand he proceeded to cut down a large section of the Sahara ahead.

Let Musty and his gang follow. Unquestionably this person on his waytoward her would have sufficient Oriental subtlety to take the hint.He would doubtless rein up his horse and save oats.

Verbeena was very much astonished when her noble Berb, Al Dobbin,stopped nearly dead in his tracks, stood up on his hind legs and didsome waltz steps.

During the whirl she noticed that the big white chap was still comingtoward her.

She gave Al Dobbin the spurs again and once more he moved into a fastgallop over the dunes.

“A blooming circus creature,” she gasped, “and in pursuit must be histrainer. And where the deuce is Musty? He must have stolen this fancyballet horse from the husky white ulster now so rapidly approaching!The rotter! I suspected Musty from the first but didn’t care tomention it to Tawdry. Wisht I had! Still, when one adventures,why——”

Verbeena, not knowing the signals, smacked her helmet hard against thedesert of Sahara, matted her curls and stretched motionless, a lightedcigarette in her hand.

One could read a symbol in its curling smoke of the fiery spirit yetexistent in the lithe, young, prone, boyish body as well as theindubitable indication of an unbreakable habit.

But there was so little time for reading anything, although it must beadmitted that the light was excellent for even an Edison cannot viewith that real thing which you get on the Sahara.

For the big, brown devil had her! Right in[Pg 48] his arms. Across hishorse! And wrapped up in his great, long white cloak. Not any toowhite either.

She—already she was beginning to feel she was she—VerbeenaMayonnaise, was caught, trapped, trussed up in the folds of that whitecloak of his, utterly helpless and like a week’s wash!

And what could she do? Jiu jitsu she had but it wasn’t worth a jitneyto a person in a cocoon! By the same token all her gymnasium and otherathletic perfections which had trained her fit to give GeorgesCarpentier or Jacques Dempsey a stiff battle now went blah.

Additionally, this big heap Arab chief that had snared her sheknew—thrillingly knew—was hefty.

He was managing his fiery steed one-handed, beautifully, better thanany stableyard virtuoso she had ever known at ’ome.

She tried to scream. But when she did so she only succeeded in eatinga section of his flowing white robe.

She tried to smoke. And that was worst of all. Her arms were soencumbered she couldn’t get at any of her cigarette cases.

Not that she was left entirely without tobacco. The Saharalady-snatcher’s garments rang with the odor of it.

To add to her agony, her snippy little nose smarted keenly and sheknew it must be red as a beet from sunburn. And she was helpless toget out her powder puff.

Despite her manly training, the powder-puff habit was one which shehad always practiced in common with all the other Cambridge girls andfellows.

Cumulatively upon these conditions of despair, she began to wonderwhat the deuce this bally coot meant to do with her!

One thing certain was that he was seriously, perhaps permanentlyupsetting her scheme, her plan, her idea for junketing forth by herlonely into the desert. Such a perfectly good plan! One that wouldforever end her being dependent on Lord Tawdry’s luck at bridge andforever relieve her of the necessity of getting Americans at theforeign hotels to stake her at games of stud poker.

Ah—it had been no idle journey—no mere whimsy! It had been designedto bring her wealth, fame, and a glory the most transcendent of hertimes.

Thus she could go into the movies—if she could get in—like a sort ofone-person band.

Perhaps draw two salaries of $1,500,000 a week each! One lady and onegentleman salary.

How to get in? That was the question Verbeena had demanded of herselfto answer. And answer it she had.

She would disappear into the desert. She would pick up with some nicecaravan at a fair rate for board and mileage and stick along with itindefinitely.

She had been careful to announce all around the Biscuit that she wouldbe gone exactly one month.

When the month was up and no Verbeena she could depend on the KnittingNeedle Dearies to start their jaws awagging concerning her and runaway and leave them.

The foreign correspondents would soon get going on the cable regardingthe missing young, daring, delightful, ingenuous, adventurous,amazing, remarkable, willful, bewitching bobbed haired beauty ofMayfair who had recklessly essayed to navigate the Sahara without amale rudder of her own, to journey far and alone save for an escort ofwicked and lowering Arabs!

As the days passed and the mystery deepened how the columns andcolumns would accumulate in the dailies and weeklies and on the timelytopics movie films! The American papers particularly would rave.

Lord Northcliffe would begin by offering a good camera to any personfinding trace of her and end by setting up a reward of 1,000,000 pun.No question of it. Hearst would offer the pick of his newspapers toany reporter who could rescue her.

But if any reporters got around her caravan it would be so easy todisguise herself. She would not even have to take off her ridin’britches. Just slip a lady jelab around her and bring one end of it upover her nose and get by.

Or if the hue and cry got the French Government so all-fired distraitthat they ordered a ruthless search of the caravan harems, she hadonly to show up in her usual ridin’ pants, paste a little blackberryjam on her lip and chin for a glossy black Oriental beard and fool ’emall.

Of course, there might be no jam in the caravan commissary. But surelythere would never be a lack of gum Arabic.

And when she, Verbeena, had thus vaulted into the top skies ofnotoriety, she would communicate secretly with the largest of themovie concerns.

What would they bid to star the “mystery girl of the Sahara” in amagnitudinous thriller with her own company of devil-riding,thrilling, stirring, fierce, wild, startling, arousing Arabs?

She saw herself getting a flood of checks from these sources blank ofeverything but signatures.

Or a procession of 2000 camels laden with the gold of the Americas ifshe preferred to do business that way.

And here was this Arab rotter grabbing her around the girdle andtaking her somewhere west of Suez!

Not till then did it occur to Verbeena that it might be because shewas a woman. Naturally, this notion filled her with astonishment anddisgust. And rage, touched most lightly with the erotic.

Indeed, Verbeena became virtuously vibrant with a revolt virginallyvolcanic. Her eyes shone virescent with hatred and the tiny blue veinson her white forehead under the tawny clubbed curls became varicose.

There was a nifty strangle hold she knew which, could she ever getfree of that tail end of his Arabian wrapper, she would love to tryout on this rough bird. Her fingers, her small, lithe, delicate,steel-like fingers, tingled at the thought.

Even if her nose was red, she determined to try and poke it out intothe air. She would gather new strength and see what the chances werefor coming out further. Cautiously she screwed her bobbed head aboutand finally, poor little snail, managed to thrust her face forward andout of the folds that were stifling her. She[Pg 55] opened her mouth wide.She took in great gulps of air.

But next she took in several deep gulps of sand as it arose from theflying hoofs of her captor’s single footer.

“Duckmong, Kid, duckmong!” her captor said sternly and pushed her headback as though she was an India rubber doll.

And then he squeezed her to him till she feared that BertieButternut’s fate would be her own. She felt crushed to the consistencyof malted milk.

Who could he be, this demon? Certainly nothing less than the localZabysko of Biscuit. And it was marvelous the way he managed at thesame time his great, big horse and herself as if she were the smallestpony of a ballet.

She didn’t faint. You’d never catch Verbeena Mayonnaise doing that.But really she felt an awful lot like it!

She looked up into his eyes. (There was no help for it.) The monsterlaughed at her—laughed!

He was now, she saw, not only driving the horse with one hand andholding her upside down with the other, but had inserted a cigaretteinto an eighteen-inch amber holder clinched in his teeth.

And then, just to show her his class, he bent low until the end of hiscigarette touched the tip of her fiery little sunburned nose, lightedthe cigarette and all over again he laughed at her.

“You ——, ——!” she cried to him with a rush of words Brother Tawdryhimself, could not have excelled.

Not being able to get a look at her wrist watch, Verbeena then lostall sense of time. She knew only that the sun was still up and burningher nose ingloriously. But she would resist to the last pulsation ofher strong, young heart this desert creature of the strangely, burningpassionate[Pg 57] orbs. They were rather nice eyes but, he would findresistance to the last recalcitrant tissue of her turbulent nature.

CHAPTER V

The next thing Verbeena’s intelligence became immersed in she wasstanding within a big tent brilliantly lighted by respectable oldcandles inside of two hanging lamps.

What was solely in her mind, to faithfully reproduce its own processaccurately was the thought:

Right in front of her was he standing and she got a good, unfurtivelook at him. Sure enough he was as big as he felt when he had hergrabbed to him on horseback.

The thing that struck her immediately, stirred her curiously amidsther emotions of hitherto unknown fear and would there be a place inthe[Pg 59] tent to wash-up properly, was that his hair didn’t match. Hiswhiskers were black, his face was really red, not brown as she sawbecause he had brushed some of the dust off, whilst his head hair wassome kind of color or other.

She caught her breath. This was no time to become romantic. She was anicicle, she told herself, and must continue to recall that fact.

He was looking at her with burning eyes. No wonder. Her own wereburning as savagely as her nose. The sand does it.

It was as if he’d caught her in bathing with her clothes on a hickorylimb. And wouldn’t have the gentlemanliness, the decency to go away.

She liked it not a little bit and was so nervous she didn’t knowwhether to throw off her coat and start for him or button it up. Shebuttoned it up. She wondered why. But, of course, it[Pg 60] was the way hewas looking at her and kept looking at her. She wished she had morebuttons on her coat. And that her clothing generally was fastened morefirmly. His malevolent eyes had such a dismantling expression.

“Frapjous ass!” she said yet well-knowing that her old boyishnonchalance had gone fazizz. “Who are you?”

Ah, the organ tones of his voice! A little gritty on account of thedesert sands perhaps, but deep, thrilling, throbbing. It tickled thevery roots of her clubbed curls.

He turned the full force of his fifty-two candle power passionutglance upon her.

“The notion of this game is,” he said in his[Pg 61] deep, devilish voice,“‘Give and Take.’ You give or I take!”

“That’s what you look like to me! A Shriek, Amut Ben Butler—it’s whatyou are too! And a pretty loud and silly one!

“You let me right out of here! When my big brother hears of this,he’ll be out this way and kick the fol de rols out of you! That’swhat’ll happen. The nerve of you with your banana-skinned face andblack licorice whiskers! Stand back, miscreant, I would pass!”

“May Allah bust eggs on my turban!” hissed the Sheik Amut Ben Butler,“but this is a saucy baggage!”

He had her in a mad, palpitant chancery but Verbeena put up some greatinfighting. She gave it to him good—right and left into thekish-kish (ringside and Yiddish for breadbasket) and[Pg 62] now and againsought the point of the chin with a left uppercut that had hithertoalways served her well. It had beautifully in that fight with thepoliceman.

But in all the many other bouts in which Verbeena had been engaged,kissing was strictly foul. It was sometimes permitted at theringsides, she had observed, at the end of a fight, but never in themix-ups.

For as she let go a wild, desperate uppercut it shot harmlessly pastan adroitly lowered chin and the next instant he had smacked her fullupon the mouth.

She could almost hear a referee, a misty, intangible wraith-likereferee, giving her the full count, for the hot mouth pressed againsthers was superlatively soporific, nicotinically, garliciouslynarcotic.

“First fall!” grinned the Sheik Amut Ben Butler the while he chuckedthe giddy girl through some heavy curtains upon a stack of[Pg 63] softyellow, pink, red (dark and light) gold, silver green and mauvecushions.

Besides, she well knew the ha-ha the world ever handed a fallen champor lady who claimed to have been drugged.

Realizing she was up against a losing fight, yet she arose for moretrouble. Yep, up she came defiant if saggy. Nobody had ever put her insuch a bait before! She would go on with it—on—on—on with it!

Yet only too well she knew that one more fragrant kiss like that whichshe had just put over and she must go whiff-whaff.

It had been a soul-numbing smack. And she felt her knees knockier thanshe ever had known them.

Also she seemed to have had just then a glimpse of her moral staminaand the vision was as of the Leaning Tower of Pisa in a high wind.

Her face ached, her left ear ached and more awfully than either herpeculiar temperament ached.

“I ask you,” said the Sheik Amut in his slow, awful drawl, twirlingthe tassel of his magenta sash, “what’s the idea of kicking up allthis shindy? Aw—take off your necktie! Do you expect me to be yourvalet as well as lover?”

“You——” she began in crashing opposition to any tomfoolery of adark, questionable nature.

She observed that he looked over her shoulder. She turned. She sawthen a little fat man behind her just as he was answering reverently:

She saw the arm of Spaghetti only as it was descending. The hand helda canvas jacket of the size and shapely proportions of a corpulentbologna. And it was stuffed with Sahara.

“See here!” cried Verbeena. “This is rotten. It’s not cricket. I——”

“Not cricket perhaps, but quite clubby,” said Amut Ben Butler with hisbrutal smile.

CHAPTER VI

When Verbeena came to she was the only one present. Outside she couldhear the Sheik’s horses whinnying among their oats and the incessantchaffing of his men. They swarmed outside there. And inside were otherswarms. These were of flies and sandfleas. She was more or lessgrateful to them. They kept her for some little time from thinking ofanything else.

But, of course, eventually she had to begin to draw a few conclusions.The design of these proved cubistic and the coloring all to thepalpitant pink, Gaugin green and yammering yellow.

She sought pushing herself around on the divan trying to get away fromherself, but always returned.

Finally she sat up with her chin between her knees and her arms aroundher ears in a posture[Pg 66] known to her blithesome boyish days as the“caterpillar crouch.”

But by no mental arrangement could she devise for herself a dittologyregarding the cataclysmic cropper attendant upon her career and feltherself, therefore, thoroughly unmanned as well as fatally deladyized.

She knew she’d never be able to look anybody in the face again.Especially a camel. Camels always had such nasty, disdainfulexpressions.

From thought of camels she passed to that of Lady Speedway, and thiscaused Verbeena to do a full pinwheel on the cushions.

If this affair ever got out wouldn’t it just be pickled walnuts forold putty-faced, jabberwocking Speedway! O God! What a position shewas placed in! O, gosh!

She gave one of her old time boyish leaps from the couch and seizedthe small object she saw on a nearby tabaret.

The object was the stump of a cigarette—a pretty long one. Thankheavens, indeed, that it hadn’t burned itself to naught in the night!

She remembered sticking it down there when she began the first roundof her terrific battle[Pg 67] with Amut Ben Butler. She remembered, too,that it had been her last fag.

She scuffled her britches for a match. She lighted up. She took a deepinhale. It was tonic. She filled her lungs again.

She hopped into her pants. She began to stir about looking for otherthings to put on. Just then a swarthy, black-haired young creature, aslip of a girl about six feet tall, entered.

“Ay bane Hulda, the maid,” said this little Arab girl. “You could havea wash for yourself back of that curtain over there. It’s a bath init. And your trunks bane come.”

“Three cheers for both those things at least,” murmured Verbeena. Andsoon she had tossed her clothes back through the curtain and wassplashing about in her usual vigorous fashion.

When a little later she thrust her head through the curtain she sawthat Hulda had neatly ar[Pg 68]ranged her riding britches and jacket, hermilitary brushes and her cigarette cases out upon the divan and wasdigging deep in one of the satchels that was part of Verbeena’sluggage regarding which it would seem Sheik Amut Ben Butler must havesent a retrieving party to grab it back from Musty Ale.

“My girl,” she said, “don’t you know there’s no safety in this awfulplace?”

By this time Hulda had a trunk open. It contained the pretty dressesVerbeena had brought along for girlish evenings on the Sahara. Girlishevenings! She choked back a sob.

Aw, gee! Why couldn’t she have been let alone to swagger about alwaysin her cute boyish britches!

Hulda looked again and studied Miss Mayonnaise’s head and shoulders asthey stuck before the curtain.

“Oho,” cried Hulda, “Allah bane knock me dead for a dumbkopf! I git itnow what is it you is. Wait—I git a Turkish towel—we got lots of’em, we have—and I give you a Swedish massage.”

By the way, all this time they had been talking French as they didlater when Hulda was arranging Verbeena’s clothing anew.

“Homme,” said Verbeena decidedly, “excepting that after I’ve got mylong boots on and everything, you can go into that third trunk to theright and pass me a hatpin.”

“There!” said Verbeena stamping into one boot heartily. “There,” saidshe stamping into the other. “Now, Hulda the hatpin.”

“But——” Hulda still watched to see what disposition Verbeena meantto make of the hatpin.

“Yumping Yiminy Allah!” shrieked the Arab girl and hit the desert withabandon.

Verbeena was rummaging her luggage for cigarettes when a soft voicesounded behind her:

The voice was pleasant, indeed, operatic and even before she turned toface him Verbeena[Pg 71] knew she was about to get her second view of thevillain, Spaghetti.

“Don’t you call me Madame,” she said fiercely, “you cowardly sandbagspecialist. Don’t you call me anything less than Sheika Verbeena.There’s going to be a wedding around here as soon as I lay my hands onthat unprincipled hoo-hoo of a Sheik of yours. And don’t you forgetit.”

With lithe, strong fingers she proceeded to put a Grecian bend inSpaghetti’s Roman nose.

She followed up with a little hatpin treatment while the faithfulfellow let forth a coloraturo lyrico outbursto for the intervention offrom twelve to fifteen hundred saints.

“Hop about and get me about fifty boxes of cigarettes, one hundredeach, long, fat ones, do you hear? What’s that? Remember, once forall, Spaghetti, I want none of your sauce.”

Outside the tent Spaghetti kissed his fingers with a fierce smack,made a noise like a buzz saw through his teeth while drawing aforefinger across his throat.

It was the high sign that in matters of terrible vengeance the BlackHand never muffs.

“Gott in Himmel!” he snarled under his breath. “Joost wait teel dapadrone, da boss, de beega da fel’ geet back! You catcha sometang. Seelike maybe you, sapristi, don’t!”

Despite his feelings, however, he hot-footed a return with thecigarettes and it was to be noticed that when he bowed low and handedthem to her he said:

Well aware was he that he would remember that hatpin at meals for daysto come and, expert chef that he was, he regarded with horror the ideaof a future in which he would figure as Spaghetti enbrochette.

But—aha! let the big fellow handle her! The padrone, the grand demon,him, the goldo fellow, Monseigneur, he’d mighty quick show her who wasthe real frito misto of that establishment!

Though why in the world the boss wanted to dally with adonna thatlooked and acted more likewallyo, presented a mystery Spaghettisadly admitted to himself was too much for him to un-ravioli[Pg 73]. So hestirred himself in her behalf for the nonce and fetched her somecous cous into which he let go the red pepper with a lavish, fine Italianhand.

For if she strangled to death he could always pretend he had got mixedand thought it was the cinnamon.

CHAPTER VII

What Spaghetti was wishing for Verbeena was wondering concerning.Whereabouts now was this bold devil, Amut? And when would he be home?To be sure, Spaghetti had said, she sort of remembered, that the Sheikwould be home for dinner and that he ate at eight. But he might comein any old time and surprise her. For, cogently considered, wouldn’tthat be just like him? That he was a nasty feller, how could she doubtit? Of the Machiavellian character of the black-whiskered, tow-headedmazib hadn’t she right then sufficient evidence to swing any jury?

But six or seven cigarettes, the knowledge of the hatpin stick beneaththe left breast of her Norfolk jacket with the right hand fullyinformed about it and something else that she had up her sleeve (Ican’t tell you yet—no, really, honest, I can’t, for it wouldn’t befair to Verbeena[Pg 75]—might give her away in a critical moment) somethingelse that she had up her sleeve reassured her mightily.

And if I could only tell you what she was thinking about doing justthen! “Durn it!” your heart would surely go out to the cute bantam!Gaw, bless her!

And that, moreover, if you are not that kind of a girl and are trulyindignant why then, my dear, your ship of Fate gathers no moralbarnacles.

Although, of course, in the matter of just what kind of a girlVerbeena was, if any, a palpable ambiguousness veers to the verge ofanguish.

But while this juncture is pending in which passion is scheduled tobridle and burst into tongues of flame high as a gas tank in eruption,gave Verbeena a chance.

Some Oriental hangings showed up as if they[Pg 76] were embroiderd byblacksmiths and colored by accident and chewed by rats.

There were two silver inlaid Moorish stools that would hold you if youwere careful. There was a fine-looking, hand-carved chest, big andimpressive, that Verbeena peeked into thinking it would revealperhaps, wondrous stores of Bagdad lace curtains or—heaven alonecould tell!—perhaps the corpse of his former victim!

She opened it and then shut it in a hurry. A person may fairly becurious. But not about somebody else’s old shoes.

However, a splendid collection of ivory and silver and ivory and goldand ivory and brass and ivory and tin and ivory and goodness-knew-whatcigarette cases, hit Verbeena right in the eye. She selected aboutsixteen she thought she might like and put them aside in one of hertrunks to be called for later.

He’s coming is Amut. But you see he is doing[Pg 77] a Sheridan on a flashingsteed and is as yet several miles away. Two at least.

Just let him gallop a few minutes because Verbeena has startedexamining his book case and that if anything should tell her what kindof a bibliophile, Francophile or Swissoup this strong-armedphilanderer was.

It was a surprise to Verbeena to find there this case of books for shehad always thought that all to be expected of the Sahara was volumesof dates.

However, she stood corrected so she scanned the titles. At the veryfirst she drew back with a shudder having read: “Poems of Passion” byRing Lardner.

And she passed over without interest a corpulent tome entitled “DerVaw; Vhy Ve Dit Id Bad” by Ludendorff.

Then she came upon “Manly Beauty, Its Dangers and Temptations,” byIrvin Cobb and Paul Swan.

Two other titles, however, fascinated her.[Pg 78] One was “Florinda of theFurnished Rooms” by Robert W. Chalmers, and the other “Maurice of theMonkey Glands” by Elinor Flynn in collaboration with the author of“Arzan of the Apes.”

“Eeny, meeny, minee, mo—” began Verbeena when another title clatteredagainst her vision. “The Passion Worm of the Sahara, an Account of itsDiscovery,” by Robert S. Hitchings.

At first she derived about ten degrees of comfort from the discoverythat Amut wasn’t exactly a raw native, that he was probably half-bakedat least. She felt that it would be logically safe to presuppose thatshe was mixed up with a king of the desert, who might be found to besuperficially coated with a veneer of civilization that was tenuous.

And yet dared she find comfort in that? Might it not make him the morehorrible, sinister, intolerable, cheekier and fresher than ever, thisdesert devil in whom passion dictated the methods of achiropractitioner?

“O, hum!” screamed the distrait and fearful Verbeena doing a backfallamong the cushions.

There was one good thing she could say for[Pg 79] him anyway—his cigaretteswere smokable. They were, she had seen by the boxes, of the famousbrand of Bull Camel.

She had reduced Spaghetti to where she had only to show him the hatpin and he would run right out and sit in the sand. She had made himproduce the sand-bag too, had ripped it open and poured the contentsback into the desert.

Also she had asked Spaghetti numerous questions about the Sheik Amutand as far as she could make out his chief business was that of abreeder, trainer and trapper of horses of a high-class character.

Nothing in the trucking way but mostly for society and circus uses.The business offemme-snatching,[Pg 80] her informant had assured her,was totally new to him.

No, Spaghetti thought not. It was very hard to keep one these days.Especially when your business had you out on the desert running anambling horse farm. You were so likely to return to Biscuit or Orangeor Ammonia and find the harem had run out on you, bobbed its hair andgot jobs as manicure girls in Constantinople.

“That will be all,” then had remarked Verbeena and had further taken atuck in Amut’s devoted servant by saying:

“It is absurd; don’t you think, for you to call yourself Spaghetti?You’re much too fat. Macaroni would be infinitely more suitable.”

Hulda she had entirely won over during the afternoon. She had giventhe little six-foot thing one of her old evening gowns, yet a modestgarment withal, hanging well below Hulda’s shoulder blades.

Dependably Verbeena was to be suspected of having something other thansawdust under those clubbed curls of hers!

She was just wondering if she could go so far as to appoint Huldapolicewoman of the tent and entrust her with a sand-club when therecame loud yells without of “Hip hoy, hip hoy, hip, hip, hip! Allah,Allah, Allah! AMUT!”

Three more “Allahs” were being heartily given still yet without whenthe Sheik Amut Ben Butler strode haughtily into the tent, threw offhis creamy cloak and with a careless motion tossed his bejeweledclassy turban among the old gold and silver cushions, thus displayinghis shock of Sahara colored hair above his stick licorice black chinmuff.

Verbeena savagely and swiftly lighted nine cigarettes and faced himpeagreen with pyromania.

“I hope Spaghetti didn’t lay down on his job,” said the Sheik. “Do youknow what we’re going to have for dinner?”

His cold manner was like a dash of water of the same temperatureagainst her face. Verbeena broke into a watery perspiration, her eyesgot watery with rage and her mouth watered to bite him the more sothat she could see, despite the nonchalant manner in which he waslooking at her, he was yet significantly appraising this outburst as avaluable asset on any desert.

His presence was an offense and she would concede no amelioration ofit due to the nature of his occupation among horses. She wished withpassionate fierceness that she could dye his hair to match hiswhiskers or his whiskers to match his hair. And the dreadful, cool wayhe was lying there staring at her, the princely thing! My—such airs!

“You seem to think everything’s nicely settled,” said Verbeena icily.“But when King and Lloyd George hear of this, they’ll put such a fleain the ear of the French Government, they’ll be after you with ahoop-la and a full set of gendarmerie armed with guillotines!”

“A pea for the French Government! And holler-woller for the Georges,King and Lloyd.”

“Of a certainty,” said the Sheik. “I’m depending on Queen Mary. She’san awful stiff one for the proprieties, you know, and when she hearsthe way you defied conventions and went journeying out into the desertwithout so much as a chaperon, if I know Mary, she’ll say it servedyou jolly well right. Anyway, what’s one of those countries you speakof got to do with it?”

“You forget, hussy,—I am the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. I’m the GrandMonarch, the Monseigneur of this entire sand-patch—put that in acigarette paper and smoke it!

“There’s another Sheik in these parts, one Abraham O’Mara who goesaround as if he cuts some didoes until he hears I’m in theneighborhood and then, Allah behold him bolt for his simoon cellar!

“Besides, he’ll soon be going back to Ireland or Palestine now andI’ll be taking over all his sandlots as well. So you can see foryourself what a grass-cutter I am.

“Don’t stand there shaking your sassy red curls[Pg 85] at me or I’ll get upto you, do you understand?”

“See here,” he said, “you’d have made a fine chorus boy but it was notas a chorus boy or any other kind I saw you in Biscuit. So shake thoseReginald fixings and get yourself into something with fancy trimmings,something decolleté and dashy. I’m surprised to find you so prone toforget that you are a lady.”

“In Biscuit—in Biscuit? You saw me in Biscuit, you underbred loafer?”gasped Verbeena.

“That cat you chased off the balcony fell on a brand new, very nattyturban I was wearing as I passed the hotel.”

“It was then that I first saw you, cutey! And when I heard you weregoing to make a desert hike alone—well, here you are, little one,mon chit, hale and hearty if a bit high-strung, my sweet ukelele.”

“Love—love! You speak of love! ’Twas for a ransom you rifled me of myliberty and what not, you big, hulking rotter!”

“As a man who gave up eighty-six cents[Pg 86] American cash to Musty Ale foryour possession—and this I did—shall you accuse me of kidnapping youfor ransom?”

“Then why—why—O, gosh, if only your hair and whiskers matched! But Iknow Spaghetti lied.”

“Well, naturally,” the Sheik frowned dangerously, “Spaghetti knowsbetter than to do any gossipin’ while I’m gone. Still it is true,Verbie, that you are the first one I have ever taken caravaning. Asfor the others——”

“The others! O, golly, golly me!” she sobbed. “Listen to him—the wayhe says it—the others—the others! Just like that!”

“Why, of course,” he said with a light insouciance that wasparamountedly the pinnacle of intense impropriety. “Let’s see—therehave been Ayah and Beeyah, Ceeyah and Deeyah, Eeyah, Effa, Geeyah,Aicha, Aihyah, Jayah, Kayah, Ella, Emma, Ennapeayah, Queahra, Essatee,Dubla, Exa, little Whyzee and,” the Sheik Amut sent a thin stream ofsupercilious,[Pg 87] insolent cigarette smoke at the trembling Verbeena, “soforth. But you notice there was a ‘V’ missing from the collection.”

“That’s something I’m keeping under my turban just now, Verbie. Theway you go ’round here asking questions you’d think we were reallymarried you know.”

Evidently without even so much of the savor of intention that mighttake a favorable skid in the direction of the morganatic!

CHAPTER VIII

Never was any girl in all her life so grateful for a good, stiffboyish training as in that moment found herself Verbeena Mayonnaise!

She thought of all the swimmin’, rowin’, ridin’, boxin’, runnin’,fightin’, wrestlin’ she had done in the past with exultation. She evenconjured up the long, sad face of Lord Tawdry with its sable curtainsand experienced a wave of gratitude. In the nomenclature of Fate shefelt that at this moment she had come Seven. Had not her life been onelong, mystically symmetrical training for such a situation, such anemergency as this?

So he sat there lawffing at her, did he? He sat there making nastyeyes at her expecting her to quiescently quiver—that soon he wouldhave her where he would be feeding her cigarettes from his hand.

She’d show this Shreik Amut with the molasses[Pg 89] taffy hair and licoricewhiskers a thing or two!

“Allah, O, Allah., HEY, Allah!” suddenly shrieked Amut Ben Butler.“What in the name of the howling hoptoads of Heligoland is—is—OW!”

You will recall I hope there was hereinbefore mentioned that Verbeenahad something up her sleeve? Well, I really wasn’t in a position forVerbeena’s sake to give the real information then. As a matter of factshe had it in one of the patch pockets of her dashing little ridingjacket. It was thecous cous that had been so overloaded with redpepper by the vengeful Spaghetti. She hadn’t eaten a speck of it.She’d saved it all for Amut.

When he would have staggered blindly up from the cushions she was onhim with a whirlwind of left and right hand hooks. Then came jabs,swings, swats, wallops, biffs and bangs! And hammerlocks, halfNelsons, strangle and toe-holds! This way and that!

All Tawd and the other fellows had ever taught her she was using. Shewouldn’t leave enough of him to crawl through a rat-hole.

A vamp of violence and vengeance working at top form was then VerbeenaMayonnaise!

Only to see his august, beloved chieftain on all fours with Verbeenajust mounting his back.

“You keep out of this, Mac, or you’ll get yours!” warned the fightin’flapper with flashing eyes which shone from her face.

“Sapristi, Queena Verbeena! Escusa! I come only to maka aska what youlika for eata? What da nica, sweeta lady she lika for deener, eh?”

The while Verbeena had not for an instant paused in massaging SheikAmut. She was all dressed, you remember, for riding and when she goton the back of the once proud devil of the desert she gave him thespurs.

His screams to Allah could have been heard in Mecca. His wild horsesstrained at their[Pg 92] tethers, neighing piteously at the frightful criesarising from the canvas abbatoir that had once been the happy bachelorapartments of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.

The swash-buckling horde of Amut’s men, after getting what strings ofinformation they could from the gasping Spaghetti, took to the palmtrees from whence they tried to make it plain to Allah that theirbeloved master had gone up against asheitana, which the same is alady devil of the first water, and that really something should bedone to save him but that nothing—nothing short of heaven couldreally avail.

And ever, ever, ever, ever, always the hatpin! The more he reared toplunge the fairer the mark.

Truly now had he become what first she had called him—a Shriek. Butas not less than a thousand shrieks sounded the plentifully puncturedpassionut of the Sahara!

He felt the stirrings in his heart of a love, ponderose, grandiose,glamorous, stupendous!

It was indeed very dominant in his veins just about the time sheslammed him back on the cushions and slapped his face for him good.

Her vibrant tones in spite of the inner cries of protest of hisdesiccated manhood he found adorable as to him then she said:

“You multi-colored, flashy, hieroglyphic son of a spavined grandsire,you stalking, frowning, sneering, swaggering imitation of somethingthat is which amounts to something, you that are nothing whatsoever atall! Rotter, bounder, boob—you blurb, blip, you—don’t you dare toanswer me back or I’ll set fire to your whiskers, youflea-bitten—why, what in the world’s happened to ’em? Amut, where’syour whiskers?”

“Over there on the floor, back of you, my Queen,” said the Sheik instrange, shivered accents due to swollen lips.

“Tosh—I might have known—Lillian Russell top hair and Trotsky chintrimmings!

“What was the idea of this face screen anyway? So’s I wouldn’t be ableto identify you I suppose after you’d squeezed me dry and threw meover at Orange with all the rest of your amorous alphabet? Was thatit, hey?”

“No, by Allah, no,” he sobbed, his haughty head tumbled among thesilver, black, green, blue, pink and twilight yellow cushions.

She drew forth the hatpin which is so much deadlier than the scarfpinof the species.

“Allah defend me—I cannot tell you—not if you kill me, my sweet wandof affliction!”

“I don’t know what I’ll do later,” said Verbeena. “But anyway, I’mgoing to make you marry me first.

“Sheik Amut Ben Butler, you say you are king of this tail-end of thedesert?”

“Stupid—like they have in America. A common law for marriage. If aman and woman agree to live together as husband and wife—that settlesit. It goes, hook, line, sinker and breakfast cereals. But it is madeall the more binding when there is a written agreement between them.

“All in favor,” she said with her eyes firmly on the passion-purgedorbs of Amut, the non-abductor, “will say ‘Aye!’”

Immediately Verbeena whipped out a paper from the breast of herNorfolk jacket and laid it before him. (That girl had just thought ofeverything! She even had a fountain pen right ready for him!)

The red pepper wasn’t all out his eyes by any means, but the broken,quivering creature was able to read:

“You will see that it’s dated yesterday,” said Verbeena, “but that’sonly a technicality.”

The Sheik Amut signed. She signed. Spaghetti[Pg 97] signed. Hulda hurled hermark on the document.

“There,” said Verbeena, “that’s that! I’d like to see Lady Speedwayopen her ole fish-mouth when our caravan pulls into Biscuit again,hey, Amut?”

“Spaghetti,” next said Verbeena, “you can serve dinner now. And golight on the use of the Italian national flower in your cooking oryou’ll hear from me.

“Hulda, rip down that bunch of moth-eaten hangings. They’re aneyesore. I’ll get some decent chintz curtains as soon as we get totown. And pick up all those revolvers and daggers and such truck andthrow them into the store tent.”

“You’ll have to get up and get out early to-morrow, Mutty, dear,because I shall simply have to start housecleaning first thing in themorning.”

“Nonsense. I’m sick of this stuff of putting[Pg 98] everything up to Allah.You’ll just get up and do it on your own account, do you hear?”

“May I have another cigarette, Verbie?” came the honeyed accents ofthe Sheik Amut as, dinner finished, coffee was being served.

“Just one. Too much smoking will affect the steadiness of your hand inhorse-training. I must look into the condition of the herd myselfto-morrow.”

“Yes, do,” he assented. “I’m afraid I’ve been pretty slack but youknow how a bachelor is—sporting around a good deal, he is likely toforget business.”

She fed him about ten which he chewed as delicately as he might—muchmore delicately, Verbeena noticed, than the camels chewed gum.

“Under the extraordinary circumstances,” she finally stated, “and thelegal steps having been[Pg 99] duly taken and perfected, there is not in sofar as I can see, any valid reason why marital relations may not withperfect propriety eventuate.”

CHAPTER IX

“A month. A little more than a month! Thirty-one days to be exact! O,Allah, it seems a life time!” sobbed the Sheik Amut Ben Butler. “Amonth since I grabbed her hot off the Biscuit! Would that then I haddeveloped butter fingers! And yet!”

He buried his face deep in the cushions and ate at them. He didn’t cryout. It wouldn’t have done the least good.

Nobody would have answered. His horses, camels and men were all scaredpositively puerile and near to death of Verbeena. Whenever they sawher coming they hurried like the deuce in every other direction.

Hypothetically considered, the situation was not extraneouslyalarming. But otherwise it was vicariously vazink.

She was certainly the hottest penny he’d ever picked up in his life,this little red-head.

“The first thing you know,” he told himself, “you’ll be falling inlove with this athletic young squidge. And then won’t you be ashamedof yourself!”

Dawn couldn’t begin on the desert without the Sheik Amut being turnedout with a slim cup of coffee to break horses. Or direct the curryingof camels. And camels require infinite currying. If you want to livearound the same oasis with them it has long been decided that this isquite essential.

And in all his former experiences he had never known that a camelcould laugh. But now he knew they all did whenever he passed by.

Besides he was losing money, for in breaking horses he’d acquired ahabit of killing them while thinking of Verbeena.

O, Allah, she had such a fascinating way of displaying romanticwomanhood when he most expected the hatpin!

But still he knew his men were beginning to call him “Tame Turban” and“Shakes” instead of Sheik.

He never, these days, slung on his flowing, dashing, romantic whitecloak without feeling like a whipped cream.

Conjurically he considered himself a storm-tossed palm branchhopelessly missing its dates.

He’d been in the habit of sprawling around on his cushions whenever heblamed felt like it. But not so no more! Verbeena could become soexceedingly vituperish and so conspicuously arousing. So different wasshe, he considered, than varinol.

Hashish had given him some relief but his stock of that was gone andVerbeena hadn’t.

The way she wound Spaghetti around her little finger was utterlyfarnicaceous. And Hulda was eating out of the hollow of her cute,steel-like fingers.

He could only draw comfort from knowing[Pg 103] that he and Verbeena had thecigarette habit intolerably.

He fumbled about among the pillows well-knowing that not a tailfeather remained. In plain words, of his masculine dominance herealized he was hirsutically tweezered.

Verbeena, he saw, was fast asleep and for this he gave several still,small praises unto Allah.

There among the cushions he kicked himself softly for never havingthought things clearly out before.

But now—aha! His horse, Sunstroke, would stand by him! That is to sayrun with him as he must if it was to do any good. And pretty fast,too, he conjectured, Sunstroke must.

Sheik Amut Ben Butler made just about then a cold sneak from the sideof Verbeena. Toes and finger tips were clammy with apprehension.

At this time, deep down, his torn and tortured pride was crying to theastral heights:

“O, Allah, Allah, Allah, is it never going to end? Am I ever going toget away from her?”

He had, as a matter of verity, long felt that he should take to thewoods, but how could he on the Sahara!

He stepped carefully over Spaghetti but Spaghetti was so nervous thesetimes he awakened very easily.

With stupendous caution Amut stalked among the steeds. His ego was soinherently erased that he touched the nose of Sunstrokeapologetically, fearsome that even his own horse might say him nay.

But Sunstroke laughed good-naturedly. A horse laugh, to be sure, yetnevertheless nothing[Pg 105] nasty in it. Sunstroke was only a kid and fullof larks. He was all for the notion of churning the desert in thesmall hours of the night and whizzled his tail gayly to indicate it.

Taking the saddle like a lamb, Sunstroke nevertheless hopped forth asof a piece of cyclone.

“Fare well, well, well, Verbeena!” shunted the Sheik Amut softly tothe handsome stars.

The stars are really very handsome on the Sahara. And so close. Onefeels like picking them. On some kinds of drinks one often tries.

With Allah quiescently concurring, Sheik Amut hoped ere morn to pullSunstroke up, lathered with foam necessarily, in Tipzaza or perhapsTlemcen although in a vague way he dreamed of Fez because there was abig, stone[Pg 106] wall around that, and gladsomely he killed many miles ofthe desert but——

From the sandpile where Amut found himself sitting on a troubled headthe Sheik began to reason that Verbeena was arrived.

“How dare you? What do you mean by it? Answer me this instant! Whowere you making off to see—Ayah or Beeyah or——”

“Aw, what the dickens,” said the Sheik Amut, with a half show ofspirit. “All you caught me was a horse!”

She slung him across her saddle as even once he had slung her and shefrequently held him head down on the journey for as she said to him,this sends the blood to the head and he could the better thereforethink of the atrocity he had[Pg 107] planned. Now and then she would dip hishead in the sand to brush up his repentance.

That same night at home, the Sheik made a harrowing error. Hisdiplomacy proved catastrophical. For he dug up a treasure bag and outof it drew a necklace of gorgeous, pallid greenstones, and dangledthem before her eyes.

“After all,” said he, “it is you only I can ever love, Verbeena! Ah,Verbeena! You fascinating baby mine! Here—take it—this small tokenof the burning regard of my Sahara disposition!”

Instead of graciously accepting she nearly drove his turban throughthe north wall of the tent. His head was in the turban.

“I get your Oriental subtlety, you wild Eastern oaf!” cried Verbeenaher red curls straightening and standing upright. “You think I’m ajade, do you?”

On the Sahara has passed into song and story the family simoon whichthen blew across, in, out, about, over and under tent of Amut BenButler.

CHAPTER X

Couscous had given way to good old English bacon and eggs andmarmalade on the breakfast table of the Sheik Amut Ben Butler.

“Chief,” said the Sheik half-heartedly to Verbeena, slipping a pieceof bacon to his big, dangerous Persian hound that Verbeena was in thehabit of kicking around so freely, “would you mind if I had a friendcome and stay for a bit?”

“A literary light, one nearly as large as a moon. He sells an awfullot of books.”

“Of whom are you speaking?” asked Queen Verbeena readily inducting theatmosphere.

“Robert,” the Sheik paused because he was very sure of his grounds,“Hitchings.”

“Literary men,” said Verbeena, “are usually terrible loafers and likelate breakfasts but as to Mr. Hitchings I am agreeable. I am fully[Pg 109]confident as regards Mr. Hitchings, I don’t mind saying. He is alwaysinteresting. I think it was reading his works which started me on thistrip.”

“It rejoices me to have you so inclined,” said the Sheik. “And Bobwill be pleased.”

“That’s up to him,” smiled Verbeena, taking a heavy smash at themarmalade. “Although I have every confidence that he will give littletrouble. From his tales of passion I am certain he is well-behaved.But in view of the event I think, Amut, we should really move to alarger oasis. It’s possible he carries his adjectives with him.”

The Ben Butlers had moved to Oasis No. 12.[Pg 110] This was a suburb ofOudjda from whence, if you were out of things, you could always getbreakfast at Guercif.

For three days Mr. Hitchings had been taking his meals and notes withthe Ben Butlers.

His observations of the Sheik and Verbeena had moved his heart topity. So that he had very little left when the Sheik was carried in bytwo men. A horse had refused to be trained and the Sheik A. Ben Butlerwas therefore invested with six broken ribs.

Verbeena prodded the Sheik somewhat and, deciding that he wouldn’tdie, came into the outer tent and caused Mr. Hitchings to pause[Pg 111] inthe taking of his notes by pulling his chair from under him.

“Did you wish to speak to me?” said Mr. Hitchings under the chair andcircumstances.

“I certainly,” said Verbeena, “am not discussing Velasquez, AmerigoVespucci or Jack Dempsey. The yellow hair and the black whiskers arenoticeably incompatible, don’t you think?”

“To be sure,” assented Mr. Hitchings. “Well then——” and he got redin the face. “I’ll tell you. It was this way:

“Because—well, you see, his father was the Earl of Glucose but not asticker for the proprieties.[Pg 112] I might even say he drank freely. Thatwas not a habit clearly to take into the Sahara. And when thusbedizened he sometimes failed in courtesy. Especially toward his wife.She was Spanish but unquestionably all her life long had walkednormally. She was a bit of a Moor too. But new to sand-dunes. Oneevening the Earl of Glucose feeling like kicking about a bit selectedhis wife. He busied himself thus for some time.

“Then it would seem he kicked her so far that he couldn’t find her norcould she find herself and thus it was she happened upon the suburbanoasis of Sheik Ben Butler, senior.

“The Sheik did not send her to his harem but kept the Spanish ladywith him hanging right around his neck until she died in his arms. Notpromptly but nearly so.

“The truth now,” said the distinguished novelist, “is on the point ofbursting forth!

“I don’t wonder that you are surprised. Amut[Pg 113] was too when he heardit. We all were! You see my father was in America at the time and theSheik was in China and so they met. By the same chain ofcircumstances, Amut and I were both educated in Siberia. Youunderstand? But even if you don’t, I don’t either. Still it isexplanatory, is it not?”

“Good heavens!” said Mr. Hitchings in ineffable alarm. “This isn’t mystuff! How could you think it? How ridiculous of me to have permittedmyself to be persuaded by Amut to try and put this over! I regret theattempt abysmally. Right now, hear me, fair lady: I wash my hands ofthe Hull thing!”

“Friendship may excuse this conduct of yours,” said Verbeena coldly.“But how, if you are also English, is it that Amut makes a friend ofyou?”

“Now, there’s something else again, isn’t it? Just as if a rebelliousSheik around here for an instant would make a bosom friend of aFrenchman. It’s a desperately silly story all the way through and Isurely apologize and—O—what?”

“I most certainly will,” replied Mr. Hitchings, “immediately—of a manpacking his grip.”

“But I beg of you, who is he? For God’s sake, listen to a woman’splea! Solve this mystery of me lord’s true identity!”

By this time, however, Mr. Hitchings had engaged the drawing room of acamel and was navigating the Sahara by means of the good, old,honorable North Star.

CHAPTER XI

Mr. Hitchings was in such a hurry hurtling off the Sahara with abroken climax that he left some things behind.

There were two collar buttons, a large piece of dignity and anewspaper clipping.

The collar buttons Verbeena knew she would be able to use, she kickedthe lost dignity aside but stood interested in the newspaper clipping.

Verbeena’s hopes and aims went vaunting in a very triumphant manner onthe reading of this clipping.

Mad emotions stirred the Sheik to follow her with an admiring eye whento show how pleased she was she went forth on the newly leased oasisand threw herself among the tops of the palm trees indiscriminately.

In swift palpitation that made his heart beat[Pg 118] the Sheik hugged hisbandaged ribs and watched her.

She moved gracefully among the tree tops snapping branches offheartlessly. She radiated, also, he saw, mercilessly among theverbiage.

In spite of a week’s notice, for Verbeena meant to can Spaghetti, thefaithful fellow had drawn up to the Sheik’s side and Amut turningwonderingly toward him asked wildly:

“O, Monseigneur, merely angelically acrobatic,” said Spaghetti with atouch of reverence that was reverberating.

Suddenly Verbeena vamoosed from the palm trees, fell thirty feet witha happy turn which landed her directly on the shampoo bandage whichwas the Sheik’s native headgear.

“My dear, your exuberance fascinates as well as flattens me,” said theaugust Amut in his fall. “May I ask the cause? Mind you, I do notinsist. You well know, I am too proud to fight.”

“You will learn in time, my dear,” laughed Verbeena airily, herthoughts running ragingly in the line of movie contracts, of a daysoon[Pg 119] when she would excel the gilded harvestings of Queen Maryherself.

“Aw—please, O, clashing cadence of my soul’s innermost adoration, letyour Sheiky know what gives you such happiness divine!”

“Nix-nix!” said Verbeena with excessive laughter, “my conqueringdevil! Have you fed the camels yet? If not, spill that toga and humpyourself!”

“Immediately, O, exquisite creature of Allah’s greatest favor! Andyet, if you’ll pardon me, this night I had planned taking a smack atmy old enemy, Sheik Abraham O’Mara. He’s been cutting into the bordersof our sandpile considerable lately. E’er this, Queenie, he has alwaysbeen scared of me. But now he rides about the wide places, the narrowand the circumambient without fear or dread of Amut Ben Butler.

“Once his goat was mine but now he thinks nothing of grabbing myhorses and camels any old time.”

“Go right over and attend to him this evening,” said Verbeena. “Youhave my full permission. If he gets giddy with you just tell him[Pg 120] I’llbe over myself. I’ve heard too that he is uncommonly cussed among thewomen. And him a black Sheik at that—the old Ace of Spades! Tellhim——”

“What are you laughing at?” demanded his thoroughly acknowledgedwife—(in writing, you remember).

“Those now to be seen scooting out of sight across it. The distance isgreat but I recognize the leading figure clearly as the Sheik AbrahamO’Mara. See how fat! And how fast he travels! And yet it has alwaysbeen said of him there was danger ever when that fiend was abroad.But, it seems he saw us first.”

Once home in the tent the Sheik Amut Ben Butler dared to put his armsout to her. He was no ordinary man to succumb to the fascinations of awoman. You had to hit him first.

But having experienced the metallic obstinacy of Verbeena Mayonnaise,the inflexibility of her character and seeing, as he ecstatically had,the flight of his powerful and avowed enemy, Abraham O’Mara, he wasfraught with the realization that love had become a force in his lifewhich might drive him to anything where[Pg 122] Verbeena was concerned,predominantly and irresistibly.

Amut’s arms ached for her and always ached worse after he had tried tohold her.

He permitted his mind to careen woefully regarding the secret Verbeenawas withholding. Something had made her very happy and as he feltnothing to boast of in this regard he wondered incontinently. But inhis growing emotion concerning one who could not only chase him buthis greatest enemy at the very sight of her, the Sheik allowed himselfa sharp, sobbing intake of breath.

At the same time no other sign escaped him of the hell he wasenduring. She might not like it.

But he couldn’t keep his mind off Verbeena for the distant howlings ofjackals came closer and closer.

He had asked her and she wouldn’t tell. His[Pg 123] soul, his mind and hearthammered, stirred, tintinnabulated and undulated to find out.

Little he knew then that vouchsafement as to this might have beenregarded generally as pretty closely to hand.

CHAPTER XII

It was a Monday morning about two months later and the Sheik washelping Hulda hang out the wash in the back of the Big Tent, his soulpondering in trepidation, even worry as one might say, regarding whatVerbeena was contemplating, what she was ruminating with such openevidences of liking it, in her masterful, little, red-capped noodle.

They were now stopping at the Sahara Golf club oasis which is really amere suburb of Orange, very popular because the golf club oasis wasthe wettest on the desert. So near Orange! She could, she would——

“Allah save my skin,” whispered the Sheik as best he could on accountof the clothes-pins in his mouth as he was spearing Verbeena’s[Pg 125]B.V.D.’s to the line hanging low between the stately palms.

From time to time as the reversal of the rôle he played in her lifecame to his quivering lips in cries of “Allah, O, Allah, let up onme!” he had managed to steal a horse-whip or two and bury it in thesand until nearly all of them had disappeared. It was notconsideration for the horses which had led to those depredations. Andnow the thought had come to him that they were so near Orange shemight ride in herself or send forth a blindly obedient equerry thenceto fetch a new supply of first quality, sturdy horsehide lashes.

But just about then other things happened to make his heart tickharder—like a grandfather’s clock.

He and Hulda dropped the wash to rush to the front of the tent wherehad arrived a messenger. Sure, on horseback.

“For you?” laughed the messenger, scornfully unloading two big bags.“You! By Allah, stand aside and don’t make the sandworms laugh!Where’s Queen Verbeena?”

“By the same Allah,” returned the Sheik with a show of spirit, “unlessyour business is of prime importance I would not disturb her now. Sheis at her daily exercise within and cares never then to beinterrupted.”

“Idiot, forbear lest she overhear. Besides, it’s not that sort ofexercise at all. For three hours each morning she now spends her timemaking faces in the looking glass. For what purpose when I ask her ofit, she orders me back into the open as being none of my Orientaldamned business. What’s in the bags?”

“No, but by Allah, it’s near the first month. I wonder what billsshe’s been running up!” faltered the Sheik.

Now the letters—there is no use keeping a person’s readerswaiting—were in reality, in[Pg 127] response to an advertisement she hadsecretly placed in several theatrical newspapers. It had read:

The messenger was now bearing to Mrs. The Sheik Amut Ben Butler thirtythousand and forty-six communications from all the choicest open-airmurder colonies in the country.

But true enterprise, real enterprise, enterprise in the magnificent,was incarnated in the person of the celebrated Mr. Cyril Gristmillefor on that very instant he descended grandly in person in anaeroplane. Slightly on his ear but soon readjusted himself. He hadfaced this small accident without turning a hair. He hadn’t any.

“See here,” cried the Sheik Amut, “what the hellah do you mean byswooping down this way on these grounds? Don’t you see what you’vedone? You’ve scared the horses and camels and scattered them all overthe desert! And, may Allah’s curses crack your skull, you’ve knockeddown the week’s wash and if you knew my wife——”

Mr. Gristmille gracefully drew a slender cigarette case from a lowerwaistcoat pocket—yep, he had the habit too—and said:

“Well, then, don’t stand there like a fathead looking at them runaway, my man. You and your other ragbags get busy and catch ’em again.I may need ’em shortly.”

“My business is not with you. But unless I am improperly informed thistent harbors the famous lost English desert girl, Miss VerbeenaMayonnaise?”

“That was,” said Sheik Amut sticking up his nose at this haughtystranger. “She’s my wife now.”

“Go in the tent then and tell her to come out to me—Mr. CyrilGristmille—immediately. I would do business with her.”

“Go in and tell her yourself,” said Amut. “I’m tired trying to tellher to do anything.”

Sheik Amut and Spaghetti who was being given another trial by Verbeenaafter his complete surrender of his garlic supply, and the Sheik’sother two pals, Yusef and Hamandaigs, looked one another keenly in theeyes and began openly holding their ribs.

But to their surprise no pistol reports or manly howls for help arosefrom within the tent.

Instead the elegant, pallid-faced Mr. Gristmille who had changed fromhis aeroplane cap into a high hat before entering the tent—insteadthen of Mr. Gristmille emerging with a scimitar wrapped around hisneck or his hat jammed down over his eyes—instead of this, O, Allah,his haughty intrusion into the tent of the doughty little Sheik tamerpassed off in most perfect quiet and presently—hands up to Allahagain[Pg 130]!—he emerged with Verbeena—with Verbeena!—why they hardlyrecognized her! the way she was acting!

Her sturdy, cocky boyish nonchalance was gone, no longer did sheswagger and scowl, the little roughneck. Instead she had become asfeminine as a powder puff!

She was looking up into the cameo profile of the illustrious andbill-postered countenance of Cyril Gristmille as one might gaze intothe eye of a golden idol or a $10,000,000 check.

Every little trick of ingenuous girlhood was in everything that littleVerbeena did and the wondering Amut, Spaghetti and Hulda and Yusef andHamandaigs ran around telling the tribe about it. And they all agreedthey just simply couldn’t believe it was Verbeena.

But had these innocents ever seen Mary Pickford they would have knownwhere Verbeena was getting her stuff. Little did they know she’d beenpracticing up on it this many a day.

“O, Mister—Mister Gristmille, it has been so good of you to come!With all that money!

“I?—Why I,” said Mr. Cyril Gristmille, “could make an actress of adoughboy to say nothing of so perfect a little gentleman as you.”

“The first thing you do,” he said, and suddenly took her by theshoulder and shook her thoroughly, “is to understand that you do everylittle damn thing I tell you without making any fuss or faces aboutit. Do you get me?”

Verbeena listened breathlessly and breathless isn’t much of a word forit. Her heart wobbled.

“And don’t you try to carry out any notions of your own while you areacting around me.

“You are to look, walk, talk, eat, weep, whimper, smile, sob, stalk,twirl, mince, mope, wriggle, squirm, turn, stand, run, race, limp,love, lallygag, or any old other darn thing I mention[Pg 132] and demand justas you hear me give the orders to do it or I’ll take you and yourmovie aspirations and bury them for once and all ten thousand feetdeep right in here in the sands of the Sahara!

“Once again,” he fixed her with his piercing eye, “I ask—do you getme?”

What Verbeena got was very hot under her boyish Eton collar and meantto answer him scornfully but she felt her heart beating as if it meantto beat it altogether.

However, the Movie Maharajah was not paying the slightest attention tohow she took it at all. He was giving his attention to a flock ofcamera men, actors and such like arriving in 2,000 aeroplanes thatleft for the Sahara that morning from Los Angeles.

She could not fight down the thrill that came at the study she thenbegan somewhat surreptitiously to make of the commanding figure of theMovie Monarch among his men. The way he talked to them was a shame.The way they took it, cringing, cowering, fawning yet with adorationin their eyes, was a wonder.

“What are you standing there goofing for and staring that way at me?Don’t you know that you are to be a girl in the first reel?”

“I—I,” hot shame mantled Verbeena’s cheek. Why was it she did notstep straight forward and punch him in the nose? But somehow, he madeher so acutely conscious of her sex, or, rather, of what sex he wantedof her.

“You are to be a girl in this first reel I tell you. Get back intoyour tent and take that football suit off and put on something close,clinging, and when you get it on work up a good, hippy walk—hippy anda bit slouchy. Go on instantly, and gethim off and puther on.”

The man was simply terrible. With dragging feet she retreated to hertent and for the boy’s clothes that somehow made her feel good andtough and ready to take chances with both hands, she submergedlysubstituted a frock that she was fiercely angry with herself to findherself, indubitably she herself, hoping would please him.

“In the name of all that’s horrible!” he cried at her. “Is that thebest thing you’ve got to[Pg 134] offer in clothes? It doesn’t fit you—itflops! Here—that skirt wants shortening and it wants tightening too,and you can only see the half of the small of your back. Away withthat flock of rags! Got any others—in heaven’s name, answer!”

“Go in and put another one on then and for the love of Pete, try topick something that looks like something above a dollar ninety-eighton a bargain counter. Take that off—quick! Must I be your dressmakeras well as your director?”

“And hurry up about it,” came his slow but icy tones as she hurriedtentwards to hurry up just as fast as she hasten well could.

“Let’s see,” he conceded on his second sight of her, “that’s awful asthe other but—O well—come here then—here is him whom is to be yourleading man in this heart-stirring and world-thrilling romance of myforthcoming creation. He is to be your leading man, but I will attendin all respects as to where he will lead you.”

Verbeena saw as she was introduced to this[Pg 135] young man that he wasexquisitely handsome, his face only saved from effeminacy by a firmchin. He was tall, lithe, slender as a wand. Although she had neverbeen introduced to him before she recognized him instantly for it wasFatty Arbuckle!

CHAPTER XIII

The Mighty Gristmille gave her no time to recover but plunged rightahead with his ethological processes concerning herself.

“The story of this picture which I am about to make in order that itmay ring down the ages is soul-grasping and spirit stirring,” said thedirector to Verbeena in a greatly animated manner, “and that’s all youneed to know about it in order to know about what you are doing. Infact, there’s no particular reason that you should know what you aredoing. But,” he grasped her chin sharply and threw her head back withan artistic touch that jarred her teeth, “it is important that you dowhat I say. And don’t you try to do anything else unless you areambitious to end your life as a canned chicken.”

“But——” stammered Verbeena who was beginning to suspect deep downafter all she perhaps was really a girl.

“But nothing—and throw away that cigarette butt too. I’m not againstcigarettes. All heroes and vamps smoke yards of ’em on orders. But inthis scene you’re a sweet thing—just a sweet thing—though God knowsif I’ll be able to prove it to the camera eye or anybody else.

“They don’t when made of paper,” said the great Gristmille. And forsome reason she saw that he suddenly gently smiled. He regardedVerbeena with a new light in his eye—one nearly of approval. “Justabout the right intelligence,” he was murmuring to himself, “out ofwhich to mold a great star. I’ll show Dave Belasco where he standsyet.”

“Now—here don’t hold that flower like it was a flagpole in aSuffragette parade! Turn your wrist a bit, give a flaunting yet atimorous grace to it and now you step over—lots of hipwork-hip-hip-hippy—O, for God’s sake, hippy! The boyish beauty’s offthe map in the scene—hip work now—hipwork—rotten—rotten—rotten[Pg 138]—hip work, hip, hip, hippy—and you givethe flower to our hero.”

“None of your damned business! Give it to him—that’s all you have todo. I’m doing all the knowing why for this outfit.

“Heaven save the day, I didn’t tell you to hit him with it! Give it tohim—timidly—timidly—you are afraid of him.”

“Is that so?” said the director severely. “But remember you are afraidofme! And don’t try to tell me you are not!”

“Don’t ever open your mouth like that when speaking! You are aheroine—not a walrus! Now then—the tender scene—giving the flowerto Rinaldo—shush, I didn’t mean to let that much out as to the storybut—well, you might as well know right now that the hero is RinaldoRingrose—that’s Mr. Arbuckle’s name in the picture.

“Now then, advance—hip, hip, hip—that’s better—a littlebetter—except that you still look like a boy in skirts, one of thosedamn pretty ones and a damn silly one at that.”

Verbeena gasped. Through her thick lashes she regarded this man of thegyratory wealth of gestures whose dominating spirit it was manifestwas to be seen. She feared—began to fear—almost started to be afraidthat the Verbeena of old was dead or nearly corpsical. Her old doughtyself, she grovelingly began to consider, was starting to decline. Herfighting stamina she felt would soon be selling for date seeds on theSahara Exchange.

And all his men gave him such blind obedience. He had a trick offlashing the sun in their eyes from his cigarette case that probablycaused them to do this, she deducted.

Two days passed before he finally decided she had given the hero therose properly. That,[Pg 140] doubtless, was why they used artificial roses. Areal one couldn’t last out a rehearsal.

But somehow, in the depths of her harrowed, deeply embittered,astonished young soul, she was humbly glad that at last she had giventhe hero the rose properly.

“That’s that,” said the High Mandarin of the Movies, “and althoughworse than bad eggs, in other things you may stand a chance ofrealizing my genius for me in the soul-stirring, magnificent,marvelous, magnitudinous work of art I am on the brink of creating.Come—come—a little loud and prolonged applause—everybody please. Ithank you.

“The next scene will call for you saying a tender farewell—keepremembering your sex, madame—with your lover under a tree. An appletree in full bloom.”

“There aren’t apple trees on the desert,” Verbeena with simply idioticindiscretion observed.

The director flung his hat on the sand, kicked it in the air, ranaround the desert on all fours for a mile, then arose majestically.

“How dare you! Can’t you see that under[Pg 141] one of those tall palm treesthe shadows wouldn’t fall right on the picture? No blossoming appletrees on the desert, eh? I guess you don’t knowme! Billy, an appletree, full blossom!”

The man addressed obeyed swiftly. In a jiffy he had brought one fromthe property aeroplane and raised it in place.

“O, Good Lord,” again and again reverberated in the ears of Verbeena,“you squint so with that snub-nosed face of yours!You—gently—gently, gently into his arms. You’re not wrestlinghim—you’re loving him—you—not that sidelong glance—a big look intohis eyes and now then—remember although we’ve only begun here, thisis the end of the picture—the final close-up—now, extend lips infull, both—stick ’em way out—that’s it—now then, kiss—kiss—holdthat—hold it—kiss, kiss, kiiiiiiiisssssssssss!”

“You know nothing of kissing! Nothing! And you’re supposed to have hadOriental training too! Here—come here—likeTHIS! Kiss—kiss—LIKE THIS!!”

A gleam of anger shot into Verbeena’s tired eyes but she waspowerless. The compelling[Pg 142]
[Pg 143]quality of this terrible creature, theforce with which he held her, the exultant, horrible, heavy, hot, and,she could feel, relentless, half savagely cruel, indifferent way hewas doing it to her!

“You must get the idea of it—the sooner the better,” he said with ahauteur that made her cringe back into her old caterpillar crouch.

“Now the next scene—and we must hurry up or the light will be bad—iswhere you are shot out of the top of a palm tree by your lover inmistake for a squirrel.

“Come now—action—Cameras!—Cameras train on that palm tree overthere. The tallest one, of course. Remember, Mrs. Amut, you falldead—a dead fall—right straight out of the tree on your face. What’sthat? Dangerous? Nonsense! And what if it is? What do you suppose weare paying you for? What’s a cracked nose for art’s sake! No morenonsense, no more words—up you go!”

Sometime later on being restored to consciousness[Pg 144] wherein she knewwhat was going on around her, she heard the great Gristmille saying:

“How dare you ask questions? Your instructions will all come in duetime. And now’s the time!

“In the next scene you fall from your horse—you’re shot or something,perhaps struck in the back with a lance—I haven’t quite made up mymind—and then you will be run over by a herd of wild Arabian horseswith Mr. Arbuckle pursuing in the hope of rescue borne by elevencamels, one for the hope and ten for Mr. Arbuckle.

“Come now—quick—and remember you are not to look frightened as thehorses—about two thousand of them—rush over you. As a heroine youare calm-eyed in the face of certain death. If you do we’ll have tokeep repeating the scene and I don’t want to give too much time to it.

“Come on now—there must be no delay—the horses are ready—at greatexpense—they are ready and now—hey, Billy, Jim, Grady,Bert[Pg 145]—quick—how dare she!—quick—catch that girl!”

But Verbeena’s early education when she used to beat all the Harrowboys at sprinting served her well.

She covered the three miles back to her own Oasis leaving all pursuersin the ruck.Time 42-1/2 seconds, but record not official.

CHAPTER XIV

Verbeena floundered wild-eyed, wide-mouthed, panting into the tent ofthe Sheik Amut Ben Butler.

She fled into the arms of Amut. She clung there girlishly trembling,so tired she was exhausted.

“O, dash it all, dash it all—that man—that man—thatterrible man!Save—save me! I’m all for you and Allah hereafter, Amut, save—saveme—save me from thatterrible man!”

He held her as he had never held her before—as he never had been ableto hold her before.

He regarded the pitiful, gasping little figure which tried to kneel athis feet, and, once more a deep and splendid chestiness came upon AmutBen Butler.

He had long wrestled with himself concerning[Pg 147] it because it waspreferable than trying to wrestle with Verbeena.

Ah, the dear head now drooping that once so proudly poised with itsjaunty clubbed curls.

A lion’s heart grew under the jelab of the old-time Boss of Oasis Nos.4, 5, 12 and 16.

“Save me, O God, save me!” gasped Verbeena anew. “That man—thatterrible man!”

“You just go away from here, every one of you, do you hear? Yes, Imean you too—you big stiff with the silver cigarette case! I thinkit’s phoney anyway. My wife doesn’t care to have anything to do withyou and I don’t either. So back to your aeroplanes and flooey!”

In horror, in abject dread Verbeena’s clubbed curls were buried in thecushions. But in a little while her distrait, white face was lifted.

“Sure, darling,” he answered. “I just went[Pg 148] out and sent that wholemoving picture outfit reeling, Kingpin and all!”

“Amut, my love,” she pleaded, “will you promise not to run away fromme any more?”

“May Allah cross my eyes and crack my teeth, if ever again I think ofit, my vibrant Verbie. I wouldn’t wanter—ever—the way you act to menow—so nice—so loving—just like a regular girlie.”

Throbs palpitant and passionate passed from one to the other—strong,vertiginous, terrific, as of an aching tooth.

“Tell me, Amut,” she said more softly than she ever knew she could,“who after all the dickens are you?”

His blue eyes sparkling like opals in their ardor, looked down uponher with a tenderness too ineffable to matriculate. But he sighed andwas silent.

“Hate the English? With you in my arms,[Pg 149] sweet Verbie? Hate theEnglish! Only I used to, Verbeena mine—used to. But——”

“I—I can hold the secret back from you no longer, throbbing jewel ofmy passion. I——”

“Am——” He doffed his turban and stood erect. He glanced fixedly intoher uplifted eyes. “The Crown Prince!”

“That partnership has been dissolved, Verbeena lieber. But as soon asPopper schnapps the manacles of Holland off him, a new and splendidproject will be put in operation by us ever magnificent and gloriousHohenzollerns. New and great fortunes await us—here on the desert,Verbeenalina! You bet your life on that! What do you think? We intendto establish[Pg 150] a chain of Imperial Breweries on the Sahara whereeverybody is always so thirsty. Isn’t that great, Verbie? How’s thatfor high?”

“Aw—the war’s over! Aw—come on, be a good little feller—I meansweetheart. Stick along.”

“The Sahara is a wide-spot and there ain’t many princesses got thefare to Reno these days, Verbeenagaborden. And, besides, didn’t youdraw up a fine Saharatic marriage contract? In lots of desert loveaffairs in the novels they jolly well—how do you like my English soswell spoken to please you?—don’t never get so far as a scrap ofpaper between them. Nothing between them—just nothing but——”

“True for you, Goldielocks,” said she, adding with a courage that waseasily tantamount to bravery, “I’d rather be respectable than a bestseller any day!

“The only ferdombt Italian who stuck when[Pg 151] the treaty busted. Popperwas going to make him King of Rome or something good like that onlyfor what happened.”

“Verbeenaheimer,” laughed the Crown Prince, “that wasn’t Mr.Hitchings. It’s Charlie of Austria. He expects to organize a circustroupe and enter Vienna with a large company of desert men, himselfdisguised as a dancing girl. Then some night they will burst from thetent and Charlie will pull his crown from under his skirts and—thereyou are! He’ll be king again—for a minute.

She snuggled to him closer and closer and closer and closer and closerthan that. Her magnificent[Pg 152] long black lashes dusted off his cheek.She smoothed back the fair hair that had been so strange to her incompany with the jet whiskers that once he had worn. She thought ofCyril Gristmille and then she clung to him like a little leech—only,you know, a warm leech.

“My prince—my prince—my Sheik Amut Never Ben King,” she sighedgustfully.

Entranced he grasped her to him fiercely his lips against her lips!Their eyes were blazing, their veins throbbing, their bodies writhingas he whispered tensely, tickling her under the chin:

Beyond the tent flap they saw the silver shaft of the magic moon andcaught glimpses of the stately palms where the dates clustered intothe years and to their ears came the sweet, silvery, insistent,impassioned twillipping of the sandworms, the neighing of the belovedhorses, the music of the mules and the vibrant sweet cough of thecamels.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SHRIEK: A SATIRICAL BURLESQUE ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions willbe renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyrightlaw means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the UnitedStates without permission and without paying copyrightroyalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use partof this license, apply to copying and distributing ProjectGutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by followingthe terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for useof the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything forcopies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is veryeasy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creationof derivative works, reports, performances and research. ProjectGutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you maydo practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protectedby U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademarklicense, especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the freedistribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “ProjectGutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the FullProject Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online atwww.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree toand accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by allthe terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return ordestroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in yourpossession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to aProject Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be boundby the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the personor entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only beused on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people whoagree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a fewthings that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic workseven without complying with the full terms of this agreement. Seeparagraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with ProjectGutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of thisagreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“theFoundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collectionof Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individualworks in the collection are in the public domain in the UnitedStates. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in theUnited States and you are located in the United States, we do notclaim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long asall references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hopethat you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promotingfree access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping theProject Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easilycomply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in thesame format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License whenyou share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also governwhat you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries arein a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of thisagreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or anyother Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes norepresentations concerning the copyright status of any work in anycountry other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or otherimmediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appearprominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any workon which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which thephrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online atwww.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work isderived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does notcontain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of thecopyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone inthe United States without paying any fees or charges. If you areredistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “ProjectGutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must complyeither with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 orobtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is postedwith the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distributionmust comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and anyadditional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional termswill be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all worksposted with the permission of the copyright holder found at thebeginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of thiswork or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute thiselectronic work, or any part of this electronic work, withoutprominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 withactive links or immediate access to the full terms of the ProjectGutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, includingany word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide accessto or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a formatother than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the officialversion posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expenseto the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a meansof obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “PlainVanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include thefull Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ worksunless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providingaccess to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic worksprovided that:

• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™ License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™ works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a ProjectGutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms thanare set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writingfrom the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager ofthe Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as setforth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerableeffort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofreadworks not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the ProjectGutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, maycontain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurateor corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or otherintellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk orother medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage orcannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Rightof Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the ProjectGutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a ProjectGutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim allliability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legalfees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICTLIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSEPROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THETRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BELIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE ORINCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCHDAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover adefect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you canreceive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending awritten explanation to the person you received the work from. If youreceived the work on a physical medium, you must return the mediumwith your written explanation. The person or entity that provided youwith the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy inlieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the personor entity providing it to you may choose to give you a secondopportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. Ifthe second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writingwithout further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forthin paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NOOTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOTLIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain impliedwarranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types ofdamages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreementviolates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, theagreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer orlimitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity orunenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void theremaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, thetrademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyoneproviding copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works inaccordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with theproduction, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any ofthe following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of thisor any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, oradditions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) anyDefect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution ofelectronic works in formats readable by the widest variety ofcomputers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. Itexists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donationsfrom people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with theassistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’sgoals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection willremain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the ProjectGutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secureand permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and futuregenerations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, seeSections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of thestate of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the InternalRevenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identificationnumber is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted byU.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and upto date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s websiteand official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project GutenbergLiterary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespreadpublic support and donations to carry out its mission ofincreasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can befreely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widestarray of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exemptstatus with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulatingcharities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the UnitedStates. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes aconsiderable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep upwith these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locationswhere we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SENDDONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular statevisitwww.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where wehave not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibitionagainst accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states whoapproach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot makeany statements concerning tax treatment of donations received fromoutside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donationmethods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of otherways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. Todonate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the ProjectGutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could befreely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced anddistributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network ofvolunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printededitions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright inthe U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do notnecessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paperedition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG searchfacility:www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg LiteraryArchive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how tosubscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Shriek: A Satirical Burlesque

THE SHRIEK
A Satirical Burlesque

Table of Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

Movatterモバイル変換

The Project Gutenberg eBook ofThe Shriek: A Satirical Burlesque

THE SHRIEKA Satirical Burlesque

Table of Contents

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

THE SHRIEK
A Satirical Burlesque