Читать книгу The Road to Bagdad - George Fort Gibbs - Страница 3
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Captain Simpson’s “Get Together” dinner the second night out was to answer many questions on board the Orizaba. For the number of travelers on the ship was small and, before the dinner was half over and the wine half drunk, confetti and paper caps made each person look as much of a fool as the next one and accomplished their purpose, turning a lot of offish and more or less sophisticated passengers into a select company of good fellows ready to mellow into friendship.
Amid a bedlam of whistles, tin horns, and toy drums, Camilla Dean struck a man at the Captain’s table squarely in the back of the head with a yellow balloon and he responded by draping her with strings of colored paper. Names were exchanged, and cigarettes, and she found that he called himself Joseph Asad and that he was going to Syria, after a business trip to the United States. His manners and his English, she found, were excellent. He would do, she thought, to while away the voyage, provided Michael Gay, the American engineer who looked very stalwart, or the fellow they called Slim McManus, who looked very amusing, didn’t pan out.
Every night after that there were cards and dancing and almost every night Joseph Asad and Camilla went out on deck to enjoy the pale wintry moon. He told her of his boyhood in Damascus, of his two years in a British university which he detested. More than anything he loved Syria, his native land, where his father was an important man. He had lived a great deal in the desert and knew the Middle East, apparently, as she knew the palm of her hand. He talked very well but was reticent about the problems of the Orient in which Camilla had recently become interested.
“Of course you must know all about the situation in Palestine,” she suggested.
It was as though she had immediately chosen a subject taboo for he seemed to grow compact for a long moment, only watching the weaving wake of the moonlight on the water.
“What do you want me to tell you?”
“Just what the Arabs are going to do. Every day there are accounts of terrorism, rioting, shooting, bloodshed—”
“How should I know?”
“There’s only one end to that sort of thing.”
He had put on a sudden reserve again and would not make a further comment.
“I’m so disappointed in you,” she said. “You have an air of knowing so much and you say so little.” She glanced at him keenly. “You are very much less stupid than you want me to think you are.”
It was not indeed a night for the discussion of politics between two persons, one of whom was a young woman, adventurous and romantic, and the other a young man, silent and mysterious. And the sudden appearance of Mrs. Kitty Trimble sweeping like a gale down the gangway with Michael Gay, Slim McManus, Nicholas Stephanov, and the Italian, Torelli, made a diversion which broke the spell.
Kitty Trimble was blondish, florid, with a slenderness that bulged here and there. She had been twice divorced and was looking for Number Three.
“Just down from the wireless room,” she announced. “More ships sunk on the coast of Spain—just where we’re going—”
“And so what?”
“And there’s a piratical sub nosing around the Balearics,” Slim drawled. “Won’t wear any colors. I hope the British get it—”
“Okay by me,” said Michael Gay.
“Too much to hope for—”
“And then in Palestine,” Gay added, “the ship’s bulletin to-morrow A. M. will report that Arab terrorists have shot and killed two British officials, one a commissioner.”
“You mustn’t believe all you read, my friend,” Torelli said. “They might have just been brigands.”
Kitty Trimble, Stephanov, and Slim moved away for a turn around the deck. Michael Gay and Torelli remained to break up the tête-à-tête.
Gay was bound for Beirut, bringing in the hold of the Orizaba a large bus of his own design which was to establish a new line of rapid communication across the desert between Damascus and Bagdad. It was to be a kind of trial trip but Gay, who was to drive, had so much confidence in his own machine that he had invited some of the passengers to take the journey with him.
“You know, I’ll be counting on you, Camilla. Straight across the Syrian desert.”
“Isn’t it rather risky in times like these?” Torelli’s soft voice ventured.
“I’d like a good crowd from the ship,” Gay went on. “I want my trial trip under full service conditions. Good advertising. I’ve talked to the tour director. I’m hoping his company will put it on the regular itinerary.”
“I see,” Asad laughed. “You want them all to see how the poor benighted heathen live.”
Torelli smoked in silence, his gaze on Camilla.
“It is a considerable danger if you take these lovely ladies as passengers,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be a mistake to run the risk of getting the United States mixed up in Near Eastern affairs?”
“That’s up to the lovely ladies,” laughed Camilla.
“You add courage to your other charms, Miss Dean.”
· 2 ·
The idea of this trip to the City of the Arabian Nights had taken hold of the imagination of at least six of the tourists. Camilla Dean and her cousin Josephine Holloway, Kitty Trimble and Janet Priestly, a little school-teacher from Vincennes, Indiana, who had never been out of her own country and had now determined to drink deep of life while the drinking was good. Slim McManus thought it was right down his alley, as he was on his way to Basra and could fly to his destination in a few hours.
Slim amused Camilla a great deal. He was six feet four in height and when the seas were rough steadied himself by holding on to the ceiling beams of the saloon. He was always ready for a laugh or a quarrel. He seemed to take the troubles in the Near East lightly, as if they were of less consequence than a minor strike at the oil-wells. There was a fellowship between Michael and Slim based on their common love of adventure in strange lands. Michael Gay had worked on dams and irrigation projects in rough countries and Slim had been everything from a telegraph lineman to boss of a construction gang. He liked fighting immensely and was irked by the peace of the Atlantic crossing. He had fallen hard for Camilla and didn’t much care for Torelli who used the dark tones of his voice and the darker glances of his eyes when talking to the girl.
So when Camilla reported a conversation that she had overheard the night before, Slim was ready to believe the worst of any man he didn’t like. Three men had sat in deck chairs just outside the French windows of Camilla’s stateroom, she said, and conversed in lowered tones. Camilla, her light out, happened to be awake, and listened. She did not recognize the voices of the men, for they spoke in eager whispers, but they were so close to her window that she could hear distinctly what they said. Their talk concerned the escape of Osman Khali, the nominal leader of the Arabs in Palestine, from the Dome of the Rock where the British had placed him under guard. She heard a hoarse whisper denounce the British for the partition of Palestine which favored the Jews, and the other voices spoke of the destruction of the British Mandate in Palestine and Egypt.
“If Barker could only be gotten out of the way,” she heard one man say.
“Ah, yes. That is easy to say. But how—where?”
“Here on this ship,” the other voice replied. “He comes aboard at Marseilles. He must be put out of the way before we reach Alexandria.”
Then, Camilla said, people passed along the gangway, the conversation ceased, and the three men, as though suddenly aware of the open window, moved away and were heard no more.
What did it all mean? Camilla didn’t know, nor did Slim. Who was Barker? British, of course ...
“Dirty doings at the cross-roads,” Slim said, wagging his head. “Barker is a big shot out here. We’ll have to do something about this, Camilla.”
It was therefore with some curiosity that they watched their new traveling companion come up the gangway from the sheds at Marseilles followed by two porters with heavy English traveling-bags. Unaware of the attention he had caused, Mr. Barker went at once to Captain Simpson’s suite below the bridge where he remained until the dinner gong, appearing at last at the Captain’s table dressed for the evening.
Ronald Barker was perhaps an inch under six feet, well proportioned with a slenderness that seemed to have come from constant exercise and activity. This impression was further enhanced by the darkness of his skin, a ruddy brown of sun-tan too frequently renewed to bleach easily. He had a good profile, cheek-bones high and clean-cut. He had a British accent but the informal manner of an American. They found out later that he had been born in New York of an American mother and had gone to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship. He gave the impression of great capability and strength in repose. If this was the man Camilla’s unknown shipmates were conspiring against, he seemed well able to look out for himself.
As though aware of the question in Camilla’s mind, Captain Simpson brought the traveler over to the table Camilla shared with her cousin, Josephine Holloway, where Slim and Michael had brought their coffee-cups. Mr. Barker had an appropriate phrase and a ready smile and Michael Gay understood in a moment that he knew his way about the world, especially about Syria and Palestine, even better than Gay did.
He was interested in Gay’s projects but not enthusiastic in his approval of them.
“There isn’t much that goes on in Arabia that England hasn’t heard about,” he said. “This machine of yours may be marvelous but it seems to me the time is not right for such an experiment.”
Asked what he meant, Mr. Barker said that the affairs of Syria and Palestine were too unsettled for new ventures in transportation.
“That’s what I tell Camilla, Mr. Barker,” Josie put in, “but she wants to take this trip to Bagdad and to drag me along with her.”
“The real spirit of adventure,” Barker said with a glance of admiration at Camilla. “Any one can sit in a deck chair or ride a camel to the Pyramids, can’t he, Miss Dean?”
“Do you think there will be real trouble in Arabia?” she asked him.
“No one but Allah knows and Allah will not tell. But if I were to give you the impression that it would be unwise to go you would only become more determined. Is that not so?”
“Perhaps we American girls are only born to make trouble for ourselves—”
“And for others,” added Slim, with a conciliatory grin.
