Читать книгу Caravans By Night - Harry Hervey - Страница 12

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Dana Charteris sat before a mirror in her room at the hotel and released her hair from all restraining pins. It tumbled over her shoulders in ripples of gold; little bronze-tipped waves, rather reddish, glowed with soft fire under the searching rays of the electric lamp. The face that looked back at her from the mirror, a face framed in the shimmering copperish masses, had a lustrous pallor. She returned the stare of her own image solemnly and realized, not for the first time, that while the features in the mirror were those of a girl, there were hints of maturity. The fullness of the throat, of the lips, and the sympathetic, almost poignant expression in the brown eyes.

She sighed, then hummed a little tune as she ran a comb through the thick strands. The odor of tobacco floated to her from the adjoining room where Alan was making out a report. She liked the smell; it was clean and masculine.

When she had plaited her hair into two long braids, she slipped into a dressing-gown and pattered into her brother's room in bedroom sandals.

"Alan," she said, slipping her arms about his neck, "it's so wonderful to be with you! Why, just think, two months ago I was teaching music in Bayou Latouche!"

He put his pipe aside.

"To-morrow we'll ramble about the city, through the Fort and the bazaars," he told her. "And the next day—to Lahore."

"I always think of Lahore with a picture of Kim sitting on 'Zam-zammah'."

He smiled. "Then to Peshawar and the Khyber. I've an old friend at Ali Masjid Fort and he's promised to take us through the Pass."

Then he rose, picked her up bodily and carried her into her room, placing her upon the bed.

"Good night; sleep tight!"

He kissed her, turned out the light and returned to his room.

Dana slipped out of her dressing-gown; flung it across the foot of the bed; dropped her slippers upon the floor. Then she lay back upon the pillows, watching the moonlight that streamed in through the open casement.

The wide-flung windows yielded a view of the sky and the white Indian stars. In her fancy she likened them to a string of jewels. Jewels. That word brought to her mind a picture of the looted treasures of which Alan had told her. Gems. What fascinating things! Jewels of rajahs and maharajahs, the pomp and rust of pagan rulers! Diamonds stripped from idols' eyes, and rubies and sapphires pillaged from the vaults of ancient temples! She had heard stories of the pearl fisheries of Ceylon where stones were stolen and hidden in cobras, even in human bodies.... India, mother of intrigue. She shivered.

She could not forget the copy of the Pearl Scarf of Indore. It haunted her.... Pearls.... Chavigny, a thief of international notoriety.... Alan's pen was scratching steadily on in the next room. The odor of tobacco was comforting. It made her forget the jewels of Ind; conjured in her mind a picture of the great, pillared house at Bayou Latouche. And she was still thinking of Bayou Latouche, and hearing faintly the scratch-scratch of the pen, when she fell asleep.