RHODA FAIR: The Classic Novel of a Woman at the Crossroads by Clarence Budingtion Kelland

Author:Clarence Budingtion Kelland [Kelland, Clarence Budingtion]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-12-06T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

HANA EFFENDI'S anxiety drew him to the one spot in Nazareth where danger might reside—the house occupied by the man Abdullah. With Paul Dare he walked down that street which from the heart of the Moslem quarter, commencing not far from the old Kaimmakam, or residence of the Turkish governor, passes through the city of the Greeks until it becomes the road to Acre. This portion of the town is a section shaped like a flat iron, its base being the street down which the men walked, its apex a corner of the Mohammedan burial-ground and that cluster of boys' school buildings which lie adjacent to the house of the Orthodox Greek bishop. Hana hoped Rhoda's footsteps had not bent thither, because there lurked in the back of his semi-Oriental mind a thought, a possibility which he did not wish to verify. . . . But it was to receive verification. As they rounded the jog at the lower corner of the flat iron he seized Paul's arm and drew him back, for a dim light suddenly had glowed ahead as a door was opened, and a woman's figure emerged from a house. Hana Effendi knew that house.

"It is she," he said, "and she must not see us—here."

"What? Not see us? What do you mean?"

"Be still. She comes."

In a moment she passed them, walking rapidly, but the police inspector kept firm fingers upon Paul's arm until she was lost in the darkness. "Now," he said, "we can follow."

"What is it? Why should we not walk with Miss Fair?"

"I think," said Hana Effendi, "she would not desire it. No. Most certainly not. . . . Oh, I have bones very sensitive to trouble, and they have ached like—like all-git-out. But they did not ache enough for this."

"Please explain yourself. You are cryptic."

"Are you," Hana Effendi demanded, abruptly, "a good friend to Miss Fair?"

"I am."

"You knew her before she came to this country?"

"I crossed the ocean with her."

"Ah. . . . Then perhaps you know who she is?"

"Do you?" Paul asked, startled.

"I know."

There was a silence, tense, unpleasant. "Then," said Paul, "this walk tonight was on business—your business?"

"No. But it may have to become so."

"Are they—has it become official? Extradition proceedings?"

"My knowledge is not official. I have papers of New York. The story of Miss Fair was in one of them. That is how I knew."

"And what are you going to do?" Paul's voice was calm, but his mind was a tumult.

"Do? About that affair in America? But nothing. It is no concern of mine—until orders come. . . . But what happens in my district is my concern. She has just come out from a house it was not good to enter."

"What house?"

"A house I have been watching. But is hard to understand. I am not able to believe it—that she is mix up with this son of pigs. I think I must talk to her like a Dutch uncle."

Paul was thinking of Jaunty Bailey and the dead policeman. He tried not to think of that dreadful moment, the suddenness of that death, but he could not avoid it.

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