Afterwards

"By Jove, but those beggars make me hot!" Anstice threw himself back into his corner and drew a long breath. "It's always a mystery to me how people who live in hot climates are so beastly energetic! They seem to have quicksilver in their veins, not blood."

"Yet they are lethargic enough at times," returned Sir Richard, pointing to a recumbent form lying unconcernedly on the platform a few feet from their open window. "Look at that fellow sleeping there--he doesn't care in the least what goes on around him--and many times in the street one has to move off the pavement to avoid stepping on some idle beggar who's drawn the hood of his garment over his head and gone to sleep, literally among the feet of the passers-by!"

As the train proceeded on its way Sir Richard outlined the situation a little more fully to his keenly-interested companion.

"When I left, Mrs. Wood had pretty well taken up her abode with Iris," he said. "Their servants--native, of course--behaved badly, as those mongrel Arabs often do, and promptly deserted us soon as they found there was likely to be trouble ahead. All but one, a very decent chap called Hassan, who is really fond of Iris and would do a lot for her."

"The other people in the village--Bedouins, I think you said?--how do they get on with their white neighbours?"

Sir Richard's forehead suddenly puckered into a worried frown.

"Not too well," he said slowly. "The fact is, I believe they resented the European people settling there at all. As I told you, it is a tiny settlement--just thirty or so Bedouins who cultivate the land and grow vegetables, which they hawk to other villages a day's march away. They daren't openly complain, of course, but I believe they would like to drive the white folks out; especially young Garnett, who is really beating them at their own game as a clever agriculturist."

"There is never any trouble, I suppose?" Somehow Anstice felt a vague uneasiness at the thought of Iris Cheniston shut up in a desert colony among sullenly hostile neighbours.

"Oh, no, the Bedouins know the English Government won't allow any hanky-panky." Sir Richard voiced the assertion so emphatically that a tiny seed of doubt sprang up in his hearer's heart. "I confess I should rather like to see Iris and Bruce settle down to civilized life again, but this is only a holiday, and they won't be there long. Unless----" He paused and Anstice guessed only too surely the ominous nature of the pause.