The Lighted Match

While Cara and Karyl had been on the second floor, a heavy Osmanli,

wearing the Sultan's uniform, had stood in the center of the room above,

looking about with keen, pig-like eyes, as he gave rapid commands to a

half dozen Arabs of villainous visage.

"You, Sayed Ayoub," he ordered, "take your pig of a self and others like

unto you into that doorway by the stairs. Remain until you hear men

enter from these two doors, facing the Infidel dogs. Then come upon them

from behind. The man is to be bound, and when evening comes--but that is

later! Still, if he resists too much--" The speaker shrugged his heavy

shoulders and made a certain gesture.

"And the woman? What of her?" The question came from a gigantic Bedouin

whose evil countenance was made the more sinister by one closed and

empty eye-socket.

Abdul Said Bey nodded. "She is to be tenderly handled," he enjoined.

"She, also, must disappear, but that shall be my care. My harem is as

silent as the Bosphorus."

There were steps on the stairs, and instantaneously the room emptied

itself and became silently dark.

When Karyl heard the hand-clapping of the decoy shopman, and saw the

responding ruffians in the opposite doors, he swiftly thrust the girl

into the spot of blacker shadow at his back, and seized the wrist of

Mohammed Abbas with a force and suddenness that wrung from him a piteous

wail.

Keeping the Turk before him, he backed toward the shadowed recess, with

the one idea of shielding Cara. But the darker spot was the door behind

which Sayed Ayoub lay in ambuscade, and as Karyl reached it, it swung

open, showing them against a background as bright as though they were

painted on yellow canvas.

With his free arm he swept Cara into the doorway, wheeling quickly in

front of her, and sent Mohammed Abbas lurching forward into the faces of

the assailants led by Sayed Ayoub. Instantly, however, his arms were

pinioned from behind by the reënforcements, and as he frantically

struggled to turn his face, in an effort to see the girl, some thick

fabric fell over his head, covering mouth and eyes, and he went down

stifled and garroted into insensibility.

Seeing the man overwhelmed and dragged through the door, Cara stood

rigidly upright, white in the intensity of voiceless outrage, until the

gigantic brute with one sightless eye and a greasy tarboosh reached

out his grimy hand and seized her. Then she sickened at the profaning

shock of his touch, and fell unconscious.