Adventure Magazine Cover — page 58: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

52 | cloth flap behind his helmet that forms a compromise between western smartness and eastern comfort, strode into the room and bore down on us. He invited us out into the corridor with an air that suggested we would better not refuse, and we filed out after him in an atmosphere of frigid dis- approval. Mabel was honestly scared half out of her wits now. Not even the smiles of the hotel proprietor in the doorway reassured her, nor his deep bow as she passed. She was even more scared, if that were possible, when two officers, obviously of high rank, came forward in the hall to greet her, and one addressed her in Arabic as Colonel Lawrence. Luckily one oil lamp per wail was doing duty in place of electric light, or there might have been an awkward incident. She had presence of mind enough to disguise her alarm by a fit of coughing, bending near- ly double and covering the lower part of her face with the ends of the headdress folded over. The officers had no time to waste and gave their message to Grim instead. “The Emir Feisul is astonished, Jimgrim, that Colonel Lawrence and you should visit Damascus without claiming his hospitality. We have two autos waiting to take you to the palace.” Well; the luggage didn’t amount to much; Narayan Singh brought that down in a jiffy; and when I went to settle with the hotel-keeper one of the Syrian officers interfered. “‘These are guests of the Emir Feisul,”’ he announced. ‘Send the bill to me.” We were piled into the waiting autos. Mabel, Grim and I rode in the first one, with the Syrian officers up beside the driver; Jeremy, Narayan Singh and Hadad fol- lowed; and we went through the dark streets like sea-monsters splashing over shoals, un- seen I think—certainly unrecognized. The streets were almost deserted and I didn’t catch sight of one armed man, which was a thing to marvel at when you consider that fifty thousand or so were supposed to be concentrated in the neighborhood, with conscription working full-blast and the foreign consuls solely occupied in procuring exemption for their nationals. ‘ It wasn’t my first visit to a reigning prince, for if you travel much in India you’re bound to come in contact with numbers of them; so I naturally formed a mental pic- Adventure ture of what was in store for us, made up from a mixture of memories of Gwalior, Baroda, Bikanir, Hyderabad, Poona and Bagdad of the Arabian Nights. It just as naturally vanished in presence of the quiet, latter-day dignity of the real thing. 426] THE palace turned out to be a villa Sega on the outskirts of the city, no big- a well-to-do commuter’s place at Bronxville or Mount Vernon. There was a short semi- circular drive in front, with one sentry and one small lantern burning at each gate; but their khaki uniforms and puttees didn’t dis- guise the fact that the sentries were dark, dyed-in-the-wool Arabs from the desert country, and though they presented arms, they did it as men who make concessions without pretending to admire such foolish- ness. I wouldn’t have given ten cents for an unescorted stranger’s chance of getting by them, whatever his nationality. Surely there was never less formality in a king’s house since the world began. We were ushered straight into a narrow, rather ordinary hall, and through that into a sit- ting-room about twenty feet square. The light was from oil lamps hanging by brass chains from the curved beams; but the only other Oriental suggestions were the cush- ioned seats in each corner, small octagonal tables inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and a mighty good Persian carpet. Narayan Singh and Jeremy, supposedly being servants, offered to stay in the hall, but were told that Feisul wouldn’t approve of that. ‘Whatever they shouldn’t hear can be said in another room,” was the explanation. So we all sat down together on one of the corner seats, and were kept waiting about sixty seconds until Feisul entered by a door in the far corner. And when he came he took your breath away. It always prejudices me against a man to be told that he is dignified and stately. Those adjectives smack of too much self- esteem and of a claim to be made of different clay from most of us. He was both, yet he wasn’t either. And he didn’t look like a priest, although if ever integrity and right- eousness shone from a man, with their effect heightened by the severely simple Arab robes, I swear that man was he. Just about Jeremy’s height and build— rather tall and thin that is—with a slight MICLOOOKS ger and hardly more pretentious than | (C@