H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ His mind was too active; and after half an hour of semi-drowsiness he would rise from the bed and go out into the street, or seek the roof terrace where there was generally a breeze. From here one caught a glimpse of the dun desert to the south and to the north a,glimpse of the Mediterranean, now polished like a glittering shield in the flat calms, now like a tray of smashed sapphires under the breeze, while, between the desert and the sea and all around, the rooftops of Sarafax lay in the baking sunlight girdled by the changeless palms. ”

“ Mason had often passed her coming in or going out, yet he had never saluted her. She held herself quite apart from the lodgers of the house as though she were ashamed of the fact that old Succi let apartments, yet she knew Logan. Logan had repeatedly tried to make love to her. He might just as well have tried his attractions on the Sphinx. With an intuitive knowledge of men she despised him, yet she never repulsed him, accepting him as one of her numerous admirers, nothing more. ”

“ Ringwell three days later departed with the Thirlwall, and Mason found himself alone to face the world and make good in a town where lying is a virtue, robbery a trade, and assassination by poisoned knife or coffee mixed with finely chopped hair, an art—one of those passionate arts that flourish only in the sun. ”

“ A street without a pane of glass, a street without house windows, a street of dazzling light and hat-black shadows, a street where a thousand blazing years have baked the color of the sun into tile and brick and to which the caravans had brought their goods in the time of the Sultan Selim, camel after camel, with bales of goods and bearded merchants, brothers and images of the traffickers of to-day. ”

“ Mail boats don’t run to Sarafax, only freighters to unload Manchester goods and hardware and other products of the west, and to take on esparto grass and great bales of dates and hammered copperware and carpets. There is no harbor, the cargo being taken ashore and brought off in boats manned by plum-colored men, half naked, and with eyes screwed up against the blaze of the blue Mediterranean.
Mason took passage on the Thirlwall, a seven-hundred-ton Black Star boat with a rust-red funnel. ”

“ As Mason sat sipping his absinth Logan entered the café, looking white and shaky. Logan had a profound and intuitive knowledge of women. Some men are like that. Perhaps they have been women themselves in some recent, previous incarnation. When he had given Giovanna the letters that morning his head had been still full of the fumes of last night’s alcohol, yet clear enough to be able to reckon what Giovanna would probably do. ”

“ When evening came on, he returned to the Café Abesslem and dined; then he left the place and walked down the street toward the desert gate.
It was now that the battle between the two alternatives, cards or flight, really began. To play hard and high and risk everything to gain everything, or to slink away defeated but still with eight hundred francs to help him in escape.
To lose was to be absolutely cut off and ruined; to win was to be saved. His fingers clutching and turning over the gold pieces in his pockets seemed endowed with thought. ”

“ In a way this was so, for that week old Peter Mason had incurred large money losses over a speculation in wood pulp, and the telegram that brought him to Cambridge brought him primed like a gun.
He put up at the Bull, received the sentence of the university on James—rustication only, as the marked cards were proved to be the personal property of Janis—and had an interview with the president of Prince’s. Then, like a business man, he went into accounts and the terrible pile of bills unpaid. The tradesmen had got wind of the mischief. ”

“ So he forgathered with Logan in the house of Abesslem, and drank with him in the house of Succi, and discovered one day that Logan came to see him very often not on his, Mason’s, account, but on account of Giovanna Succi, the daughter of his landlord.
Now this girl was a most astonishing figure, quite unique, even in that town of strange figures, Sarafax. She was beautiful. Born of a Spanish mother and an Italian father her beauty was a blend of the characteristics of each race. ”

“ North of forty-five degrees people don’t know anything about love—no more than they do about mangoes. I mean the real thing, the thing that makes folks dig knives into one another and poison their rivals. North of forty-five degrees Cupid goes about with cold feet, in a Burberry, with an account book. South of it he goes about naked with a dagger.”
James Mason got up and fetched down an atlas. His rooms at Prince’s were furnished quietly but with an eye for effect and with excellent taste, which he had full liberty to indulge.
Old Peter Mason supplied the money. ”

“ There are primitive and most curious social circles in Sarafax, and there are no shades of morality. There is only morality, pure and simple, or abomination. Love with Giovanna meant marriage, and this fact was very presently engraved upon the mind of Mason, as was also the fact that to carry on a flirtation with this strange being would be a business fraught with danger. ”

“ She seemed a being not only of another race, but of another century, and there was something about her that almost repelled him. This vague repulsion came, perhaps, not from herself so much as from her attire, so outré and bizarre. The little dagger, the silver bangles on her arms, the brilliancy of her robe ”

“ Five minutes later James found himself in the street, feeling like a man who had fallen downstairs. That night, having borrowed some money from Tyrebuck, he started for London. Arrived there he took rooms, and lost no time in writing a long letter to Jane. It was promptly returned by Hogg. Then a fortnight later, finding the situation impossible, he made peace with his father, and these were the terms of peace as dictated by Peter:
“You have had your chance and thrown it away and disgraced yourself. I'll have no more of Cambridge, but I'll make you an offer. ”

“ Then Count Janis strolled in with a couple of other men. Cards were produced and Tyrebuck, who had no taste for gambling, took his departure.
Janis was an “out-coll” man, one of the foreign brigade, an Austrian nobleman with rooms in Hill Street and a big pile of debts. At cards, when he lost, which was seldom, he gave checks on the Crédit Lyonnais. He was reckoned wealthy, but the university already had its eye on him.
He had developed the gambling instinct in Mason. ”