The Shriek Part 7

But there was so little time for reading anything, although it must be admitted that the light was excellent for even an Edison cannot vie with that real thing which you get on the Sahara.

But to get back to Verbeena. And high time too!

For the big, brown devil had her! Right in his arms. Across his horse! And wrapped up in his great, long white cloak. Not any too white either.

She--already she was beginning to feel she was she--Verbeena Mayonnaise, was caught, trapped, trussed up in the folds of that white cloak of his, utterly helpless and like a week's was.h.!.+

It was horrible, awful, terrible and very uncomfortable.

Moreover, the humiliation of it was meticulously genuine.

And what could she do? Jiu jitsu she had but it wasn't worth a jitney to a person in a coc.o.o.n! By the same token all her gymnasium and other athletic perfections which had trained her fit to give Georges Carpentier or Jacques Dempsey a stiff battle now went blah.

Additionally, this big heap Arab chief that had snared her she knew--thrillingly knew--was hefty.

He was managing his fiery steed one-handed, beautifully, better than any stableyard virtuoso she had ever known at 'ome.

His other arm about her was like a hoop of steel.

Or a lobster's claw.

She felt pinched. And, in truth, she was. She was in the hands of the Shereef.

She tried to scream. But when she did so she only succeeded in eating a section of his flowing white robe.

She tried to think. But she might as well have been her brother, Tawdry.

She tried to smoke. And that was worst of all. Her arms were so enc.u.mbered she couldn't get at any of her cigarette cases.

Not that she was left entirely without tobacco. The Sahara lady-s.n.a.t.c.her's garments rang with the odor of it.

To add to her agony, her snippy little nose smarted keenly and she knew it must be red as a beet from sunburn. And she was helpless to get out her powder puff.

Despite her manly training, the powder-puff habit was one which she had always practiced in common with all the other Cambridge girls and fellows.

c.u.mulatively upon these conditions of despair, she began to wonder what the deuce this bally coot meant to do with her!

One thing certain was that he was seriously, perhaps permanently upsetting her scheme, her plan, her idea for junketing forth by her lonely into the desert. Such a perfectly good plan! One that would forever end her being dependent on Lord Tawdry's luck at bridge and forever relieve her of the necessity of getting Americans at the foreign hotels to stake her at games of stud poker.

Ah--it had been no idle journey--no mere whimsy! It had been designed to bring her wealth, fame, and a glory the most transcendent of her times.

The marriage of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks had suggested it.

For had she not the pulchritude of Mary?

And girlishness could be acquired.

And had she not the athletic prowess to cut the didoes of Doug?

Thus she could go into the movies--if she could get in--like a sort of one-person band.

She could double in s.e.x.

Perhaps draw two salaries of $1,500,000 a week each! One lady and one gentleman salary.

How to get in? That was the question Verbeena had demanded of herself to answer. And answer it she had.

She would disappear into the desert. She would pick up with some nice caravan at a fair rate for board and mileage and stick along with it indefinitely.

She had been careful to announce all around the Biscuit that she would be gone exactly one month.

When the month was up and no Verbeena she could depend on the Knitting Needle Dearies to start their jaws awagging concerning her and run away and leave them.

The foreign correspondents would soon get going on the cable regarding the missing young, daring, delightful, ingenuous, adventurous, amazing, remarkable, willful, bewitching bobbed haired beauty of Mayfair who had recklessly essayed to navigate the Sahara without a male rudder of her own, to journey far and alone save for an escort of wicked and lowering Arabs!

As the days pa.s.sed and the mystery deepened how the columns and columns would acc.u.mulate in the dailies and weeklies and on the timely topics movie films! The American papers particularly would rave.

Lord Northcliffe would begin by offering a good camera to any person finding trace of her and end by setting up a reward of 1,000,000 pun.

No question of it. Hearst would offer the pick of his newspapers to any reporter who could rescue her.

But if any reporters got around her caravan it would be so easy to disguise herself. She would not even have to take off her ridin'

britches. Just slip a lady jelab around her and bring one end of it up over her nose and get by.

Or if the hue and cry got the French Government so all-fired distrait that they ordered a ruthless search of the caravan harems, she had only to show up in her usual ridin' pants, paste a little blackberry jam on her lip and chin for a glossy black Oriental beard and fool 'em all.

Perhaps it would be wise to mix camel hair with the jam.

But that would be a matter to be decided upon when the emergency arose.

Of course, there might be no jam in the caravan commissary. But surely there would never be a lack of gum Arabic.

And when she, Verbeena, had thus vaulted into the top skies of notoriety, she would communicate secretly with the largest of the movie concerns.

What would they bid to star the "mystery girl of the Sahara" in a magnitudinous thriller with her own company of devil-riding, thrilling, stirring, fierce, wild, startling, arousing Arabs?

She saw herself getting a flood of checks from these sources blank of everything but signatures.

Or a procession of 2000 camels laden with the gold of the Americas if she preferred to do business that way.

"Just name your price, girlie," would inevitably be the message.

And here was this Arab rotter grabbing her around the girdle and taking her somewhere west of Suez!

And what for?

What was the idea?

Not till then did it occur to Verbeena that it might be because she was a woman. Naturally, this notion filled her with astonishment and disgust. And rage, touched most lightly with the erotic.