Margaret Pargeter Read online

  'Well, you haven't come to any harm yet, have you!' Freddy had intervened swiftly, before Ross could reply. He was pouring what she supposed was meant to be oil on troubled waters, but she suspected with sudden and frightening intuition that he was secretly rather nervous of his friends himself!

  After that Ross had hated the lot of them, and if Freddy had not held all her money she would not have stayed. He had refused to even give her her return ticket, so there was little else she could do but tag along. He must have said something to the other two about her threatening to leave as, after that, they had been a little more restrained, but it wasn't anything for which Ross felt particularly grateful.

  Taking precautions which she had never thought she would be forced to resort to, she took to wearing as much concealing clothing as she could find. Her hair, too, with little appreciation of its rare loveliness, she pinned tightly on top of her head, jamming it securely beneath her wide-brimmed hat which she didn't remove until she slept at night. She did all this so that she might pass unnoticed. It was not until they had been in the desert for almost three days that she discovered it was not her all-enveloping anorak that was distracting the attention of the two men. It was gold !

  After Denis and Lance met them at the airport they had gone immediately into Casablanca, and when Denis and Lance had left to conclude some mysterious business Freddy had shown her briefly around. He had been here before, although Ross hadn't been aware of it until that moment, when he declared idly that he must have forgotten to mention it. Ross had stared at him, curiously uneasy, while knowing subconsciously that to reproach him would merely be a waste of time. As if to make up for such an omission he had made himself extremely pleasant, but somehow Ross had not been able to put it from her mind. She had wandered with him down palm-lined boulevards, through sun-kissed parks and narrow twisting streets, noting also the many fine examples of modern planning, but somehow the brightness of the day had diminished.

  Ross had not really thought about how they would spend the next few days. If she had considered at all she had merely concluded that they would probably make for Rabat, then up the coast to Tangier, going slowly but trying to cover as much ground as sensibly possible in three weeks. When Freddy told her they were moving straight into the desert, she felt puzzled but not unduly alarmed.

  They travelled in a rough truck and the canvas-covered back seemed to get unbearably hot. It was a hundred and fifty miles to Marrakesh where the men obtained necessary equipment and permits, and many more after that before they came to Zagora and the Draa valley.

  They camped beside the Mhamid oasis on the second night. It was flat desert country with the occasional clump of mountains outlined against the sky. Next morning they packed their gear and followed a track across a waste of pebbles and rock which eventually gave way to sandy desert. They were gone, almost before daylight, and it was only then that Ross had learnt about the gold.

  Lost in the fascinating wonder of a pearly desert dawn, Ross eventually realised they had come to the end of the hard track and were travelling in what appeared to be a straight line over the Sahara. Undulating dunes stretched on either side, in what seemed a limitless, ruthless, sand-strewn wilderness. It might be exciting, but with a start she had questioned their wisdom in leaving the road.

  Freddy, who had been sitting in the back of the truck beside her, had whispered, 'Shush! They've been here before, plenty of times. We're quite safe. They both know all the ropes. So do I, for that matter, and I don't want you to start making another fuss !'

  'How do you mean?' She followed up her indignant gasp with a glance of pointed resentment.

  Freddy's lips had tightened, and he had replied with exaggerated patience as he had stretched his cramped limbs in the confined space, 'Just that—that we're quite safe I You'll see as much of the primitive desert as you've been wanting to. We might even allow you to be there when we find the gold. Lance has all the maps.'

  Incredulously Ross had stared at him. It was unbelievable, of course, the story they had about the Germans hiding gold in the Western Desert during the last war, and it never having been found. She might have laughed if she hadn't suddenly realised they were deadly serious. Even so, she found it difficult to credit that if gold had really been hidden, they imagined they had any chance of ever discovering exactly where it was.

  Later, after a day of almost non-stop driving, she had asked Freddy if he didn't think they were quite crazy. She hadn't dared suggest this to Lance as already she was learning to be wary of him and wished to become the victim of his sarcastic remarks no more than was necessary. Freddy, while not annoyed because she was anxious, brushed her bewildered protests to one side.

  'We've done a lot of research into this, Ross. We know what we're doing. We have, in fact, quite a bit of capital invested in it, so no one's going to stop us. Certainly not you, little sister !'

  'But I never asked to be involved!' she had exclaimed. 'I wonder they wanted to bring a girl?'

  'They didn't,' Freddy's shoulders had lifted in a careless shrug, 'but your money was the only way I could reach them. Why do you think I laid on the pressure, spent so many hours talking you into it? Don't tell me you'd be here if I'd left you to decide for yourself? I have you summed up all the way, Ross. Beneath that so cool exterior is an impulsive, high-spirited girl waiting to escape, but you did need that extra push.'

  Ross felt ashamed, the way he put it. How could she deny that there was a lot of truth in what he said? She had allowed herself to be persuaded. That her recklessness might prove her eventual undoing was something' she would rather not think about. Freddy must be right about the streak of wildness, otherwise she would not be here !

  Subdued by a depressing weight of self-condemnation, she had suffered in silence for almost a week. For days, far away from the popular tourist routes, they had pressed on across the desert. Ross began to suffer badly. Instead of the pleasurable journey she had envisaged, spending a little time in towns and villages, she saw nothing but sand. This she wouldn't have minded in moderate doses, but she got no real satisfaction from interminable miles of it on ever hotter, sun- scorched days! Very soon there had been very little water, scarcely enough to wash their hands, and at least one oasis on Lance's map, when they reached it, had dried out.

  Ross's fine, pale skin, exposed too suddenly to long periods of sun, became burnt. Only her hat saved her creamy complexion, but even this was turning faintly brown. Sometimes she felt the truck resembled an oven. She was not allowed to sit in the front and no air seemed to penetrate the back, the vents all being closed to keep out the infiltrating sand. It was only a small truck, and, loaded with their gear and spare petrol, the space was cramped. The heat, especially around noon, could become so bad that Ross, crouched among all the paraphernalia, often felt almost unable to breathe. Often she would have given anything to have seen the last of it, but, contrarily, when it did break down she shared her companions' dismay.

  'Oh, hell I' Lance had moaned with annoyance, as he surveyed the immobile vehicle. His eyes had swung angrily to the other two men. 'Gan't either of you useless bastards do anything? Freddy, you're supposed to be the expert. One of the reasons you're here !'

  Ross had bit back a splutter of surprise. Freddy, she could have told Lance, was expert at nothing, but the coarseness of his language warned her what to expect if he really lost his temper. She was probably better than Freddy when it came to engines. She didn't know a lot, but many a time she had fixed a small fault at home. The thought of home had made the sick feeling in her stomach worse and she had turned away.

  A moment later she had been startled to hear Freddy mumble, 'I've never professed to be infallible, old boy. Ross here is almost as good as me. Between the two of us we'll see what we can do.'

  That was how, Ross recalled painfully, she had been in such a mess when the desert men had arrived. Burst upon them would have been a better way of putting it! Grease from the engine had been plastered over her fac
e and hands, even her hair had been smeared with a liberal coating of oil. After an hour they still hadn't found the fault, the whole of the engine being too covered in sand to make diagnosis easy. A lot of small, simple tests had been almost impossible to carry out with any degree of accuracy.

  Time passed and Lance, heedless of Freddy's warning glances in Ross's direction, had got down to cursing long and loud. Ross, for once losing her own temper, had turned on him in a small fury and given him a piece of her mind. Lance, while his eyes had glinted with sudden interest, had merely raised his voice higher. Such had been the commotion that they had never heard the nomads until they were within a few yards of the truck.

  Where they had come from Ross had no idea, One moment she could have sworn there was nothing, no even a spot on the horizon, just miles of unmarked sand. The next, they were surrounded, and Freddy had gasped hoarsely.

  'Ross ! For God's sake cover yourself up ! Zip your jacket! Don't let them see you're a girl until we know who they are. They might be all right, but they don't look it to me !

  She had done her best—slid under the bonnet while she had zipped up her anorak and jammed down her hat. She supposed Freddy meant they could be gangsters. She had never seen anything like them before, with their da _ k thin faces and cruel slits of eyes. Before they had reached the desert, in the few towns and villages they had passed through, the people had been friendly and kind, net pushing, but polite and courteous, very willing, when a:ked, to give helpful advice, and treating them in much the sane way as tourists were usually treated in England.

  These men were different, she could see at a glance. They might be, but they didn't look like the native Berbers. Not that she knew if they were in Morocco any more, and the Sahara was strewn with nomadic tribes who lived by their own creeds, answerable only to themselves. For what had seemed an incredible time the men had sat silently on their thin, bony horses, just staring at them. Yet Ross had a feeling they had been following the truck for a long while and were not really surprised. Lance spoke to them in the native Arabic which he knew very well, then in French. Whether they understood or not there was no means of telling, as they had simply ignored his tentative efforts, breaking out into a gibberish language all of their own.

  The truck had appeared to interest them greatly from the start. A few of them, getting down from their horses, had begun poking about it. Imagining it was because they had never seen such a thing before, Ross was amazed when one jumped into the driving seat and switched on the ignition. His toothless leer of anticipation had swiftly turned to fury when the engine refused to start and, although Lance tried to explain, a rumble of anger swiftly swept through the gathering crowd of his friends. Several more of them left their mounts to grab hold of Ross and the three boys, shaking them roughly as they pointed with unmistakable meaning to the man at the wheel, but all Lance could continue to do was shake his head and, in turn, point to the tools they had been using trying to repair the engine.

  Ross had felt faint. The grasp on her arms had been cruel and the hot reek from the . men wrapped in their coarse burnouses had been terrible. Mindful of Freddy's warning, she had not dared struggle, but she had longed desperately to be free.

  A young lad, whom she hadn't previously noticed, was eventually summoned from the crowd and a man who was obviously the leader spoke to him sharply. In halting French that surprised them the lad had managed to convey that they wanted the truck—and that it must be made to go'!

  This had brought a fresh sally of oaths from Lance. To Ross's horror the men had immediately bound his wrists and ankles and thrust a rough gag across his mouth before flinging him carelessly on to the sand. Another time Ross might have been glad that something had succeeded in shutting him up, but now she could only stare in terror, wondering what was to happen next.

  The answer came quicker than she had anticipated, when the lad spoke again.

  'My master says he will tie you all up, if you not mend truck.'

  From then the whole affair seemed to turn into a fantastic nightmare. Feverishly Freddy and she had worked on the engine without success, while the sun had blazed down on their helpless heads. The man who drove could not fix an engine, the lad said. Ross gathered the truck would be a mark of some prestige with this wandering tribe and they were determined to have it. When it became apparent that neither Ross or Freddy could do anything the fury of the leader had been alarming. Immediately, in spite of Freddy's delaying tactics, they had been seized and bound like Lance and thrown down beside him.

  To struggle against such numbers would have been futile, but as the men caught hold of Ross, to give Freddy his due, he had attacked them wildly with a spanner, catching the leader a glancing blow over his low brow and drawing blood.

  'That's torn it!' Denis had exclaimed bitterly, as pandemonium had broken loose.

  The naked venom in the eyes of the injured man had been frightening. Ross thought he must intend leaving them lying on the sand, tasty morsels for some roaming wild animal to pick up, but after scorching hours without food or attention a large black tent had been erected and all four dragged inside. Here some respite from the blazing sun had been more than offset by the way in which they had been tied firmly to hastily driven in posts—probably as an extra precaution until it was decided what to do with them, Lance had moaned.

  Ross had been tied at one side of the tent, the boys on the other, but while they had at last been given something to eat and drink she had received nothing. If it hadn't been for the young lad who, as if feeling sorry for her, had furtively wetted her lips, she wasn't sure what she would have done. It puzzled her why she should be treated differently. When she had asked Lance, who happened to be nearest, his reply had been far from reassuring.

  'They don't know you're a girl and probably think you're to small to be of much use.'

  'Much use for what?'

  'I'm not sure yet,' he had drawled laconically, 'but whatever they have in mind for us, don't worry. I've been in worse corners than this. It usually only takes a little patience.'

  'And me?' '

  j

  'Oh, they're possibly hoping you'll die of natural causes,' he had shrugged indifferently, regardless of Freddy's annihilating glance. 'Anything as fragile as you probably scares them stiff. However, if they knew you were a girl you might get better treatment!'

  'Or then it could be worse!' Denis had laughed suggestively. 'Depends how you look at it.'

  Now, a day later, by great effort, Ross aroused herself, pushing aside the too insidious thoughts of home. Whatever was going on outside, she couldn't even guess, but some instinct persuaded her to sit up and take notice. As if unconsciously to satisfy her curiosity, their young attendant crept in, informing them, with innocent pleasure that someone had arrived and was fixing the engine, and that soon his master would be able to drive away. There was just one small matter to be decided first.

  Ross longed to ask what this small matter was, but when she opened her mouth to speak no sound came. All she could manage was a hoarse, unintelligible croak which drew a frown of rather ashamed despair from Freddy.

  Even had she managed to say anything there would have been no time for an answer, as almost immediately the flap of the tent burst open and two men came in. The boy was thrust rudely outside. The first man to enter was the leader. He was followed by another, a man so tall he was unable to stand upright but was forced to bow his head beneath the burning canvas. Ross didn't recall seeing him before. She was sure he had not been among the crowd who had watched her abortive attempt to get the truck going yesterday. He seemed a much larger type altogether than the small, wiry desert men.

  Painfully, Ross screwed up her smarting eyes, staring at him blindly as he towered above her. Through a haze she saw that his face was dark, if not so dark as his companions, and the burnous he wore, though all-enveloping, was white. He appeared to have a kind of visible strength about him, and he looked clean. Clean. . .! Lying, as she was, in so much dust and d
irt, Ross doubted if she would ever be clean again!

  She became aware that the nomad was making vigorous, enthusiastic gestures towards her with his hands, while his voice rose excitedly in a tongue she did not understand. He went so far as to poke her fiercely with his foot, as if she was a piece of merchandise he was trying hard to sell. As the thought struck her incongruously she blinked. If he was, then she knew suddenly that she would rather go with the tall man than be left here at the mercy of this other.

  But apparently the tall one had no use for her either. After silently contemplating her slender, dirt-ingrained figure he turned contemptuously away. Despair caught Ross forcibly by the throat as she was forced to acknowledge his cold rejection. He was unimpressed by the boys too, as he spared them no more than an uninterested shrug. Clearly, whatever the purpose of his visit, it wasn't to rescue them.

  Somehow Ross felt urgently that it was up to her to save them all, and she could only do this by acting now. But how? She couldn't speak to tell this newcomer she was a girl, which might have appealed to his sense of chivalry. Staring desperately at his broad back, she remembered reading somewhere—'If you can't escape your prison, try to change it for .another that might offer better opportunities.'

  There seemed sense in this, even to her slightly hysterical mind. Numbly she groped with strangely cold fingers for the zip of her anorak, rasping it down, exposing the unmistakable curves of her softly feminine body, tightly stretched against the thin, clinging material of her tee shirt.

  As the tall stranger paused briefly in the doorway, the intensity of her gaze must have prompted him to turn his dark head. As he did so his eyes went straight to her, narrowing and glittering slightly with incredulous surprise. Then, as if bereft of words, he followed the nomad leader swiftly from the tent.