“But my friends knew where I was going”—­slowly the mind turned back to trace the blind, careless steps of that afternoon.  “At least he said he’d leave a note—­Oh, what a fool I was!” she broke off to gasp, seeing how that forethought of his, that far-sighted remark, had prevented her from leaving a note of her own.  And she remembered now, with flashing clearness, that upon her arrival he had carelessly inquired if she, too, had left a note of explanation.  How lightly she had told him no!  And what unguessed springs of action came perhaps from that single word!  For so cleverly had the trap been swiftly prepared that if anything had gone wrong, if anyone had become aware of her intentions, it could have passed off as a visit and she would have returned to her hotel prattling joyously of her wonderful glimpse into the seclusion of Turkish aristocracy!

“But the soldier with the bayonet,” she said aloud.  “There was one on the stairs.”

“A servant.”

“Oh, if I had passed him!”

“You could not—­he would run you through on a nod from Hamdi.  They watch that stairs always—­day and night.”

Day and night—­and she was alone here, in this grim palace, alone and helpless and forsaken....  What were her friends thinking about her?  Where did they think she was?  Her thoughts beat desperately upon that problem, trying to find there some ray of hope, some promise that there were clues which would lead them to her, but she found nothing there but deeper mystery and fearful surmise.  He was clever enough to cover his traces.  No one had known of his connection with her departure....  Perhaps he had sent them some false and misleading message like the one he had sent her....  What were they thinking?  What did they believe?  This was Friday night, and she had been gone since Thursday afternoon.

In that moment she saw with merciless clarity the bitter straits that she was in.

“Oh, he is a devil!” her companion was reaffirming with an angry little half-whisper sibilant with fury.  “Look how he treat me—­me, Fritzi Baroff!  You do not know me?  You do not know that name?  In Vienna it is not so unknown—­Oh, God, I was so happy in Vienna!” She stopped, her breast heaving, with the flare of emotion, then went on quickly, with suppressed vehemence, “I was a singer—­in the light opera.  I dance, too, and I was arriving.  Only this year I was to have a fine role—­and it all went, zut, it all went for that man!  I was one fool about him, and his dark eyes and his strange ways....  I thought I had a prince.  And he worship me then, too—­he follow me, he give me big diamonds....  So he take me here—­it was to be the vacation!”

She gave a strangling little laugh.  Arlee was listening with a painful intensity.  She was living, she thought, in an Arabian nights.