Monty nodded.

“If we can find her and get word to the consul, that ’ud be one more lever for him to pull on.”

“D’you suppose they’d dare molest an Englishwoman?” I asked, with the sudden goose-flesh rising all over me.

“She’s American,” said Will between purposely set lips.  But I did not see that that qualified the unpleasantness by much.

One of the Armenians, whom Rustum Khan had finished questioning, went and stood in Kagig’s way, intercepting his everlasting sentry-go.

“What is it, Eflaton?”

“My wife, Kagig!”

“Ah!  I remember your wife.  She fed me often.”

“You must come with me and find her, Kagig—­my wife and two daughters, who fed you often!”

“The daughters were pretty,” said Kagig.  “So was the wife.  A young woman yet.  A brave, good woman.  Always she agreed with me, I remember.  Often I heard her urge you men to follow me to Zeitoon and help to fortify the place!”

“Will you leave a good woman in the hands of Turks, Kagig?  Come—­come to the rescue!”

“It is too bad,” said Kagig simply.  “Such women suffer more terribly than the hags who merely die by the sword.  Ten times by the count —­during ten succeeding massacres I have seen the Turks sell Armenian wives and daughters at auction.  I am sorry, Eflaton.”

“My God!” groaned Will.  “How long are we four loafers going to sit here and leave a white woman in danger on the road ahead?” He got up and began folding his blankets.

The Armenian whom Kagig had called Eflaton threw himself to the floor and shrieked in agony of misery.  Rustum Khan stepped over him and came and stood in front of Monty.

“These men are fools,” he said.  “They know exactly what the Turks will do.  They have all seen massacres before.  Yet not one of them was ready when the hour set for this one came.  They say—­and they say the truth, that the Turks will murder all Europeans they catch outside the mission stations, lest there be true witnesses afterward whom the world will believe.”

“But a woman—­scarcely a white woman?” This from Will, with the tips of his ears red and the rest of his face a deathly white.

“Depending on the woman,” answered Rustum Khan.  “Old—­unpleasing—­” He made an upward gesture with his thumb, and a noise between his teeth suggestive of a severed wind-pipe.  “If she were good-looking —­I have heard say they pay high prices in the interior, say at Kaisarieh or Mosul.  Once in a harem, who would ever know?  The road ahead is worse than dangerous.  Whoever wishes to save his life would do best to turn back now and try to ride through to Tarsus.”

“Try it, then, if you’re afraid!” sneered Will, and for a moment I thought the Rajput would draw steel.

“I know what this lord sahib and I will do,” he said, darkening three or four shades under his black beard.  “It was for men bewitched by gipsy-women that I feared!”