The Sword of Fate by Dennis Wheatley Read Free Book Online

the whole time?”
    “I am afraid so,” she nodded her head vigorously. “You see, Alcis couldn’t leave me and I couldn’t leave her in case someone saw either of us riding alone. If Mother heard of it we’d get into frightful hot water for exposing ourselves to the possibility of unwelcome attentions.”
    This sounded fantastic on the lips of the young woman who was just reaching maturity in the year 1940, but the crumbling walls, the sun-baked paths and the fronds of the palm trees etched against the moonlit sky reminded me that I was in Egypt, the land of the dope-pedlar and the whiteslaver. In any country where the races are mixed the men naturally take every precaution to protect their women from any form of interference. One could not blame the Greek colony for the strict chaperonage that they imposed upon their women.
    “All right,” I agreed reluctantly; “but that means it will be more than twenty-four hours before I’ll be able even to see you again.”
    She laid a soft hand on mine. “I’m so sorry, but there’s nothing that I can do—nothing. You must wait till Thursday morning and you must go now, because I’m tired; happy, but so tired.”
    Hand in hand we walked slowly to the bottom of the garden. I made our final embrace last as long as possible, but at length she broke away from me and pushed me through the low door into the street. I was still standing there, breathless and a little bewildered, after she had locked it, and I had lost the sound of her retreating footfalls along the sandy path.
    Next morning I slept late and whiled away the rest of the day as well as I could by writing Daphnis a letter. In it I said all the absurd things that lovers always say about the object of their devotion and it rambled on for about fourteen pages, but I did not dare to post it in case, when Daphnis received it, her mother happened to be in the room, as a letter of such length would have been certain to provoke awkward questions.
    I had arranged with the hall-porter, about a horse and to be called early on the Thursday, so, when I arrived downstairs at half past seven, I found quite a presentable hack being held by an Arab boy ready for me. Twenty minutes later I was at Stanley Bay and it was not long before I saw two girls clad in white silk shirts and jodhpurs riding towards me, one of whom, by the outline of her dark hair and the set of her head on her shoulders, I knew at once as Daphnis.
    They pulled up some fifty yards away from me, and upon Daphnis’ waving her hand I rode over to join them. The cousin, Mademoiselle Alcis Diamopholus, to whom I was introduced, was a plump, round-faced girl with dull reddy-brown hair and small bright dark eyes, rather like a monkey’s.
    She was obviously thrilled to the marrow at being made Daphnis’ confidante about her clandestine acquaintance with aBritish officer, and positively bursting with curiosity about myself. I did my best to answer her questions politely, while inwardly cursing her presence, which made any chance of private conversation with Daphnis out of the question, at all events for the moment, and as the three of us rode along together the talk inevitably turned upon the war.
    We had not been on the subject long before I was forced to realise that the two girls were anything but pro-British in their sympathies. I suppose I should not have been surprised, as having mixed so much with foreigners I was much more conscious than the majority of Englishmen that most of them are very far from regarding Britain as the benevolent, disinterested champion of freedom and democracy that we all like to believe her.
    Great numbers of them are fully convinced that our policy is entirely inspired by selfish avarice, and that we should never go to war at all if we were not forced to protect those huge Imperial territories from which we draw our riches while keeping them half-empty and barring all less fortunate peoples out of them. Others, while admitting our