The Key West Citizen

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 8, 1933.

GIANT DUST
by
Percival Christopher Wren

SYNOPSIS: Herr Schlacht, apparently a German agent plotting with the Kaid of Mekazzen in his Citadel, proves to Margaret Maligni that he knows more about her precarious position in the Citadel than she herself does. Margaret, smarting under insulting advances from Raisuli, son of the Kaid, distrusts Jules, her husband, and is disliked by all the Moorish element in the castle. She demands to know what Herr Schlacht is doing in Mekazzen.

Chapter 27
FRIENDLY PLOTTERS

"I am watching the situation, my dear young lady. There are going to be developments. This waste, uncultivated country, these savage barbarous people who are two hundred, two thousand, years behind the times, have got to adjust themselves, or be adjusted to the advance of civilization, the march of progress. Europe must expand. The colonizing nations of Europe, save your own great country, which has already colonized half the world, have their eyes on Northern Africa—Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Morocco, a potential granary, a mine of wealth, is too near to hungry Europe to be allowed to lie fallow."

"Is that the motto of civilized and enlightened Europe—might is right—then?" asked Margaret. "It seems a little hard on the Moors, doesn't it, that a European nation should invade their country simply because it covets it, and is strong enough to take it?"

"And what about when the Moors coveted European countries and were strong enough to take them? Didn't they invade Italy, France and Spain, time after time? Weren't they the curse of the whole Mediterranean? Didn't they conquer Spain and rule most of it with a rod of iron for five hundred years? But do not let us talk politics now. Let us agree to be friends, and to help each other, shall we?"

"I shall be grateful for your help, Herr Schlacht, if you will give it, should I need it," replied Margaret. "And I shall be glad to help you in any way that I can. But I can't help you by betraying confidences, or repeating things I hear, or anything of that sort. And now I must, and I will, go. So please show me the way out, or I'll try and return by the way I came."

Herr Schlacht bowed. "Come with me, Fraulein," he said. "You and I will talk some more, isn't it? You and I are going to be very good friends and help each other very much."

A few minutes later, suddenly weary in mind and body—weary as never before had she been in all her life—frightened, unhappy and puzzled, Margaret reached her room. She would have been yet more puzzled could she have overheard the conversation then being carried on between Herr Schlacht and his squint-eyed "servant" in the room allotted to the former, particularly as the two men sat down together and talked, drank coffee and smoked cigarettes, in the style of friends and equals rather than that of master and servant.

"Oh, no. Utterly and absolutely incorruptible. You couldn't buy a word from her with a diamond tiara, a rope of pearls and a million francs."

"I was afraid so. In fact, I felt perfectly certain that it was a case of nothing doing—on those lines. But she might be extremely useful if you worked on her fears, or rather used her very legitimate fears to make an offensive and defensive alliance," mused the "very clever Arab" who was playing the part of servant to Herr Schlacht.

"Yes, that was my idea," agreed Herr Schlacht.

"She'd be absolutely staunch to her husband so long as he played the game by her, but I fancy she'd be on the merciless side if he let her down badly, that is to say, if she found out that he was unfaithful to her, as of course he is..."

"Still more so," observed the other man, "if he even seems to take the line of complacent husband when Raisuli pesters her."

"Yes, if we can step in just when and where her husband fails her and the breach between them is sufficiently irreparable we might get her—through her gratitude and sense of self-preservation... She's the type who'd sell you nothing, but give you everything—if you deserved it."

"How far do you think she's in the know?"

"Do you mean with regard to the general situation, the treachery of the Malignis or our identity?"

"I'm perfectly certain she knows absolutely nothing—except what I told her—that war might come this way. I'd stake my life on it that she hasn't the vaguest idea that Papa Judas Iscariot Pedro Maligni and his precious son think they are in with us and would betray the Kaid to Germany—or the highest bidder. Also I'm equally sure that she takes us at our face value."

"And yours, my lad, is a face of great value when you take your teeth out and put that squint on," added Herr Schlacht.

"What makes you so certain that the girl knows nothing?"

"Psychology, my boy, psychology. And my great and priceless gift of character-reading. Do you think that girl would stay here for one day if she knew what the Maligni game is? Do you think a girl like that would be a party to such villainy or any villainy at all? Look at her face, man. She's a transparently honest, honorable, typical Anglo-Saxon girl of her class. If I'm mistaken in her, I'll resign from the secret service on the day I discover the fact."

"I agree. But what'll she do if she does discover anything? Or suppose she finds her husband can't or, for his own good reasons, won't protect her from Raisuli?"

"Try to bolt. Go back home, if she could—which, of course, she couldn't."

"We don't want to lose her while there's a chance of her joining forces with us."

"No. It's a difficult situation. She'd be absolutely invaluable if she'd come in with us completely. We could tell her everything, and she could show the Malignis that she knew—pretending that she'd guessed it or overheard something. She could also pretend to stand in with them and demand to be admitted to all their councils and plans and secrets. But the devil of it is the moment we told her the facts she'd be sick with horror and disgust at their treachery and would simply go—and die in the desert."

"You don't think she'd be out for punishing them, having revenge on her husband for bringing her here and keeping her in the dark?"

"No. The Anglo-Saxon of her class and type doesn't react in that way. They don't go in for vengeance. Her one wish would be to clear out and have no more to do with him."

The two men smoked awhile in silence.

"As you say, we'd feel a lot safer if she would spy for us, for I trust the good Pedro just about as far as I could throw him with my left hand."

"And not as far as I could kick him with my right foot," agreed the other. "The probabilities are that they are to be trusted in this particular matter because the stakes are so big. But if there were another purchaser in the market with a longer purse..."

"The longer his purse the shorter our shrift."

"Yes," agreed Herr Schlacht, "or if the wily old Kaid got on to their game we should join them in some really choice novelty in the not-too-sudden death line."

"All of which makes for the probability of honest conduct on the part of those honorable Maligni gentlemen."

"Yes." Herr Schlacht added: "I'll send you to the English girl's room with notes from time to time, making appointments so that I can talk with her as often as possible... It won't be long before she'll be remembering my offer of help and friendship."

"Yes, it wouldn't do to be caught talking with her. You might get her to come here later on, when you've fully won her confidence. She could easily get a Moorish woman's kit and veil."

"Yes, she might come to regard this room as the one place where she was safe," agreed Herr Schlacht, "and we certainly might get something out of her if we are very clever, what with her terror on the one hand and her indignation and resentment on the other."

"Poor little girl," he added kindly. "The secret service isn't always a gentleman's job, my friend."

"No, but it's a man's job, old chap," replied the other, "and you're the man for it... Best man we've got by far none."

(Copyright, 1932, F. A. Stokes Co.)

Margaret has a harrowing scene, tomorrow, with her husband.