my work any easier—Nizam was less of a problem when Arslan was in town—but it was a weakness in a man who was trying to run the world, and any weakness in Arslan was something to hang onto.
He had been gone since early morning, presumably into the next district west, the day Rusudan disappeared. About five o’clock that afternoon, she had started out for a stroll with two of her women. It was just turning dusk when they got back. She had sent the women upstairs, walked through the kitchen, picked up an apple, and stepped out the back door, and that was the last anybody had seen of her.
When Arslan came in about an hour later, looking very pleased with himself and yelling for Rusudan, we were just realizing she was gone. The women were in a flutter. Arslan’s face hardened; it was against his orders for Rusudan to go anywhere alone. But she had lived in Kraftsville almost a year now, and that particular order had been disobeyed a hundred times. He didn’t say much to the two women who had been with her, but whatever he said was effective; their faces were sick with dread as they scampered out the back door and went separate ways into the dark.
After them went the soldiers—half a dozen who had come back with him, and three of his own bodyguards. Hoofs pounded and tires squealed. Arslan himself was across the street to school and back again four times in ten minutes. Obviously he was losing no time in mounting a full-scale search.
“What do you think?” Luella asked me quietly.
“I think you’d better go upstairs.” I wanted her out of Arslan’s way. He had driven Hunt upstairs already with one savage gesture. Only little Sanjar stood by gravely, gazing up from the level of his father’s knee.
“They’ll be wanting their supper,” Luella said.
“Well, let them call for it.”
She put her hand on my arm. “All right, but you come up with me.”
It must have been about nine o’clock when I heard the front door open after a period of quiet, and came downstairs to see a Turkistani sergeant frozen in a salute that Arslan did not return. The man’s face was blank and hard as a glazed brick. Arslan stood in front of the couch, his shoulders a little hunched and his eyes dogged. There was dead silence in the room.
“What is it?” I asked the sergeant. Most of them knew a little English by now.
He dropped his salute, and spoke a few stiff words to Arslan. Arslan gestured silently towards the door, and was through it himself before any of his bodyguards had time to open it for him.
They brought her in within the hour. Sanjar had run downstairs in his pajamas when he heard the jeep, with the women fluttering after him. Arslan in the doorway shouted; one of them scooped up the boy, and they rushed back up the stairs.
His arms were full of her. She looked grotesquely big; she should have been doll-size, she seemed so broken. Clothes and hair, tangled and soiled, stuck out every which way; here a limp arm, there a dangling foot. He laid her on the couch and straightened her.
She was mired with her own blood. Whatever she had been beaten with had smashed full across her bright, queenly face. She was unquestionably dead.
“Vodka,” Arslan said flatly. He backed away from the couch and sank into the armchair. He was staring steadily at Rusudan. The bodyguard flashed into clockwork action. One produced a bottle, another a glass. Arslan took the drink in his left hand and looked at it; and slowly, deliberately, he clenched his hand upon it, till the glass broke with a snap and he crunched the pieces in his tightening fist. Blood spurted, squirting between his fingers. He opened his hand slowly, shedding glass fragments and liquor and blood, and still looking blankly at it.
Two of the guards had sprung forwards, one of them jerking out a handkerchief and the other one grabbing Arslan’s forearm, but he shook them off with a wordless grunt, and they backed away. His right hand fastened and tightened on his left wrist, the nails and joints of the fingers standing out pale, and he bowed intently over his locked hands. His blood dribbled slower and slower.
There was a flurry of action at the door. The jeep charged away. Arslan raised his head at last, and his face was absent as a death mask. Now he began to talk, asking questions, giving orders, but his voice was soft and distant, and the eyes in that blank face stayed fixed on Rusudan.
In a few minutes, Dr. Allard was escorted in by the jeep driver. He looked perfunctorily at Rusudan, nodded to me, and turned to Arslan. One of the hovering bodyguards pointed unnecessarily to the wounded hand.
“Now, why do a stupid thing like that?”
I stood up quickly; I thought the doctor had really put his foot in it this time. But Arslan only looked at him, a bleak, defensive look I’d never seen. The doctor spread out Arslan’s hand on the arm of the chair, getting blood on Luella’s doily. “Sure, broken glass is all right; but it can’t compare with tire chains, can it?” He pulled up a chair, settled himself domestically, and went to work. “Stings, doesn’t it?” He was pouring something into the cuts. “Here, I’ll give you a good dose. Now see if you can hold that still while I sew you up.”
The bodyguard crowded close, suspicious and helpless. In a little while the doctor stood up and waved his hand casually towards Rusudan. “You want me to do an examination on her?”
“No.” Strength and timbre had come back into his voice.
“Okay,” the doctor agreed with a shrug. “Let me know if you change your mind.”
He sprang up, bumping the doctor backwards. His eyes blazed and his face was flushing. “Get out! Out!”
Jack Allard wasn’t the man to be hurried by a tornado. He closed his bag calmly, nodded to me again, and moseyed out. Arslan had stood silent and vibrating. Now he spun on me. He took a handful of my shirt front, and I was on my feet instantly. I didn’t know I could move that fast, but I wasn’t going to be jerked up.
His voice was low and staccato. “Tell me anything that you know about this, tell me anything that can help me. Do not quibble about words now. You understand. Tell me.”
“Nothing,” I said. “I know nothing about it, thank God, and I don’t want to know anything.”
He let go of me slowly. “If you learn anything, at any time, by any means, you will tell me at once.” Something blazed suddenly in his face. “If you betray me, sir, you will beg me to let you die,” he cried, and whirled away from me. A moment later he was snapping out orders. One of the soldiers waved me brusquely towards the stairs. The last I saw of Arslan, he was sinking back into the armchair, and he was still talking.
No, I didn’t want to know anything about it. That night I lay awake, trying not to think. I couldn’t afford it. And lying there with open eyes in the dark, I felt an ugly joy in my soul. If only it had been done outside of Kraft County!
I took a deep breath and willed that joy away. I was ready to stake my life that it hadn’t been done by anybody in the KCR. Nobody in my organization would make such an all-out mistake. Not now, above all, when we were so near to starting the upheaval that was to put the world back on its track. Revenge was sweet, sure; there’d be plenty of people who felt the same vicious little joy I did when they got the news, plenty of nice ladies who’d nod their heads and say, “It served her right.” But Kraftsville had taken on an expert.
All through that night they were coming and going. There were hoofbeats—usually one or two horses, sometimes more. A jeep drove up, later another; after a while they left. Rusudan’s women had been brought down early, and Hunt shortly after. I had fallen into a sickly doze when I heard a cry from below, and then a whole chorus of shrieks and moaning wails. Luella sat up and clutched at me. “What is it?”
“Put the pillow over your head.” And pretty soon she did. There was something funny about those shrieks; they didn’t have exactly the wholehearted spontaneousness of cries of pain. After a while, they stopped as suddenly as if they’d been cut off by a switch.
I had slept and waked again to hear the first roosters crowing, when Arslan’s quick step drummed up the stairs. He paused at our door and said something (the sentry must have been posted there while I was asleep) and went on to his own room. From then on, there was an irregular stream of footsteps up and down. I went to sleep again to that ragged beat.
Luella woke me with breakfast on a tray. “This is just to get you started,” she said. “There’s plenty more downstairs. I would have let you sleep, but I thought you’d better have something in your stomach.” She was right; I could feel the warning sensations already. “You’ll have to go down for your coffee. I knew if I brought it up you’d drink it the first thing.”
It was already nine o’clock. Arslan was still in his room, where he’d had breakfast. Hunt was locked in. Luella had tried to take him some breakfast, too, but the soldiers wouldn’t let her get near the door. She thought Arslan
