The contrast was hideous.
She refused the coffee he offered her with a shake of her head, paying
no attention to his growl of protest, not even understanding it, for he
spoke in Arabic. As she laid down the end of her cigarette with almost
the feeling of letting go a sheet anchor--for it had at least kept her
lips from trembling--his fat hand closed about her wrist and he jerked
her towards him.
"How many rifles did the Frenchman bring to that son of darkness?" he
said harshly.
She turned her head, surprised at the question, and met his bloodshot
eyes fixed on hers, half-menacing, half-admiring, and looked away again
hastily. "I do not know."
His fingers tightened on her wrist. "How many men had Ahmed Ben Hassan
in the camp in which he kept you?"
"I do not know."
"I do not know! I do not know!" he echoed with a sudden savage laugh.
"You will know when I have done with you." He crushed her wrist until
she winced with pain, and turned her head away further that she might
not see his face. Question after question relating to the Sheik and his
tribe followed in rapid succession, but to all of them Diana remained
silent, with averted head and compressed lips. He should not learn
anything from her that might injure the man she loved, though he
tortured her, though her life paid the price of her silence, as it
probably would. She shivered involuntarily. "Shall I tell you what they
would do to him?" She could hear the Sheik's voice plainly as on the
night when she had asked him what Gaston's fate would be at the hands
of Ibraheim Omair. She could hear the horrible meaning he had put into
the words, she could see the terrible smile that had accompanied them.
Her breath came faster, but her courage still held. She clung
desperately to the hope that was sustaining her. Ahmed must come in
time. She forced down the torturing doubts that whispered that he might
never find her, that he might come too late, that when he came she
might be beyond a man's desire.
Ibraheim Omair ceased his questioning. "Later you will speak," he said
significantly, and drank more coffee. And his words revived the
agonising thoughts she had crushed down. Her vivid imagination conjured
up the same ghastly mental pictures that had appalled her when she had
applied them to Gaston, but now it was herself who was the central
figure in all the horrors she imagined, until the shuddering she tried
to suppress shook her from head to foot, and she clenched her teeth to
stop them chattering.