Free Arabesque by Geoffrey Household Page B

that was quite obvious—never for patience, or
ability to suffer bores or breaking one’s own mood at will. Certainly, she agreed, he would be madly proud of what she was doing. And that—that suggested it was all some masculine
folly, and nothing to be proud of at all.
    “And you will remember. Man and woman alike, we have need of memories when we grow old.”
    “I shall be old,” said Armande bitterly, “and there will still be war. The whole world will be flooded with men and arms and misery before it is over.”
    She had spoken without any thought of her task; but Wadiah, at his old and beloved game of watching the lightest word of the visiting pasha, answered dreamily:
    “And there will be arms to give away.”
    Armande was shot abruptly out of visions of Kensington and an obscure apocalypse.
    “No,” she said. “That I cannot promise.”
    Then she boldly plunged.
    “But we will pay you for any you surrender now.”
    Armande’s cheeks flushed with excitement. Her eagerness restored the old generosity of their friendship. She felt no longer a prim young nuisance to an older man. Sheikh Wadiah rested his
eyes on her with delight.
    “Pay? Never!” he declaimed. “Madame, am I a Jew or a Moslem that I should haggle with arms? I am a Christian chief. What has been taken from Christians shall be returned to
them. Let us ride to Jerusalem with my arms and lay them before General Wilson himself!”
    “Shall we? Is it possible?” asked Armande, catching his enthusiasm.
    “In these days? You think so?” Wadiah hesitated, and then sighed. “Ah, Madame, it was the Crusader in me who spoke. I forgot a lifetime’s experience of public officials.
We should spend a year in jail before the police admitted the purity of our motives. No, Madame! I will deliver what you require discreetly, but only into sure hands and against an official
receipt. What do you suggest”
    “I think a British officer should take them over,” answered Armande.
    “You are right. In uniform and of the rank of major at least. With his own men and his own transport.” “I can do that.”

 
Chapter Four
Security
    “Your glass, sir, is empty,” said Sergeant Prayle reproachfully.
    He poised a bottle over the specially generous spirit measure which the section used for visiting officers who might be helpful. The Field Security bar was hospitable. Sergeant Prayle, in his
daily round of the hotels, managed to supplement the liquor ration by economical buying.
    Major Guy Furney—since the French had made Montagne a major, he too had been hastily promoted—was spending the evening with the F.S. Section. This very English Gestapo, with its
picked men and a degree of good taste in all ranks, had evolved a social code of its own for the bar. Officers were unhesitantly allowed the convential address of “sir” and were treated
with deference just in so far as awkward subjects were avoided; rank, otherwise, did not exist, and mixing was so effortless that guests, whether majors or privates, could conform easily to the
standards which they found in force.
    “Yes, but look here! Do let me do a round!” Furney protested.
    Field Security was not under his command. He arranged, as it were, their hunting, but he did not own the hounds—directing them only when he needed their aid in clearing his own political
coverts, or when they crashed into those tangled thickets hot on their own line.
    “Shall we make him an honorary member of the bar, Sergeant-Major?” suggested Captain Wyne, the section officer.
    “Not looking after us properly,” answered the sergeant-major, shaking his head in pretended disapproval.
    “Forks,” Prayle explained, as he poured Furney his favourite gin and Dubonnet.
    “Wanted for the bar?”
    “No, sir. For motorcycles,” said the sergeant-major firmly. “Four of our bikes have had it, doing your road checks in the blackout, and Sergeant Prayle has written off another
all by himself.”
    “Accidents,