"Zut-Ski" The Problem Of A Wicked Feme Sole by M--R--E C--R--LLI
I
The great pyramid towered up from the desert with its apex toward
the moon which hung in the sky. For centuries it had stood thus,
disdaining the aid of gods or man, being, as the Sphinx herself
observed, able to stand up for itself. And this was no small
praise from that sublime yet mysterious female who had seen the
ages come and go, empires rise and fall, novelist succeed novelist,
and who, for eons and cycles the cynosure and centre of admiration
and men's idolatrous worship, had yet--wonderful for a woman--
through it all kept her head, which now alone remained to survey
calmly the present. Indeed, at that moment that magnificent and
peaceful face seemed to have lost--with a few unimportant features--
its usual expression of speculative wisdom and intense disdain;
its mouth smiled, its left eyelid seemed to droop. As the opal
tints of dawn deepened upon it, the eyelid seemed to droop lower,
closed, and quickly recovered itself twice. You would have thought
the Sphinx had winked.
Then arose a voice like a wind on the desert,--but really from the
direction of the Nile, where a hired dahabiyeh lay moored to the
bank,--"'Arry Axes! 'Arry Axes!" With it came also a flapping,
trailing vision from the water--the sacred Ibis itself--and with
wings aslant drifted mournfully away to its own creaking echo:
"K'raksis! K'raksis!" Again arose the weird voice: "'Arry Axes!
Wotcher doin' of?" And again the Ibis croaked its wild refrain:
"K'raksis! K'raksis!" Moonlight and the hour wove their own
mystery (for which the author is not responsible), and the voice
was heard no more. But when the full day sprang in glory over the
desert, it illuminated the few remaining but sufficiently large
features of the Sphinx with a burning saffron radiance! The Sphinx
had indeed blushed!
II
It was the full season at Cairo. The wealth and fashion of
Bayswater, South Kensington, and even the bosky Wood of the
Evangelist had sent their latest luxury and style to flout the
tombs of the past with the ghastly flippancy of to-day. The cheap
tripper was there--the latest example of the Darwinian theory--
apelike, flea and curio hunting! Shamelessly inquisitive and
always hungry, what did he know of the Sphinx or the pyramids or
the voice--and, for the matter of that, what did they know of him?
And yet he was not half bad in comparison with the "swagger
people,"--these people who pretend to have lungs and what not, and
instead of galloping on merry hunters through the frost and snow of
Piccadilly and Park, instead of enjoying the roaring fires of piled
logs in the evening, at the first approach of winter steal away to
the Land of the Sun, and decline to die, like honest Britons, on
British soil. And then they know nothing of the Egyptians and are
horrified at "bakshish," which they really ought to pay for the
privilege of shocking the straight-limbed, naked-footed Arab in his
single rough garment with their baggy elephant-legged trousers!
And they know nothing of the mystic land of the old gods, filled
with profound enigmas of the supernatural, dark secrets yet
unexplored except in this book. Well might the great Memnon murmur
after this lapse of these thousand years, "They're making me
tired!"
Such was the blissful, self-satisfied ignorance of Sir Midas Pyle,
or as Lord Fitz-Fulke, with his delightful imitation of the East
London accent, called him, Sir "Myde His Pyle," as he leaned back
on his divan in the Grand Cairo Hotel. He was the vulgar editor
and proprietor of a vulgar London newspaper, and had brought his
wife with him, who was vainly trying to marry off his faded
daughters. There was to be a fancy-dress ball at the hotel that
night, and Lady Pyle hoped that her girls, if properly disguised,
might have a better chance. Here, too, was Lady Fitz-Fulke, whose
mother was immortalized by Byron--sixty if a day, yet still
dressing youthfully--who had sought the land of the Sphinx in the
faint hope that in the contiguity of that lady she might pass for
being young. Alaster McFeckless, a splendid young Scotchman,--
already dressed as a Florentine sailor of the fifteenth century,
which enabled him to show his magnificent calves quite as well as
in his native highland dress, and who had added with characteristic
noble pride a sporran to his costume, was lolling on another divan.
"Oh, those exquisite, those magnificent eyes of hers! Eh, sirs!"
he murmured suddenly, as waking from a dream.
"Oh, damn her eyes!" said Lord Fitz-Fulke languidly. "Tell you
what, old man, you're just gone on that girl!"
"Ha!" roared MeFeckless, springing to his feet, "ye will be using
such language of the bonniest"--
"You will excuse me, gentlemen," said Sir Midas,--who hated scenes
unless he had a trusted reporter with him,--"but I think it is time
for me to go upstairs and put on my Windsor uniform, which I find
exceedingly convenient for these mixed assemblies." He withdrew,
caressing his protuberant paunch with some dignity, as the two men
glanced fiercely at each other.
In another moment they might have sprung at each other's throats.
But luckily at this instant a curtain was pushed aside as if by
some waiting listener, and a thin man entered, dressed in cap and
gown,--which would have been simply academic but for his carrying
in one hand behind him a bundle of birch twigs. It was Dr. Haustus
Pilgrim, a noted London practitioner and specialist, dressed as "Ye
Olde-fashioned Pedagogue." He was presumably spending his holiday
on the Nile in a large dahabiyeh with a number of friends, among
whom he counted the two momentary antagonists he had just
interrupted; but those who knew the doctor's far-reaching knowledge
and cryptic researches believed he had his own scientific motives.
The two men turned quickly as he entered; the angry light faded
from their eyes, and an awed and respectful submission to the
intruder took its place. He walked quietly toward them, put a
lozenge in the mouth of one and felt the pulse of the other, gazing
critically at both.
"We will be all right in a moment," he said with professional
confidence.
"I say!" said Fitz-Fulke, gazing at the doctor's costume, "you look
dooced smart in those togs, don'tcherknow."
"They suit me," said the doctor, with a playful swish of his birch
twigs, at which the two grave men shuddered. "But you were
speaking of somebody's beautiful eyes."
"The Princess Zut-Ski's," returned McFeckless eagerly; "and this
daft callant said"--
"He didn't like them," put in Fitz-Fulke promptly.
"Ha!" said the doctor sharply, "and why not, sir?" As Fitz-Fulke
hesitated, he added brusquely: "There! Run away and play! I've
business with this young man," pointing to McFeckless.
As Fitz-Fulke escaped gladly from the room, the doctor turned to
McFeckless. "It won't do, my boy. The Princess is not for you--
you'll only break your heart and ruin your family over her! That's
my advice. Chuck her!"
"But I cannot," said McFeckless humbly. "Think of her weirdly
beautiful eyes."
"I see," said the doctor meditatively; "sort of makes you feel
creepy? Kind of all-overishness, eh? That's like her. But whom
have we here?"
He was staring at a striking figure that had just entered, closely
followed by a crowd of admiring spectators. And, indeed, he seemed
worthy of the homage. His magnificent form was closely attired in
a velveteen jacket and trousers, with a singular display of pearl
buttons along the seams, that were absolutely lavish in their
quantity; a hat adorned with feathers and roses completed his
singularly picturesque equipment.
"Chevalier!" burst out McFeckless in breathless greeting.
"Ah, mon ami! What good chance?" returned the newcomer, rushing to
him and kissing him on both cheeks, to the British horror of Sir
Midas, who had followed. "Ah, but you are perfect!" he added,
kissing his fingers in admiration of McFeckless's Florentine dress.
"But you?--what is this ravishing costume?" asked McFeckless, with
a pang of jealousy. "You are god-like."
"It is the dress of what you call the Koster, a transplanted
Phenician tribe," answered the other. "They who knocked 'em in the
road of Old Kent--know you not the legend?" As he spoke, he lifted
his superb form to a warrior's height and gesture.
"But is this quite correct?" asked Fitz-Fulke of the doctor.
"Perfectly," said the doctor oracularly. "The renowned ''Arry
Axes'--I beg his pardon," he interrupted himself hastily, "I mean
the Chevalier--is perfect in his archaeology and ethnology. The
Koster is originally a Gypsy, which is but a corruption of the word
'Egyptian,' and, if I mistake not, that gentleman is a lineal
descendant."
"But he is called 'Chevalier,' and he speaks like a Frenchman,"
said Fluffy.
"And, being a Frenchman, of course knows nothing outside of Paris,"
said Sir Midas.
"We are in the Land of Mystery," said the doctor gravely in a low
voice. "You have heard of the Egyptian Hall and the Temple of
Mystery?"
A shudder passed through many that were there; but the majority
were following with wild adulation the superb Koster, who, with
elbows slightly outward and hands turned inward, was passing toward
the ballroom. McFeckless accompanied him with conflicting
emotions. Would he see the incomparable Princess, who was lovelier
and even still more a mystery than the Chevalier? Would she--
terrible thought!--succumb to his perfections?
III
The Princess was already there, surrounded by a crowd of admirers,
equal if not superior to those who were following the superb
Chevalier. Indeed, they met almost as rivals! Their eyes sought
each other in splendid competition. The Chevalier turned away,
dazzled and incoherent. "She is adorable, magnificent!" he gasped
to McFeckless. "I love her on the instant! Behold, I am
transported, ravished! Present me."
Indeed, as she stood there in a strange gauzy garment of exquisite
colors, apparently shapeless, yet now and then revealing her
perfect figure like a bather seen through undulating billows, she
was lovely. Two wands were held in her taper fingers, whose
mystery only added to the general curiosity, but whose weird and
cabalistic uses were to be seen later. Her magnificent face--
strange in its beauty--was stranger still, since, with perfect
archaeological Egyptian correctness, she presented it only in
profile, at whatever angle the spectator stood. But such a
profile! The words of the great Poet-King rose to McFeckless's
lips: "Her nose is as a tower that looketh toward Damascus."
He hesitated a moment, torn with love and jealousy, and then
presented his friend. "You will fall in love with her--and then--
you will fall also by my hand," he hissed in his rival's ear, and
fled tumultuously.
"Voulez-vous danser, mademoiselle?" whispered the Chevalier in the
perfect accent of the boulevardier.
"Merci, beaucoup," she replied in the diplomatic courtesies of the
Ambassadeurs.
They danced together, not once, but many times, to the admiration,
the wonder and envy of all; to the scandalized reprobation of a
proper few. Who was she? Who was he? It was easy to answer the
last question: the world rang with the reputation of "Chevalier the
Artist." But she was still a mystery.
Perhaps they were not so to each other! He was gazing deliriously
into her eyes. She was looking at him in disdainful curiosity.
"I've seen you before somewhere, haven't I?" she said at last, with
a crushing significance.
He shuddered, he knew not why, and passed his hand over his high
forehead. "Yes, I go there very often," he replied vacantly. "But
you, mademoiselle--you--I have met before?"
"Oh, ages, ages ago!" There was something weird in her emphasis.
"Ha!" said a voice near them, "I thought so!" It was the doctor,
peering at them curiously. "And you both feel rather dazed and
creepy?" He suddenly felt their pulses, lingering, however, as the
Chevalier fancied, somewhat longer than necessary over the lady's
wrist and beautiful arm. He then put a small round box in the
Chevalier's hand, saying, "One before each meal," and turning to
the lady with caressing professional accents said, "We must wrap
ourselves closely and endeavor to induce perspiration," and hurried
away, dragging the Chevalier with him. When they reached a
secluded corner, he said, "You had just now a kind of feeling,
don't you know, as if you'd sort of been there before, didn't you?"
"Yes, what you call a--preexistence," said the Chevalier
wonderingly.
"Yes; I have often observed that those who doubt a future state of
existence have no hesitation in accepting a previous one," said the
doctor dryly. "But come, I see from the way the crowd are hurrying
that your divinity's number is up--I mean," he corrected himself
hastily, "that she is probably dancing again."
"Aha! with him, the imbecile McFeckless?" gasped the Chevalier.
"No, alone."
She was indeed alone, in the centre of the ballroom--with
outstretched arms revolving in an occult, weird, dreamy, mystic,
druidical, cabalistic circle. They now for the first time
perceived the meaning of those strange wands which appeared to be
attached to the many folds of her diaphanous skirts and involved
her in a fleecy, whirling cloud. Yet in the wild convolutions of
her garments and the mad gyrations of her figure, her face was
upturned with the seraphic intensity of a devotee, and her lips
parted as with the impassioned appeal for "Light! more light!" And
the appeal was answered. A flood of blue, crimson, yellow, and
green radiance was alternately poured upon her from the black box
of a mysterious Nubian slave in the gallery. The effect was
marvelous; at one moment she appeared as a martyr in a sheet of
flame, at another as an angel wrapped in white and muffled purity,
and again as a nymph of the cerulean sea, and then suddenly a cloud
of darkness seemed to descend upon her, through which for an
instant her figure, as immaculate and perfect as a marble statue,
showed distinctly--then the light went out and she vanished!
The whole assembly burst into a rapturous cry. Even the common
Arab attendants who were peeping in at the doors raised their
melodious native cry, "Alloe, Fullah! Aloe, Fullah!" again and
again.
A shocked silence followed. Then the voice of Sir Midas Pyle was
heard addressing Dr. Haustus Pilgrim:
"May we not presume, sir, that what we have just seen is not unlike
that remarkable exhibition when I was pained to meet you one
evening at the Alhambra?"
The doctor coughed slightly. "The Alhambra--ah, yes!--you--er--
refer, I presume, to Granada and the Land of the Moor, where we
last met. The music and dance are both distinctly Moorish--which,
after all, is akin to the Egyptian. I am gratified indeed that
your memory should be so retentive and your archaeological
comparison so accurate. But see! the ladies are retiring. Let us
follow."
IV
The intoxication produced by the performance of the Princess
naturally had its reaction. The British moral soul, startled out
of its hypocrisy the night before, demanded the bitter beer of
self-consciousness and remorse the next morning. The ladies were
now openly shocked at what they had secretly envied. Lady Pyle
was, however, propitiated by the doctor's assurance that the
Princess was a friend of Lady Fitz-Fulke, who had promised to lend
her youthful age and aristocratic prestige to the return ball which
the Princess had determined to give at her own home. "Still, I
think the Princess open to criticism," said Sir Midas oracularly.
"Damn all criticism and critics!" burst out McFeckless, with the
noble frankness of a passionate and yet unfettered soul. Sir
Midas, who employed critics in his business, as he did other base
and ignoble slaves, drew up himself and his paunch and walked away.
The Chevalier cast a superb look at McFeckless. "Voila! Regard me
well! I shall seek out this Princess when she is with herself!
Alone, comprenez? I shall seek her at her hotel in the Egyptian
Hall! Ha! ha! I shall seek Zut-Ski! Zut!" And he made that
rapid yet graceful motion of his palm against his thigh known only
to the true Parisian.
"It's a rum hole where she lives, and nobody gets a sight of her,"
said Flossy. "It's like a beastly family vault, don't you know,
outside, and there's a kind of nigger doorkeeper that vises you and
chucks you out if you haven't the straight tip. I'll show you the
way, if you like."
"Allons, en avant!" said the Chevalier gayly. "I precipitate
myself there on the instant."
"Remember!" hissed McFeckless, grasping his arm, "you shall account
to me!"
"Bien!" said the Chevalier, shaking him off lightly. "All a-r-r-
right." Then, in that incomparable baritone, which had so often
enthralled thousands, he moved away, trolling the first verse of
the Princess's own faint, sweet, sad song of the "Lotus Lily," that
thrilled McFeckless even through the Chevalier's marked French
accent:--
"Oh, a hard zing to get is ze Lotus Lillee!
She lif in ze swamp--in ze watair chillee;
She make your foot wet--and you look so sillee,
But you buy her for sixpence in Piccadillee!"
In half an hour the two men reached the remote suburb where the
Princess lived, a gloomy, windowless building. Pausing under a low
archway over which in Egyptian characters appeared the faded
legend, "Sta Ged Oor," they found a Nubian slave blocking the dim
entrance.
"I leave you here," said Flossy hurriedly, "as even I left once
before--only then I was lightly assisted by his sandaled foot," he
added, rubbing himself thoughtfully. "But better luck to you."
As his companion retreated swiftly, the Chevalier turned to the
slave and would have passed in, but the man stopped him. "Got a
pass, boss?"
"No," said the Chevalier.
The man looked at him keenly. "Oh, I see! one of de profesh."
The Chevalier nodded haughtily. The man preceded him by devious,
narrow ways and dark staircases, coming abruptly upon a small
apartment where the Princess sat on a low divan. A single lamp
inclosed in an ominous wire cage flared above her. Strange things
lay about the floor and shelves, and from another door he could see
hideous masks, frightful heads, and disproportionate faces. He
shuddered slightly, but recovered himself and fell on his knees
before her. "I lofe you," he said madly. "I have always lofed
you!"
"For how long?" she asked, with a strange smile.
He covertly consulted his shirt cuff. "For tree tousand fife
hundred and sixty-two years," he said rapidly.
She looked at him disdainfully. "The doctor has been putting you
up to that! It won't wash! I don't refer to your shirt cuff," she
added with deep satire.
"Adorable one!" he broke out passionately, attempting to embrace
her, "I have come to take you." Without moving, she touched a knob
in the wall. A trap-door beyond him sank, and out of the bowels of
the earth leaped three indescribable demons. Then, rising, she
took a cake of chalk from the table and, drawing a mystic half
circle on the floor, returned to the divan, lit a cigarette, and
leaning comfortably back, said in a low, monotonous voice, "Advance
one foot within that magic line, and on that head, although it wore
a crown, I launch the curse of Rome."
"I--only wanted to take you--with a kodak," he said, with a light
laugh to conceal his confusion, as he produced the instrument from
his coat-tail pocket.
"Not with that cheap box," she said, rising with magnificent
disdain. "Come again with a decent instrument--and perhaps"--
Then, lightly humming in a pure contralto, "I've been photographed
like this--I've been photographed like that," she summoned the
slave to conduct him back, and vanished through a canvas screen,
which nevertheless seemed to the dazed Chevalier to be the stony
front of the pyramids.
V
"And you saw her?" said the doctor in French.
"Yes; but the three-thousand-year gag did not work! She spotted
you, cher ami, on the instant. And she wouldn't let me take her
with my kodak."
The doctor looked grave. "I see," he mused thoughtfully. "You must
have my camera, a larger one and more bulky perhaps to carry; but
she will not object to that,--she who has stood for full lengths.
I will give you some private instructions."
"But, cher doctor, this previous-existence idea--at what do you
arrive?"
"There is much to say for it," said the doctor oracularly. "It has
survived in the belief of all ages. Who can tell? That some men
in a previous existence may have been goats or apes," continued the
doctor, looking at him curiously, "does not seem improbable! From
the time of Pythagoras we have known that; but that the individual
as an individual ego has been remanded or projected, has harked
back or anticipated himself, is, we may say, with our powers of
apperception,--that is, the perception that we are perceiving,--
is"--
But the Chevalier had fled. "No matter," said the doctor, "I will
see McFeckless." He did. He found him gloomy, distraught,
baleful. He felt his pulse. "The mixture as before," he said
briefly, "and a little innocent diversion. There is an Aunt Sally
on the esplanade--two throws for a penny. It will do you good.
Think no more of this woman! Listen,--I wish you well; your family
have always been good patients of mine. Marry some good Scotch
girl; I know one with fifty thousand pounds. Let the Princess go!"
"To him--never! I will marry her! Yet," he murmured softly to
himself, "feefty thousand pun' is nae small sum. Aye! Not that I
care for siller--but feefty thousand pun'! Eh, sirs!"
VI
Dr. Haustus knew that the Chevalier had again visited the Princess,
although he had kept the visit a secret,--and indeed was himself
invisible for a day or two afterwards. At last the doctor's
curiosity induced him to visit the Chevalier's apartment.
Entering, he was surprised--even in that Land of Mystery--to find
the room profoundly dark, smelling of Eastern drugs, and the
Chevalier sitting before a large plate of glass which he was
examining by the aid of a lurid ruby lamp,--the only light in the
weird gloom. His face was pale and distraught, his locks were
disheveled.
"Voila!" he said. "Mon Dieu! It is my third attempt. Always the
same--hideous, monstrous, unearthly! It is she, and yet it is not
she!"
The doctor, professional man as he was and inured to such
spectacles, was startled! The plate before him showed the
Princess's face in all its beautiful contour, but only dimly
veiling a ghastly death's-head below. There was the whole bony
structure of the head and the eyeless sockets; even the graceful,
swan-like neck showed the articulated vertebral column that
supported it in all its hideous reality. The beautiful shoulders
were there, dimly as in a dream--but beneath was the empty
clavicle, the knotty joint, the hollow sternum, and the ribs of a
skeleton half length!
The doctor's voice broke the silence. "My friend," he said dryly,
"you see only the truth! You see what she really is, this peerless
Princess of yours. You see her as she is to-day, and you see her
kinship to the bones that have lain for centuries in yonder
pyramid. Yet they were once as fair as this, and this was as fair
as they--in effect the same! You that have madly, impiously adored
her superficial beauty, the mere dust of tomorrow, let this be a
warning to you! You that have no soul to speak of, let that
suffice you! Take her and be happy. Adieu!"
Yet, as he passed out of the fitting tomblike gloom of the
apartment and descended the stairs, he murmured to himself: "Odd
that I should have lent him my camera with the Rontgen-ray
attachment still on. No matter! It is not the first time that the
Princess has appeared in two parts the same evening."
VII
In spite of envy, jealousy, and malice, a certain curiosity greater
than all these drew everybody to the Princess Zut-Ski's ball. Lady
Fitz-Fulke was there in virgin white, looking more youthful than
ever, in spite of her sixty-five years and the card labeled "Fresh
Paint" which somebody had playfully placed upon her enameled
shoulder. The McFecklesses, the Pyles, Flossy, the doctor, and the
Chevalier--looking still anxious--were in attendance.
The mysterious Nubian doorkeeper admitted the guests through the
same narrow passages, much to the disgust of Lady Pyle and the
discomfiture of her paunchy husband; but on reaching a large
circular interior hall, a greater surprise was in store for them.
It was found that the only entrance to the body of the hall was
along a narrow ledge against the bare wall some distance from the
floor, which obliged the guests to walk slowly, in single file,
along this precarious strip, giving them the attitudes of an
Egyptian frieze, which was suggested in the original plaster above
them. It is needless to say that, while the effect was ingenious
and striking from the centre of the room, where the Princess stood
with a few personal friends, it was exceedingly uncomfortable to
the figures themselves, in their enforced march along the ledge,--
especially a figure of Sir Midas Pyle's proportions. Suddenly an
exclamation broke from the doctor.
"Do you see," he said to the Princess, pointing to the figure of
the Chevalier, who was filing along with his sinewy hands slightly
turned inward, "how surprisingly like he is to the first attendant
on the King in the real frieze above? And that," added the doctor,
"was none other than 'Arry Axes, the Egyptian you are always
thinking of." And he peered curiously at her.
"Goodness me!" murmured the Princess, in an Arabic much more soft
and fluent than the original gum. "So he does--look like him."
"And do you know you look like him, too? Would you mind taking a
walk around together?"
They did, amid the acclamations of the crowd. The likeness was
perfect. The Princess, however, was quite white as she eagerly
rejoined the doctor.
"And this means--?" she hissed in a low whisper.
"That he is the real 'Arry Axes! Hush, not a word now! We join
the dahabiyeh to-night. At daybreak you will meet him at the
fourth angle of the pyramid, first turning from the Nile!"
VIII
The crescent moon hung again over the apex of the Great Pyramid,
like a silver cutting from the rosy nail of a houri. The Sphinx--
mighty guesser of riddles, reader of rebuses and universal solver
of missing words--looked over the unfathomable desert and these few
pages, with the worried, hopeless expression of one who is obliged
at last to give it up. And then the wailing voice of a woman,
toiling up the steep steps of the pyramid, was heard above the
creaking of the Ibis: "'Arry Axes! Where are you? Wait for me."
"J'y suis," said a voice from the very summit of the stupendous
granite bulk, "yet I cannot reach it."
And in that faint light the figure of a man was seen, lifting his
arms wildly toward the moon.
"'Arry Axes," persisted the voice, drifting higher, "wait for me;
we are pursued."
And indeed it was true. A band of Nubians, headed by the doctor,
was already swarming like ants up the pyramid, and the unhappy pair
were secured. And when the sun rose, it was upon the white sails
of the dahabiyeh, the vacant pyramid, and the slumbering Sphinx.
There was great excitement at the Cairo Hotel the next morning.
The Princess and the Chevalier had disappeared, and with them
Alaster McFeckless, Lady Fitz-Fulke, the doctor, and even his
dahabiyeh! A thousand rumors had been in circulation. Sir Midas
Pyle looked up from the "Times" with his usual I-told-you-so
expression.
"It is the most extraordinary thing, don'tcherknow," said Fitz-
Fulke. "It seems that Dr. Haustus Pilgrim was here professionally--
as a nerve specialist--in the treatment of hallucinations produced
by neurotic conditions, you know."
"A mad doctor, here!" gasped Sir Midas.
"Yes. The Princess, the Chevalier, McFeckless, and even my mother
were all patients of his on the dahabiyeh. He believed,
don'tcherknow, in humoring them and letting them follow out their
cranks, under his management. The Princess was a music-hall artist
who imagined she was a dead and gone Egyptian Princess; and the
queerest of all, 'Arry Axes was also a music-hall singer who
imagined himself Chevalier--you know, the great Koster artist--and
that's how we took him for a Frenchman. McFeckless and my poor old
mother were the only ones with any real rank and position--but you
know what a beastly bounder Mac was, and the poor mater DID overdo
the youthful! We never called the doctor in until the day she
wanted to go to a swell ball in London as Little Red Riding-hood.
But the doctor writes me that the experiment was a success, and
they'll be all right when they get back to London."
"Then, it seems, sir, that you and I were the only sane ones here,"
said Sir Midas furiously.
"Really it's as much as I can do to be certain about myself, old
chappie," said Fitz-Fulke, turning away.
-THE END-
Bret Harte's short story: "Zut-Ski" The Problem Of A Wicked Feme Sole by M--R--E C--R--LLI
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