“It’s rather beautiful, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Leidner.
“It’s very peaceful,” I said. “It seems funny to me to be so far away from everywhere.”
“Far from everywhere,” repeated Mrs. Leidner. “Yes. Here at least one might expect to be safe.”
I glanced at her sharply, but I think she was speaking more to herself than to me, and I don’t think she realized that her words had been revealing.
We began to walk back to the house.
Suddenly Mrs. Leidner clutched my arm so violently that I nearly cried out.
“Who’s that, nurse? What’s he doing?”
Some distance ahead of us, just where the path ran near the expedition house, a man was standing. He wore European clothes and he seemed to be standing on tiptoe and trying to look in at one of the windows.
As we watched he glanced round, caught sight of us, and immediately continued on the path towards us. I felt Mrs. Leidner’s clutch tighten.
“Nurse,” she whispered. “Nurse . . .”
“It’s all right, my dear, it’s all right,” I said reassuringly.
The man came along and passed us. He was an Iraqi, and as soon as she saw him near to, Mrs. Leidner relaxed with a sigh.
“He’s only an Iraqi after all,” she said.
We went on our way. I glanced up at the windows as I passed. Not only were they barred, but they were too high from the ground to permit of anyone seeing in, for the level of the ground was lower here than on the inside of the courtyard.
“It must have been just curiosity,” I said.
Mrs. Leidner nodded.
“That’s all. But just for a minute I thought—”
She broke off.
I thought to myself. “You thought what? That’s what I’d like to know. What did you think?”
But I knew one thing now—that Mrs. Leidner was afraid of a definite flesh-and-blood person.
Eight
NIGHT ALARM
It’s a little difficult to know exactly what to note in the week that followed my arrival at Tell Yarimjah.
Looking back as I do from my present standpoint of knowledge I can see a good many little signs and indications that I was quite blind to at the time.
To tell the story properly, however, I think I ought to try to recapture the point of view that I actually held—puzzled, uneasy and increasingly conscious of something wrong.
For one thing was certain, that curious sense of strain and constraint was not imagined. It was genuine. Even Bill Coleman the insensitive commented upon it.
“This place gets under my skin,” I heard him say. “Are they always such a glum lot?”
It was David Emmott to whom he spoke, the other assistant. I had taken rather a fancy to Mr. Emmott, his taciturnity was not, I felt sure, unfriendly. There was something about him that seemed very steadfast and reassuring in an atmosphere where one was uncertain what anyone was feeling or thinking.
“No,” he said in answer to Mr. Coleman. “It wasn’t like this last year.”
But he didn’t enlarge on the theme, or say any more.