The Gabriel Hounds Read Online Free PDF Page A

Stanhope’s in 1820, had created quite as much stir and trouble a hundred years later. She had married an archaeologist, Ernest Boyd, and thereafter accompanied him on all his working journeys, hangingover and (it must be confessed) superintending his ‘digs’ from Cambodia to the Euphrates Valley. After his death she gave up active work and returned to England, but continued to take deep interest in the Middle East, and financed one or two expeditions that stirred her fancy. Two years of England’s weather had been enough. She had said goodbye to the family (this was the last visit that I remembered) and gone off to the Lebanon, where she had bought her hilltop refuge and settled down (she told us) to write a book.
    From this fastness she had made one sortie, four years ago, just after my side of the family had gone to Los Angeles. She had come, she said, to settle her affairs – which meant removing her considerable assets to the Lebanon – pick up a mate for her revolting (Charles said) Tibetan terrier Delilah, and shake the mud of England off her skirts for good. This was the last I had heard. Whether she had in fact written anything at all during her fifteen years’ exile nobody had any idea, except for the occasional re-makes of her Will, which the family read with pleasure and then disregarded. We could get along as well without Great-Aunt Harriet as it appeared she could without us. There was of course no resentment on either side; my great-aunt merely personified in herself the family’s genius for detachment.
    So I still regarded my cousin doubtfully. ‘You think she’ll see you?’
    ‘Oh, she’ll see me,’ he said calmly. ‘My mother was always pretty sarcastic about Great-Aunt Harriet’s penchant for young men, but I see no reason whywe shouldn’t trade on it. And if I tell her I’ve come to demand my rights, viz. the Gabriel Hounds, it’ll appeal to her; she was always a tough egg who liked people who stuck out for their dues. If I can get to Beirut by Sunday evening, what do you say we make a date of it together for Monday?’
    ‘I’m on. It sounds intriguing, if I thought one could believe a word of it.’
    ‘Sober truth – or as near sober truth as you’ll ever get in this country,’ promised my cousin. ‘Don’t you know what they say about it? That it’s a country where anything can happen, a “country of prodigies …”’ He quoted softly: ‘“The men inhabiting this country of prodigies – those men of rocks and deserts – whose imagination is higher coloured and yet more cloudy than the horizon of their sands and their seas, act according to the word of Mahomet and Lady Hester Stanhope. They require commerce with the stars, with prophecies, miracles and the second sight of genius.”’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Lamartine.’
    ‘Makes it sound as if even Great-Aunt Harriet might be normal. I can hardly wait. But I’ll have to go now.’ I glanced at my watch. ‘Heavens, yes, it’s dinner-time.’
    ‘I’m sure Ben would want you to stay. He’ll be in any minute. Can’t you?’
    ‘I’d like to, but we’ve an early start tomorrow, and I’ve things to do.’ I stooped to retrieve my handbag. ‘And you’re going to drive me home, dear boy, and no mistake. I’m not venturing through the dark streets of Damascus for you or anybody – even if I could find theway which I probably can’t. Unless you simply lend me the Porsche?’
    ‘There are some risks I will take,’ said my cousin, ‘and some I won’t. I’ll drive you back. Come along.’
    We crossed the court quietly together. Someone – the Arab boy, probably – must have brought a lamp in and set it in a niche near the door. It was an Aladdin lamp of some silvery metal which was probably in daylight hideous; but in the dusk, and holding the small orange buds of flame, it looked quite beautiful. The deep blue oblong of sky above the open court was pricking already with brilliant stars. No ugly diffusion of