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Female Islamic Education Movements

Since the 1970s, movements aimed at giving Muslim women access to

the serious study of Islamic texts have emerged across the world. In this
book, Masooda Bano argues that the creative spirit that marked the rise
and consolidation of Islam, whereby Islam inspired serious intellectual
engagement to create optimal societal institutions, can be found within
these education movements. Drawing on rich ethnographic material
from Pakistan, northern Nigeria and Syria, Bano questions the restricted
notion of agency associated with these movements, exploring the educa-
tional networks which have attracted educated, professional and cultur-
ally progressive Muslim women to textual study, thus helping to reverse
the most damaging legacy of colonial rule in Muslim societies: the
isolation of modern and Islamic knowledge. With its comparative
approach, this book will appeal to those studying and researching the
role of women across Africa, the Middle East and South Asia, as well as
the wider Muslim world.

Masooda Bano is Associate Professor at the Oxford Department of

International Development, and Senior Golding Fellow at Brasenose
College, University of Oxford. She is the author of The Rational Believer:
Choices and Decisions in the Madrasas of Pakistan (2012).
“One of the more striking developments in the Muslim world over the
past century has been the way in which individuals have, to varying
degrees, been taking responsibility for their Islamic understandings. In
this important book Masooda Bano explores this process amongst
women in three different Muslim societies and concludes with a
cautiously optimistic view of the future.”
Professor Francis Robinson, Royal Holloway,
University of London

“Persuasive and clearly written, Female Islamic Education offers stunning

insight into why women’s mosque- and home-situated Islamic
education and study circles have expanded in scope, impact, and
prestige in recent years. Bano combines long-term field research in
West Africa, the Arab world, and South Asia with a thorough
knowledge of historical sources. The reasons for the growth in
women’s religious education also provides a key to understanding why
Islamic education, far from conventional predictions, is gaining ground
today.”
Professor Dale F. Eickelman, Dartmouth College

“Tectonic shifts are at play within Muslim societies that remain

overshadowed by more spectacular phenomena like Jihadi militancy.
The rise of female Islamic education movements since the late 20th
century is one of such tectonic shifts, and it could very well constitute
a major turning point in the history of the Islamic tradition at large. The
drivers of this transformation and its implications for Islamic knowledge
are masterfully unpacked by Masooda Bano through a unique
combination of analytical breadth and empirical depth.”
Dr Thomas Pierret, University of Edinburgh
Female Islamic Education
Movements
The Re-democratisation of Islamic Knowledge

Masooda Bano
University of Oxford
University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom
One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA
477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia
4843/24, 2nd Floor, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, Delhi – 110002, India
79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of
education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence.

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781107188839
DOI: 10.1017/9781316986721
© Masooda Bano 2017
This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception
and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without the written
permission of Cambridge University Press.
First published 2017
Printed in the United Kingdom by Clays, St Ives plc
A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Bano, Masooda, 1973– author.
Title: Female Islamic education movements : the re-democratization of Islamic
knowledge / Masooda Bano, University of Oxford.
Description: New York : Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017020598 | ISBN 9781107188839
Subjects: LCSH: Islamic modernism. | Islamic renewal. | Muslim
women – Education. | Sex differences in education. | Women in Islam.
Classification: LCC BP166.14.M63 B365 2017 | DDC 297.7/7082–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017020598
ISBN 978-1-107-18883-9 Hardback
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain,
accurate or appropriate.
In the loving memory of Hasan Baba (2000–2015) –
The much-loved Little Master of 129 Market Road
 Contents

Preface page ix
A Note on Transliteration xv
Glossary xvi

1 Understanding Knowledge Creation: A Re-Reading of

Female Islamic Education Movements 1

Part I The Power of Dispersed Knowledge 51

2 Incentivising Creative Outcomes: Historical Patterns 53
3 Knowledge Production and Student Profiles 84

Part II Incentivising the Mixing of Knowledge 129

4 Institutional Shifts: Facilitating Emergence 131
5 Institutional Shifts: Facilitating Expansion 155
6 Institutional Shifts: The Rise of Western Feminism 178

Part III Conclusion 201

7 Incentivising Creative Outcomes: Looking Forward 203

Bibliography 221
Index 241

vii
 Preface

It was in 2006, when I was doing fieldwork with religious schools in

Pakistan, that I first came across female madrasas. They had emerged
only in the 1970s, but within the last thirty years had started to catch up
fast with male madrasas, which have a centuries-old tradition in South
Asia. In successive years my comparative work in Bangladesh and India
confirmed similar patterns. As I was writing up my research (later pub-
lished as The Rational Believer, with a chapter on female madrasas duly
included), a colleague at Oxford proposed to host a conference on the
increasing presence of women within the mosque and madrasa networks,
which have traditionally been dominated by male religious elites. The
resulting conference and the subsequent volume noted the prevalence of
this trend across the Muslim world and also among Muslim diaspora
communities in the West; the point of its origins seemed to be the 1970s.
Much has been written about the global Islamic revival since the 1970s;
on-going research on these women’s movements, however, often views
them as a contemporary stand-alone phenomenon, rather than seeing
them as part of the broader trend (a notable exception being Saba
Mahmood’s Politics of Piety). As I have explored this phenomenon in
more depth, I have concluded that these movements are indeed part
and parcel of the broader societal shifts that have shaped the Islamic
revival since the 1970s. But, more importantly, I have become convinced
of the great creative energy generated by some of these movements
(especially those attracting the modern-educated, professional and cultu-
rally progressive Muslim women) which existing scholarship consistently
fails to recognise.
The arguments that I build in this volume are based on prolonged field-
work with a diverse range of female Islamic education platforms across
three Muslim-majority contexts: Pakistan, northern Nigeria, and Syria.
Pakistan has been the base of my previous studies, and this project was
thus a natural extension of them, especially given that South Asia repre-
sents a major share of the world’s Muslim population. From within the
Middle East, which for many is still the heartland of Islam, Syria made a

ix
x Preface

compelling case, as it was less studied than Egypt, and admittedly, the
region identified as Bilad-i-Sham has historically been of great interest to
me. Prolonged fieldwork in Damascus and Aleppo during the summer of
2010 saved the project, despite the inevitable sadness associated with
having to work on a country (even if remotely) where things have gone
horribly wrong. Kano, in West Africa, opened up to me rather unexpect-
edly. In January 2008, as a result of my growing comparative work on
Islamic education systems, I was requested by the UK Department for
International Development (DFID) to take a trip up to Kano to advise on
how best to support education in Islamic schools in northern Nigeria;
engaged with a region where the 23,000 recorded Islamiyya, Quranic, and
Tsangaya Education (IQTE) schools far outnumbered the fewer than
6,000 modern state schools, DFID’s education advisers wondered how to
proceed. When I did reach Kano, what I wrote to a friend then still holds
true for me today: ‘I have never seen such high demand for Islamic
schooling in any other region where I have worked.’ This West-African
region, which to me was the most foreign of all my three research sites, is
in fact the one where in the long run I have had the most easy and wide-
ranging access to religious scholars, Islamic intellectuals, Sufis heading
the Qadiriyya and Tijaniyya tariqas (Sufi orders), female preachers and
their students, and government officials.
Two central questions guided the fieldwork across the three sites: why
have these female Islamic education movements emerged?; and what do
they mean for women, as well as for the way in which Islam will be
interpreted and lived in the future? Existing work has focused on identify-
ing their orthodoxy; I instead have been struck by their creative energy
and their pursuit of alternative modernities rather than that of the
Western liberal tradition. I argue that we need to see these movements
not just through a narrow theoretical lens of female agency or piety: we
need to understand how knowledge creation is in fact a complex process,
where the outcomes of an educational experience are directly shaped by
the socio-economic and professional background of the students, but –
even more importantly – by their cultural background. While considering
the experiences of women of diverse profiles who join these movements,
the focus of this volume is on documenting the creative potential that is
unlocked in the religious imagination when educated, culturally liberal,
and progressive societal elites, engage with Islamic texts. Women of this
profile do not absorb orthodox rulings uncritically, nor do they absorb
modernist arguments without question; they are convinced of religious
ideals only when they are intellectually convinced of their moral super-
iority to competing moral frameworks, Western liberalism included, or of
their optimality in addressing challenges as well as opportunities offered
 Preface xi

by contemporary realities. Unlike the modernists, these women retain

due respect for the shari‘a and the scholarship within the four Sunni
madhhabs (schools of Islamic law); they do, however, put pressure on
the ‘ulama (Islamic scholars) and traditional religious elites to find opti-
mal answers to issues posed by modern life, while respecting the Islamic
frame of reference. The significance of these women’s engagement with
Islamic texts becomes particularly clear when we juxtapose them against
the historical developments whereby colonial rule led to the exit of
Muslim elites from Islamic education platforms, which led to a clear
division between Islamic and modern knowledge. This process led to
the isolation of Islamic knowledge production and its disengagement
from modern socio-economic and political institutions; the earlier pat-
terns of knowledge production in Muslim societies which allowed for the
mixing of Islamic knowledge with other fields and the realities of people’s
lives were severely distorted.
My central argument in this book is that by bringing educated, profes-
sional, and culturally progressive women to the field of Islamic studies,
these platforms (often unintentionally) are contributing to the revival of a
democratised process of Islamic knowledge production, a process which
had historically been central to unleashing the creativity that led to the rise
of Islamic civilisational identity – hence the emphasis on ‘Re-democrati-
sation’ in the book’s subtitle. The number of such women within these
movements might arguably be small, but given that they come from
influential families and elite networks, their impact is wide ranging.
Further, as I show in Chapter 7 of this volume, these movements are
not alone; rather, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century we are
witnessing a major societal shift in Muslim societies, and even more
visibly among Muslim diaspora communities in the West, leading to
changed modes of religious engagement. There is growth in an array of
Islamic movements which are bringing not just modern-educated
Muslims (arguably the Islamists were and are modern-educated too)
but also culturally progressive Muslims to the study of Islamic texts,
working towards an intellectually rigorous, yet spiritually grounded,
approach to the study and practice of Islam. The outcome, I argue,
indicates the potential for a revival of creative energy within Muslim
societies, at a phenomenal pace, in the next few decades.
Predictably, the comparative dimension of this study has been made
possible only by generous support from a series of research council fellow-
ships and grants. Between 2009 and 2012, I held the Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC) flagship Ideas and Beliefs Fellowship,
which facilitated the fieldwork in Pakistan; Oxford University’s Fell
Fund award and research grant awards from my department covered
xii Preface

the fieldwork in Syria; and DFID’s ESSPIN programme in northern

Nigeria facilitated the fieldwork in Kano. But the arguments advanced
in this volume would not have taken their final shape if I had not won the
European Research Council (ERC) five-year start-up grant (ERC grant
agreement no. [337108], funded under the European Union’s Seventh
Framework Programme [FP7/2007–2013]), which I took up in March
2014. Apart from allowing continued access to these field sites, the field-
work that I began with new Islamic revival movements in the West (briefly
covered in the last chapter of this volume, and my next book project) has
been critical to convincing me that the creative potential that I see in some
of the female Islamic education movements is in fact part of a broader
shift which is a product of the dramatically changed global context in
which Muslims find themselves today. In ensuring that such comparative
claims remain incisive while being cognisant of the complexity of each
context and time period, I have greatly benefitted from the insightful
comments and suggestions from four anonymous reviewers. I remain
indebted to Maria Marsh, my editor at Cambridge University Press, for
securing these reviews and equally for her own deep engagement with the
actual text. She proved a wonderful editor to work with. I am also grateful
to Lucy Rhymer for the enthusiasm she shared for this project.
Finally, over the seven years of fieldwork, involving repeat annual visits
in the cases of northern Nigeria and Pakistan, I have incurred debts to a
countless number of people. It is impossible to list them all here; I hope
that those who gave me their time were aware of my gratitude, and I trust
that if they read this book they will find their experiences justly recorded. I
must, however, name those who not only gave their own time, but also
helped me to become embedded in the local networks that with time
make a foreign land appear familiar. In Syria, the support of Professor
Abdul Nabi Isstaif from the University of Damascus was instrumental to
getting me access to the networks that were important for my research. An
acquaintance formed in Oxford during 2004 when he was there on
sabbatical has developed over the years into a relationship of strong
mutual respect; when in 2008 I wrote to him announcing my plans, he
gave me the warmest of welcomes. The access that he secured for me to
the Al-Fatih Institute and the family of Shaykh Farfour in turn helped me
to approach prominent Syrian scholars, such as Shaykh Muhammad Al-
Yaqoubi, who come from old Syrian scholarly families and were known to
be both independent and critical of the state. Muazzan from the Al-Fatih
Institute was instrumental in securing access to many of the female
Islamic education circles both in Damascus and Aleppo; he was also the
one to introduce me to Razzan, a former student and associate of
Mahmud Abu al-Huda al-Husseini (at the time Director of the
 Preface xiii

Directorate of Awqaf in Aleppo), who opened up Aleppo to me. Now

living in the UK, she remains a trusted source to tap developments in
Syria. I must also note the hospitality of Shaykh Mahmud and his two
wives, who acted as my hosts during my time in Aleppo.
In Pakistan, my debts are old, too many, and already well documented.
In Kano, the list is again long, but three people must be named: Yardada,
the Islamic and Quranic Schools State Specialist with the DFID ESSPIN
programme, has not only been instrumental to developing my under-
standing of Islam in Nigeria, but she has also been the most wonderful
companion during my visits to Kano; Auwalu Diso, who was introduced
to me in 2009 by Dr Bashir Galadanci (then Special Adviser to the
Governor of Kano on Islamic and Quranic Schools) and remained my
main liaison in the initial years of my work there, has been fundamental to
my eventual familiarisation with Kano; finally, the encouragement I have
received over the years from Dr Bashir Galadanci, who himself heralds
from a family of learned scholars of Islamic and modern sciences, has
been essential to the development of a thesis concerning Kano, which I
am confident has local resonance. It is not just the formal interviews or
observations that I have conducted across the three sites over the seven
years, but equally importantly, these deeper bonds, developed with peo-
ple who are embedded in these networks, that have left me convinced that
what is viewed as mainstream Sunni Islam within these three respective
societies is actually remarkably similar; studies arguing for local Islam
thus in my view often fail to see the wood for the trees.
Last but not least, I must also thank my students who over the years
have studied different dimensions of Islam and Muslim societies with me
at undergraduate as well as postgraduate level. These include my DPhil
and MPhil students at Oxford, who have written their theses on Islamic
movements or aspects of Muslim societies; the visiting undergraduate
exchange students to Oxford from the US universities to whom I have at
times agreed to give tutorials on related themes; and the students who
took the ‘Islam and Democracy’ module with me at the School of Oriental
and African Studies (SOAS) in 2009 over two terms, when Matt Nelson
asked me to cover for him. But most of all, they include the students who
over the years have taken the Gender and Development module that I
have convened at Oxford since 2009. Designed primarily for MPhil
Development Studies students, this module has with time attracted stu-
dents from many other Oxford degree courses, most noticeably MSt
Women Studies, in which the emphasis otherwise is on studying
Western feminism. These cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural discus-
sions have made me interested in tracing the evolution of Western femin-
ism in a bid to understand whether Muslim societies, despite their current
xiv Preface

resistance, will inevitably, as they develop economically, experience shifts

in gender norms similar to those experienced in the West during the last
two centuries – an analysis presented in Chapter 6. I have predicted
against it. Predictions of course are risky affairs; but they are what make
social science exciting.

Masooda Bano
Oxford, October 2016
 A Note on Transliteration

This volume draws on fieldwork in three regions, with three distinct

languages: Syria (Arabic), Pakistan (Urdu), and northern Nigeria
(Hausa). The first two share the Arabic script, while Hausa, which from
the fifteenth century to the early twentieth century was written in Arabic
script (‘ajami), switched during the colonial period to use of the Roman
alphabet. The need for transliteration is therefore confined to Arabic and
Urdu words; in both cases, transliteration has been kept simple in view of
the multidisciplinary nature of the expected readership. With the
exception of the (‘) to indicate the Arabic and Urdu letters ‘ayn and
’hamza, diacritical marks have been avoided. Except for the word
‘ulama, the plural form of Arabic or Urdu words is indicated by
addition of an s to the singular form. To avoid strain on the eyes and
minimise distractions while reading, words that are frequently repeated
(such as madrasa) are not italicised. Other non-English words are
italicised only on their first occurrence. Non-English words used only
once in the text are defined where they occur but are not included in the
glossary. It is also worth noting that most of the words in the glossary are
closely associated with Islamic practices, and thus, though of Arabic
origin, they have been absorbed into the other two languages. While
translating them, I have emphasised their Islamic meaning because that
is the context in which these words are used in this volume; however,
where I think it would be useful, I have also indicated the root meaning of
such words in Arabic. Words that are specific to Hausa or Urdu have been
indicated by (*) and (**), respectively. Finally, while in interview quotes
transliterated words have been standardised in line with the glossary,
extracts from written publications (including those by the movements
being studied) as per the standard rules retain the original transliteration.
The resulting inconsistency in spellings of some transliterated words (at
times visible on the same page), though potentially annoying for the
reader, is inevitable.

xv
 Glossary

Adab Islamic etiquette; the root meaning is ‘good

manners’
‘Ajami* African languages written in Arabic script;
comes from Arabic root word ajam, mean-
ing ‘foreign’ or ‘stranger’
‘Alim Learned man, religious scholar
‘Aqida Creed
‘Ashra Here refers to the last ten days of Ramadan;
the root meaning is ten
Awqaf Religious endowments
Azan Islamic prayer call
Bid‘a Innovation; heretical doctrine
Boko* Western schools or Western education;
developed with reference to the English
word ‘books’
Dars Lesson; here specifically refers to Islamic
sermons
Fajr The Muslim morning prayer at dawn
Falsafah Greek philosophy
Fiqh Technical term for the science of Islamic
jurisprudence
Hadiths Sayings of the Prophet Mohammad
Hajj The annual pilgrimage to Mecca
Halaqas Study circles; literal meaning is ‘ring’
Haya Modesty
Hifz Memorisation of the Quran; literal meaning
is ‘save’
Hijab Headscarf worn by Muslim women
‘Ibadah Worship; performance of Islamic prayer
rituals

xvi
 Glossary xvii

Ijtihad Systematic reflection on the foundational

sources of the law to arrive at legal rulings
expending great effort
Ilmi* Islamic schools in northern Nigeria for the
specialist study of Islamic texts; root word
comes from Arabic word ‘ilm, meaning
‘knowledge’
Imam Prayer leader at the mosque; literal meaning
is ‘leader or head of the community’
‘Iqra’ Read
‘Isha’ The Muslim night-time prayer
Islamiyya schools Islamic schools in northern Nigeria which
attempt to combine teaching of Islamic and
modern subjects
Itter Concentrated perfume
Jizya A tax imposed on non-Muslims living under
the protection of Muslim political authority
Jihad Struggle, including armed struggle against
non-believers, as well as inner struggle for
spiritual purification
Khayrat Religious alms
Khutba Sermon
Madhhabs Schools of Islamic law
Maghrib North-West Africa
Mahram Unmarriageable kin
Malam* Islamic scholar
Malamai* Female Islamic teacher
Maqasid-al-shari‘a A technical term for a particular approach to
Islamic legal interpretation; literal meaning
is objectives of shari‘a
Mukhabarat Intelligence
Munshi** Secretary (originally from Persian)
Qadi Judge
Qaida Beginner’s book introducing the Quranic
alphabets; root meaning is ‘base’
Qanun Law
Ramadan The Muslim month of fasting
Rihla Journey; especially one linked to spiritual
pursuits
Sabr Patience
Sadaqa Religious alms
xviii Glossary

Salafi Comes from root word, salaf, meaning

‘ancestors’; today the word is widely asso-
ciated with puritanical Islamic movements
stemming from Saudi Arabia
Seerah Life of the Prophet Mohammad
Shari’ Road
Shari‘a Islamic law and morality; literal meaning is
‘path to water’, with the connotation that
following the shari‘a leads to salvation
Shaykh Islamic scholar (male)
Shaykha Islamic scholar (female)
Shukr Gratitude; here used in specific reference
to God
Sufi Tariqa Muslim mystic order
Suhar The predawn meal during Ramadan to mark
the beginning of the fast
Sunnah Practice of the Prophet Mohammad
Surahs Chapters of the Quran
Tafsir Commentaries; exegesis of the Quran
Tahajjud Optional predawn prayer
Tahara Bodily purification
Tajdid Renewal or rebirth
Tajweed Proper pronunciation of Quranic Arabic
Tarawee prayer Special night prayer in Ramadan; literal
meaning is ‘to rest’
Tarbiya Moral training, especially in childhood
Tariqa Way, a Sufi order
Tsangaya* Quranic boarding schools for boys in north-
ern Nigeria
‘Ulama (singular: ‘alim) Islamic religious scholars
Viziers Ministers
Wafaq** Central madrasa boards in Pakistan
Waqf Religious Endowment
Zakat Islamic alms – tax paid annually on one’s
accumulated wealth
Zauq** Taste
Zikr Remembrance of God; it also has a technical
meaning referring to a type of Sufi practice
or ritual
1 Understanding Knowledge Creation:
A Re-Reading of Female Islamic Education
Movements

In August 2010, when I was engaged in fieldwork, women were in regular

attendance at the famous Umayyad Mosque, located in bustling Souk
Hamidiyah in the heart of old Damascus. One of the foundational mos-
ques in the Muslim world, whose foundations were laid in the very first
century of Islam (706),1 the mosque had a dedicated prayer area for
women. This was, however, not the only mosque with a growing female
presence; in most mosques in Damascus, whether located in the rich or
poor neighbourhoods, increasing numbers of women had been evident in
the previous decade; some mosques also hosted female halaqas (study
circles). The Lala Basha Mosque, located in the affluent Shari’ Baghdad
(a main road in central Damascus), was a good example of the growing
demand for mosque attendance and pursuit of Islamic learning among
women in Syria. In the last ‘ashra (the final ten days)2 of Ramadan, the
large turnout of women for the ‘Isha’ (night prayer) made it difficult for
attendees to secure a spot inside the prayer hall, a fact which obliged some
women, as well as men, to pray in the street outside. Other prominent
mosques, such as the Kuwaiti Mosque and Abu-Nour Mosque, experi-
enced a similar demand for separate prayer sections for women, and some
held regular weekly halaqas. This growing female participation in mos-
ques was in addition to the home-based study circles which continue to
some extent even in today’s troubled Syria; increased state restrictions on
gatherings at mosques since the 2011 uprisings have, however, severely
curtailed the mosque-based activities in cities under the control of the
regime (Pierret 2012), while in the rebel-held areas, most notably

1
The Umayyad Mosque remains an important Islamic landmark in Syrian imagination.
During my fieldwork, the Ministry of Awqaf had organised a major event in the courtyard
of the mosque to celebrate what it called the four ‘foundational mosques’ in Islam. Masjid-
i-Nabwi in Medina, Masjid-i-Aqsa in Jerusalem, and the Grand Cordoba Mosque were
the other three mosques. For a brief introduction to its period of construction and Islamic
architectural style, see Yalman (2000).
2
The last ‘ashra is viewed to be particularly auspicious because of the promise of Layla-tul-
qadr (Night of Destiny), which can fall on any odd night in the last ten days of Ramadan.

1
2 Female Islamic Education Movements

Aleppo, mosques have been a major casualty of the ongoing conflict3

(Reuters 2015). The home-based study circles were most noticeably
associated with Qubaysiat – a movement which in the last three decades
has played a major role in creating demand for the study of Islamic texts
among women from affluent families in Syria.
Women were known to be actively involved in the transmission of
Islamic knowledge in Damascus in the early periods of Islam
(Nadwi 2007). The trend gradually declined from the ninth to eleventh
centuries, and subsequently revived between the twelfth and fifteenth
centuries, after which it largely disappeared.4 Since the 1970s, this tradi-
tion has seen a revival, and a growing number of girls and women of all
ages are joining the mosque-based or home-based study circles to gain
knowledge of Islamic texts. There is little evidence to suggest that Syrian
women have taken an active part in the armed rebel resistance that has
gripped the country since early 2011.5 Sources, however, confirm that
these female Islamic study groups, especially those meeting in private
homes, such as Qubaysiat, have continued to convene during the resis-
tance, even though the government has restricted the mosque gatherings
for men and women alike.
In the Indian subcontinent, over 3,385 km away, (unlike Syria) there is
no recorded evidence of women ever being actively involved in teaching
Islamic texts in the earlier period of Islam’s emergence in the region
(Nadwi 2007),6 even though a vibrant madrasa tradition for the training
of ‘ulama (Islamic religious scholars) evolved from the twelfth century

3
Since some of the initial protests in 2011 against the Assad regime had taken place in the
mosques or after Friday prayers, Pierret (2012) documents how this led the state to clamp
down on mosque-based activities. However, in the rebel-held cities, mosques have
remained central to the resistance; both the Assad regime and the Russian military have
accused Syrian rebels and ISIS (the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) of using
mosques to hide ammunition and to plan attacks (Reuters 2015). The most widely
condemned destruction has been that of Aleppo’s Umayyad Mosque, a UNESCO
World Heritage Site, and its famous minaret; the rebels blamed the destruction on the
regime’s aerial bombing, while the government in turn blamed the rebels (Diplomatie
2013; Martinez and Alkhshali 2013).
4
Nadwi is primarily concerned with tracing the involvement of women in the transmission
of hadith scholarship. He finds names of women teachers and women students in the
records of major centres of hadith scholarship in Damascus during this period. Popular
venues for such learning and teaching activities included Al-Madrasah Al-‘Umariyyah,
Umayyad Mosque, Jami‘a Al-Muzaffari, and other mosques, gardens, and private schools
(Nadwi 2007: 267). From the sixteenth century onwards, however, women’s participation
in these educational platforms steadily declined.
5
Fears of sexual assaults in state custody have limited women’s participation in armed
resistance; many have, however, been able to support the rebels by providing humanitar-
ian assistance (Fotini 2013).
6
Nadwi (2007) records that only a few female hadith scholars emerged in South Asia, and
only in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
 A Re-Reading of Female Islamic Education Movements 3

(Malik 2008; Bano 2012a). Today, however, there is a continually

expanding demand among women for formal study of Islamic texts.
Islam gained a hold in the subcontinent in the twelfth century,7 i.e. five
centuries after it arrived in present-day Syria. Although few mosques in
the Indian subcontinent, especially those in the regions that became part
of Pakistan, have dedicated prayer areas for women that are as accom-
modating as those in their counterparts in the Syrian cities of Damascus
or Aleppo, today a larger proportion of women than ever before are
accessing madrasas, which normally evolve as an extension of
a mosque, for the study of Islamic texts. Traditionally, women in this
region gained knowledge of Islam by learning to recite the Quran at home
under the supervision of older family members or of respected elderly
women in the neighbourhood; some families went further and engaged
a trained ‘alim (Islamic scholar) from a neighbourhood mosque or
madrasa to provide home tuition. Today, a growing number of women
are enrolling in female madrasas, which emerged only in the 1970s.
These madrasas offer students boarding facilities and a formal four-
year degree programme covering Islamic subjects, thereby constituting an
even more formal education system than that offered in the mosque- or
home-based female halaqas in Damascus or Aleppo. Twenty per cent of
registered madrasas in Pakistan today cater for female students (Bano
2012a: 125–54). Further, like Qubaysiat in Syria, there is also an informal
movement promoting the textual study of Islam among women of all ages,
which has made major progress among educated women from affluent
families in Pakistan. Known as Al-Huda, this movement is distinct from
the older tradition of hosting home-based dars (sermons) by women for
women, which does also continue.8
In West Africa, in the most populous and Muslim-majority northern
Nigerian state of Kano, where initial contact with Islam developed in the
eighth century9 and was consolidated in the nineteenth century after
the Jihad of Usman dan Fodio, female Islamic scholarship did flourish
during the reign of dan Fodio family but petered out soon after10. Today,
7
Islam’s initial contact with the Indian sub-continent is recorded as early as the seventh
century. A visible Muslim community, which emerged within Syria in the very first
century of Islam (Berkey 2002), however, developed only gradually from the twelfth
century onwards with the establishment of successive Islamic empires, starting with the
Delhi Sultanate (1173–1351) and culminating in the rule of the Mughal Empire
(1526–1858) (Malik 2008).
8
For a comparative account of some of the home-based Islamic study groups in Pakistan,
see Ahmad (2009).
9
The spread of Islam in West Africa took longer than in the other two regions; even when
local rulers converted, many retained pagan beliefs and practices (Hill 2009).
10
A Fulani Islamic scholar who led a jihad against the Muslim leaders of Hausa city states
for following pagan practices, Usman dan Fodio ended up establishing the Sokoto
4 Female Islamic Education Movements

however, a similar rise in demand for the pursuit of formal Islamic

education for women is evident in northern Nigeria as in the other two
contexts. The most pronounced expression of this demand takes the
form of Islamiyya schools. These schools present a complex landscape
of education provision; some operate in the morning, others in the eve-
ning or at night, and others operate multiple shifts (Bano 2008). Among
them they cater for women of all ages. The Islamiyya school model of
Islamic education in northern Nigeria emerged as early as the 1950s.11
In the first two decades (the 1960s and 1970s), there were, however, only
a few such schools, and they were targeted primarily at men. These
schools were different from traditional Islamic learning platforms in
Kano, popularly known as Tsangaya and Ilmi schools,12 and they offered
an integrated education model which combined modern education with
study of the Quran and acquisition of basic Islamic knowledge (Bano
2008). From the 1970s onwards, however, these Islamiyya schools also
began to attract female students. Today these schools have a higher ratio
of female students: on average between 55 and 60 per cent of the student
population in the mixed Islamiyya schools in Kano is estimated to be
female (ESSPIN 2011; Antoninis 2014).
There are in addition many Islamiyya schools catering exclusively for
young or married women of all ages from a range of socio-economic
classes. Hajiya Fatima Tasallah Nabilisi, a prominent female preacher
in Kano, runs one such statewide network of Islamiyya schools, targeted
primarily at married women of all ages.13 Further, the education in these
schools never stops; enrolled students often view themselves as students
for life and not for a specified period of time. At the same time, as in the
case of the other two countries, even in northern Nigeria there is also

Empire, which covered northern Nigeria, northern Cameroon, and parts of Niger, and is
referenced by northern Nigerian Muslims with great pride. As we will see in Chapter 2,
women from dan Fodio family were very active in scholarly pursuits. For a detailed
analysis of the rise and fall of the Sokoto Empire, see Last (1967); for the life and times
of Usman dan Fodio, see Shagari (1978) and Hiskett (1994).
11
Interviews in the schools, with Islamic scholars from the two main Sufi tariqas (orders) in
Kano, Tijaniyya and Qadiriyya, as well as those from the more puritanical movement,
Izala, and with officials within the Ministry of Education, verify the foundation dates of
the oldest Islamiyya schools in Kano. Umar (2001) similarly identifies the 1970s as being
important for the emergence of new Islamic schooling platforms in Kano.
12
Tsangaya schools provide Quranic education to boys mainly between the ages of 5 and
20; Ilmi schools are normally organised around a senior malam (Islamic scholar) who is
a specialist in a specific Islamic text.
13
In northern Nigeria, many girls still get married when they are only 14 or 15 years old.
Government regulations do not encourage married girls to join government schools,
a fact which makes Islamiyya schools a popular choice within this group. Consequently,
Islamiyya schools for married women often have a student population ranging from
teenage girls to women in their seventies or eighties.
 A Re-Reading of Female Islamic Education Movements 5

a more elite-based Muslim women’s movement named FOMWAN

(Federation of Muslim Women’s Association in Nigeria);14 today
broader in its scope than its counterparts in the other two countries, the
movement’s origin is linked to the growing demand for Islamic education
among Muslim women in the north.15
These three locations, which represent three distinct regions of the
Muslim world, have been my field sites since 2008 or earlier.16 They
are, however, not the only sites to have witnessed the emergence and
steady expansion of this demand for the formal study of Islamic texts
among Muslim women, starting from the 1970s. A similar phenomenon
is observable in most Muslim-majority countries, as well as among
Muslim diaspora communities in the West (Bano and Kalmbach 2012).
From Indonesia to Morocco, and from Muslim diaspora communities in
the United States to South Africa, a similar trend in supply and demand
for the formal study of Islamic texts, in the form of both formal certified
courses and informal study circles, is visible and is on the rise (Bano and
Kalmbach 2012). Further, there is no evidence to suggest that the emer-
gence of this phenomenon at one site was triggered by awareness of
a similar phenomenon at another site. The women joining halaqas in
mosques in Syria whom I interviewed did not know of female madrasas
in Pakistan, and vice versa – just as neither of the two groups was aware of
the Islamiyya schools in Kano, or they about them.
Other studies show a similar lack of mutual awareness among groups in
the other countries (Bano and Kalmbach 2012). The fact that a similar
phenomenon emerged at the same time across different sites, without any
mutual awareness then or now, makes the emergence and growth of these
movements a fascinating topic of research inquiry for social scientists for
a number of reasons: one, they have emerged across the different contexts
at the same time, mainly the 1970s; two, the rate of expansion has been
fast, and the trend is continuing; three, in most contexts, despite their
organisational or doctrinal differences, most of these movements follow
what is normally categorised as orthodox Sunni scholarship, with due
respect for key texts produced by the four Sunni madhhabs (schools of

14
The FOMWAN’s stated mission is to ‘propagate the religion of Islam in Nigeria through
da’awah, establishment of educational institutions and other outreach activities’
(FOMWAN 2015a).
15
Its current area of activity is more diverse than that of Qubaysiat and Al-Huda, as its
members are now involved in many development projects funded by government or
development agencies. As we will see in Chapter 3, the emphasis on the study of Islamic
texts and modes of engagement with those texts is very similar across the three groups.
16
In Pakistan, my initial interviews in female madrasas started as early as 2006 as part of the
fieldwork that I conducted for The Rational Believer (Bano 2012a) – an ethnography of the
overall madrasa network in Pakistan.
6 Female Islamic Education Movements

Islamic law), as opposed to heeding the modernists’ call for independent

interpretation of the Quranic verses.17
Why a similar phenomenon, namely, demand for formal study of
Islamic texts among Muslim women, has emerged across different
Muslim societies and Muslim diaspora communities in the West at the
same time and why this demand has apparently tilted in favour of respect-
ing and reviving the orthodox Sunni scholarship, rather than adopting the
reformist reading of Islamic texts, are critical questions that need to be
addressed in order to understand the real implications of these move-
ments for the shaping of Muslim societies. At a deeper level, such a focus
acts as a lens to understand the broader institutional mechanisms that
have facilitated the emergence and expansion of Islamic revival and
reform movements since the 1970s. The emergence of these female
Islamic study groups since the 1970s, and their preference for
a scripturalist reading of Islam, becomes particularly noteworthy when
seen in the context of major cultural transformations that are simulta-
neously underway in Muslim societies as a result of accelerated processes
of globalisation.18
In most Muslim societies, inclusive of the three contexts under study,
steady growth in access to television and cable network, increased
media connectivity through the Internet, and the rolling out of gender-
empowerment programmes supported by the state and funded by
Western aid programmes have put religiously inspired gender norms
under pressure (Larkin 2008; World Bank 2010; Bano 2012a).
An increasing number of Muslim women today are accessing modern
education (UNDP 2014); the male-to-female ratio in university enrol-
ment has already been narrowed in many Muslim countries (Klugman
et al. 2014; BBC 2015); and, a higher percentage of women are securing
employment outside the restricted list of sectors, such as teaching,

17
The term ‘orthodox’ is normally used to indicate groups that adopt a literal interpretation
of Islamic texts, while modernist approaches are argued to support more context-bound
interpretations, thereby allowing more flexibility in making Islamic dictates adjust to the
needs of modern times. This volume finds such a distinction superficial, as even orthodox
groups recognise the difference between fixed and changeable rulings in Islam, and some
are more literalist than others. The main difference between the two positions is argued to
rest in their treatment of the scholarship produced by the four madhhabs. The orthodox
approach places this body of shari‘a at the heart of the interpretative process; the
modernists are often dismissive of it. The core features of the two approaches and their
implications for how Islamic law and moral teaching is related to contemporary life will
become clear in Chapter 3.
18
This cultural transformation has not been confined to the last three decades, but was part
and parcel of Western colonial rule. For an engaging account of how colonial rule, among
other changes, also influenced the cultural sensibilities of the educated Muslims, espe-
cially the elites, see Rogan (2011).
 A Re-Reading of Female Islamic Education Movements 7

traditionally viewed as suitable for them (Kelly and Breslin 2010; World
Bank 2010; GoP 2012). Women are increasingly visible across the differ-
ent spheres of economic activity, as well as in the media, and some also
enter the political arena. Recent studies also document changing house-
hold dynamics and an increasingly assertive role assumed by women in
household decision-making among younger couples in Muslim societies
(Kelly and Breslin 2010; World Bank 2010; Klugman et al. 2014).
Seen through the lens of modernisation theory, which predicts
a decline in religious adherence with the onset of modernity,19 this
relaxation in gender norms within contemporary Muslim societies,
which allows for increased socio-economic mobility and opportunities
for political engagement for women, is understandable. The broader
societal shifts would be expected to reduce religious adherence, especially
if the prevalent religion, as is the case with Islam, is seen to be inherently
restrictive of female agency (Mernissi 1991, 1992; Ahmed 1992).
Further, those who retain the faith would be expected to demand
a reinterpretation of particularly restrictive Islamic norms. Such demands
for reinterpretation would find natural support in the works of scholars
who argue that it is the ‘ulama and the dense body of shari‘a that evolved
over the centuries, and not necessarily the guidelines presented in the
Quran, that are responsible for the perpetuation of patriarchal structures
within Muslim societies (Mernissi 1991; Wadud 1999; Barlas 2002).
The emergence of female mosque- or madrasa-based Islamic study plat-
forms and informal study circles as convened by Qubaysiat and Al-Huda,
which permit educated Muslim women to study Islamic texts, could
thus be expected to challenge male interpretation of these texts to argue
for more liberal gender norms from within the Islamic tradition.
The scholarship available on these movements to date, however, reports
otherwise.
What then explains the demand for these apparently orthodox con-
temporary female Islamic education movements? And how are the read-
ings of Islam that they promote shaping the socio-economic and political
institutions within their host societies? This rare comparative study of one
form of Islamic associational life across three diverse contexts argues for
a major revision to the arguments advanced to date about the causes of
expansion and spread of female Islamic movements and their bearing on
shaping the public sphere within Muslim societies. It also serves as a lens
to understand the broader phenomenon of Islamic resurgence since the
1970s. In order to understand the significance of these movements, and

19
For a review of how the founding fathers of sociology expected modernity to lead to the
demise of religion, see Stark and Finke (2000).
8 Female Islamic Education Movements

the argument advanced in this volume, it is best to proceed by briefly

elaborating the reasons why from an analytical perspective the emergence
of these female Islamic education movements and the persistence of Islam
in fast-changing domestic and global contexts is not a trivial achievement.

The Persistence of Islam: Not a Trivial Achievement

The ‘ulama and their attempts at Islamic revival20 through supporting
movements such as these female Islamic education movements are often
held responsible for the apparent stagnation of intellectual spirit within
Islam and the apparent inability of Muslim societies to experience eco-
nomic prosperity and political stability in modern times. Such arguments
often assume the persistence of Islam to be a product of the weight of
history and custom, rather than possibly the product of reason and
efficient adaptation by the scholars to demands of the changing times.
It is often argued that the doors of ijtihad (independent reasoning) were
closed in the Muslim world from the twelfth century onwards,21 curbing
the intellectual reasoning and associated creativity and socio-economic
and political prosperity that marked the period of early Islamic history.
The centrality of scientific progress and rational reasoning associated with
the Western renaissance and the rise of Western colonial power made
many Muslim political elites attribute the decline of Muslim political
authority to the nature of Islamic scholarship.22 It was this conviction
that made many postcolonial Muslim leaders embark on major Islamic
modernisation projects (Berkey 2007) involving reform of the traditional
centres of Islamic authority and learning. Interestingly, such views of the
‘ulama and their reading of Islamic texts were not confined solely to
Western scholars or the modernising Muslim political elites, but were
also shared by the university-educated Islamic reformers, who in the
twentieth century increasingly started to challenge the ‘ulama’s under-
standing of Islam. Unlike the secular reformers, these Islamists, such as
Maulana Maududi in India and Sayyid Qutb in Egypt, did not find
Islamic texts incapable of answering modern challenges; they did,

20
‘Ulama, unlike the modern-educated Islamists who often argue for the capturing of state
power through the establishment of movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood and
Jamaat-i-Islami, have instead normally focused on Islamic revival movements through
encouraging the spread of Islamic knowledge and personal piety (Metcalf 2002; Loimeier
2003).
21
For a review of such positions and their critique, see Saliba (2011).
22
Ataturk’s reforms of the Islamic education institutions under the Turkish Republic (Agai
2007) are arguably the most visible expression of this cynicism towards orthodox Islam
and Islamic authority structures within twentieth-century Muslim political elites.
 A Re-Reading of Female Islamic Education Movements 9

however, find the ‘ulama and their readings of Islamic texts out of sync
with the needs of modern times.23
Central to such conceptions of the ‘ulama, and the rigidity associated
with orthodox readings of Islamic texts, is an assumption of stagnation
and uncritical thinking within classical methods of Islamic teaching.24
‘Ulama as religious elites in this line of reasoning are presented as highly
orthodox, lacking dynamism, and capable only of protecting the tradi-
tional texts that they know best. The analytical challenge posed by such
narratives, however, is major: it fails to account for the reasons why the
‘ulama and the orthodox Islamic scholarship that they preserved could
survive the major upheavals faced by Muslim societies during the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries.25 Colonial rule not only made Islamic
education irrelevant to modern economic and political realities and
opportunities, it also came with a Christian civilisational agenda. Yet,
Islam survived. In the words of (Geertz 1971: 64): ‘Beyond the economic
and political, the colonial confrontation was spiritual: a clash of selves.
And in this part of the struggle, the colonized, not without cost and not
without exception, triumphed: they remained, somewhat made over,
themselves.’
While the Muslim political and economic elites failed to defend their
turf in the face of Western economic and political institutions introduced
by the colonisers, the ‘ulama (despite coming under direct state control in
many Muslim contexts26) successfully defended their authority over the
religious sphere and ensured the successful transmission of core tenets of
the faith to successive generations of Muslims. The continued demand
for madrasa education in Muslim societies,27 despite the improved
provision of modern education systems, the growth of female Islamic

23
For a review of the different orientations of the Islamists and the ‘ulama of Al-Azhar, see
Mitchell (1993) and Calvert (2010).
24
For a review of such positions and their critiques, see Zeghal (2007); Zaman (2010);
Pierret (2013).
25
When researching how elite families in medieval Damascus (1190–1350) used the
demonstration of knowledge and cultural practices to preserve their status,
Chamberlain (1994: 176) draws on Charles Maier (1975) to argue the same: ‘In an era
of upheaval, it is continuity and stability that need explanation.’
26
Al-Azhar in Egypt being the most studied example (Zeghal 2007).
27
Even when pursuing modern education, in all three societies under study, the majority of
the public at some point either studies in a mosque or a madrasa or is taught at home by
a teacher trained in this traditional Islamic education system, to secure basic Islamic
education. In Kano, the 2003 government census recorded 23,000 Islamiyya, Quranic,
and Ilmi schools, as compared with fewer than 6,000 state primary and secondary schools
(GoK 2003); for Pakistan, see Nelson (2006) for an analysis of how even when pursuing
modern education, part-time enrolment in the form of evening classes in mosques for
both boys and girls remains critical to parental conceptions of what constitutes basic
education.
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 The last had been straight blarney, but Dennis shivered as the
receiver clicked on its hook. Well he knew that telephone number
and the grim little house far over toward the river where, for a brief
interval, the bluff, kindly Bill harbored the city’s unknown dead! Had
the sickly little Goddard heir gone the way of Hughes after all?
“Why did you ask about the doors?” The conversation had
evidently held only its obvious meaning for the man before them.
“Horace must have been induced in some way to leave the house,
for no one could have entered with Trafford and all the servants
about!”
“He did leave, and by the side door,” McCarty held out the
shattered little wristwatch. “Does this belong to the lad?”
“Good God, yes! He wore it yesterday!” Goddard seized it and then
sank into his chair. “It’s—smashed! He must have been handled
brutally, perhaps even—!”
“That don’t follow, sir!” McCarty interrupted. “The strap slips out
of the buckle easy, for I tried it, and the lad might have dropped it
without noticing. Anybody going to one of the back doors could have
come along and trod on it after, for ’twas in the alley right in front of
the door that I found it. And now—”
“Mrs. Goddard is awake and ready to see you now,” Trafford’s
voice sounded from the threshold and Goddard started up once
more.
“She knows there is no news?” he asked, and at the tutor’s nod
added: “Come then, but don’t tax her beyond her strength and don’t
mind any—any wild statements which she may make. My poor wife
is almost out of her mind!”
“Of course; we understand,” McCarty darted a quick glance at
Dennis and then turned to the tutor. “Trafford, Inspector Druet and
another man are on their way up from headquarters and you’ll be
helping matters if you tell the both of them what’s happened and all
about them you ’phoned to for trace of the lad.”
 In silence they followed Goddard to the tiny jewel-box of an
elevator, whose velvet and gold and glittering crystal mirrors made
Dennis gasp. He gasped again when their guide pressed a button
and they shot abruptly upward and his weatherbeaten face turned a
delicate green as they stopped with a smooth but sickening swoop
at the second floor. He was the first out with the opening of the
door, but there was no time for the aside which trembled on his lips,
for Goddard led the way down the wide hall to the doorway in which
the figure of an elderly maid was silhouetted against the dim light of
the room within.
“Eustace!” A woman’s trembling voice sounded from behind her.
“It can’t be that nothing is known, nothing! Did you tell them about
that—”
“Everything is being done, Clara.” Goddard motioned the maid
aside and McCarty and Dennis followed him into the dressing-room.
They received only a confused impression of mahogany and old-rose
and tall mirrors, of a faint, aromatic perfume and the sound of deep-
drawn, convulsive breathing. The next moment their eyes were
caught and held by the long figure outstretched upon a chaise-
longue, imposing even in the dishevelled abandonment of grief. Mrs.
Goddard was a woman well over forty, but her distraught face still
bore traces of the beauty which must normally have been hers.
There was no touch of gray in the masses of luxuriant dark hair
which the maid had arranged with evident haste, but that night had
etched lines about the fine eyes and the firm though sensitive mouth
that would never be erased.
As her husband went on speaking, her glance swept past him to
the two who waited at his elbow.
“Everything that is humanly possible is being done, my dear!”
Goddard repeated more emphatically. “These are the police officers I
called in, and they want to ask you a few questions. Do you think
you can collect yourself enough to stick to facts and not foolish,
morbid fancies?”
 “I am quite collected, Eustace!” There was a note almost of
defiance in Mrs. Goddard’s tones and she sat up among her pillows
with an unconscious dignity, in spite of the emotion which she held
in check with such obvious effort. “Ask me anything you please! I—I
only want my baby safe once more!”
“Of course, ma’am,” McCarty responded soothingly. “You went out
and left the lad on the couch in the library and when you came back
to get ready for the musicale next door you thought he was with his
teacher. Now, what was the first you knew of his disappearance?”
“When I returned from the musicale. It was late, after six, and my
husband met me in the hall with the news. He and Mr. Trafford had
been telephoning everywhere! They thought Horace might have
gone to some of our friends, but he had never done such a thing as
to leave the Mall without our knowledge and I knew that something
terrible had happened. I could feel it—here!” Her slender, very white
hands flew to her breast. “I cannot blame Mr. Trafford for not
starting the search for Horace in the early afternoon; he supposed
he had slipped away to the studio of an artist who has taken a great
fancy to our little boy, but Mr. Blaisdell is not in town.”
The forced composure still held her and only her fluttering hands
and quick-drawn breath gave evidence of her supreme agitation.
“You don’t think the lad has gone to join him, do you?” McCarty
asked.
“Run away, you mean?” Mrs. Goddard shook her head slowly. “Oh,
no! Horace would never dream of such a thing! Mr. Blaisdell wanted
to take him but we would not hear of it and Horace had no idea of
disobeying our wishes. He has never been away from us before—
before yesterday!”
“Then you think he has been kidnapped?”
At the question Goddard, who had moved around to the other side
of the couch, took a step forward, the sagging muscles of his round
face tightening as his jaw tensed but his wife did not take her eyes
from those of McCarty.
 “He isn’t here!” her trembling voice broke. “He wouldn’t run away!
The earth didn’t open and—and an avalanche descend upon him! It
must have been that man!”
“What man!” McCarty and Dennis spoke in chorus, and then
Goddard placed his hand on his wife’s shoulder.
“Now, Clara!” he admonished. “You promised—!”
“To give us facts, Mr. Goddard!” interrupted McCarty sternly. “If
Mrs. Goddard can tell us whatever it was you were holding back last
night so much the better! You ’phoned to me that the lad had been
kidnapped but you couldn’t give me any reason for thinking so
except that he was gone, and you didn’t breathe a word about any
‘man’!—Will you tell us, ma’am?”
“There’s nothing to tell!” Goddard insisted obstinately. “My wife is
nervous, imaginative, and so is Horace. He was badly frightened by
a strange man here in the Mall a short time ago and his mother was
quite frantic about it. It was some days before she would allow him
to go out alone again, but personally I think he exaggerated—”
“Our boy would not tell a falsehood!” Mrs. Goddard interrupted. “It
was just at dusk one afternoon about a fortnight ago, or perhaps
less, when Horace had returned alone from Mr. Blaisdell’s studio. He
entered the Mall by the east gate as usual, but stopped to play with
a little white Persian kitten, the pet of Mrs. Bellamy’s baby. Mrs.
Bellamy lives just two doors away, next to Mr. Orbit’s. The watchman
had passed him and gone on toward the west gate when all at once
the kitten darted across the street and Horace followed, afraid that it
might become lost. It ran into the open court between the Parsons
house and the closed one next door belonging to the Quentin estate
and Horace was stooping to coax it to him when he was seized from
behind by a strange man and searched!”
“Searched?” echoed McCarty.
“Yes. The man pressed Horace back against him with one hand
over his mouth and felt in all his pockets with the other, but he took
nothing and never uttered a word! My little son was too startled to
struggle at first, and all at once the man released him—and
disappeared!”
“Did the boy have any money with him?” Dennis could contain
himself no longer.
“Three or four dollars, I believe, but the man left it untouched.”
Mrs. Goddard’s eyes shifted to those of the questioner. “It was quite
dark there in that narrow space between the two houses, but Horace
saw the face which bent down over his distinctly and he said the
man was an utter stranger whom he had never seen in the Mall
before; rough, unshaven and desperate looking!”
“Which way did he go?” McCarty took up the interrogation once
more. “Was it down the alley to the street or up in the open court
behind the houses?”
“How could the child tell?” Goddard interjected before his wife
could speak. “It was almost dark and he was terror-stricken!”
“Horace told us that the man ran toward the rear and disappeared
in the shadows of a doorway at—at the left,” Mrs. Goddard replied,
as though her husband had not spoken.
“At the left, facing the rear of the houses on the north side of the
way?” McCarty was thinking rapidly aloud. “That’ll be Parsons’ house
then!—Why didn’t you want us to know this, Mr. Goddard?”
“Because it can have no possible bearing on the disappearance of
our son yesterday!” Goddard retorted hotly. “He ran home
immediately and told us, and I instituted a thorough search without
delay, but the watchman could find no trace of the fellow and
insisted he had admitted no one that day through either gate who
resembled Horace’s description. The Parsons’ servants had seen
nothing of him and he has not reappeared since, although a strict
watch was kept. It is madness to suppose that Horace left this house
of his own accord to meet the fellow, when he stood in mortal terror
of him—!”
 “Not unless he met him accidental-like and got waylaid a second
time!” Dennis broke in irrepressibly. “There’s no telling what he was
after if ’twas not money, but if he was crazy and the boy put up a bit
of a struggle—!”
“A-a-ah!” Mrs. Goddard’s taut nerves gave way and she broke into
a low, wailing cry. “That is my fear! No sane person would harm
him; but all night long in horrible dreams I have seen him—! My
baby! He is hidden somewhere, helpless, suffering, and I cannot
reach him! I shall go mad!”
 CHAPTER XI
THE CLOSED HOUSE

“A FINE mess you made of that!” McCarty remarked disgustedly

when the door of Mrs. Goddard’s dressing-room had closed
behind them, shutting in her husband and the maid. “Just when we
were on the point of getting at the truth, too!”
“Truth, is it?” Dennis retorted. “I suppose you mean you’d have
been finding out what the crazy guy expected to find in the boy’s
pockets!”
“No, I know that already!” McCarty emitted a grim chuckle. “’Twill
keep, though, for we’ve got quick work ahead of us now and the
inspector must have been waiting this long while.”
“You can shoot yourself down in that birdcage if you’ve a mind to,
but my own legs will carry me!” Dennis eyed the elevator door,
cunningly concealed in the high oak paneling of the hall, with a
hostile glare. Then he added sarcastically: “I’ve no doubt but that,
by the new book learning you’ve got lately, you know who the guy
was, too, and where he came from and how he got out, through
solid walls and barred gates! Education is a grand thing, but where
is Horace? Answer me that!”
“If we’re not able to answer that soon, Denny, I’m thinking it
would be best left unanswered forever, for the sake of that woman
back there.” McCarty spoke with deep earnestness. “There’s a feeling
in me that we’ve something working against us more than human,
something worse than lightning or the plague, even! If we could
only see our way clear to the black heart of it!”
They went down the stairs together, to find the inspector and
Martin awaiting them with Trafford, who appeared crushed from the
gruelling half hour through which he had passed.
 McCarty addressed him first, with a mere nod to his superior.
“Trafford, why didn’t you tell me about the man who grabbed the
lad in the alley not two weeks ago?”
“Mr. Goddard forbade me,” the wretched young man stammered,
then drew himself up with a vain assumption of dignity. “Since it has
nothing to do with the case—”
“We’re the best judges of that!” McCarty waved him away
peremptorily. “Tell Mr. Goddard we’ll see him later.... Now, inspector,
before we talk, if you’ll follow a suggestion of mine just once more,
there’s a train Martin will be after catching and he’ll have to hustle to
do it.”
The inspector eyed him keenly for a moment and then nodded.
“Go to it,” he said briefly. “Get the instructions, Martin.”
McCarty drew the young operative aside and after a brief
interchange of words the latter took his departure. Then the
inspector motioned the other two into the library and closed the
door.
“Now I want an explanation of this!” he announced, in a tone
which took McCarty swiftly back to the old days. “Why didn’t you
report to me at once when you learned what had happened? What
have you two been doing since? I made you deputies, but by the
Lord I didn’t appoint you chiefs!”
McCarty told him in detail of their activities during the night and
added frankly:
“I didn’t report, inspector, because I wanted a few hours’ the start
of you, and that’s the truth. So far, I’ve only done what I think you
would have, yourself, but I’m working from an angle of my own that
you’d not have taken. I’ve sent Martin just now to Ellenville, to find
out if this Blaisdell has heard anything of the lad, but that’s only
routine; the real job is here in the Mall, even if Horace turns up dead
or alive somewhere else.”
 “What’s this angle of yours on the case?” the inspector demanded
curtly. “What did Goddard forbid that tutor mentioning and why?”
McCarty described the interview with Mrs. Goddard and the
inspector listened attentively, asking when he had finished:
“What do you propose to do? Put the screws on Goddard to find
out why he kept that back? He can’t be a party to the kidnapping of
his own son!”
“No, but he thinks he knows who the fellow was, and that he’ll
hear from him or them back of him soon with a view to ransom; he’s
ready to offer fifty or a hundred thousand reward, whenever you
give the word. Until he does hear from him, though, he can’t be sure
what happened to the lad and that’s why he’s anxious. His wife don’t
know anything about this private opinion of his, of course, and
naturally she’s half-crazed,” McCarty summed up as though his
process of deduction was equally clear to his two companions. “We’ll
leave him worry awhile, for ’tis my opinion he’s mistaken entirely. I
want a look now inside that empty house next to the Parsons’ across
the street and there’s no time to wait for red tape to get permission.”
“The Quentin house, that’s been closed all these years?” The
inspector looked fixedly at him and Dennis gaped. “You think the
fellow might have hidden there after letting the little boy go? Come
on, we’ll take a chance.”
A huge dark blue limousine of impressive aspect was just drawing
up before Number Seven as they emerged from the Goddard house
and crossed the street. At sight of the distinguished, gray-bearded
man who alighted and went up the steps the inspector halted with
an exclamation.
“Do you know who that is, Mac? The ambassador to whom the
mayor gave the keys of the city only yesterday down at City Hall! If
he comes himself to call on the Parsons family they’re of more
importance even than I thought!”
“And ’tis small wonder they don’t bother to associate with the rest
on the block, millionaires or no,” McCarty commented, eyeing the
equipage with vast respect as they passed. “You said the old
gentleman was—?”
He paused suddenly and Dennis’ eyes followed his to the great
entrance doors which were closing slowly behind the aristocratic
back of the ambassador. There was just a glimpse of a thin, sallow-
faced manservant in black, who appeared to sweep the trio with a
curiously penetrating gaze and then the scene was shut out.
McCarty seemed to have lost interest in the question he was about
to ask and they went on in silence to the narrow, paved court
between the Parsons residence and the vast, rambling pile of
brownstone next door.
“Let’s go up here and see if the rear is open for the length of the
block, the way it is on the other side of the street,” McCarty
suggested. “There’s Parsons’ side door, the one Horace said the man
disappeared into; it’s pretty deep, you see, deep enough for him to
have just stepped into the embrasure and been hid in the shadows
of late afternoon without actually going through the door itself,
though I don’t say he didn’t, at that!”
“’Tis likely a nut that’d go around grabbing children and searching
their pockets would be let into the Parsons’!” Dennis exclaimed in
fine scorn. “Unless the boy made the whole thing up for a sensation,
the way some kids do, how’d the man get in and out of the block?
The house on this side looks to be boarded up, as tight as a drum.”
They reached the rear and found the open court which extended
along behind the houses, to be even wider than that on the south
side of the street, the back wall higher and devoid of a single vine.
The silent Quentin house presented as blank an aspect as from the
front, its sealed windows and barred doors staring like blind eyes in
the sunlight. The inspector shook his head.
“No one has entered here in months; years maybe,” he remarked.
“The padlocks are so rusted on those board doors that they would
have to be broken and the boards themselves are weatherbeaten
and rotting. I’m surprised they’d let the place get into such a
condition, even though it is in litigation.... What are you doing,
Riordan?”
The house, being the corner one, was built around in an ell on the
Madison Avenue side and in the right angle formed by its two walls a
leader descended from the roof. Dennis was examining and testing it
speculatively. At the inspector’s question he turned.
“Do you mind, sir, ’twas a wide shiny mark burnished on a pipe
running across the top of an air-shaft that showed Mac and me how
a murderer had swung himself down on a rope and in at a window,
in the first case ever he butted in on after he left the Force?” he
asked. “This rain-pipe looks to be too frail to bear the weight of a
cat, but ’tis not a cat rubbed the rust off here, and here, so it shines
like new tin! I put on a clean shirt yesterday, more’s the pity, but
hold my coat and hat, Mac.”
“Mind or you’ll break your neck!” McCarty warned, forgetful of his
friend’s calling, as he complied. Dennis scorned to reply but
swarmed up the straining, creaking leader to the second floor,
swinging out to land lightly and sure-footedly on the broad sill of a
window two feet away. The leader, released suddenly from his
weight, tore loose from its fastening and canted crazily against the
angle of the wall, shaking and clattering, and McCarty exclaimed:
“You’ll not be coming down the way you went up!”
“True for you!” Dennis sang out with a note of rising excitement.
“I’ll be coming down the way the last guy did who lit here, and that’s
by the inside! Wait you there for me.”
He had been examining the sill upon which he stood and the
boards which covered the window, pressing experimentally upon the
latter. Suddenly one of them gave way, forced inward with an
accompanying crash of glass.
“Now you’ve done it!” McCarty observed superfluously. “Look out
there is not more than us waiting for you inside!”
 “I’ve my flashlight, thanks be, and my two fists,” Dennis
responded. “That board wasn’t tight; the nails had just been stuck
back in the holes. Here goes another!”
With the rending of wood the second followed the first and with a
third which he wrenched loose Dennis smashed in the fragments of
glass which still clung to the sash, then wriggled lithely through the
aperture and disappeared. McCarty drew a long breath and turned to
his former superior.
“I’d like to be following him,” he said wistfully. “If so be some guy
is hiding in there—the same one that grabbed the lad—he’ll be
desperate enough to kill, and Denny’s too slow-thinking and slow-
moving to take care of himself! I’m heftier than him and ’tis long
since I did any shinnying, but maybe that pipe would hold me after
all!”
“A man with four medals from the fire department for meritorious
conduct and conspicuous bravery doesn’t need a nursemaid, Mac!”
the inspector responded with a laugh. “Personally, I don’t believe
any one’s been in there for months before him but—what’s that?”
“That” was a sudden subdued commotion within, a long-sustained
clatter followed by a reverberating thud and then a silence ominous
in its intensity.
“I knew it!” McCarty dropped the hat and coat and made for the
wooden barrier that sealed the main back door. “I’m going in if I
break the whole damn’ place down! Denny! Denny! I’m coming!”
His reassuring roar was lost in the mighty smash of his fist on the
rotting boards but after the first blow the inspector reached him and
dragged him back.
“Have you taken leave of your senses?” the latter demanded.
“You’ll have the whole block aroused to find us breaking and
entering! Riordan’s all right!—There, I hear somebody moving about
inside. Listen!”
 McCarty waited, panting and tense, and faintly there came to his
ears the sound as of stumbling footsteps within and a scratching
noise from a window at the left of the door which, being protected
by an iron grill-work, had been left unboarded. A heavy green shade
hung close against the inner side of the dirty windowpane, furrowed
by many past rainstorms, and the stout bars seemed at a glance to
be firmly imbedded in the broad stone sill but McCarty strode to
them and began trying them one by one, while behind him the
inspector drew his revolver and stood expectant.
“Look here, sir!” McCarty whispered. “’Tis fine burglar protection
they’ve got in these houses! See how this bar slides up into its
groove in the top of the casement, till you can pull it out below and
down over the sill entirely? I’ll bet the next will work the same.—It
does! If we’d taken the trouble to find this out at first—! Glory be,
here’s Denny himself!”
The green shade had flown up and the face of Dennis appeared in
a sickly yellow aura cast by his flashlight, but he promptly
extinguished it and set to work on the catch of the window. As
McCarty removed the fourth bar the sash opened upward and the
two, who had meanwhile been exchanging grimaces pregnant with
meaning gazed silently at each other for a full minute. Then McCarty
found his voice.
“Where is he!” he demanded. “What did you do with him? We
heard the row out here—!”
“There wasn’t any ‘him,’” Dennis interrupted sheepishly. “It was
me, by myself. I came on the stairs unexpected-like and took the
whole flight of them without even breaking my flashlight!—But come
in, the both of you, and see what I found!”
McCarty scrambled over the sill and Inspector Druet, despite his
added years, followed with the effortless ease of a boy. They found
themselves in a large room bare of furniture but in the dust which
lay like a heavy carpet upon the floor a meandering trail of
footsteps, many times traversed, ran from the window by which they
had entered to a connecting door opening into a laundry. Dusty
finger-marks, with here and there the imprint of a whole hand, were
plainly outlined on the white woodwork of the inner sill and below it
greasy pieces of wrapping paper were scattered. In a corner two
pitchers and several small tin cans were heaped.
“Some one has been camping out here, that’s evident,” the
inspector remarked. “Getting his food handed in to him through that
window, too!”
“And it wasn’t any ordinary bought stuff, the kind that comes
ready fixed in stores.” McCarty was poking about in the papers.
“Here’s the carcass of a whole chicken, pieces of fancy rolls and
pastry and other stuff, but it’s all stale; it’s been here for four or five
days, at least.”
“And there’s traces of coffee in those pitchers and cans, to say
nothing of the wine bottles on that shelf!” Dennis pointed
impatiently. “He’s been living on the fat of the land from one of the
houses in this row and the nearer the likelier, even if it does happen
to be occupied by the Parsons! Come upstairs till I show you more.”
The larger adjoining room had evidently been the laundry, for
rows of enameled tubs and washing machines were ranged against
the wall and dryers stood about, but all were covered with a thick
blanket of dust. Dennis led the way through a series of kitchens and
pantries, far more elaborate than those they had encountered in
Orbit’s house, to the back stairs and up to the second floor rear, into
the room with the broken window. All the way they had followed
that zigzag trail of overlapping footsteps and here the floor was
crossed and recrossed by a network of them. This apartment had
evidently been one of the master bedrooms, for a well-appointed,
marble-lined bath opened from it and heavy, old-fashioned furniture
of richly carved mahogany was ranged with stiff precision about the
room. A half-burned candle, shielded from the window by an old
cardboard box-cover, stood on a side table together with a handful
of matches and some cigarette stubs. McCarty pointed to it.
 “He couldn’t live without a light but he hid it from the window and
he didn’t dare carry it when he went down to get his food; that’s
why those footprints ramble so, he was feeling his way in the dark.
That bed looks as if it had been slept in, with all those old draperies
piled on it, and what’s in that big pitcher on the bureau?”
“Water,” Dennis replied. “There’s still a little left, though you can
see from the marks on the inside where it has dried down.”
“Evaporated?” The inspector nodded. “That would show, too, that
whoever the fellow was he hadn’t used any of it for a few days at
least.—Hello, what’s this?”
He had turned to the bathroom and after a moment he emerged
from it holding a bright, new razor, a piece of soap and a very dirty
Turkish towel.
“The water has been turned off in the pipes of course, but there is
an empty bucket in there in which some must have been brought to
him, and he seems to have had some regard to his personal
appearance, at least. The Goddard boy said the man who had
tackled him was rough-looking and unshaved, didn’t he?”
“When he tackled him, yes,” McCarty replied. “He had chance
enough to clean up after, as soon as whoever was helping him to
hide here brought him the things.”
“He did more than that!” Dennis declared. There was an unwonted
flush on his leathery cheeks and his gray eyes were alight with
excitement. “Why do you suppose he was hiding here, anyway? Why
does anybody hide? If ’tis not to do something unlawful, couldn’t he
have broken the law already and be hiding from it?”
“Denny!” McCarty breathed. “What are you getting at? You’ve
found out something! Who is the man?”
“Who’s wanted now, Inspector?” Dennis asked. “Somebody that’s
gentleman enough to keep shaved and clean in spite of everything,
who’d appreciate good food and wine and the best in life, and yet
was a convicted criminal for all that!”
 “‘Convicted—!’” McCarty started forward. “An ex-crook, do you
mean? How did you guess—?”
“‘Ex-crook,’ nothing!” retorted his confrère. “I’m not up in the
latest of prison styles but if this ain’t a penitentiary get-up I’m an
Orangeman!”
He flung open a closet door behind him, dived in and dragged
forth in triumph a tell-tale suit of stained and ragged gray.
“Sing Sing!” exclaimed Inspector Druet. “Good Lord, Riordan,
you’ve made a find!—Do you remember, Mac, that three men
escaped last month? One was killed making his getaway and another
caught and transferred to Dannemora, but the third of those that
crashed out then is still at large and there’s a big reward out!
Heaven knows how he managed to get into the Mall and why he
should have come here, of all places, but I’ll stake my life that the
man who has been hiding in this house is George Radley!”
 CHAPTER XII
THE BREATH OF DEATH

“W HO is he?” asked Dennis, wide-eyed. “Who is this George

Radley?”
“You remember, don’t you, Mac?” The inspector turned to the ex-
roundsman. “Radley was a young chemist—”
“A chemist!” caroled McCarty and Dennis in unison. Then their
mouths shut like traps and they stared at each other.
“What’s got into you two?” Inspector Druet demanded. “This
Radley was accused, together with an accomplice, of sending poison
to a mutual enemy, concealed in candy. An innocent member of the
man’s household ate it and died, but the actual evidence against the
accused was so weak that they could only be convicted of
manslaughter after two disagreements and then the accomplice only
got two or three years and Radley ten. He’ll have several more to
serve yet, however, even allowing for good behavior and then, too, a
guard was seriously injured in trying to prevent that crush-out, so
he’s wanted bad. He could never have got as far as the city in those
clothes!”
“He had others outside of ’em, either stole or slipped to him.”
Dennis returned to the closet and produced a pair of dilapidated
shoes, gray trousers and a long mackinaw, together with a soft
Panama hat. “Only the shoes are ragged, you see; the rest is in
pretty good condition and there’s an umbrella in a corner of the
closet. He could have got past the watchman easy on a rainy night,
especially if he said he was coming to see a maid, maybe, in one of
the houses.—Still, that don’t account for his grabbing the Goddard
kid, if ’twas him, and going through his pockets!”
 “His clothes may be a find but we’ve not got himself yet. What if
he’s hid under this roof now?” McCarty exclaimed. “He’d have no call
to harm the Goddard lad unless Horace found out he was here and
was going to give him away, but harm or no, if so he’s had no
chance to escape—!”
“You’re right, Mac!” The inspector dropped the clothes he had
been examining and started for the door. “We’ll smoke him out!”
But a painstaking search of the great house from attic to cellar
failed to reveal any further trace of the refugee and they departed at
last through the open window in the basement to round the corner
into the court and come face to face with Bill Jennings.
“Mr. Parsons’ butler next door sent me,” the watchman explained.
“He said somebody’d heard a noise in there and I’d better see about
it. Nothing wrong I hope, inspector?”
Open curiosity rang in his tones but the official replied bruskly:
“Nothing. We’ll go over the other empty houses on the block later.
It’s all right.”
“What’s this we’ve been hearing about a strange man who scared
the Goddard lad in this very court not two weeks ago?” McCarty
asked as they approached the sidewalk once more.
Bill Jennings looked uncomfortable.
“There was no strange man got between these gates while I was
on!” he averred defensively. “It must have been some butler or
houseman that works on the block, trying to play a joke on the little
feller. It was a week ago Saturday that he raised the rumpus about it
but there wasn’t any sign of the rough-looking kind of guy he
described when Mr. Trafford and I looked, and we went over every
foot of the courts.... There’s Mr. Orbit motioning.”
It was to the inspector and his deputies, however, that Orbit
beckoned and when they had crossed to him he asked with grave
concern:
 “Is it true that Horace Goddard cannot be found? One of the
maids from next door told Jean, and said that you had been notified,
but I couldn’t believe it! Trafford came to my house yesterday
afternoon, though, inquiring for him—but I forgot, McCarty and
Riordan were present. Is it possible that the little boy hasn’t been
seen since?”
“Not so far as we’ve been able to discover,” the inspector
responded. “It’s a pretty bad business. If he was a normal, healthy,
mischievous kid we’d be apt to think he ran away, but from all
accounts he was sickly and timid, not the kind to strike out for
himself.”
“Horace is very nervous and highly strung, with remarkable artistic
possibilities,” Orbit observed thoughtfully. “I’m immensely interested
in him and my friend Blaisdell is of the opinion that he’ll become a
great painter some day if his people don’t kill his aspirations by lack
of sympathy; like a sensitive plant he needs encouragement,
nurturing.—But what can have happened to him? If he isn’t with
friends or relatives the child must have met with an accident! Has an
alarm been sent out?”
“We’re trying every way to locate him. He used to run in and out
of your house a lot, didn’t he? Did you ever hear him speak of any
one he might have gone to now?” the inspector asked. “We know, of
course, how disappointed he was when his father and mother
wouldn’t let him go on a sketching tour with this Mr. Blaisdell you
mention, but he seems to have got over it. Do you know if he had
any boy friends his own age?”
Orbit shook his head.
“None. He is a solitary little chap, self-contained and retiring, and I
don’t think he cares very much for the society of other boys. He
would not have gone away and remained like this without a word if
he was able to communicate with his family. It seems inexplicable!
Goddard must be dreadfully cut up about it, to say nothing of the
boy’s mother, and I feel badly myself! I should hate to think of any
accident happening to him! I’m going in to see Goddard and ask if
there is anything I can do.—Meanwhile, you’ve no news for me
about Hughes’ strange death, have you? It is odd that two such
mysterious, unrelated incidents should have occurred in less than a
week, even though Hughes must have taken the poison either
accidentally or through someone’s murderous intent, after he left the
Mall that night. Haven’t you come upon the slightest indication?”
“We’re working on several promising ones.” The time-worn
formula was repeated a trifle wearily. “Let you know when there’s
anything to give out, Mr. Orbit.... Come on, Mac; it’s nearly noon.”
Orbit turned toward the Goddard house but the others had
scarcely gone a half dozen steps in the opposite direction when
again they were halted. This time it was by the pretty little French
nurse and she drew the Bellamy baby closer, gazing at McCarty with
wide, affrighted eyes as she voiced her question.
“Pardon, monsieur, but is it of a truth, that which I have heard?
Must it be that the little garçon of that house there is lost?”
“That’s about the size of it, ma’am,” McCarty removed his
reblocked derby with a flourish. “I don’t suppose you saw him
playing around anywheres yesterday afternoon?”
“But no!” She caught her breath with a slight gasp. “All the night
he has been depart, alors! It is terrible, that! He is so gentil, so
good, the little Horace! He would not run away—is it that he have
been stole’? Me, I have fear for the little Maude—”
She hugged her small charge tighter and the baby stared at them
solemnly.
“There ain’t much danger of that!” McCarty laughed reassuringly.
“I guess the lad will turn up all right. When did you see him last?”
“Yesterday morning, when he have passed with M’sieu Trafford.
Oh, if he has been keednap’ we do not go beyond these gates!”
She nodded and led the child away slowly while Dennis remarked:
 “Pretty and a lady, but did ever you hear the like of such lingo? No
wonder them French have a fit when they talk; ’tis from trying to
understand each other.”
McCarty darted a quick glance at the harassed frown on the
inspector’s face, and then replied to his companion:
“She had it straight, though. Horace has ‘been depart’ all right,
and if we don’t get him back soon there’ll be a bigger howl than ever
from the chief!—Isn’t that what you’re thinking, sir?”
The inspector nodded gloomily.
“I’m going to the agents in charge of these houses and get the
keys.” He indicated the two closed residences east of Mrs. Bellamy’s.
“Try to get a line meanwhile on who slipped food to the man hiding
over there and what became of him and meet me here in an hour.”
“It’s not much he’s wanting,” Dennis remarked, as the inspector
left them abruptly and strode toward the gate. “Still, if we could
trace what cellar them wine bottles came from that was stacked up
on the shelf in that empty house—look! The ambassador’s limousine
is going away.”
The impressive dark blue car was indeed moving slowly away from
the curb in front of the Parsons house and the great front door
closing. They caught another fleeting glimpse of the sallow-faced
manservant and then McCarty exclaimed:
“Come on! I want a few words with the butler over there anyway,
and maybe the old gentleman himself, and don’t be putting in your
oar, Denny, and rocking the boat; I know what I’m after.”
Dennis followed in injured silence and they mounted the steps of
the stately house and rang the bell. A lengthy pause ensued.
McCarty was about to ring again when the door opened suddenly
and the manservant whom they had seen a moment before stood
confronting them.
He paid no heed to Dennis but his dull, sunken eyes fastened
themselves on McCarty and as he stared his sallow cheeks seemed
to whiten.
“Hello, Porter. You remember me, I see,” the latter said briskly.
“Me and my friend here want to have a little talk with you.”
“My name is not Porter; it’s Roberts,” the man replied stiffly with
an evident effort. “You’ve made a mistake.”
“Not me, my lad!” McCarty spoke with easy assurance. “Inspector
Druet got you too, the other day, but he didn’t bother you then
because we didn’t know as much as we do now.”
“By God, you’ll never frame me again!” The man shrank back and
a harsh, grating note came into his low tones. “You haven’t got
anything on me—!”
“Haven’t, hey? How about the neighbor you’ve had next door for
the past week or so?” McCarty inquired while Dennis held his breath.
“Look here, Porter, I suppose you have been pretty well hounded
and I don’t want to be hard on you but I’m going to get the truth!”
“‘Neighbor!’” The pseudo-Roberts moistened his dry lips. “I don’t
know what you’re talking about—!”
“Maybe Mr. Parsons does, then; we’ll see him.” McCarty made as
though to push his way past the cowering figure and the man threw
out his hands.
“For God’s sake don’t, just when he’s giving me the only square
chance I’ve had!” It was more an agonized whisper than speech.
“I’m Porter all right but he knows that! He knows I got railroaded
and you bulls wouldn’t let me go straight afterwards; that’s why he
took me in. I don’t know what you’re trying to hang on me now but
you’re not going to drag him into it! What do you want of me?”
McCarty glanced down the long hall which seemed almost bare in
its lofty austerity, in spite of the richness of the carved paneling and
quaint old furniture.
“Take us some place where we can talk without anybody butting
in,” McCarty suggested. “It’s for your own sake, man! If you’ll come
clean—?”
“I’ve heard that before!” Porter shrugged, with a shadow of a
dreary smile. “Come along back to my pantry if you want to, but why
don’t you take me right downtown now and be done with it? If
you’re out to frame me, cut all the bluff!”
“Did I ever?” demanded McCarty. “Did I ever try to send you or
any other guy up unless I had the straight goods on them?”
“I guess not, Mac. I haven’t got anything against you but I’ve had
a rough deal; what’s come now is just the luck of the game, I
suppose.” He closed the pantry door carefully behind them and
motioning to chairs he leaned back against the table, gripping its
edge with his thin hands. “What do you want to know? I’ll come
clean all right—about myself.”
McCarty noted the almost imperceptible pause and asked quickly:
“How long have you been out this time?”
“A year and a half. My lungs went back on me and I would have
been a goner if I hadn’t got pardoned, but what good did it do me?
Every time I got a job clerking in a drug store one of the Narcotic
Squad came along with my record and I was kicked out. My record—
God! And I wasn’t guilty! I never knew my boss was crooked and in
with the dope ring, making me the scapegoat!” His voice had
roughened again with a sort of savage earnestness. “I was about at
the end of my rope but the—the man who’d had me pardoned was
keeping his eye on me all the time and saw how hard I’d tried and—
and so Mr. Parsons took me on here to give me a breathing spell.
Anything else—about me—you want to know?”
“Yes.” McCarty replied on a sudden inspiration. “You were tried
with Radley, weren’t you, and convicted of sending that poisoned
candy—?”
He paused and Porter shrugged again.
“What’s the comedy for? You got that from headquarters, and
nobody’s making a secret of it. It was that old charge, the record of
that first case that convicted me again and it helped convict Radley,
too, for we were both of us innocent—but what’s the use of telling
that to you now?”
“There’ll be a lot of use in telling us, for your own sake, what you
had to do with the crush-out last month.”
“Nothing. I haven’t been outside these gates since I came in
June.”
“Then you didn’t know anything about it till Radley showed up
here a couple of weeks ago?”
“I don’t know anything about it now, except what I read in the
papers.” Porter faced him squarely. “What do you mean about
Radley showing up?”
“You didn’t hide him in that empty house next door and smuggle
food and drinks, and a razor and clothes in to him, did you?”
McCarty paused for a moment again, but Porter maintained a
dogged silence and he went on: “Does Benjamin Parsons know of it?
’Twill be news to him to hear that after him taking you in and all,
you’ve been making him accessory after a crush-out—!”
“He’s accessory to nothing!” Porter interrupted. “I know the law,
for I have bitter reason to! He’s a fine old man and believes in giving
everybody a fair chance, especially if they’ve been framed, but he’d
do nothing against the law even if he thinks it’s in the wrong. You’ve
no proof that Radley was here or that any one helped him to hide
but I’m glad he made his getaway, glad! I hope to God he’s never
caught to go back to that hell!”
“Even though you go, now?” McCarty demanded. “You’ve one
chance to keep clear of it, Porter, and you’ll not be giving Radley
away, either. We’re wise already that ’twas you helped him to hide
and then make his getaway, but ’tis not Radley we’re after now
except as the alarm has gone out to the whole Force. We’re on
another lay entirely but we just want to find out when he beat it
away from the Mall and how he got out. I never gave my word yet
that I broke it, and I’m giving it now that ’twill not be from me nor
Riordan either a hint will get out about your part in all this.”
“You mean you’re not here to frame me nor kid me into snitching
on Radley?” A faint tremor of hope ran through his tones as he
gazed searchingly into the honest, square-jawed face before him.
“You’ve got a name for fair play, Mac, and you’re on to enough
already to put me away again if you want to, so what I tell you can’t
matter.—It won’t hurt George Radley either, as it happens.”
Dennis started violently and McCarty asked:
“Why can’t it? You don’t mean he’s croaked?”
“I mean I don’t know any more than you do when he beat it or
how he passed the gates, and that’s the God’s truth!” Porter
responded slowly, his gaunt, sallow face twitching. “I read about his
escape in the papers as I told you and when the days passed and he
wasn’t caught I was happy thinking he had got clean away but I
never dreamed of him turning up here! Late one afternoon, though,
—never mind how long ago—I opened the side door to find him all
but leaning against it, weak from hunger and thirst and fairly
desperate. He’d got past the watchman during a rainstorm a night or
two before to try to reach me, his old pal, and he’d been hiding in
that empty house next door, without food or water, not daring to
come openly and ask for me. When I didn’t show myself he made up
his mind to beat it, but he found he couldn’t get out as easy as he’d
got in, and he was near crazy!”
“That’ll be a week ago last Saturday.” McCarty nodded. “When you
came on him he was just after grabbing a kid that lives on the block
here and searching his pockets to see could he find if the lad had a
key to the gates—!”
“Glory be!” Dennis ejaculated beneath his breath.
“Yes. He was half off his head, but he didn’t hurt the boy any, only
scared him. I made him go back next door and lay low till the search
was over, and after night-fall I took him some bread and meat and a
bottle of rare old port from the cellar. It was stealing, and poor
return for all the old gentleman has done for me, but George needed
it bad, and I figured I owed most to him. He needed clothes too, but
mine fitted him, and I didn’t have to steal money for him either,
because the old gentleman pays me good and I’d been nowhere to
spend it. The trouble was how to get him through the gates, for
after the scare he’d given the boy both watchmen were leery of
strangers and if he was held up and questioned I knew he’d go to
pieces from the long strain he’d been under, and it would be all up
with him.” Porter reached for a silver jug of icewater which stood on
the table beside him and drank deeply, then replaced it with a sigh
of relief. “No one has keys except the families themselves and I’d no
chance to borrow Miss Parsons’, of course, nor her niece, Miss
Hester’s. The old gentleman carries his on a ring and sleeps with it
under his pillow and though I tried twice to get it he woke up both
times; I had a job of it to explain what I was doing in his room and I
didn’t dare risk it again. George was getting wild with the waiting
and worry, and took to prowling out at night in spite of all I could
say; I was getting pretty desperate myself when all at once he’d
gone, and that’s all I know.”
He straightened his narrow shoulders as though a load were lifted
from them and McCarty rose.
“When did you see him last?”
“Sunday night late when I went to take him some food. I handed
it in through the window and we talked for a minute, but I didn’t
dare stay longer. George was almost ready to give himself up, for his
nerve was gone and it was all I could do to persuade him to wait.
We’d arranged that I was to go to him every other night—I couldn’t
risk it oftener—so I didn’t miss him Monday. Last evening I got some
rolls, a cold pheasant and a half-bottle of burgundy and waited
under the window as long as I dared, but he didn’t come and finally
I took down the loose iron bars and let myself in. There wasn’t the
least sign of a light from his candle and he didn’t answer when I
took a chance and called, so I left the food and came away, but I
was awake all night worrying and towards morning I went back and
got the stuff, which hadn’t been touched. I was afraid the cook
would miss the pheasant and it might be found and traced; I never
thought about the wine bottles!”
“So he might have got away any time from Sunday night on?”
“That’s right. I’m giving it to you straight, Mac, and I knew when I
saw you an hour ago that you’d be after me sooner or later,
especially when Miss Parsons—the old gentleman’s sister, Miss
Priscilla—heard a noise next door and told me to notify the
watchman! I was afraid it was all up with us last week when
Inspector Druet came, but it was about that valet from across the
street who was poisoned and the inspector didn’t even let on he
recognized me.”
“Do you know the kid that Radley tried to get a key off of?”
McCarty ignored the observation.
“Only by sight. Red-haired, isn’t he, and lives next door to where
that valet worked? I see him now and then going by on the other
side of the street.”
“Have you seen him since he got that scare?”
“Oh, yes.” Porter smiled faintly in surprise. “Only a day or so ago.
George didn’t mean to scare him even,—he wouldn’t harm a fly!—
but the thought of those gates shutting him in as though he was
back up the river almost drove him mad!”
“You’ve been here since June, you say, Porter? Did you know that
valet who died?”
“No. I think I’ve seen him with the butler from the next house, but
I don’t want to know any of them. I was glad enough to stay here
and do a servant’s work myself till I could get my nerve back to go
out and hunt up my own kind of a position again where the bulls
wouldn’t keep moving me on.” He smiled again, but bitterly. “I guess
there isn’t a chance of that now with you on! I’m not sorry, though;
I’d do it again for George! He was innocent, the same as me, and
look what was done to him!”
 “If I find you’ve come clean I’ll keep my word, Porter,” McCarty
reiterated as he moved toward the door with Dennis in tow. “You
may not know it but I’m not on the Force any longer, nor connected
with headquarters except to mix in now and then for old times’ sake,
and the inspector didn’t recognize you the other day; he kind of
knew your face but he couldn’t place you. Riordan and me will just
forget you laid eyes on Radley unless it comes to a showdown, and
then we’ll do what we can for you.”
Cutting short the ex-convict’s broken thanks they took their
departure, to find Inspector Druet pacing impatiently back and forth
before the two closed houses opposite and Dennis’ comments on the
interview just ended were necessarily curtailed.
“Did you get any dope from Parsons?” the inspector asked.
“We didn’t even see him,” McCarty parried. “I was getting a line on
the servants; do you recall saying you’d seen one or two of them
before? Have you thought where?”
“Lord, no! I’ve had enough else on my mind! I had an idea one of
the housemaids and the page-boy who runs errands looked familiar,
but there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary about them.”
Dennis coughed and McCarty remarked hastily:
“I guess none of them knows what’s become of the man who has
been hiding next door, nor anything about the Goddard lad and
that’s all that matters right now, isn’t it, sir? Did you get the keys to
these houses?”
“Yes, and explained again to that fool of a watchman, Jennings. I
had time to look around pretty thoroughly outside them while I
waited for you and I couldn’t find a window or door that had been
tampered with. Let’s see what’s inside.”
One o’clock had come and gone and another hour passed before
they emerged from the second of the two houses after a fruitless
search. Dust and mold were all they had encountered in the huge,
echoing, partially dismantled rooms and the footprints they
themselves left behind them were the only recent signs of human
presence.
Dennis blinked and drew in the fresh air deeply when they stood
once more in the sunlight.
“’Tis like coming out of a tomb!” he averred. “What’s it to be now,
inspector?”
“I’m going to Goddard and make him talk!” that official responded
with a certain grimness which was eloquent. “Until he comes across
with his suspicions as to who kidnapped the boy our hands are tied
and every hour counts. You two had better get a bite to eat and
meet me at his house later.”
Nothing loth, they accepted the hint. It was mid-afternoon before
they approached the east gate of the Mall again, to find Jennings
energetically engaged in driving away a swarthy vendor of toy
balloons, whose basket freighted with globes of bright, crude color
bobbing on slender sticks, resembled an uprooted garden patch of
strange, grotesque blooms.
“They’re a pest, those peddlers!” he declared as he admitted
them. “They’re not so bad, though, as the reporters that have been
trying to get in since you left! Say, did you know Horace Goddard is
lost—?”
“Sure we know it!” McCarty interrupted. “Didn’t Trafford tell you so
himself yesterday afternoon?—Hurry, Denny!”
Leaving the watchman staring speechlessly, they quickened their
pace toward the Goddard house and were passing the entrance door
of Orbit’s when it was flung open and Ching Lee appeared.
For once the Chinaman’s wooden impassivity had deserted him.
His slant-eyes were rolling wildly, his yellow face distorted and his
queue streaked out behind him like a tail as he plunged down the
steps and seized McCarty with an iron grip of long-nailed, tapering
fingers.
 “The nurse-baby!” he babbled, his singsong voice high and shrill.
“The Flench maid of next-door baby! Come quick!”
“Lucette, do you mean? The Bellamy child’s nurse?” McCarty
halted. “Stop chattering like a monkey and tell me where is she, and
what’s the matter?”
“Lucette!” Ching Lee nodded vigorously and pointed in at the open
windows of the conservatory. “She is the next! She has breathed the
breath of death!”
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