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As they disappeared, Kaid made a wide gesture of friendliness to David, and motioned to a seat, then to a narghileh. David seated himself, took the stem of a narghileh in his mouth for an instant, then laid it down again and waited. "Nahoum I do not understand," Kaid said presently, his eyes gloating. "He comes of his own will, Effendina." "Wherefore?" Kaid could not realise the truth.
He grew a little paler. He was less stoical and apathetic than most Egyptians. Also he was absurdly vain, and he knew that his vanity would receive rough usage. Now the door swung open, and a portly figure entered quickly. For so large a man Prince Kaid was light and subtle in his movements. His face was mobile, his eye keen and human. Achmet salaamed low.
"He awaits his fate in thine own dwelling, Effendina." Kaid glowered upon Achmet. "In the years which Time, the Scytheman, will cut from thy life, think, as thou fastest at Ramadan or feastest at Beiram, how Kaid filled thy plate when thou wast a beggar, and made thee from a dog of a fellah into a pasha. Go to thy dwelling, and come here no more," he added sharply.
My present master is the Sheïkh bin Záharah, Lieutenant Kaïd of the Boo Azeezi, but I was once the slave-wife of the English agent, who sold me again, though they said that he dare not, because of his English protection. That was why I fled for justice to the English consul, and now come to thee. For God's sake, succour me!"
I spent it for the State for the Effendina, and to keep my place. I lost my place, however, in another way." "Proofs! Proofs!" Kaid's voice was hoarse with feeling. "I have no proofs against Prince Harrik, no word upon paper. But there are proofs that the army is seditious, that, at any moment, it may revolt." "Thou hast kept this secret?" questioned Kaid darkly and suspiciously.
"What shall be his punishment so foul, so wolfish?" Kaid asked of them all. A dozen voices answered, some one terrible thing, some another. "Mercy!" moaned Achmet aghast. "Mercy, Saadat!" he cried to David. David looked at him calmly. There was little mercy in his eyes as he answered: "Thy crimes sent to their death in the Nile those who never injured thee. Dost thou quarrel with justice?
Higli Pasha laughed low it was like the gurgle of water in the narghileh a voice of good nature and persuasiveness from a heart that knew no virtue. "Bismillah! Who shall read the meaning of it? Why has he not already killed?" "Nahoum would choose his own time after he has saved his life by the white carrion. Kaid will give him his life if the Inglesi asks. The Inglesi, he is mad.
"The gardens of the First Heaven be thine, and the uttermost joy, Effendina," he said elaborately. "A thousand colours to the rainbow of thy happiness," answered Kaid mechanically, and seated himself cross-legged on a divan, taking a narghileh from the black slave who had glided ghostlike behind him. "What hour didst thou find him? Where hast thou placed him?" he added, after a moment.
But in the far east of the Moghreb the French closed the oases of Tuat and Tidikelt without rebuke, and burnt Ksor and destroyed the Faithful with guns containing green devils, and said, 'We do all this that we may venture abroad without fear of robbers. Then my Lord sent the War Minister, the kaid Maheddi el Menebhi, to London, and he saw your Sultan face to face.
There are no foreign consuls in this far-off city, and no English element beyond the two or three missionaries who live there. Since the Sultan was at Fez, his army and his commander-in-chief, Kaid Maclean, were at Fez too: hence the reason of the Macleans' house standing empty, within which we were so fortunate as to find ourselves. Marrakesh cannot be described: it must be seen.
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