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A haze bounded the south-eastern horizon, where a range of iron hills jaggedly cut the sky. Mecca was almost at hand. The Master entered his cabin and summoned Rrisa. "Listen," he commanded. "We are now approaching the Holy City. I am bringing back the Apostate Sheik and the Great Pearl Star. I am the preserver of the Star. Thine own people could not keep it. I have recovered it.
From the swine and brothers of the swine it has been taken by Allah, and put back into the hands of Rrisa, Allah's slave! See, M'almé, see!" The shaking hands extended the leather sack. At it the Master stared, his face going dead white. "Thou dost not mean ?" he stammered. "Truly, I do!" "Not Kaukab el Durri?" "Aye it was lying near that heretic dog!"
"The Great Pearl Star, the sacred loot from the Haram?" "Kaukab el Durri, M'almé. The Great Pearl Star itself!" With hands that quivered in unison with his nerves, now no longer impassive, the strange chief of this still stranger expedition took from Rrisa the leather sack. Over the top of the wady a million sand-devils were screeching.
Leclair buried his cigarette in the warm earth. Rrisa caught up a handful of sand and flung it toward the unseen enemy, in memory of the decisive pebbles thrown by Mohammed at the Battle of Bedr, so great a victory for him. Then he followed the Master and Leclair, with a whispered: "Bismillah wa Allahu akbar!
Rrisa, the silent and discreet, brought them up in the private elevator from the forty-first floor to the Master's apartment on the top story of the building, then up the stairway to the observatory, and thus ushered them into the presence of the Master and Bohannan. Each man was personally known to one or the other, who vouched absolutely for his secrecy, valor, and good faith.
"We can descend the wady to the beach, and make southward along it, under the shelter of the dunes." "In the noise and confusion of the storm they may take us for Arabs and shoot us down." "I will see to that. Come, we must go! Carry Lebon, if you like. Rrisa and I will take Abd el Rahman." "M'almé, not Abd el Rahman, now," ejaculated Rrisa, "but Abd el Hareth! Let that be his title!"
A rattle of pebbles down the side of the wady, and a grunting call, told them Rrisa had returned. Dimly they saw him dragging the old Sheik over the lip of the gully, down into its half-protection. He brought the unconscious man to them, and though bowed by the frenzy of the storm managed a salute. "Here, Master, I have saved him from the jinnee of the desert," Rrisa pantingly announced.
"Would it not be better that such things should be carried far from danger, to the hidden, inner city? I ask thee this, Rrisa; would it not be better far?" "And what is the meaning of my master's strange words?" ventured Rrisa, a sort of dazed horror dawning in his eyes. "The other and more sacred things of Islam are they there under that cloth, O Master?" "Thou hast said it, Rrisa!
"Mecca, the Ka'aba, and the Black Stone are forbidden to all heretics?" relentlessly pursued the Master. "Wallah! Yea, so they are to all who are not of Islam," Rrisa tried to soften the answer. "They tell me," persisted the Master, "the Black Stone is in the western wall of the Ka'aba, about seven feet from the pavement." "That is a lie!" flared Rrisa, with indignation.
"It shall be truth, by the Prophet's beard! What doth the Master ask of me?" "Is it a large city, Rrisa?" "Very large." "And beautiful?" "As the Jebel Radhwa!" "Thou hast been in that secret city, Rrisa?" "Once, Master. The wonderful sight still remaineth in mine eyes." "And, seeing the Iron Mountains again, thou couldst guide us thither?" "Allah forbid! That is among the black deeds, Master!
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