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The old black Taleb dismissed his scholars, closed down his shutter, locked it with a padlock, hobbled to Naomi's bedside in his tattered white selham, looked down at her through the big spectacles that sprawled over his broad black nose, and then, while a dim mist floated between the spectacles and his eyes, and a great lump rose at his throat to choke him, he fell to the floor and prayed, and Ali and the black women knelt beside him.
His face retained no human expression but fear. He was seen to draw his arms from beneath his selham, to hold both his money-bags against his breast, to plunge a hand into the necks of them, and fling handfuls of coins to the people. "Silver," he cried; "silver, silver for everybody." The despairing appeal was useless. Nobody touched the money. It flashed white through the air, and fell unheard.
In the dark he found the place, and taking bags in both his hands and hiding them under the folds of his selham, he tried to escape from the Kasbah unseen. It was too late; the Spanish soldiers were coming up the arcades, and Ben Aboo, with his money-bags, took refuge in a granary underground, near the wall of the Kasbah gate.
The collection of garments which complete his attire are mostly European, though the "Fez" cap remains the distinctive feature of the Muslim's dress, and a selhám that cloak of cloaks, there called a "bûrnûs" is slung across his shoulder.
I suggested that the people who saw Charlie get in hadn't seen her get out, and that she must look at the thing as it appeared to other people. "Look," I said, "at the facts. Mrs. Jevons walks to Selham Station for the London train. Captain Thesiger joins her there, presumably by pre-arrangement, leaving by Midhurst station so that they may not be seen going away together.
The slippers are also characteristic, but ugly, being of black leather, excellently made, and cut very far open, till it becomes an art to keep them on, and the heels have to be worn up. The use of the white selhám is almost universal, unhemmed at the edges, as in Tunis also; and over it is loosely tied a short haïk fastened on the head by the cord.
I said we'd meant to catch her at Selham but we missed the train and were trying to get to Horsham before the London train started. She was looking at me now with a sort of compassion, the tenderness of her contempt. "I see," she said. "You were clever, weren't you?" She looked at her watch.
His ragged following he had left behind him; he was alone; he was afoot; a selham of rough grey cloth was all his bodily adornment; yet he was mightier than the monarch who had entered Tetuan that day. He passed through the town not like a sultan, but like a saint; not like a conquering prince, but like an avenging angel.
And the local trains take more than half an hour to get from Selham to Horsham. At a pinch you could speed the car up to the limit of the local train. And, as we had to allow for accidents, we did speed her up whenever we saw a clean track before us. The run to Selham was nothing to it.
What was the sense, said Kendal, with his mouth full, of going to Selham when we hadn't got a wire? The sense of it, Norah told him, was that we had a message an important message for Mrs. Jevons, which she must get before she started. At this Kendal left off munching and looked at my wife. Even in my eagerness I was struck by the singular intelligence of that look. There was nothing covert in it.
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