IV
There are certain shocks that numb the brain. This was one of them. My recollection of the period immediately following those words of Abû Tabâh is hazy and indistinct. My narrow escape from decapitation at the hands of the ferocious Arab assassin and the tangled love-affairs of that aged Othello became insignificant memories. (I seem to recollect that we left him in tears.)
My next clear-cut memory is that of walking beside the mysterious imâm along the Darb el-Ahmar and of stopping before the closed door of my newly acquired premises!
The street was quite deserted again. Those muffled Nubians who seemed to constitute a bodyguard for my inscrutable companion had disappeared in company with the bereaved Sheikh.
“This is your house?” said Abû Tabâh sweetly.
My habit of thinking before I speak or act asserted itself automatically.
“I recently leased it on another’s behalf,” I replied.
“In that event,” continued the imâm, “unless the information lodged with me to-night prove to be inaccurate, that other must speedily proclaim himself.”
He tested the cumbersome lock, and, as I knew would be the case, since Mizmûna had recently entered, found it to be unfastened, opened the door and stepped in.
“Have you a pocket lamp?” he asked.
I pressed the button of my electric torch and directed its rays fully upon the stack of boxes. It was the great sage, Apollonius of Tyana, who said “loquacity has many pitfalls, but silence none”; therefore I silently watched Abû Tabâh consulting the label on the topmost chest. Presently—
“Ahmed Ben Tawwab,” he read aloud; “is that the name of the friend on whose behalf you secured a lease of this house?”
“It is,” I answered.
“If you will rest the light upon this box and assist me to open one of the others, I shall be obliged to you,” said Abû Tabâh.
Knowing, as I did, that this strange man was in some way connected with the native police and with the guardianship of Egyptian morals, I recognized refusal to be impolitic if not impossible. But, as we set to work to raise the lid of the chest, my mind was more feverishly busy than my fingers.
Ere long our task was successful, and the contents of the chest lay exposed. These were: two hundred Osiris statuettes, twelve one-pound tins of mummy heads ... and fifty packets of hashish.
Silence was no effort to me now; I was dumbfounded. The musical voice of my companion broke in upon my painful reverie.
“The information upon which I now am acting,” he said, “reached me to-night in the form of a letter, bearing no address and no signature. The suppression of this vile hashish traffic is so near to my heart that I immediately secured the necessary powers to search the premises named, and was on my way hither when I observed you (although I did not at once recognize you) in the act of escaping from a group of my servants who had been detailed, some weeks ago, to trace a missing damsel known to be in Cairo. Concerning your share in that affair I await a full statement from your own lips; concerning your share in this I can only say that unless Ahmed Ben Tawwab comes forward by to-morrow and admits his guilt, I must apply to the British agent for a formal inquiry. Is there anything that you would wish to say, or any action you desire that I should take?”
I turned to him in the dim light. Habitually I am undemonstrative, especially with natives. But there was a nobility and an implacable sense of justice about this singular religieux which conquered me completely.
“Abû Tabâh,” I said, “I thank you for your friendship. I have committed a grave folly; but I am neither an abductor nor a hashish dealer. This is the work of an unknown enemy, and already I have a theory respecting his identity.”
“Can I aid you—or do you prefer that I leave you to pursue this clue in your own way?” he asked tactfully.
“I prefer to work alone.”
“The affair is truly mysterious,” he admitted, “and I purpose to spend the night in meditation respecting it. After the hour of morning prayer, therefore, I will visit you. Lîltâk sa’îda, Kernaby Pasha.”
“Lîltâk sa’îda, Abû Tabâh,” I said, as he stepped out of the door.
Slowly and stately the imám passed down the street; and the ginnee of solitude reclaimed that deserted spot. A night watchman, nebbut on shoulder, passed along the distant Sukkarîya. A dog howled.
I re-entered the doorway conscious of a sudden mental excitement; for an explanation of the anonymous letter had just presented itself to my mind. The owner of the neighboring house must have detected my rendezvous with his lady-love, have investigated the contents of the cases, and denounced me from motives of revenge! That the villainous Joseph Malaglou had been in the habit of smuggling hashish into Egypt in my cases of “cutlery” was evident enough and accounted for his reluctance to fall in with the new arrangement; but my bemused brain utterly failed to grapple with the problem of why, knowing their damning contents, he had permitted these ten cases to be delivered at my address. Moreover, how my worthy neighbor—who had evidently abducted Mizmûna from the old man of the scimitar—had learned my real name was another mystery which I found no leisure to examine. For I had but just set foot again within the ill-omened place when there came a patter of swift, light footsteps—and out from behind the fatal stack of boxes ran Mizmûna, and threw herself into my arms!
“Oh, my friend, my protector!” she cried distractedly, “what shall I do? Yûssuf has discovered our plot! Fatimah, that mother of calamities, has betrayed me, and I dare not return! I am an outcast; for although I was stolen from the Sheikh Ismail without my consent, how can I hope for his forgiveness?”
Such a flood of sorrows and confidences overwhelmed me, and I placed a silent but deathless curse upon the lapis armlet which had brought me to this pass. Mizmûna sobbed upon my shoulder.
“Yûssuf has planned your ruin as well as mine,” she said brokenly. “For it was he who denounced you to the Magician.” (As “the Magician” Abû Tabâh was known and feared throughout Lower Egypt.) “Oh that I might return to the house of Ismail where I lived in luxury in a marble pavilion, guarded by Hanna and a hundred negroes, where I possessed the robes of a princess and was laden with costly jewels!”
So very human and natural an ambition met with my hearty approval, and, upon consideration of the word-picture of his domestic state, the old man of the scimitar rose immensely in my esteem. How my malevolent neighbor had succeeded in abducting Mizmûna from such a fortress I failed to imagine. But I began to see my way more clearly and hope was reborn in my bosom.
“Fear nothing, child,” I said to the weeping girl. “You shall return to your marble pavilion and to the care of that worthy, if somewhat hasty man, from whose arms you were torn. And now inform me—where is Yûssuf?”
Mizmûna raised her face and looked up at me, her long lashes wet with tears, but the slow, childish smile of the Eastern woman already curving her red lips.
“He is in his own room destroying papers,” she said.
“Who told you this?”
“Ali, the bowwab, who is faithful to me—and who hates Fatimah.”
“Is the trap rebolted?”
“I know not.”
“Remain here until I return,” I said, seating her upon one of the boxes. “Where are my keys?”
“I hid them upon the ledge of the window, beside the door yonder.”
Taking them from this simple “hiding-place,” I locked the door to give Mizmûna courage, and, taking the lamp with me, began to mount the stairs, first assuring myself of the presence in my pocket of my Colt automatic, which Abû Tabâh had restored to me.
The ray of my lamp shining out ahead, I came to the crazy ladder giving access to the trap. I climbed up, raising the trap, and gazed upon the jeweled dome of midnight Egypt. Dire necessity spurred me, and I walked across to the adjoining trap, carefully inserted two fingers in the iron ring and pulled.
It was not fastened below! Inch by inch I raised it, and, finding the room beneath it to be in darkness, opened the trap fully and descended the ladder.
I flashed the light quickly about the place; then stood staring at what it revealed. My heart began to beat rapidly, for in that dirty attic I had found salvation ... and a further clue to the mystery of all my misfortunes.
It was a hashish warehouse!
Taking off my shoes, I thrust one into either pocket of my jacket, and, perceiving that the house was constructed on a plan identical with that adjoining it, I crept downstairs to the apartment of the mushrabîyeh window. A heavy curtain was draped in the doorway, but I could see that the room within was illuminated.
I drew the curtains slowly aside and peeped in. I saw an apartment that had evidently been furnished very luxuriantly, but which now was partially dismantled. In the recess formed by the window a low table was placed, bearing a shaded lamp. The table was littered with papers, account books and ledgers; and, seated thereat, his back towards the door, was a man who figured feverishly. I stepped into the room.
“Good evening, Yûssuf of Rosetta,” I said; “you do well to set your affairs in order.”