VI
It was on the following evening, as I sat smoking upon the terrace of the hotel and reflecting upon the execrably bad luck which pursued me, that I observed Abû Tabâh mounting the carpeted steps with slow and stately carriage. He saluted me gravely and accepted the seat which I offered him.
My plan had run smoothly; Malaglou had given himself up to the authorities, but had been released upon payment of a substantial bail. Mizmûna was concealed at Shubra, and I was flogging my brain in a vain endeavor to conjure up a plan whereby, without betraying the villainous Greek and thus causing him to betray me, I might secure the Sheikh’s reward—or, at least, the lapis armlet.
“Alas,” said Abû Tabâh, “that the wicked should prosper.”
“To whose prosperity,” I inquired, “do you more especially refer?”
He regarded me with his fine melancholy eyes.
“You have an English adage,” he continued, “which says, ‘set a thief to catch a thief.’”
“Quite so. But might I inquire what bearing this crystallized wisdom has upon our present conversation?”
“The man, Joseph Malaglou,” he replied, “learning of the hue-and-cry after a certain missing damsel——”
I remember I was about to light a cigar as he uttered those words, but a dawning perception of the iniquitous truth crept poisonously into my mind, and I threw both cigar and matches over the rail into the Shâra Kâmel and clutched fiercely at the little table between us.
“And of the reward offered for her recovery,” pursued the imám, “denounced to us, one Yûssuf of Rosetta, a man owning a small house at Shubra. Yûssuf had fled, and the only occupant of the place was the missing damsel Mizmûna. Alas that fortune should so favor the sinful. The abductor, the despoiler, escapes retribution; and the traitor, the informer, the dealer in hashish is rewarded.”
The Turk has signally failed to rule Egypt; but there are certain Ottoman institutions which are not without claims, as I realized at that moment in regard to Joseph Malaglou: I was thinking, particularly, of the bow-string.
“Already,” said Abû Tabâh, with his sweet but melancholy smile, “the heart of the Sheikh Ismail inclined toward the damsel, for whom his soul yearned; and has not it been written that he who heals the breach betwixt man and wife shall himself be blessed? Behold the reward of the peace-maker—which I design as a gift to my sister.”
I was unable to speak, but I became aware of a bitter taste upon my palate as, from beneath his robe, the smiling imám took out the armlet of gold and lapis-lazuli!