The captain stood holding the paper. I walked round the table and laid my hand on his shoulder.
‘You didn’t know his schemes,’ said I. ‘They weren’t schemes that he could tell to a Turkish gentleman.’
At this instant the door opened and the officer who had been with us in the morning entered.
‘I have laid his Excellency’s body in his cabin,’ he said.
‘Come,’ said the captain, ‘we will go and see it, my lord.’
I followed him to where Mouraki lay. The Pasha’s face was composed and there was even the shadow of a smile on his pale lips.
‘Do you believe what I tell you?’ I asked. ‘I tried to save the girl from him and in return he meant to kill me. Do you believe me? If not, hang me for his murder; if you do, why am I a prisoner? What have I done? Where is my offence?’
The captain looked down on Mouraki’s face, tugged his beard, smiled, was silent an instant. Then he shrugged his shoulders, and he said—he who had not dared, a day before, to lift his voice or raise his finger unbidden in Mouraki’s presence:
‘Faugh, the Armenian dog!’