But the man was not to be tempted. He groaned that it was a question of his life. Poor as it was, he valued it. He groaned, he apologised, he explained, he pressed upon me the true history of all the antiquities in his shop, and the five hundred piastres I was ready to pay for the bit of embroidery had shrunk in his eyes to a sum scarcely worth taking. At last, when I turned away, deaf to his eloquence, he caught me by the coat. "If Effendi must know, I will risk all and give him his will!" he wailed. "The embroidery came from Asiut. I will write down the name of the powerful pasha who is master of the house: that is, I will do so if Effendi is still ready to pay three thousand piastres."
I knew that the man was lying, yet my best hope lay in his knowledge—practically my one hope. How to get the truth out of him, was the question.
"I must think it over," I said. As I spoke I became conscious that the lame beggar who had crawled off his mat to the door of the shop was whining again.
To my astonishment he hurriedly jumbled in English words as if he wished to hide them. Under his appeal, in Arabic that I should buy a fetish he held up in a knotted old hand, he was mumbling in English, that he would tell me for gratitude, what Ben Hassan dared not tell me for money. "Do not give him one piastre: he is lying," muttered the beggar. "Buy this fetish. Inside you will find explanations."
The fetish was a tiny silver box of native make, one of those receptacles intended to contain a text from the Koran, and to hang from a string on the breast of the Faithful. I threw the man a look and I threw him money. Squatting there, he seemed to pick up both before he crawled away. I burned to call him back as I saw him wrap the sacking over head and shoulders, and start—without a backward glance—to hobble off. But I dared not make a sound. Hassan, if he suspected, might ruin the beggar's plan. I slipped the fetish into my pocket, and told the shopkeeper that I would content myself for the present with buying the piece of embroidery. I must reflect before paying the price he wanted for information. I should, I said, spend the night at the inn, for I was tired. There would be time to think.
The inn at Hathor Set is hardly worth the name, being little better than the desert borg which, in my mind, I called the Borg of the Watching Eye; but its goodness or badness did not matter. As for Abdullah, he was glad of the rest. I had made him start before dawn in the midst of a sand-storm which had blown itself out only late in the baking heat of afternoon when we neared the oasis of Hathor Set. When I shut myself into an ill-smelling room of the inn, to open the silver fetish, it was still baking hot, but close upon sunset. If I had not felt some strange impulse of confidence in the lame beggar who hid his English under vulgar Arabic slang, I should have resented the coming of night. As it was, I was glad of the falling dusk. I could work to find Maida only under the cover of darkness, I knew: for there was no British consul here, no Justice to whom I could appeal. There were only my own hands and my own brain: and such help as the beggar might give because he hated Said ben Hassan.
A torn scrap of paper was rolled inside the tiny silver box: but it was not a text from the Koran.
"Dine at eight to-night with the beggar Haroun and his friends and hear something to your advantage. Anyone can show you the house," I read, written in English with pencil. If I had had time to think of him much I should have been consumed with curiosity as to the brown-faced old man who begged by day, and in faultlessly spelled English invited strangers to dine with him by night. But I had time to think only of what I might hear "to my advantage." The mystery of the "beggar king of Hathor Set" was lost for me in the mystery of Maida Odell, as a bubble is lost in the sea.
The Eastern darkness fell like a purple curtain over a lighted lamp. I went out long before eight, and showed a coin as I asked the first cloaked figure I met for the house of Haroun the beggar. It was strange that a beggar should have a house, but everything about this beggar was strange!
The house was in the heart of the crowded town, a town of brown adobe turning to gold under a rising moon. All the buildings were huddled together like a family of lion cubs, but my guide led me to a square of blank wall on the lower edge of a hill. The door was placed at the foot of this hill; and when a negro opened it at my knock I found myself in a squalid cellar. At the far end was a flight of dilapidated stone steps: at the top of this another door, and beyond the door—a surprise. I came out into a small but charming garden court with orange trees and a fountain. A white embroidered cloth was spread on the tiled pavement, and surrounded with gay silk cushions for more than a dozen guests. Coloured lanterns hung from the trees and lit with fairy-like effect dishes of crystallised fruit and wonderful pink cakes.