Not once did the dark eyes falter or turn from the enemy's, and Stephen could not help admiring the Arab's splendid self-control. It was impossible to feel contempt for Ben Halim, even for Ben Halim trapped. Stephen had talked with an air of cool indifference, his hands in his pockets, but in one pocket was a revolver, and he kept his fingers on it as the marabout stood facing him silently after the ultimatum.
"I have listened to the end," the Arab said at last, "because I wished to hear what strange folly thou hadst got in thy brain. But now, when thou hast finished apparently, I cannot make head or tail of thy accusations. Of a man named Cassim ben Halim I may have heard, but he is dead. Thou canst hardly believe in truth that he and I are one; but even if thou dost believe it, I care little, for if thou wert unwise enough to go with such a story to my masters and friends the French, they could bring a hundred proofs that thy tale was false, and they would laugh thee to scorn. I have no fear of anything thou canst do against me; but if it is true that thou and thy friend have stolen my son, rather than harm should come to him who is my all on earth, I may be weak enough to treat with thee."
"I have brought proof that the boy is gone," returned Stephen. For the moment, he tacitly accepted the attitude which the marabout chose to take up. "Let the fellow save his face by pretending to yield entirely for the boy's sake," he said to himself. "What can it matter so long as he does yield?"
In the pocket with the revolver was a letter which Sabine had induced Hassan ben Saad to write, and now Stephen produced it. The writing was in Arabic, of course; but Sabine, who knew the language well, had translated every word for him before he started from Oued Tolga. Stephen knew, therefore, that the boy's uncle, without confessing how he had strayed from duty, admitted that, "by an incredible misfortune," the young Mohammed had been enticed away from him. He feared, Hassan ben Saad added, to make a disturbance, as an influential friend—Captain Sabine—advised him to inform the marabout of what had happened before taking public action which the child's father might disapprove.
The Arab frowned as he read on, not wholly because of his anger with the boy's guardian, though that burned in his heart, hot as a new-kindled fire, and could be extinguished only by revenge.
"This Captain Sabine," he said slowly, "I know slightly. He called upon me at a time when he made a well in the neighbourhood. Was it he who put into thine head these ridiculous notions concerning a dead man? I warn thee to answer truly if thou wouldst gain anything from me."
"My countrymen don't, as a rule, transact business by telling diplomatic lies," said Stephen smiling, as he felt that he could now afford to smile. "Captain Sabine did not put the notion into my head."
"Hast thou spoken of it to him?"
Stephen shrugged his shoulders slightly. "I do not see that I'm called upon to answer that question. All I will say is, you need have no fear of Captain Sabine or of any one else, once Miss Ray is safely out of this place."
The marabout turned this answer over quickly in his mind. He knew that, if Sabine or any Frenchman suspected his identity and his plans for the future, he was irretrievably lost. No private consideration would induce a French officer to spare him, if aware that he hoped eventually to overthrow the rule of France in North Africa. This being the case (and believing that Knight had learned of the plot), he reflected that Sabine could not have been taken into the secret, otherwise the Englishman dare not make promises. He saw too, that it would have been impolitic for Knight to take Sabine into his confidence. A Frenchman in the secret would have ruined this coup d'état; and, beginning to respect Stephen as an enemy, he decided that he was too clever to be in real partnership with the officer. Ben Halim's growing conviction was that his wife, Saidee, had told Victoria all she knew and all she suspected, and that the girl had somehow contrived to smuggle a letter out of the Zaouïa to her English lover.