For reply Von Ritz permitted himself the rare indulgence of a smile.
"Martin is here," he said briefly.
"And you—?"
As he spoke the figure of Martin himself emerged from a shop a few paces ahead, and without a backward glance cut diagonally across the narrow street to disappear into the doorway of the curio shop which is kept by Mohammed Abbas.
When, after being cut off and delayed for some minutes by a passing donkey train, Von Ritz and Benton entered the place, they found it empty except for a native salesman, but as the Galavian paused to make a trivial purchase his listening ear caught a sound above. Without hesitation, he wheeled and mounted the stairs with Benton close at his heels. Behind him the shop-clerk stood irresolute—taken aback, with a vague consciousness that he should have devised a way to stop this gigantic Infidel. Assuredly the master would be angry. Orders had been explicitly given to allow no one to climb those steps to-day without permission.
While Cara and Karyl had been on the second floor, a heavy Osmanli, wearing the Sultan's uniform, had stood in the center of the room above, looking about with keen, pig-like eyes, as he gave rapid commands to a half dozen Arabs of villainous visage.
"You, Sayed Ayoub," he ordered, "take your pig of a self and others like unto you into that doorway by the stairs. Remain until you hear men enter from these two doors, facing the Infidel dogs. Then come upon them from behind. The man is to be bound, and when evening comes—but that is later! Still, if he resists too much—" The speaker shrugged his heavy shoulders and made a certain gesture.
"And the woman? What of her?" The question came from a gigantic Bedouin whose evil countenance was made the more sinister by one closed and empty eye-socket.
Abdul Said Bey nodded. "She is to be tenderly handled," he enjoined. "She, also, must disappear, but that shall be my care. My harem is as silent as the Bosphorus."
There were steps on the stairs, and instantaneously the room emptied itself and became silently dark.