"Gaston?" she repeated stupidly. She had forgotten the valet, in all that had occurred since the morning she had forgotten his very existence.
"Yes—Gaston," he said sternly. "You do not seem to have thought of what might happen to him."
She sat up slowly, a puzzled look coming into her face. "What could happen to him?" she asked wonderingly.
He dragged back the flap of the tent and pointed out into the darkness. "Over there in the south-west, there is an old Sheik whose name is Ibraheim Omair. His tribe and mine have been at feud for generations. Lately I have learned that he has been venturing nearer than he has ever before dared. He hates me. To capture my personal servant would be more luck than he could have hoped for."
He dropped the flap and began walking up and down again. There was a sinister tone in his voice that made Diana suddenly comprehend the little Frenchman's peril. Ahmed Ben Hassan was not the man to be easily alarmed on any one's behalf. That he was anxious about Gaston was apparent, and with her knowledge of him she understood his anxiety argued a very real danger. She had heard tales before she left Biskra, and since then she had been living in an Arab camp, and she knew something of the fiendish cruelty and callous indifference to suffering of the Arabs. Ghastly mental pictures with appalling details crowded now into her mind. She shuddered.
"What would they do to him?" she asked shakily, with a look of horror.
The Sheik paused beside her. He looked at her curiously and the cruelty deepened in his eyes. "Shall I tell you what they would do to him?" he said meaningly, with a terrible smile.
She gave a cry and flung her arms over her head, hiding her face. "Oh, do not! Do not!" she wailed.
He jerked the ash from his cigarette. "Bah!" he said contemptuously.
"You are squeamish."
She felt sick with the realisation of what could result to Gaston from her action. She had had no personal feeling with regard to him. On the contrary, she liked him—she had not thought of him, the man, when she had stampeded his horse and left him on foot so far from camp. She had looked upon him only as a jailer, his master's deputy.