The maniac's features worked wildly, and his eyes flashed, while the Sultan was speaking. The mildness of his reception had inspired him with greater boldness.
"Ha! ha! ha!" he yelled. "Iblis whispered me this, and told me to come prepared."
He threw open his cloak, and produced a bundle, enveloped in the embroidered scarf lately given by the Sultan to Abdslem.
"Dost thou know that scarf?" he continued, "did it not belong to the false witness? And if he does not admit himself a perjured slave and confess the innocence of Azora, his accursed tongue will never again say that she is guilty.—Behold!" and unrolling the scarf with a jerk, the ghastly head of Abdslem fell on the Sultan's carpet.
The eyes of the maniac literally blazed with rapture, on beholding the effect he had produced, he ground his teeth, and the foam flew from his mouth.
"There!—there!" he shouted, rushing towards the Sultan, then suddenly stopping and pointing to it with his staff—"ask him—behold your witness—does he accuse her? then I must answer for him," said he, raising his voice to the highest pitch. "I swear that she is innocent, and every fiend in hell re-echoes, 'She is innocent!'"
The Sultan, though restrained by superstition, hardly considered himself safe in such close proximity to the madman, yet did not wish to evince his alarm, but his hand went mechanically into his vest for a pistol or dagger. This movement did not escape the eye of the maniac—he yelled a hideous laugh, that thrilled the hearts of his hearers.
"Ha! he fears me, he is a Sultan—but guilt always fears. You slew my father, why should you not fear me? My sister!"
His brain seethed as the horrid vision of her death flashed on his broken intellect, and he gazed an instant at his clenched hands.
"Yes! her blood is upon them."