As the curtain fell behind them Zeenut Maihl crossed swiftly to the crushed lizard and raised it gingerly.
"No carnal creature," she repeated. It was not; only a deft piece of patchwork. Yet it, or something else, made her shiver as she dropped the tell-tale remains into the basket. This man Hussan Askuri sometimes seemed to her own superstition a saint, sometimes to her clear head a mere sinner. She was not quite certain of anything about him save that his delusions, his dreams, his miracles, suited her purpose equally, whether they were false or true.
So she crossed over again to a marble lattice and peered through a convenient peephole toward the Audience Hall, which rose across an intervening stretch of platform in white shadow, and whiter light. She could not see or hear much; but enough to show her that everything was going on the same as usual. The disciples, most of them in full uniform, went up and down the steps calmly, and the wordy exordium on the cardinal virtues went on and on. How different it might be, she thought, if she had the voice. She would rouse more than those faint "Wâh! Wâhs." She would make the fire come to men's eyes. In a sort of pet with her own helplessness, she moved away and so, through another room, went to stand at another lattice. It looked south over a strip of garden, and there was an open square left in the tracery through which a face might look, a hand might pass. And as she stood she counted the remaining kerchiefs in the basket she still held. They were all of bright green silk and bore the same lettering. It was the Great Cry: "Deen! Deen! Futteh Mohammed!" As dangerous a woman this, as Hussan Askuri was a man; as dangerous, both of them, to peaceful life, as the fabled bis-cobra, at the idea of which the foolish old King had cried, "Ouée, Umma!" like any woman.
And now at last that wordy exordium must be over, for, along the garden path, came the clank of accouterments. Zeenut Maihl's listless figure seem galvanized to sudden life, there was a flutter of green at the open square, and her voice followed the shower of silk.
"These banners from the Defender to his soldiers."
But as she spoke, a stir of excitement, a subdued murmur of expectation reached her ear from outside, and, leaning forward, she caught a glimpse of a swinging litter coming along the path. Mahboob returned already! Vexatious, indeed, when she had turned and planned everything so as to be sure of having the King in her apartments when the answer arrived. None others would know it before she did--unless!--the thought obliterated all others, and she flew back to the further lattice. The King, returning from the initiation, had paused in the middle of the platform at the sight of the approaching litter, and his courtiers, as if by instinct, had grouped themselves round him, leaving him the central figure. The cruel sunlight streamed down on the tawdry court, on the worn-out old man.
It seemed interminable to the woman behind the lattice, that pause while the fat eunuch was helped from his litter. She could have screamed to him for the answer, could have had at his fat carcass with her hands for its slowness. But the old King had better blood in his veins. He stood quietly, his tawdry court around him; behind him the marble, and gold, and mosaics of his ancestors.
"What news, slave?" he asked boldly.
"None, Light of the Faithful," replied the Chief Eunuch.
"None!" The semi-circle closed in a little, every face full of disappointed curiosity.