Astonishment lifted Aylmer into a weak attempt to rise. The Moor put a hand upon his shoulder and firmly pressed him back.
"Nay, Sidi," he said respectfully. "The German doctor lord expressly forbade that you should raise your head from the pillow till he had seen you again."
Aylmer began to feel as if his wits as well as his body had been bludgeoned. Circumstances seemed to have leaped freakishly beyond his recollection.
"I was brought here when?" he asked.
"Yesterday, Sidi. Your brain was sorely smitten inside your skull, or so I understood the man of medicines. For fifteen hours you have lain as one feigning death, though breathing. Now you have come into the right of your senses again. This the medicine man also prophesied."
The puzzled frown stayed on Aylmer's brow.
"And you?" he demanded. "And you?"
The Moor answered with a demure shrug of the shoulder.
"Your wounded brain has perchance forgotten, Sidi, that I entered your benign service on the morning of the day which saw you defeated by the treachery of that one whom we sought, you and I. My service has been constant ever since."
He met his victim's increasing frown with complacent assurance as he spoke. Surely everything, he seemed to imply, was in order. And as the situation became clear to Aylmer's growing intelligence, the frown became an exasperated smile.