“It does not matter if you have a weapon, Jakoub, for you dare not use it. Now listen, we offer you safety, or at least to help you to safety if we can. You may not believe it, but it is a fact that the whole of the hashish is at the bottom of the sea. We threw it overboard and sank it for reasons of our own. We may help you to earn an honest living in safety, if you choose to. At least, that is what we meant to offer you. But these gentlemen did not know for certain until this minute that you were a murderer. When I tell them what the man was whom you killed, they may still help you. I do not know.”
Edmund paused and looked enquiringly at the bishop.
“We ought to have known of this,” the bishop said very gravely.
“I was going to tell you, my lord. If I may send Jakoub out of the room I will tell you the whole story. He had better think over our offer, in case it still holds good. But understand, Jakoub, that alone and unaided in England you can no more escape our police than a quail can escape your net when it lands in Egypt. This is not Egypt. If you choose to quarrel with us you know now what to expect.”
I felt a kind of pity for Jakoub as I looked at him. He was changed from the masterful villain I had known, the man to whose skill and courage in the desert I probably owed my life.
He was now a huddled figure in his chair, and under Edmund’s new threat he looked beaten, weak, and forlorn. It occurred to me that he might have had little or no food on his journey, and I always find something pathetic in the more primitive human needs. I was sure, too, that Jakoub would regard Edmund’s last remark as a warning that the whole system of backshish would, in this country, be against him as a foreigner without money. It would seem to him quite natural that a person like myself should have the entire legislature in his pay, and this would of course be a depressing thought. My feelings as a host were aroused on his behalf, but I recognised the impossibility of suggesting that he should join us at dinner.
“Perhaps,” I said, “Jakoub is ready for some food and a glass of wine? I am sorry not to have thought of it sooner. I am afraid you are tired, Jakoub.”
I noticed a flicker of humorous appreciation of the situation pass between Edmund and Jakoub, and as the latter must have had murder in his heart but a moment before, and the other had used force to frustrate the intention, I suppose my conventional words were really somewhat absurd.
But Jakoub rose and salaamed with the ceremony demanded of an Oriental when hospitality is in question.
“Jakoub is never tired,” he said, “but he has come far, fasting. The effendi is kind, and Jakoub gives thanks to Allah and to him. Jakoub needs food and remembers the red wine he drank in the Temple of Osiris. It is not yet Ramadan.”