“Am I not welcome here?” she replied wearily. “O, my sister, thou art the master of my life and all that I have,” he exclaimed, and a moment afterwards he was speeding towards Kaid’s Palace.
For the first time since the day of his banishment Achmet the Ropemaker was invited to Kaid’s Palace. Coming, he was received with careless consideration by the Prince. Behind his long, harsh face and sullen eyes a devil was raging, because of all his plans that had gone awry, and because the man he had sought to kill still served the Effendina, putting a blight upon Egypt. To-morrow he, Achmet, must go into the desert with the army, and this hated Inglesi would remain behind to have his will with Kaid. The one drop of comfort in his cup was the fact that the displeasure of the Effendina against himself was removed, and that he had, therefore, his foot once more inside the Palace. When he came back from the war he would win his way to power again. Meanwhile, he cursed the man who had eluded the death he had prepared for him. With his own eyes had he not seen, from the hill top, the train plunge to destruction, and had he not once more got off his horse and knelt upon his sheepskin and given thanks to Allah—a devout Arab obeying the sunset call to prayer, as David had observed from the train?
One by one, two by two, group by group, the unveiled dancers came and went; the singers sang behind the screen provided for them, so that none might see their faces, after the custom. At last, however, Kaid and his guests grew listless, and smoked and talked idly. Yet there was in the eyes of Kaid a watchfulness unseen by any save a fellah who squatted in a corner eating sweetmeats, and a hidden singer waiting until she should be called before the Prince Pasha. The singer’s glances continually flashed between Kaid and Achmet. At last, with gleaming eyes, she saw six Nubian slaves steal silently behind Achmet. One, also, of great strength, came suddenly and stood before him. In his hands was a leathern thong.
Achmet saw, felt the presence of the slaves behind him, and shrank back numbed and appalled. A mist came before his eyes; the voice he heard summoning him to stand up seemed to come from infinite distances. The hand of doom had fallen like a thunderbolt. The leathern thong in the hands of the slave was the token of instant death. There was no chance of escape. The Nubians had him at their mercy. As his brain struggled to regain its understanding, he saw, as in a dream, David enter the court-yard and come towards Kaid.
Suddenly David stopped in amazement, seeing Achmet. Inquiringly he looked at Kaid, who spoke earnestly to him in a low tone. Whereupon David turned his head away, but after a moment fixed his eyes on Achmet.
Kaid motioned all his startled guests to come nearer. Then in strong, unmerciful voice he laid Achmet’s crime before them, and told the story of the bridge-opener, who had that day expiated his crime in the desert by the hands of Mahommed—but not with torture, as Mahommed had hoped might be.
“What shall be his punishment—so foul, so wolfish?” Kaid asked of them all. A dozen voices answered, some one terrible thing, some another.
“Mercy!” moaned Achmet aghast. “Mercy, Saadat!” he cried to David.
David looked at him calmly. There was little mercy in his eyes as he answered: “Thy crimes sent to their death in the Nile those who never injured thee. Dost thou quarrel with justice? Compose thy soul, and I pray only the Effendina to give thee that seemly death thou didst deny thy victims.” He bowed respectfully to Kaid.
Kaid frowned. “The ways of Egypt are the ways of Egypt, and not of the land once thine,” he answered shortly. Then, under the spell of that influence which he had never yet been able to resist, he added to the slaves: “Take him aside. I will think upon it. But he shall die at sunrise ere the army goes. Shall not justice be the gift of Kaid for an example and a warning? Take him away a little. I will decide.”