“Till yesterday it was Claridge Pasha. Hast thou then forsaken him in his trouble—the rat from the sinking ship?”
A flush passed over Ebn Ezra Bey’s face, and his mouth opened with a gasp of anger. Oriental though he was, he was not as astute as this Armenian Christian, who was purposely insulting him, that he might, in a moment of heat, snatch from him the business he meant to lay before Kaid. Nahoum had not miscalculated.
“I have but one master, Excellency,” Ebn Ezra answered quietly at last, “and I have served him straightly. Hast thou done likewise?”
“What is straight to thee might well be crooked to me, effendi.”
“Thou art crooked as the finger of a paralytic.”
“Yet I have worked in peace with Claridge Pasha for these years past, even until yesterday, when thou didst leave him to his fate.”
“His ship will sail when thine is crumbling on the sands, and all thou art is like a forsaken cockatrice’s nest.”
“Is it this thou hast come to say to the Effendina?”
“What I have come to say to the Effendina is for the world to know after it hath reached his ears. I know thee, Nahoum Pasha. Thou art a traitor. Claridge Pasha would abolish slavery, and thou dost receive great sums of gold from the slave-dealers to prevent it.”
“Is it this thou wilt tell Kaid?” Nahoum asked with a sneer. “And hast thou proofs?”