“For my gain and thine, keeper of the gate. To-night I am weak, because I am poor. To-morrow I shall be rich and, it may be, strong. If Kaid knew of this tonight, I should be a prisoner before cockcrow. What claims has a prisoner? Kaid would be in my brother’s house at dawn, seizing all that is there and elsewhere, and I on my way to Fazougli, to be strangled or drowned.”
“O wise and far-seeing! Thine eye pierces the earth. What is there to do? What is my gain—what thine?”
“Thy gain? The payment of thy debt to me.” Mizraim’s face lengthened. His was a loathsome sort of gratitude. He was willing to pay in kind; but what Oriental ever paid a debt without a gift in return, even as a bartering Irishman demands his lucky penny.
“So be it, excellency, and my life is thine to spill upon the ground, a scarlet cloth for thy feet. And backsheesh?”
Nahoum smiled grimly. “For backsheesh, thy turban full of gold.”
Mizraim’s eyes glittered-the dull black shine of a mongrel terrier’s. He caught the sleeve of Nahoum’s coat and kissed it, then kissed his hand.
Thus was their bargain made over the dead body; and Mizraim had an almost superstitious reverence for the fulfilment of a bond, the one virtue rarely found in the Oriental. Nothing else had he, but of all men in Egypt he was the best instrument Nahoum could have chosen; and of all men in Egypt he was the one man who could surely help him.
“What is there now to do, excellency?”
“My coachman is with the carriage at the gate by which the English girl left. It is open still. The key is in Foorgat’s pocket, no doubt; stolen by him, no doubt also.... This is my design. Thou wilt drive him”—he pointed to the body—“to his palace, seated in the carriage as though he were alive. There is a secret entrance. The bowab of the gate will show the way; I know it not. But who will deny thee? Thou comest from high places—from Kaid. Who will speak of this? Will the bowab? In the morning Foorgat will be found dead in his bed! The slight bruise thou canst heal—thou canst?”
Mizraim nodded. “I can smooth it from the sharpest eye.”