Nahoum sat sipping coffee. A cigarette was between his fingers. He touched his hand to his forehead and his breast as David closed the door and hung his hat upon a nail. David’s servant, Mahommed Hassan, whom he had had since first he came to Egypt, was gliding from the room—a large, square-shouldered fellow of over six feet, dressed in a plain blue yelek, but on his head the green turban of one who had done a pilgrimage to Mecca. Nahoum waved a hand after Mahommed and said:
“Whence came thy servant sadat?”
“He was my guide to Cairo. I picked him from the street.”
Nahoum smiled. There was no malice in the smile, only, as it might seem, a frank humour. “Ah, your Excellency used independent judgment. Thou art a judge of men. But does it make any difference that the man is a thief and a murderer—a murderer?”
David’s eyes darkened, as they were wont to do when he was moved or shocked.
“Shall one only deal, then, with those who have neither stolen nor slain—is that the rule of the just in Egypt?”
Nahoum raised his eyes to the ceiling as though in amiable inquiry, and began to finger a string of beads as a nun might tell her paternosters. “If that were the rule,” he answered, after a moment, “how should any man be served in Egypt? Hereabouts is a man’s life held cheap, else I had not been thy guest to-night; and Kaid’s Palace itself would be empty, if every man in it must be honest. But it is the custom of the place for political errors to be punished by a hidden hand; we do not call it murder.”
“What is murder, friend?”
“It is such a crime as that of Mahommed yonder, who killed—”
David interposed. “I do not wish to know his crime. That is no affair between thee and me.”