Achmet the Ropemaker was ill at ease. He had been set a task in which he had failed. The bright Cairene sun starkly glittering on the French chandeliers and Viennese mirrors, and beating on the brass trays and braziers by the window, irritated him. He watched the flies on the wall abstractedly; he listened to the early peripatetic salesmen crying their wares in the streets leading to the Palace; he stroked his cadaverous cheek with yellow fingers; he listened anxiously for a footstep. Presently he straightened himself up, and his fingers ran down the front of his coat to make sure that it was buttoned from top to bottom. He grew a little paler. He was less stoical and apathetic than most Egyptians. Also he was absurdly vain, and he knew that his vanity would receive rough usage.
Now the door swung open, and a portly figure entered quickly. For so large a man Prince Kaid was light and subtle in his movements. His face was mobile, his eye keen and human.
Achmet salaamed low. “The gardens of the First Heaven be thine, and the uttermost joy, Effendina,” he said elaborately.
“A thousand colours to the rainbow of thy happiness,” answered Kaid mechanically, and seated himself cross-legged on a divan, taking a narghileh from the black slave who had glided ghostlike behind him.
“What hour didst thou find him? Where hast thou placed him?” he added, after a moment.
Achmet salaamed once more. “I have burrowed without ceasing, but the holes are empty, Effendina,” he returned, abjectly and nervously.
He had need to be concerned. The reply was full of amazement and anger. “Thou hast not found him? Thou hast not brought Nahoum to me?” Kaid’s eyes were growing reddish; no good sign for those around him, for any that crossed him or his purposes.
“A hundred eyes failed to search him out. Ten thousand piastres did not find him; the kourbash did not reveal him.”
Kaid’s frown grew heavier. “Thou shalt bring Nahoum to me by midnight to-morrow!”
“But if he has escaped, Effendina?” Achmet asked desperately. He had a peasant’s blood; fear of power was ingrained.