Mahomed accepted this compliment to his prowess in silence. Indeed, he gazed dreamily over Ryanne's head. The other fellow wouldn't trouble any one again. To Mahomed it had not been the battle, man to man; it had been the guile and trickery leading up to it. He had been bested at his own game, duplicity, and that irked him. Death, he, as his kind, looked upon with Oriental passivity. Ah, well! The game was to have a second inning, and he proposed to play it in strictly Oriental ways.
"How much did he give you for it?"
The expression upon Ryanne's face would have deceived any one but Mahomed. "Give for it!" indignantly. "Why, that's the whole trouble. All my trouble, all the hard work, and not a piaster, not a piaster! Can't you understand, I had to do it?"
"Is he going to sell it?"
"Sell it? Not he! He's a collector, and crazy over the thing."
Mahomed nodded. He knew something of the habits of collectors. "Is he still in Cairo, and where may he be found?"
Ryanne began to believe that the game was going along famously; Mahomed was sure of it.
"He is George P. A. Jones, of Mortimer & Jones, rich rug dealers of New York. Money no object."
Though his face did not show it, Mahomed was singularly depressed by this news. If this man Jones had money, of what use was his little packet of notes?