“Surely,” he thought, “the sheikh is not such a beast as to herd Ingleton with the ordinary criminals!”
Another alley-way, apparently underneath the one from which he had come, was disclosed by his electric torch when he reached the bottom of the staircase; but in this case there were doors at his right, and in the thickness of the wall, Moorish fashion, little peep-holes, through which no doubt the warder could spy upon the movements of the captives within.
Which was the door leading to the place of the envoy’s confinement? Tom wondered. Was he indeed imprisoned here at all? Tom gave no thought to the predicament in which Abdul and he would be placed if it should prove that they had gone astray; his whole mind was centred on the plight of the English prisoner and the terrible misfortune it would be if he were elsewhere, and deep within him burned a fierce indignation that any countryman of his should be even within hailing distance of so noisome a place as this kasbah dungeon.
So anxious was he to know whether he was on the right track that, scarcely giving a thought to possible consequences, he lifted up his voice and shouted the name of the man for whom he was seeking. The loud tones went rolling beneath the arches, answered by a hundred echoes. But there was a nearer and more material answer. By the light of his torch, which he kept constantly in use, Tom saw a big, bearded, spectacled face appear at the aperture nearest to him on the right.
“Ach! Gott in Himmel! Vas zat English voice?”
Tom himself was in shadow, but his light fell full on the face of the speaker, and with a gasp of amazement he recognized Herr Hildebrand Schwab, the representative of the Schlagintwerts, who had called on him at Midfont months before and showed such a consuming curiosity to know the use to which he put the Photographic Sensitizer Preparation Number Six. And with a sudden flash of recollection he remembered that Schwab had spoken of proceeding to Morocco on business. Coming out from beneath the arch in which he stood, and holding his torch before him, he approached the aperture. His appearance was hailed by a groan. Schwab did not recognize him in his Moorish dress. Deeply he groaned again, muttering—
“Ach, Ich Unglücklicher!”
His face, utterly woebegone in expression, was just disappearing within the cell when Tom, almost frantic with despair at the thought that the white prisoner was not the man he had come to seek after all, shouted again—
“Ingleton! Sir Mark Ingleton! Are you there?”
Schwab’s face reappeared instantly. It was aglow with excitement and hope.