The dragoman, on ascertaining that the victim was his accomplice, was frantic with despair. He rushed into the dwelling and gazed around him anxiously. The room appeared to his eyes just as it had a hundred times before. Kāra was nowhere to be seen, and the secret that Tadros had plotted so artfully to discover was lost to him forever.
“Confound you, Nephthys!” he cried, returning to the archway, “you’ve killed the wrong man and eternally ruined my fortunes!”
But the girl had disappeared. In her mother’s hut she had quietly seated herself at the loom and resumed her work at the shuttle.
CHAPTER XXVI.
THE DRAGOMAN WINS.
Antar, the sheik, waited for Kāra until his patience was exhausted; then he left the dahabeah and came up through the sands to Fedah to discover, if possible, what had delayed the prince from returning with his promised reward. To Antar this cluster of hovels seemed mean and unattractive when compared with his own village, and these hills were not likely places for treasure tombs. He knew that the French and Italian excavators had been all over them, and found only some crocodile mummy pits.
The sheik grew suddenly suspicious. Kāra’s promises were too extravagant to be genuine; doubtless he had deceived Antar from the first, and sought to obtain his services without payment. It was true that Kāra was reputed in Cairo to be wealthy, but he might easily have squandered his inheritance long ago. One thing Antar was certain of—the Egyptian prince must produce his treasure at once or the sheik, thinking he was duped, would undertake to exact a bit of vengeance on his own account.
Thus musing, he turned the corner of the hill and came full upon Tadros, who was expecting him. The dragoman’s thumbs were thrust into the pockets of his gorgeous silver and blue vest. He stood with his feet spread well apart, in an attitude of dejection; his countenance was sorrowful and discontented.
“Ah,” growled the sheik, “this is the man Kāra requested me to kill!”