Kāra stuffed the document carelessly into a side pocket; but a moment after, as if struck by a sudden thought, he pulled out a paper and rolled it into a taper. This he lighted from the blaze of a lamp and with it relit his cigar, afterward holding the taper in his fingers until it was consumed to a fine ash. Not a word was spoken. The others watched him silently, but with significant looks, never suspecting he had substituted another paper for the note of hand, while Consinor, as the ash was brushed to the floor, breathed more freely.
“The pleasure of winning ought to be enough for any man,” remarked the prince, and, rising from the table, he sauntered from the room.
“Nevertheless, it is a debt of honor,” said Colonel Varrin, gravely. “But it is fortunate, Consinor, you were playing with Prince Kāra. The fellow is so confoundedly rich that money means nothing to him, and he will not take his winnings unless you force him to accept them.”
“I know that,” returned the viscount. “I would never have allowed another man to double the stakes during a winning streak. Perhaps I should not have allowed the prince to do so.”
Then he also left the club, for, despite Kāra’s seeming generosity in destroying the note, his own insidious nature led him to suspect every man he had dealings with, and the amount involved was so enormous that it would swallow up double the sum his father’s crippled estates were now worth. On his own account he had nothing at all beyond the salary he drew from the Ministry of Finance; so he realized his danger, and could not resist feeling that he had been led into a trap.
Meantime Tadros had not forgotten, as his master had done, the probable arrival of Nephthys by the afternoon train. He should have waited in the ante-room of the club for Kāra’s orders; but instead he returned to the house and found that the girl had already been there for an hour.
“I will see her,” he muttered, and disregarding old Ebbek, who would have stopped him, he entered the harem.
Thrusting aside the draperies, Tadros coolly stalked into the girl’s boudoir and then stopped short in undisguised astonishment at what his eyes beheld. Nephthys was reclining upon the divan, smoking her cigarette, resplendent in her fleecy silks, the golden braid and the sparkling jewels.
She smiled and nodded as she saw her old friend the dragoman, but Tilga burst into a flood of angry protestations and curses, rushing at the intruder and trying to drive him from the room with futile pushes of her lean hands.
Tadros resisted, and when the hag started to scream he covered her mouth with his hand, holding her fast at the same time.