The prince shrank. "Wilt thou do it, Ribâta?" he asked.
Accordingly, while Belshazzar held aside the curtain that some light might enter by the door-way, Ribâta, sick at heart, hunted over the blood-splashed floor for some clew to the identity of what it was that had died here. Belshazzar presently turned his back and stood staring into the street, refusing to look, yet listening with every sense for a dreaded exclamation from his friend. It came. As Bit-Shumukin bent over the corner where Nabonidus had fallen, he found something that wrung from him a low cry.
Belshazzar turned deathly white. "What is it?" he said, quietly.
Ribâta came to him with something in his hand. It was a small, shining, blue stone, that showed itself in the sunshine to be an Egyptian-cut sapphire of great value, attached to a wire of twisted gold.
Belshazzar took it dully from his hand. "My father wore it always on his neck. Let us return to the palace," he said.
"But the body—it may surely be found!"
"The river hath it. Let her keep her own."
And so the two remounted the vehicle and started on their way back through the city of which Belshazzar was king.