Abdul salaamed. "My master's secrets are his servant's."
"Then how could he find out?"
"Tents have ears, Effendi. The saint's voice was weak, but not too weak for the super-ears of a spy. When the saint told the Effendi, very secretly and minutely, how to find the hidden treasure, on that night when he knew that Allah had decreed his death, Abdul was also playing the part of a spy. He saw the servant of the honourable Sitt, he saw his ear, and how it was placed at a little aperture in the sick man's tent."
Michael was silent for a few seconds.
"Ma lesh! The Effendi need not trouble too much. I did not tell him—there was nothing to be gained by causing my master unhappiness."
"I am not troubling, Abdul. If it has been so willed that I am to discover Akhnaton's treasure, even the spy of the cleverest woman on earth will not prevent it. I am fatalist enough for that, Abdul!"
"The Effendi is wise. Avarice destroys what the avaricious gathers.
Allah will reward the spy according to his merits."
Michael smiled. "I'm afraid it is more my nature than my piety which makes it easy for me to resign myself to the inevitable."
"Ma lesh! The Effendi understates his obedience to God's will—there is much good in patiently tolerating what you dislike."
"There's another way of expressing the same thing, Abdul—Effendi Lampton calls it 'drifting.' I am too like the desert sands, he thinks. I am without ambition, I too easily accept what seems to me the deciding finger of fate."