“I must get back to the Bordj,” I said abruptly.
“I will accompany monsieur.”
The old formula, and this time the voice which spoke it sounded natural. We went forward together. I walked very fast. I wanted to catch up that music, to prove to myself that it was produced by human fists and sticks upon an instrument which, however barbarous, had been fashioned by human hands. But we entered Sidi-Massarli in a silence, only broken by the soughing of the wind and the heavy shuffle of the murderer’s feet upon the sand.
Outside the Café Maure D’oud was standing with the white hood of his burnous drawn forward over his head; one or two ragged Arabs stood with him.
“They’ve been playing tom-toms in the village, D’oud?”
“Monsieur asks if——”
“Tom-toms. Can’t you understand?”
“Ah! Monsieur is laughing. Tom-toms here! And dancers, too, perhaps! Monsieur thinks there are dancers? Fatma and Khadija and Aïchouch———”
I glanced quickly at the murderer as D’oud mentioned the last name, a name common to many dancers of the East. I think I expected to see upon his face some tremendous expression, a revelation of the soul of the man who had run for one whole day through the sand behind the Spahi’s horse, cursing at the end of the cord which dragged him onward from Tunis.
But I only met the gentle smile of eyes so tender, so submissive, that they were as the eyes of a woman who had always been a slave, while the ragged Arabs laughed at the idea of tom-toms in Sidi-Massarli.