“What is it?”
“Monsieur, it is the desert drum. There will be death in Sidi-Massarli to-night.”
I felt myself turn cold. He spoke with such conviction. The murderer was still smiling, and I noticed that the tired look had left him. He stood in an alert attitude, and the sweat had dried on his broad forehead.
“The desert drum?” I repeated.
“Monsieur has not heard of it?”
“Yes, I have heard—but—it can’t be. There must have been someone.”
I looked at the white teeth of the murderer, white as the saltpetre which makes winter in the desert.
“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.