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.
When we reached the Bordj I found that it contained only one good-sized room, quite bare, with stone floor and white walls. Here, upon a deal table, was set forth my repast; the foods I had brought with me, and a red Arab soup served in a gigantic bowl of palmwood. A candle guttered in the glass neck of a bottle, and upon the floor were already spread my gaudy striped quilt, my pillow, and my blanket. The Spahi surveyed these preparations with a deliberate greediness, lingering in the narrow doorway.
I sat down on a bench before the table. My attendants were to eat at the Café Maure.
“Where are you going to sleep?” I asked of D’oud.