“At the Café Maure, monsieur, if monsieur is not afraid to sleep alone. Here is the key. Monsieur can lock himself in. The door is strong.”
I was helping myself to the soup. The rising wind blew up the skirts of the Spahi’s scarlet robe. In the wind—was it imagination?—I seemed to hear some thin, passing echoes of a tom-tom’s beat.
“Come in,” I said to the Spahi. “You shall sup with me to-night, and—and you shall sleep here with me.”
D’oud’s expressive face became sinister. Arabs are almost as jealous as they are vain.
“But, monsieur, he will sleep in the Café Maure. If monsieur wishes for a companion, I——”
“Come in,” I repeated to the Spahi. “You can sleep here to-night.”
The Spahi stepped over the lintel with a jingling of spurs, a rattling of accoutrements. The murderer stepped in softly after him, drawn by the cord. D’oud began to look as grim as death. He made a ferocious gesture towards the murderer.
“And that man? Monsieur wishes to sleep in the same room with him?”
I heard the sound of the tom-tom above the wail of the wind.
“Yes,” I said.