But within his sinuous, twisted soul Ferez writhed exultingly, and patted Gerhardt on the arm, and patted d’Eblis, too—dared even to squirm visibly closer to Excellenz, like a fawning dog that fears too much to venture contact in his wriggling demonstrations.
“You take with you our pretty wonder-child to Paris to be launched, I hear,” remarked Excellenz, most affably, to d’Eblis. And to Nihla: “And upon a yacht fit for an emperor, I understand. Ach! Such a going forth is only heard of in the Arabian Nights. Eh 13 bien, ma petite, go West, conquer, and reign! It is a prophecy!”
And Nihla threw back her head and laughed her full-throated laughter under the Turkish moon.
Later, Ferez, walking with the Ambassador, replied humbly to the curt question:
“Yes, I have become his jackal. But always at the orders of Excellenz.”
Later still, aboard the Mirage, Ferez stood alone by the after-rail, staring with ratty eyes at the blackness beyond the New Bridge.
“Oh, God, be merciful!” he whispered. He had often said it on the eve of crime. Even an Eurasian rat has emotions. And Ferez had been in love with Nihla many years, and was selling her now at a price—selling her and Adolf Gerhardt and the Count d’Eblis and France—all he had to barter—for he had sold his soul too long ago to remember even what he got for it.
The silence seemed more intense for the sounds that made it audible. From, the unlighted cities on the seven hills came an unbroken howling of dogs; transparent waves of the limpid Bosphorus slapped the vessel’s sides, making a mellow and ceaseless clatter. Far away beyond Galata Quay, in the inner reek of unseen Stamboul, the notes of a Turkish flute stole out across the darkness, where some Tzigane—some unseen wretch in rags—was playing the melancholy song of Mourad. And, mournfully responsive to the reedy complaint of a homeless wanderer from a nation without a home, the homeless dogs of Islam wailed their miserere under the Prophet’s moon.