With an uncontrollable shudder he stepped out of the shroud and stood staring at the knife as though it were a snake. It had a curved blade and a bone hilt coarsely inlaid with Arabic characters in brass.
The shroud was a threadbare affair—perhaps a bed-sheet from some cheap lodging house. But its significance was so repulsive that he hesitated to touch it.
However, he was ashamed to have it discovered in his room. He picked up the brutal-looking knife and kicked the shroud out into the corridor, where they could guess if they liked how such a rag got into the Ritz-Carlton.
Then he searched his bedroom, and, of course, discovered nobody hiding. But chills crawled on his spine while he was about it, and he shivered still as he stood in the centre of the room examining the knife and testing edge and point.
Then, close to his ear, a low voice whispered: “Be careful, my lord; the Yezidee knife is poisoned. But it is written that a poisoned heart is more dangerous still.”
He had turned like a flash; and he saw, between him and the sitting-room door, a very young girl with slightly slanting eyes, and rose and ivory features as perfect as though moulded out of tinted bisque.
She wore a loose blue linen robe, belted in, short at the elbows and skirt, showing two creamy-skinned arms and two bare feet in straw sandals. In one hand she had a spray of purple mulberries, and she looked coolly at Cleves and ate a berry or two.
“Give me the knife,” she said calmly.
He handed it to her; she wiped it with a mulberry leaf and slipped it through her girdle.
“I am Sansa,” she said with a friendly glance at him, busy with her fruit.