“Kernaby Pasha!” he cried.
“Abû Tabâh!” said I dazedly.
“I perceive that I am not alone in my anxiety for the welfare of M. Felix Bréton.”
“But why were you following him? I narrowly missed assaulting you.”
“Very narrowly,” he agreed in his gentle manner; “but you ask me why I was following M. Bréton. I was following him because I have seen so many of those who have crossed the path of the Black Darwîshes meet with violent and inexplicable deaths.”
“Murder?” I whispered.
“Not murder—suicide. Therefore, observing, as I had anticipated, a strangeness in your friend’s behavior, I have watched him.”
“The strangeness of his behavior is easily accounted for,” I said. And excitedly, for the horror of the episode in the studio was still strongly upon me, I told him of the whispering mummy.
“These are very dreadful things of which you speak, Kernaby Pasha,” he admitted, “but I warned you that it was ill to incur the enmity of the Black Darwîshes. That there is a scheme afoot to compass the self-destruction or insanity of your friend is now evident to me; and he has brought this calamity upon himself; for the words which he believed to be spoken by the spirit of the girl Yâsmîna would not have affected him so unpleasantly if his attitude towards her had been marked by proper restraint and the affair confined within suitable limitations.”
“Quite so. But although the Black Darwîshes may be both malignant and clever, that uncanny whispering is beyond the control of natural forces.”