“She has been kept a prisoner during the past week in a house belonging to one of the Black Darwîshes,” continued Abû Tabâh; “but my agents succeeded in tracing her this morning. By my orders, however, she has not been allowed to return to her home.”
“And what was the object of those orders?”
“That I might learn for what purpose she had been made to disappear,” replied Abû Tabâh; “and I have learned it to-night.”
“Then you think that the whispering mummy——”
He suddenly clutched my arm.
“Quick! raise your glasses!” he said softly. “On the roof of the house to the left of the light. There is the whispering mummy!”
Strung up to a high pitch of excitement, I gazed through the glasses in the direction indicated by my companion. Without difficulty I discerned him—a man wearing a black turban—who crept like some ungainly cat along the flat roof, carrying in his hand what looked like one of those sugar canes which pass for a delicacy among the natives, but which to European eyes appear more suitable for curtain-poles than sweetmeats. Springing perilously across a yawning gulf, the wearer of the black turban gained the roof of the studio, crept along for some little distance further, and then, lying prone, began slowly to lower the bamboo rod in the direction of the lighted window.
I found that unconsciously I had suspended my respiration, and now, breathlessly, as the truth came home to me—
“It is a speaking-tube!” I cried, “I cannot see the end of it, but no doubt it is curved so as to protrude through the side of the lattice window. Do you look, Abû Tabâh: I propose to act.”