And then, clutching me to him with his bony hands, he spoke in hushed and fearful tones of the house of the Sheikh Ismail Ebn al As. It was the fabled treasure of this holy man which had been the lodestone drawing Abdûl Moharli out into the desert. Something of his fear, of his constant apprehension seized upon me too; and as he glanced tremblingly first over this shoulder and then over that, so likewise did I glance, until I seemed to crouch in a world of spies listening to a secret greater than that of the Universe.
I pronounced the Takbîr, “Great is the Lord!”—a superstitious custom which I have acquired from my business acquaintances. I made the sign of the Cross and called upon the name of the Holy Virgin. Almost I feared to listen further, yet I lacked the courage to abstain.
“Not with mine eyes have I beheld the treasure of Ismail,” he whispered to me, this shadow of a man, this living mummy, those same eyes rolling in their sunken sockets; “nor with mine ears have I heard it named. These hands have never touched it; yet the secret of Ismail is my secret.”
So far he had proceeded and no further, when a slight noise, that was not of my imagination, came from immediately outside the tent. On the instant I sprang forth ... but no one was there and nothing now disturbed the solitude of the desert about me. A moment I stood, peering to left and right, into the void of the velvet dusk; no more than a moment, I can swear, yet long enough for that dreadful thing to happen—that thing which sometimes haunts my dreams.
Shrill and awful upon the silence it burst; the scream of a stricken man. It stabbed me like a knife; and as a creature of clay I stood, unable to stir or think. It died away, in a long wail of pain, that gave place to a guttural, inarticulate babbling—a choking, sobbing sound indescribable, but that may not be forgotten once it has been heard.
No living thing, as I can testify, entered or left the tent; so far the evidence of my senses bears me. But that one had entered and left it, unseen, I learned, when, throwing off this palsy of horror, I staggered back to the side of the one who knew the secret of Ismail.
He lay writhing upon the ground; blood issued from his mouth. The tongue of Abdûl Moharli had been torn out!
II
Three weeks later I had my first sight of the secret oasis. The fate from which Abdûl had fled had overtaken him as I have related, in my tent, and from that moment until we parted company—for this poor wretch survived his mutilation—not another hint could I glean from him respecting the discovery for which he had paid so terrible a price.