It was on the following evening, as I sat smoking upon the terrace of the hotel and reflecting upon the execrably bad luck which pursued me, that I observed Abû Tabâh mounting the carpeted steps with slow and stately carriage. He saluted me gravely and accepted the seat which I offered him.
My plan had run smoothly; Malaglou had given himself up to the authorities, but had been released upon payment of a substantial bail. Mizmûna was concealed at Shubra, and I was flogging my brain in a vain endeavor to conjure up a plan whereby, without betraying the villainous Greek and thus causing him to betray me, I might secure the Sheikh’s reward—or, at least, the lapis armlet.
“Alas,” said Abû Tabâh, “that the wicked should prosper.”
“To whose prosperity,” I inquired, “do you more especially refer?”
He regarded me with his fine melancholy eyes.
“You have an English adage,” he continued, “which says, ‘set a thief to catch a thief.’”
“Quite so. But might I inquire what bearing this crystallized wisdom has upon our present conversation?”
“The man, Joseph Malaglou,” he replied, “learning of the hue-and-cry after a certain missing damsel——”
I remember I was about to light a cigar as he uttered those words, but a dawning perception of the iniquitous truth crept poisonously into my mind, and I threw both cigar and matches over the rail into the Shâra Kâmel and clutched fiercely at the little table between us.