“Ah, my gentleman, I am sorry to be late but——”
The voice ceased. I looked up.
“Well?” I said.
Then I, too, said no more. Hassan Abd-el-Kebîr was glaring at the ornament in my hand as though I had held, not a very choice example of native jewellery, but an adder or a scorpion!
“What’s the matter?” I asked, recovering from my surprise. “Do you know to whom this amulet belongs?”
He muttered something in guttural Arabic ere replying to my question. Then:
“It is the heart of lapis,” he said, in a strange voice. “It is the heart of lapis!”
“So much is evident,” I cried, laughing. “But does it alarm you?”
“Please,” he said softly, and held out a brown hand—“I will see.”
I placed the thing in his open palm and he gazed at it as one might imagine an orchid hunter would gaze at a new species of Odontoglossum.