“Ze company is all here. There is no cause for longer delay. For this hour I waited; everything comes to him who waits. Listen now, you wretch, who stole my bride years ago. To pay me, you must even now give Aroun Scutari your daughter for a wife.”
“It is you who are the wretch. I would sooner see her dead than your wife. You are many, I am one; but despair never gnawed at my heart. Let him lay hands on me who dares,” and the speculator of the Chicago Bourse draws himself up defiantly.
None of them seem to be in any hurry, but perhaps it is because they are so sure—because they have other means at hand.
“Bah! shout if you will—no one can hear you. It is our turn to laugh, and we shall enjoy it, I assure you. I have asked for your daughter—you refuse. Bismillah! she comes to me of her own will.”
He points his trembling forefinger at the veiled figure standing beside Anthony, and his mocking laugh is enough to make one’s blood run cold. These old Turks know how to make of their revenge sweetness long drawn out—they can lacerate their victims’ feelings even as vultures pick the flesh from the bones of the dead placed in the Towers of Silence.
“Man, behold your child come to fill ze place you made vacant in my heart when you stole her mother from me. So shall ze revenge of Aroun Scutari be complete. Look upon her for ze last time, I tell you, for you go not forth from here again. It is decreed.”
With these last cutting words the Turk steps forward and tears the veil away. His manner is proud, disdainful. He feels as though he has the destiny of all present within the grasp of his hand, just as might a reckless man who holds a dynamite bomb, and looks around upon the men he hates.
As he does this, he receives the greatest shock of his life. It almost paralyzes him. He stares like a man demented.
Instead of the lovely features of Dorothy, he sees the face of a man, and a very homely face it is, to boot. The fellow shuts one eye and ogles him in a ridiculous fashion. Aroun Scutari is aghast at this failure of his plan. He turns his gaze upon Wayne.
“Where is she—what have you brought to me—zis thing? Speak, you slave, you dog of an unbeliever!”