“You bet!” said Mr Hicks, energetically. “But you’ll have to conclude to take me as part of the outfit, Count. Your physician extraordinary won’t quit until he’s kicked out. And since you’re set on this piece of foolishness, I suppose I may as well hand you a document which was left for you to-day, but when Mr Mansfield came back and we began upon this palaver, I forgot it.”
Cyril took the letter, which was written on rough native paper, and read it through carefully. “How did you get hold of this, Hicks?” he asked at last.
“Brought by a blind Arab with a book under his arm, Count. ‘From the Great Princess,’ he said, as he handed it to me. He mentioned that he was a Protestant, and seemed to incline to loaf around and ask affectionately after the Churches of America, but I was in a hurry, and fired him out.”
“My dear Hicks! Why not have humoured the poor wretch, and kept him in talk? He would have been able to give me just the information I want.”
“That is so, Count, and that’s why I invited him to vanish.”
“Won’t do, Hicks. You’ll have to find him again now.”
“I guess so,” said Mr Hicks resignedly. “Well, I reckon I’ll appeal to our rackety friend Mahmud Fadil. He makes out to be acquainted with all the shady characters in the city. But I hope the lady is kindly disposed towards you, Count?”
“Not exactly. She warns me not to meddle with her subjects or their territory, on pain of an appeal to the Powers. Strange that she should have picked up that idea, isn’t it? But her scribe writes French, so very likely he is an Armenian from Czarigrad, full of the latest European notions. Her seal is Arabic, you see, but it has only ‘I, the Queen of the Desert,’ on it, no name.”
In fulfilment of the task imposed upon him by Cyril, Mr Hicks set out the next morning to seek the help of Mahmud Fadil, who had no difficulty in identifying from his description the person of whom he was in search.
“I know him,” he said. “It is Yeshua, a dog of a Bedawi who professes to have become a Christian, and is in the pay of the English ladies who have the schools.”