consent to receive from him a sum of money as compensation. I was too
busy to give thought to the matter. I could readily imagine that Selim,
cunning but thoughtless, caressing yet unfeeling, had played with the
little girl, torn off her ear-rings, killed her, and hidden her body.
The affair soon passed out of my mind. The epidemic was spreading from
Old Cairo to the European quarters. I was visiting from thirty to forty
sick persons daily, practising venous injections in every case. I was
suffering from liver trouble, anaemia was playing havoc with me, and I
was dropping with fatigue. In order to husband my strength, I took a
little rest at noon. I was accustomed, after luncheon, to lie down in
the inner courtyard of my house, and there for an hour I bathed myself
in the African shade, as dense and cool as water. One day, as I was
lying there on a divan in my courtyard, just as I was lighting a
cigarette, I saw Selim approaching. With his beautiful bronze arm he
lifted the door-curtain, and came towards me in his blue robe. He did
not speak, but smiled with his shy and innocent smile, and the deep red
of his lips disclosed his dazzling teeth. His eyes, beneath the blue
shadow of his eyelashes, shone with covetousness while gazing at my
watch which lay on the table.

"I thought he had escaped. And this surprised me, not because captives
are strictly watched in Oriental prisons, where men, women, horses and
dogs are herded in imperfectly closed courtyards, and guarded by a
soldier armed with a stick. But Moslems are never tempted to flee from
their fate. Selim knelt down with an appealing grace, and approached
his lips to my hand, to kiss it according to ancient custom. I was not
asleep, and I had proof of it. I also had proof that the apparition had
been before me only for a short time. When Selim had vanished I noticed
that my cigarette, which was alight, was not yet tipped with ash."

"Was he dead when you saw him?" asked Nanteuil.

"Not a bit of it," replied the doctor, "I heard a few days later that
Selim, in his jail, wove little baskets, or played for hours at a time
with a chaplet of glass balls, and that he would smilingly beg a piastre
of European visitors, who were surprised by the caressing softness of
his eyes. Moslem justice is slow. He was hanged six months later. No
one, not even he himself, was greatly concerned about it. I was in
Europe at the time."

"And since then he has never reappeared?"

"N