led her down and stood stock-still, as these dogs are trained
to do; then with crimson saliva dripping from the jaws, crimson lights
shining in the eyes, let go their hold and stood looking alternately
from master to quarry, with slowly wagging tails.

There was no sign of anger in the man as he sat tranquilly upon the
cushions, the amber mouthpiece of the _nargileh_ between his lips; no
sound of wrath in the gentle voice which bid the Ethiopian eunuch to
remain prostrated upon the floor, until the arrival of the other
slaves, who could be heard pelting through the house from every
direction in answer to the summons of the gong.

"Idrabuh," he said quietly to four of the terror-stricken domestic
staff, pointing to the eunuch. "Upon the soles of the feet so that he
walketh not for many a day--if ever." And as the wretch was dragged
screaming from the room, he beckoned to four others, and pointed to the
body of the woman. "Carry that out and throw it in the street, in such
wise that it is not known from whence it came. Touch not the jewels,
lest thou sharest thy brother's fate."

With falcon upon wrist and blood-stained dogs at his heels, he passed
out of the ill-fated court to his own apartment, and, having bathed and
dressed himself, to his body-servant's grief, in hot, European
riding-kit, with boots from Peter Yapp, tucked the cleansed dogs of
Billi in beside him, and raced his car to the Obelisk which is all that
remains upright of the Biblical City of On.

* * * * * *

The Ethiopian slave Qatim gathered up the broken body of the woman from
the filth of the gutter and carried her to his hovel and flung her upon
the filthy straw under which he hid the jewels he stripped from her.

CHAPTER XIII

"_Best springs from strife and dissonant chords beget
Divinest harmonies_."

SIR LEWIS MORRIS.

As the sky lightened way down in the east and the faithful turned to
prayer, the little old lady sat at her window, taking her hour of
rest--her hour of understanding--with hands clasped peacefully in her
lap, a little smile at the corner of her whimsical mouth and her
snow-white hair fluttered by the breeze of dawn.

Bodily, mentally, spiritually, she was resting, having filched this
hour in which, before donning the garish trappings of her toilet, to
sit in fine cashmere night attire, covered in camel's-hair wrap as soft
as satin, with her little crimson bed-room slippe