like. There was an Egyptian tried it a month ago. Look
yonder on the ledge, where his skull hangs. May devils burn
his soul!"

It was easy enough to look shocked at that suggestion. He had the
drop on me for one thing; and, for another, Ayisha was whispering
to him, and I couldn't guess whether she was betraying me or not.
It turned out that that young woman was much too bent on swapping
owners to do anything but smooth our path; but I wasn't so sure
of that then as Narayan Singh seemed to be, and as, for that
matter, Grim was too.

But he seemed to grow a little less irascible, until she leaned
too close to him and touched his neck. Then he went off like a
pent-up volcano, and cursed her until she shuddered; and her
fright gave him no satisfaction, because he could not turn his
head to look at her.

"Where is this cursed person?" he demanded, meaning Grim,
of course.

"He rests at the treasury of Pharaoh," said I, hoping that as
Narayan Singh and I both stood exactly in front of him he might
not catch sight of Grim's movements in the valley below.

"How did he enter Petra without my leave?" he demanded.

I took a long pause, for that was an awkward question. I could
not very well admit that Grim had seized and imprisoned his
watchmen. But Narayan Singh strode into the breach.

"The Lion's jackals slept," he announced in a voice of righteous
indignation. "There was none to give our great Sheikh Jimgrim as
much as Allah's blessing. Nevertheless, he sends these presents."

Without answering that Ali Higg clapped his hands twice, and a
woman came around the corner from a near-by cave. By her bearing
she was either a junior wife or a concubine, and she greeted
Ayisha like a sister with a great pow-wow of blessing and reply.
But Ali Higg cut all that short. He was no sentimentalist.

"Find Shammas Abdul," he ordered her. "Order him to take camel
and meet the men returning from the Ben Aroun raid. Let him bid
them hurry. Go!"

She obeyed on the run. There was discipline in that man's camp,
as long as he was looking. But Ayisha followed the woman out, and
whether she herself found Shammas Abdul, or whether she contrived
to pervert the junior wife, Grim presently became aware of that
move to summon forth men, and governed himself accordingly.

For about a minute Ali Higg fixed baleful eyes on me.

"You are a Shia!" he snapped suddenly. "A Persian! A cursed heretic!"

A look of pained surprise was the best reto