and he had never felt real repentance. Thinking of that blow, he saw its sequel in the blow he had given now. Thus was that day linked with the present, thus had a blow struck in punishment of the wrong done the woman at the crossroads been repeated in the wrong done the girl who had just left him.
A sound now broke the stillness. It was a door shutting not far off. Kaid was coming. David turned his face towards the room where Foorgat Bey was lying dead. He lifted his arms with a sudden passionate gesture. The blood came rushing through his veins again. His life, which had seemed suspended, was set free; and an exaltation of sorrow, of pain, of action, possessed him.
“I have taken a life, O my God!” he murmured. “Accept mine in service for this land. What I have done in secret, let me atone for in secret, for this land—for this poor land, for Christ’s sake!”
Footsteps were approaching quickly. With a great effort of the will he ruled himself to quietness again. Kaid entered, and stood before him in silence. David rose. He looked Kaid steadily in the eyes. “Well?” said Kaid placidly.
“For Egypt’s sake I will serve thee,” was the reply. He held out his hand. Kaid took it, but said, in smiling comment on the action: “As the Viceroy’s servant there is another way!”
“I will salaam to-morrow, Kaid,” answered David.
“It is the only custom of the place I will require of thee, effendi. Come.”
A few moments later they were standing among the consuls and officials in the salon.
“Where is Nahoum?” asked Kaid, looking round on the agitated throng.
No one answered. Smiling, Kaid whispered in David’s ear.
CHAPTER VII. THE COMPACT
One by one the lights went out in the Palace. The excited guests were now knocking at the doors of Cairene notables, bent upon gossip of the night’s events, or were scouring the bazaars for ears into which to pour the tale of how David was exalted and Nahoum was brought low; how, before them all, Kaid had commanded Nahoum to appear at the Palace in the morning at eleven, and the Inglesi, as they had named David, at ten. But they declared to all who crowded upon their words that the Inglesi left the Palace with a face frozen white, as though it was he that had met debacle, while Nahoum had been as urbane and cynical as though he had come to the fulness of his power.
Some, on hearing this, said: “Beware Nahoum!” But those who had been at the Palace said: “Beware the Inglesi!” This still Quaker, with the white shining face and pontifical hat, with his address of “thee” and “thou,” and his forms of speech almost Oriental in their imagery and simplicity, himself an archaism, had impressed them with a sense of power. He had prompted old Diaz Pasha to speak of him as a reincarnation, so separate and withdrawn he seemed at the end of the evening, yet with an uncanny mastery in his dark brown eyes. One of the Ulema, or holy men, present had said in reply to Diaz: “It is the look of one who hath walked with Death and bought and sold with Sheitan the accursed.” To Nahoum Pasha, Dim had said, as the former left the Palace, a cigarette between his fingers: “Sleep not nor slumber, Nahoum. The world was never lost by one earthquake.” And Nahoum had replied with a smooth friendliness: “The world is not reaped in one harvest.”
“The day is at hand—the East against the West,” murmured old Diaz, as he passed on.
“The day is far spent,” answered Nahoum, in a voice unheard by Diaz; and, with a word to his coachman, who drove off quickly, he disappeared in the shrubbery.
A few minutes later he was tapping at the door of Mizraim, the Chief Eunuch. Three times he tapped in the same way. Presently the door opened, and he stepped inside. The lean, dark figure of Mizraim bowed low; the long, slow fingers touched the forehead, the breast, and the lips.
“May God preserve thy head from harm, excellency, and the night give thee sleep,” said Mizraim. He looked inquiringly at Nahoum.
“May thy head know neither heat nor cold, and thy joys increase,” responded Nahoum mechanically, and sat down.
To an European it would have seemed a shameless mockery to have wished joy to this lean, hateful dweller in the between-worlds; to Nahoum it was part of a life which was all ritual and intrigue, gabbling superstition and innate fatalism, decorated falsehood and a brave philosophy.
“I have work for thee at last, Mizraim,” said Nahoum.
“At last?”
“Thou hast but played before. To-night I must see the sweat of thy brow.”
Mizraim’s cold fingers again threw themselves against his breast, forehead, and lips, and he said:
“As a woman swims in a fountain, so shall I bathe in sweat for thee, who hath given with one hand and hath never taken with the other.”
“I did thee service once, Mizraim—eh?”
“I was as a bird buffeted by the wind; upon thy masts my feet found rest. Behold, I build my nest in thy sails, excellency.”
“There are no birds in last year’s nest, Mizraim, thou dove,” said Nahoum, with a cynical smile. “When I build, I build. Where I swear by the stone of the corner, there am I from dark to dark and from dawn to dawn, pasha.” Suddenly he swept his hand low to the ground and a ghastly sort of smile crossed over his face. “Speak—I am thy servant. Shall I not hear? I will put my hand in the entrails of Egypt, and wrench them forth for thee.”
He made a gesture so cruelly, so darkly, suggestive that Nahoum turned his head away. There flashed before his mind the scene of death in which his own father had lain, butchered like a beast in the shambles, a victim to the rage of Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Mehemet Ali.
“Then listen, and learn why I have need of thee to-night.”
First, Nahoum told the story of David’s coming, and Kaid’s treatment of himself, the foreshadowing of his own doom. Then of David and the girl, and the dead body he had seen; of the escape of the girl, of David’s return with Kaid—all exactly as it had happened, save that he did; not mention the name of the dead man.
It did not astonish Mizraim that Nahoum had kept all this secret. That crime should be followed by secrecy and further crime, if need be, seems natural to the Oriental mind. Mizraim had seen removal follow upon removal, and the dark Nile flowed on gloomily, silently, faithful to the helpless ones tossed into its bosom. It would much have astonished him if Nahoum had not shown a gaping darkness somewhere in his tale, and he felt for the key to the mystery.
“And he who lies dead, excellency?”
“My brother.”
“Foorgat Bey!”
“Even he, Mizraim. He lured the girl here—a mad man ever. The other madman was in the next room. He struck—come, and thou shalt see.”
Together they felt their way through the passages and rooms, and presently entered the room where Foorgat Bey was lying. Nahoum struck a light, and, as he held the candle, Mizraim knelt and examined
