is the Sôk," replied Hamet.
They had passed round the bend of the hill up which the cemetery slopes, and were come within view of the market-place. Charnock was puzzled by his unanswered question, and the question was forced to his notice again that afternoon, and with yet greater force.
It was market-day. Charnock beheld stretched out beneath him a great field, or rather a great plain, (for the grass was long since trampled into mud,) which curved down to the yellow sun-baked wall of the city, and whereon an innumerable throng, Negroes from Timbuctoo, Arabs, Jews, and Moors, in all manner of raiment, from rags to coloured robes, jostled and seethed, bawled and sweated, under a hot sun and in a brilliant air. Here an old hag screamed aloud the virtues of her merchandise, a few skinny onions and vegetables; there two men forced a passage with blows of their sticks, and behind them a stately train of camels brought in from the uplands their loads of dates. A Riffian sauntered by with an indifferent air, his silver-mounted gun upon his back, a pair of pistols in his belt, and a great coarse tail of hair swinging between his shoulders. He needed no couriers to prepare his way. At one spot a serpent-charmer thrust out his tongue, from which a snake was hanging by the fangs; at another a story-teller, vivid in narration, and of an extraordinary aptness in his gestures, held an audience enchained. From every side the din of human voices rose into the air, and to the din was added the snarling of camels, the braying of donkeys, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of oxen, and all manner of squeals and grunts, so that it seemed the whole brute creation had combined to make one discordant orchestra.
Into this Babel Charnock descended.
"Those are the shoemakers," said Hamet. He pointed to a cluster of tiny grimed gunny-bag tents in a corner of the highest part of the Sôk. In the doorways of the tents a few men sat cobbling; one or two wood fires crackled in the intervals between the tents; and in close proximity a dead mule took its last unsavoury sleep.
"Hassan Akbar sleeps in the mud near to the tents," continued Hamet. "Every evening he comes down to the Sôk, buys milk and bread from the shoemakers, and sleeps--"
"Near to that mule!" interrupted Charnock. "And he was the richest man in all Tangier."
A moment later there was shown to him the second picture which he was to carry away from Tangier. Down the Sôk, through the crowd, came the Moor, in his spotless robes, and a few yards behind him, striding swiftly and noiselessly, the blind gaunt beggar of the cemetery gate followed upon his trail. In and out amongst the shifting groups he threaded and wound, and never erred in his pursuit. The man in whose track he kept never spoke when all were shouting, yet Hassan never faltered. The sound of his footsteps was lost in a multitude of the like sounds, yet Hassan was somehow sensible of it, somehow to his ears it emerged distinct.
Charnock was amazed; in a way too he was chilled. It seemed uncanny that this sightless creature of the impassive face should be able to follow, follow, follow relentlessly, unswervingly, one silent man amongst the noisy hundreds. Charnock walked for a few yards by Hassan Akbar's side, keeping pace with him. Even with his eyes fixed upon the Moor in front, even though he saw his feet tread the ground, he could not distinguish his footfalls. How then could Hassan?
Tracker and Tracked passed from the Sôk under the archway of the gate, and Charnock dismissing Hamet walked down towards his hotel near the waterside. However, he missed his road. He turned through the horse market, descended the steep street, past the great Mosque, and walked along a narrow, crooked alley between blank and yellow walls, which ended in a tunnel beneath over-arching houses. Almost within the mouth of this tunnel there was a shop, or so it seemed, for a stuffed jackal swung above the door as a sign. Before this shop Charnock halted with a thrill of excitement. The door of the shop was shut, the unglazed window was shuttered. It was not on that account that Charnock stopped; but underneath the shuttered window, his head almost touching the sill, Hassan squatted on the cobbles fingering now and then a silver dollar.
Inside the door a bolt grated, the door opened, and a stout, undersized European appeared in the entrance, polished a pair of glasses, set them upon his nose, glanced up and down the street, closed the door behind him, and taking no heed whatever of the blind man under his window, walked briskly into the tunnel. He walked with a short, tripping, and jaunty step.
Charnock waited while the echo of it diminished and ceased, and the moment it had ceased he saw Hassan, without any hurry, without any sign of expectation or excitement, rise slowly to his feet and move along the house wall towards the door. His right elbow scraped the plaster; then his elbow touched nothing. He had come to the recess of the door, and he stopped.
It flashed upon Charnock that he had not heard the bolt again grate into its socket. The door was then only latched and--was Hassan's quarry behind its panels?
The affair had ceased to be a toy with which Charnock's imagination could idly play. He strode across the alley and planted himself face to face with Hassan. Hassan quietly and immediately murmured a request for alms and stretched out his left hand, a supple, corded hand, with long sinuous fingers, a hand of great strength. But as he spoke he drew within the recess of the door, and Charnock noticed his right hand steal up the panels feeling for the latch.
Made by this seemingly passionless and apathetic man, the secret movement shocked Charnock. It seemed to him at that moment so cold-blooded as to be almost inhuman.
"Look out!" he shouted through the door and in broad English, forgetting that the man for whom his warning was intended was a Moor. But the warning had its effect. There was a heavy blow upon the door, as though a man's shoulder lurched against it, and then the bolt grated into the socket. Hassan Akbar walked on repeating his prayer for alms, as if his hand had never for an instant stolen up the panel and felt for the latch.
Charnock, to make his warning the more complete, rapped on the door for admission, once, twice, thrice. But he got no answer. He leaned his ear to the panel. He could detect not so much as a foot stirring. Absolute silence reigned in that dark and shuttered room.
Charnock walked back to his hotel. On the way he passed the end of the pier, where he saw the little Frenchman bargaining with the owner of a felucca. His excitement gradually died down. It occurred to him that there might have been no grounds at all for any excitement. Hassan Akbar might have been following through the Sôk by mere accident. He might have tried the door in pursuit of nothing more than alms; and in a little the whole incident ceased to trouble his speculations. He crossed the Straits to Gibraltar the next morning, and waited there for two days until the P. and O. came in. It was on the P. and O. that he first fell in with Major Wilbraham.
CHAPTER III
TREATS OF A GENTLEMAN WITH AN AGREEABLE COUNTENANCE, AND OF A WOMAN'S FACE IN A MIRROR
Major Ambrose Wilbraham had embarked at Marseilles, and before the boat reached Gibraltar he had made the acquaintance of everyone on board, and had managed to exchange cards with a good many. The steamer was still within sight of Gibraltar when he introduced himself to Charnock with a manner of effusive jocularity to which Charnock did not respond. The Major was tall and about forty years of age. A thin crop of black hair was plastered upon his head; he wore a moustache which was turning grey; his eyebrows were so faultlessly regular that they seemed to have been stencilled on
