Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/174

 Tagi Khan had done that morning, and the Sheik-ul-Islam the day before.

“Of all the confounded, mystifying darned poppycock—I'll be jolly well blowed!” he said to himself, in plain, colloquial English, as he returned to his quarters in the left wing of the palace.

For in almost every instance when Hector, since he had begun to take charge of the affairs of Tamerlanistan, combining flattery and unvarnished brutality, brought the leaders and sub-leaders and henchmen of the different warring factions into line with his administrative policy, sooner or later the blades and the ancient prophecy were referred to, as the final argument.

And Hector was prey to natural curiosity. He wanted to know what it was all about.

But he did not dare.

At first his congenital stubbornness and, too, a certain fatalistic resolve to accept this new life of his and all it might bring without question or doubt or mental reservations, had sealed his lips. Now the very fact that he had accepted all without asking, that thus he had admitted indirectly that he was familiar with the prophecy and its meaning, made it impossible for him to demand an explanation.

What puzzled him most was that reference was always made to two blades.

He might have understood had they spoken of only one, the one he had found in the old lumber room near Dealle Castle; might have figured out that originally it had belonged to one of the Gengizkhani