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“Thou hast made an enemy of the priest,” said Koom Khan to Hector, that night, as the two, in the company of the Armenian treasurer, were smoking peaceful hubble-bubbles on the balcony of the palace, looking out into the spring night where fire starlight drifted through budding boughs into budding earth.

Hector made a negligent gesture, while the other continued that, too, there was some truth in what the Sheik had said:

“The army is ready, is eager to fight. Let us strike, Al Nakia.”

And Gulabian, though an Armenian and thus, congenitally, a man of peace, agreed to it and advocated a quick, smashing attack on the governor of the western marches. He went on to say that, through the good offices of spies and also of the local agent of the Cable Company, the Babu Chandra, who had intercepted and deciphered several cable messages sent from India, via Tamerlanistan, to Isfahan, and thence to the headquarters of the rebel chief, he had found out that the latter was preparing a great military coup, for which he had not only the support of the renegade Arab, Musa Al-Mutasim, but also of certain Europeans who seemed to have enough influence with the British-Indian government to have been granted a permit to ship rifles and ammunition in large quantities through the Persian Gulf.

“England takes no interest in the affairs of Tamerlanistan,” continued Hector. “It is outside their sphere of interests.”