Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/224

 different. Nureddin Zaid told me you'd be perfectly safe the moment Al Nakia gives me his solemn oath—but not before. So, my dear, I'd much rather you stay here—won't you please?”

Thus the mild and meek American parent whose words, when he talked to men of millions on Wall Street or on the Stock Exchange, popped sharp and dry like machine-gun bullets; and Jane smiled.

“Certainly, dad,” she said. “I don't want to worry you.”

“Thanks, my dear. I'll send for you just as soon as Al Nakia promises me.”

A few hours later, Abderrahman Yahiah Khan and “The Basin,” whom the Tamerlani officials at the eastern gate had passed in without question as evidently belonging to the saheb's retinue, had disappeared in the packed, greasy wilderness of houses that ran from the Bazaar of the Mutton Butchers to the Ghulan River where stood the dead Ameer's mausoleum, while Mr. Warburton whose Baluchi guide had left the moment he had been paid his wages and a handsome bakshish in appreciation of his loyal warning about Al Nakia, was sitting on a rickety, three-legged chair in the chapar-khanah, the official rest house for distinguished travelers, trying to convince a bored, bearded major-domo by sign language that goat stewed in honey and spiced with asafoetida, badly cooked brinjal, unripe melons, underdone bread, and luke-warm licorice water were not the right sort of diet for a dyspeptic stomach.

Finally he gave up in despair, and contented himself