She laughed softly at the quick flash in his eyes and hardly waited for his speech.

“Good—­what a lover!  You are not afraid?”

Mendaciously he assured her that he was not.

“Good!” she said again, with a showing of white teeth between her carmined lips.  “You take her—­you take her away from him.  That is what I want.  You understand?”

Very suddenly he understood.

CHAPTER XVIII

AZIZA IS OFFENDED

This was no emissary from Aimee.  This was no philanthropic bystander.  It was some girl of the palace, jealous and daring, conspiring shrewdly for the removal of her rival.

“Take her away,” she was saying urgently.  “Out of this palace.  We want no brides here.”  Lowering and sullen, she turned bitter on the word.

“To-night, I was watching,” she went on swiftly.  “I heard—­the noise—­and then the whispering....  The darkness has ears and eyes—­and a tongue.  And so I waited out there....”

He could not distinguish all the quick flow of her speech, but he caught enough to understand how she had lurked in the halls, jealously spying, defying the eunuchs’ authority, and how she had caught with passionate delight that stifled alarm of scandal.  Later, hanging over some banister, she had seen the Ethiopian pass with his burden and had stolen down afterwards, stalking like a cat, and had discovered the lantern gone, the door unlocked....  And then she had watched until the pair emerged without the burden.

She had not been able to get hold of the key to the door.  But she had resolved to explore and so she had furnished the waterman with his wine, drugged, Ryder gathered, and so stolen past him on the other route to those underground foundations to which her suspicions had been directed by the mortar and dust upon Yussuf.

Evidently she knew the possibilities of the place and the mind of its master.  And when she found the old niche freshly bricked and the mortar at hand she had not needed more to assure her that here was the burial place of her rival’s lover.

Now, for the boon of his life, he was to relieve her of that rival.  Or try to.

“For once—­he might not kill her,” she whispered, “but if again—­” Her eyes glowed like a cat’s in the dark.  “Take her away.  Make her name a spitting and a disgrace....  Her memory a shame and a sting....  Is she beautiful?” she broke off to demand.  “They say—­but slaves lie—­”

“Can you believe a lover?” he said whimsically for all his impatience.  “She is a pearl—­a rose—­a crescent moon—­”

“They say she is very pale and thin—­”

“She is an Houri from Paradise,” he said distinctly.  “And now, in the name of Allah, let me get to her.  Tell me the way—­”

“Will she go gladly with you?” the low, insistent voice went on, and at his quick nod, “Holy Prophet, what a bride!”