“By George! it sounds like a page from the ‘Arabian Nights,’” exclaimed Cleek.  “Well, what next?  Did Ulchester take kindly to this housing of the mummy of his father-in-law and the eventual coffin of his wife?  Or was he willing to stand for anything so long as he got possession of the huge fortune the old man left?”

“He never did get it, Mr. Cleek—­he never touched so much as one farthing of it.  Zuilika took nobody into her confidence until everything had been converted into English gold and deposited in the bank to her credit.  Then she went straight to him and to Anita, showed them proof of the deposit, reviled them for their treatment of her, and swore that not one farthing’s benefit should accrue to Ulchester until Anita was turned out of the house in the presence of their guests and the husband took oath on his knees to join the wife in those daily prayers before the caliph’s mummy.  Furthermore, Ulchester was to embrace the faith of the Mohammedans that he might return with her at once to the land and the gods she had offended by marriage with a Frankish infidel.”

“Which, of course, he declined to do?”

“Yes.  He declined utterly.  But it was a case of the crushed worm, with Zuilika.  Now was her turn; and she would not abate one jot or tittle.  There was a stormy scene, of course.  It ended by Ulchester and the woman Anita leaving the house together.  From that hour Zuilika never again heard his living voice, never again saw his living face!  He seems to have gone wild with wrath over what he had lost and to have plunged headlong into the maddest sort of dissipation.  It is known—­positively known, and can be sworn to by reputable witnesses—­that for the next three days he did not draw one sober breath.  On the fourth, a note from him—­a note which he was seen to write in a public house—­was carried to Zuilika.  In that note he cursed her with every conceivable term; told her that when she got it he would be at the bottom of the river, driven there by her conduct, and that if it was possible for the dead to come back and haunt people he’d do it.  Two hours after he wrote that note he was seen getting out of the train at Tilbury and going towards the docks; but from that moment to this every trace of him is lost.”

“Ah, I see!” said Cleek reflectively.  “And you want to find out if he really carried out that threat and did put an end to himself, I suppose?  That’s why you have come to me, eh?  Frankly, I don’t believe that he did, Major.  That sort of a man never commits suicide upon so slim a pretext as that.  If he commits it at all, it’s because he is at the end of his tether—­and our friend ‘Zyco’ seems to have been a long way from the end of his.  How does the lady take it?  Seriously?”