He gave no thought to the dead body on the filthy straw; that he knew he could carry under his arm and drop into the Nile when the bazaar slept; but he pulled hard at his curly hair as a plan germinated in the sluggish convolutions of his brain.

It was a very vague and a very childlike plan, but too much could not be expected from one who had been conceived, born and bred on the animal plane.

After an hour’s pondering it, however, took a fairly definite outline.

When the sun had warmed the cool wind of night he would hide the body under the straw and visit his eunuch twin, who had really been the cause of the disaster.  His silence would have to be bought.  Of course it would have been better to have broken his neck at once, but it was too late now, so there was no use in worrying!  Then he would go terrorise the servants, giving them to understand that he had been left in charge in his mistress’s absence; he would remain in charge until he had acquired enough money to buy the coal-black little Venus who worked in the Shoemakers Bazaar; after that he would creep away with her and return to his own village further down the Nile.

And because, perhaps, of the childishness of the plan it succeeded up to a certain point.

He found his eunuch brother, who was the only one besides his master and himself to know that the dancer had been Zulannah, in the grip of such terror and physical pain as to be almost imbecile, though a look of cunning had shone for a moment in his bloodshot eyes when Qatim had inadvertently let drop a hint as to the accumulated riches in his hovel.

Anyway, they came to an understanding which ensured the eunuch’s silence at the price of so much good money, paid in instalments.

Qatim had no intention of holding to his side of the agreement, nor his brother to his—­as is the way of such breed of Oriental.

Then, just as he was, clad only in loin-cloth and with whip in hand, the gigantic brute strode to the House of Zulannah.  Ensued a turbulent hour, at the end of which he remained acknowledged master of the house and inmates until the return of the mistress, whilst those who had mocked him went in search of cool leaves to place upon the bruised portion of their backs and those two whose heads he had cracked together for having resisted him lay quite still.

Returned to the hovel as the sun was sinking, and in high fettle, he donned red tunic, huge turban and rattling scimitar and strutted with all the negro’s delight in fine feathers in front of the mirror which rested against the crumbling plaster walls.

And then he suddenly stopped and stared into the glass.

The filthy straw in the corner of the room had moved.  His face went grey; great beads of sweat showed upon his chest, his knees shook, then he fell on his face and covered his head with a corner of the green-yellow Kidderminster carpet, when a voice feebly craved for water and a small blood-stained hand weakly pulled at the straw.