And thus came it to be known in the bazaar that Zulannah the courtesan had returned to the great city.

And a little later, Ben Kelham felt no tweak at the string with which Fate had hobbled him to his destiny, when, on hearing his number called, he took the letter from the page-boy, turned it over, and looked at it on each side, as we do when curious, but not over-interested; then he opened it idly, read it and crushed it in both hands.

It was written in the execrable English Zulannah had picked up in her few years of cosmopolitan intercourse with different nationalities; it was in vile hand-writing and was as despicable a method of revenge as an anonymous letter usually is.

It ran after this fashion: 

“If you want to find your white woman go and look for her in the ruins of Karnak, at night, in the arms of her half-caste lover, Hugh Carden Ali.”

And the woman who had limped back to the street, sniggered behind her veil as she watched the man tear the letter into shreds, while he sat and thought out an answer to this second problem.

“It’s a damnable lie.   My Damaris and good old Carden!   I expect
they’ve met, but who------”  He sniffed at his hands suddenly.   “Pah! 
Now, where have I smelt that scent before?—­filth!”  He sat with his
hands to his nose, then frowned as, under the suggestion of the
perfume, the picture of a lovely woman clad in silks and satins and
wearing rich jewels rose before him.

“My God!” he said slowly, as the full significance of it all dawned slowly upon him.  “Of course!  She—­she invited me to—­to visit her—­and I refused.  By all that’s clean and decent, if I don’t make her pay for this!  And it’s Carden, too, who can tell me the best way to set about it.  The harlot!  I wonder if I shall have to wait until evening for a train.”  He clenched his hands until the knuckles showed white, as he unseeingly watched a woman limp down the street.  “I’ll make her sorry she was ever born.”

He need not have worried on that point.  Fate was dogging those unsteady feet back to the hovel.

The spreading of a prairie fire is slow compared to the speed with which news runs through the bazaar.  The servants in the big house in the big garden went sullenly about their various tasks of tidying and clearing up the courtesan’s home, whilst little knots of people, composed principally of women, stood about in the vicinity of the gate.

It was the first time the tyrannical woman had been absent upon a long journey, and the relatives and friends even unto a most distant generation of her servants had taken advantage of it to visit the house and examine its, to them, surpassing luxury.

The Ethiopian, with his mind fixed only upon the bank, had taken but little interest in the house itself, and had visited it but rarely, and then only for the sake of appearances; so that the visitors had become more and more brazen, as the days passed, fingering the satins, sitting upon the cushions, feasting on the floor.