“Just so,” said Meakim.

“Of course,” assented the District Attorney.

“But as soon as he reaches this place, Holcombe,” continued Carroll, “he begins to show just how bad he is.  It all comes out—­all his viciousness and rottenness and blackguardism.  There is nothing to shame it, and there is no one to blame him, and no one is in a position to throw the first stone.”  Carroll dropped his voice and pulled his chair forward with a glance over his shoulder.  “One of those men you saw riding in from the meet to-day.  Now, he’s a German officer, and he’s here for forging a note or cheating at cards or something quiet and gentlemanly, nothing that shows him to be a brute or a beast.  But last week he had old Mulley Wazzam buy him a slave girl in Fez, and bring her out to his house in the suburbs.  It seems that the girl was in love with a soldier in the Sultan’s body-guard at Fez, and tried to run away to join him, and this man met her quite by accident as she was making her way south across the sand-hills.  He was whip that day, and was hurrying out to the meet alone.  He had some words with the girl first, and then took his whip—­it was one of those with the long lash to it; you know what I mean—­and cut her to pieces with it, riding her down on his pony when she tried to run, and heading her off and lashing her around the legs and body until she fell; then he rode on in his damn pink coat to join the ladies at Mango’s Drift, where the meet was, and some Riffs found her bleeding to death behind the sand-hills.  That man held a commission in the Emperor’s own body-guard, and that’s what Tangier did for him.”

Holcombe glanced at Meakim to see if he would verify this, but Meakim’s lips were tightly pressed around his cigar, and his eyes were half closed.

“And what was done about it?” Holcombe asked, hoarsely.

Carroll laughed, and shrugged his shoulders.  “Why, I tell you, and you whisper it to the next man, and we pretend not to believe it, and call the Riffs liars.  As I say, we’re none of us here for our health, Holcombe, and a public opinion that’s manufactured by declassee women and men who have run off with somebody’s money and somebody’s else’s wife isn’t strong enough to try a man for beating his own slave.”

“But the Moors themselves?” protested Holcombe.  “And the Sultan?  She’s one of his subjects, isn’t she?”

“She’s a woman, and women don’t count for much in the East, you know; and as for the Sultan, he’s an ignorant black savage.  When the English wanted to blow up those rocks off the western coast, the Sultan wouldn’t let them.  He said Allah had placed them there for some good reason of His own, and it was not for man to interfere with the works of God.  That’s the sort of a Sultan he is.”  Carroll rose suddenly and walked into the smoking-room, leaving the two men looking at each other in silence.

“That’s right,” said Meakim, after a pause.  “He give it to you just as it is, but I never knew him to kick about it before.  We’re a fair field for missionary work, Mr. Holcombe, all of us—­at least, some of us are.”  He glanced up as Carroll came back from out of the lighted room with an alert, brisk step.  His manner had changed in his absence.