“You, Sayed Ayoub,” he ordered, “take your pig of a self and others like unto you into that doorway by the stairs.  Remain until you hear men enter from these two doors, facing the Infidel dogs.  Then come upon them from behind.  The man is to be bound, and when evening comes—­but that is later!  Still, if he resists too much—­” The speaker shrugged his heavy shoulders and made a certain gesture.

“And the woman?  What of her?” The question came from a gigantic Bedouin whose evil countenance was made the more sinister by one closed and empty eye-socket.

Abdul Said Bey nodded.  “She is to be tenderly handled,” he enjoined.  “She, also, must disappear, but that shall be my care.  My harem is as silent as the Bosphorus.”

There were steps on the stairs, and instantaneously the room emptied itself and became silently dark.

When Karyl heard the hand-clapping of the decoy shopman, and saw the responding ruffians in the opposite doors, he swiftly thrust the girl into the spot of blacker shadow at his back, and seized the wrist of Mohammed Abbas with a force and suddenness that wrung from him a piteous wail.

Keeping the Turk before him, he backed toward the shadowed recess, with the one idea of shielding Cara.  But the darker spot was the door behind which Sayed Ayoub lay in ambuscade, and as Karyl reached it, it swung open, showing them against a background as bright as though they were painted on yellow canvas.

With his free arm he swept Cara into the doorway, wheeling quickly in front of her, and sent Mohammed Abbas lurching forward into the faces of the assailants led by Sayed Ayoub.  Instantly, however, his arms were pinioned from behind by the reenforcements, and as he frantically struggled to turn his face, in an effort to see the girl, some thick fabric fell over his head, covering mouth and eyes, and he went down stifled and garroted into insensibility.

Seeing the man overwhelmed and dragged through the door, Cara stood rigidly upright, white in the intensity of voiceless outrage, until the gigantic brute with one sightless eye and a greasy tarboosh reached out his grimy hand and seized her.  Then she sickened at the profaning shock of his touch, and fell unconscious.

A few moments later the “English Jackal” stood nonchalantly looking down at the bound figure of the former King lying on the floor, shoulders propped against the wall, head wrapped in a richly embroidered shawl from Persia.  Lamps had been kindled.  The head wrappings had already been somewhat loosened and Karyl was stirring with the indication of returning consciousness.

“Oh, damn it!” remarked Martin in disgust.  “He doesn’t need to be both trussed up and gagged, you know.  He’s quite safe.  Take off the head cloths.”

He stuffed tobacco into his blunt bull-dog pipe as he supervised the undoing of the smothering fabric and complacently looked at his prisoner.