Achmet made no reply, but, as he passed beyond the door with Higli, he said in a whisper: “Come--to Harrik and the army! He shall be deposed. The hour is at hand.” High answered him faintly, however. He had not the courage of the true conspirator, traitor though he was.
As they disappeared, Kaid made a wide gesture of friendliness to David, and motioned to a seat, then to a narghileh. David seated himself, took the stem of a narghileh in his mouth for an instant, then laid it down again and waited.
“Nahoum--I do not understand,” Kaid said presently, his eyes gloating.
“Wherefore?” Kaid could not realise the truth. This truth was not Oriental on the face of it. “Effendina, he comes to place his life in thy hands. He would speak with thee.”
“He sought me to plead for him with thee, and because I knew his peril, I kept him with me and brought him hither but now.”
“Nahoum went to thee?” Kaid’s eyes peered abstractedly into the distance between the almost shut lids. That Nahoum should seek David, who had displaced him from his high office, was scarcely Oriental, when his every cue was to have revenge on his rival. This was a natural sequence to his downfall. It was understandable. But here was David safe and sound. Was it, then, some deeper scheme of future vengeance? The Oriental instinctively pierced the mind of the Oriental. He could have realised fully the fierce, blinding passion for revenge which had almost overcome Nahoum’s calculating mind in the dark night, with his foe in the next room, which had driven him suddenly from his bed to fall upon David, only to find Mahommed Hassan watching--also with the instinct of the Oriental.
Some future scheme of revenge? Kaid’s eyes gleamed red. There would be no future for Nahoum. “Why did Nahoum go to thee?” he asked again presently.
“That I might beg his life of thee, Highness, as I said,” David replied.
David looked meditatively at him. “It was agreed between us yesterday that I should speak plainly--is it not so?”
Kaid nodded, and leaned back among the cushions.
“If what the Effendina intends is fulfilled, there is no other way but death for Nahoum,” added David. “What is my intention, effendi?”
“To confiscate the fortune left by Foorgat Bey. Is it not so?”