Ahmet answered, "I do not think so, but better a lily than a sword-pierced liver."
"Have I not planned well?" The Jackal demanded.
"One who can select thirty-four men, scatter them throughout a Moslem _Hadj_ and bring all safely to Mecca, has planned as wisely as he chose men," Ahmet commented. "Just let there be no mistake at this late hour."
The Jackal said, "The only mistake of which we can be guilty now is in leaving this place without The Black Stone."
Ali clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle a gasp. The Jackal was indeed playing for big stakes, one of the most colossal prizes in the history of brigandage, and he seemed in a fair position to get it. Fixed in the wall of The Kaaba, an edifice so ancient that some claimed it was here even before Mohammed, The Black Stone was possibly the holiest of Moslem shrines. In common with all other pilgrims, Ali had dutifully kissed it. As far as its physical aspects were concerned, it was a small, dark mass that at one time might have been part of a meteor. Should anyone ever succeed in stealing it, the Moslem world would pay a fantastic ransom for its safe return. If nobody stopped The Jackal and his accomplices, each of them could be so wealthy that the Pasha of Damascus would seem a beggar by comparison.
Ben Akbar swung his head to nudge Ali's shoulder with an inquiring nose, and Ali stroked the _dalul's_ soft cheek. Accustomed to spending his nights in some peaceful pasture, Ben Akbar had no liking for this confined place, and he was telling his friend so.
Ali tried to conjure up a mental image of The Sacred Course, but he couldn't do it, in spite of the fact that he had run its length the stipulated seven times. Because he had hoped to find that in their faces which would tell him just why they had come to Mecca, and thus furnish some sure basis upon which he could build his own right motivation for coming, Ali had studied his fellow pilgrims and ignored the street. Who could imagine that he or anyone else might have to leave The Masa by the nearest and quietest path?
There had to be a way because there was always a way, but Ali was still seeking it when Ben Akbar, increasingly eager to be out of the city that he did not like and into the desert he did, expressed his impatience in a racking grunt.